Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas gathered today at a Mideast summit in Sharm el-Sheikh for unilateral talks and goodwill gestures aimed at halting violence. This is the first summit after collapse of talks in 2000. With this summit sides hope to enter a new era of peace talks.

It’s interesting that the cease-fire agreement won’t be a formal written document. Instead, it will be a verbal declaration by each side to halt violence. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said the agreement also included the establishment of joint committees to define conditions of the release of Palestinian prisoners and to oversee the successive withdrawal of Israeli forces from the West Bank.

Sharon says he is ready to come into agreement with Abbas and withdraw settlers from Gaza and part of the West Bank this year if Palestinians will halt violence.

Abbas is firm stating that a state must include all the West Bank with Arab East Jerusalem and Gaza, refugees and their descendants should obtain the right to return to lands in what is now Israel.

Those demands complicate the situation for Israel, which wants to keep major West Bank settlements, considers Jerusalem its own capital and excludes the possibility for refugees to return to the Jewish state.