Abbas to press Olmert to end Gaza blockade

By Wafa Amr

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will ask Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to end a blockade in Gaza and accept his offer to control Gaza's border crossings, Palestinian officials said on Saturday.

The two leaders are expected to meet on Sunday to discuss how to push forward with peace talks after Hamas breached Gaza's border with Egypt in defiance of an Israeli blockade.

Israel and the Palestinians launched their most serious peace talks in seven years at a U.S.-sponsored conference in November with the goal of signing a peace treaty in 2008.

Thousands of Palestinians poured into Egypt this week to stock up on food and fuel in short supply after Israel closed its borders with the Hamas-controlled territory in what it said was a bid to end cross-border rocket fire into southern Israel.

The fall of the border wall punched a new hole in a U.S.-backed campaign to curb the clout of Hamas and strengthen Abbas, nearly eight months after the Islamist group routed his Fatah forces in Gaza. Hamas opposes the peace moves with the Jewish state.

Israel, which occupied Gaza in 1967, pulled out its troops and settlers in 2005 but still controls the strip's northern and eastern borders, airspace and coastal waters.

Abbas will also ask Olmert to lift immediately travel restrictions in the occupied West Bank, officials said. Israel has so far balked at removing its hundred of checkpoints that crisscross the West Bank.

"The number one issue on the agenda of Sunday's talks between President Abbas and Olmert will be ending the siege imposed on Gaza, and the need to end the siege in the West Bank as well, as there are hundreds of checkpoints there," senior Abbas aide Yasser Abed Rabbo told Reuters.