The U.S. praised Israelis and Palestinians to create a positive atmosphere for their first peace contacts in more than a year, after the initial round of indirect talks ended Sunday.
President Barack Obama's Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, left for home Sunday after multiple meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders over the course of a week to get the indirect talks under way. Resumption of the peace talks amounts to the first achievement here for the Obama administration.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said the talks were "serious and wide-ranging," and both sides offered initial steps to help things along: Israel committed to no building in a housing project in disputed east Jerusalem and the Palestinians said they would work against incitement.
Over the next four months, Mitchell will ply the road between the offices of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Netanyahu, less than 10 miles (15 kilometers) apart, to try to narrow vast differences over the terms of Palestinian independence.
Crowley said in a statement that Mitchell will return in a week for another round of shuttle diplomacy.
He said Mitchell told both sides that progress is important so that they can move to direct negotiations about creation of a Palestinian state next to Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his Cabinet on Sunday that the goal should be resumption of direct peace negotiations as soon as possible.
"Peace can't be made from a distance or by remote control," he told his Cabinet. "Over time one cannot assume that that we will reach decisions and agreements on critical issues such as security and our national interests and their interests if we don't sit in the same room."
Indirect talks are a step backward after 16 years of face-to-face negotiations, which failed to achieve a peace accord. The last direct talks broke down in late 2008.
The Palestinians claim all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with east Jerusalem as their capital. Netanyahu says Israel must maintain a presence in the West Bank to protect his country's security. He also says east Jerusalem — home to sensitive Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites — must remain under Israeli control.
Israel, which captured all three areas in the 1967 Mideast war, withdrew from Gaza in 2005.
Mitchell's mission was devised to get around a deadlock over Israeli settlement construction. Abbas has said he will not negotiate directly without an Israeli freeze on Jewish settlement activity. Netanyahu has offered only a temporary construction slowdown in areas claimed by the Palestinians.
The indirect talks had been set to start in March, but they were thrown into disarray when Israel announced plans to build 1,600 homes in Ramat Shlomo, a Jewish neighborhood in east Jerusalem.
