JERUSALEM, Nov 17: Israeli caretaker Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Monday 250 Palestinian prisoners would be freed in a goodwill gesture towards Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, who in turn urged Israel to maintain the Gaza truce.

The pair met in Jerusalem for the first time in two months, amid rising tension in and around the besieged Gaza Strip where Israeli forces and Palestinian militants have engaged in almost daily tit-for-tat attacks since Nov 4.

“Abbas had asked him to free Palestinian prisoners and Olmert told him of the decision to release 250 at the beginning of December,” Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said.

In a similar move in August, Israel freed 198 Palestinian prisoners. More than 11,000 Palestinians are still held in Israeli prisons.

A senior Israeli official said that none of the prisoners to be freed belongs to radical Palestinian movements such as Hamas, the Islamist movement that seized power in the Gaza Strip in June 2007.

Since the Hamas takeover, the secular Abbas has held sway only in the West Bank.

But during Monday’s talks at Olmert’s official residence, Abbas “stressed the need to maintain the truce and to meet humanitarian and food needs in the Gaza Strip,” Erakat said.

Israel has cited a recent flare-up in violence in further tightening its blockade and completely sealing off the aid-dependent territory, but allowed the delivery of humanitarian supplies on Monday for the first time in almost two weeks.

Olmert told Abbas that Hamas is to blame for violations of the truce in and around the Gaza Strip, and warned that if violence escalates, “Israel will have to respond,” a senior Israeli official said.

On Monday at least half a dozen rockets fired from Gaza hit southern Israel without causing any casualties.

Each side has accused the other of violating the ceasefire in the latest flare-up of violence in which volleys of rockets and mortar rounds have been launched at Israel and 15 Gaza militants killed since Nov 4.

Israel generally responds to the Gaza attacks by tightening the blockade it imposed after the 2007 Hamas takeover, but said it allowed 33 truckloads of humanitarian supplies into the coastal strip on Monday.

A UN spokesman said that many more deliveries will be needed in the impoverished and overcrowded territory where it distributes food to 750,000 people — half the population.

“We cannot have another period when people are not getting their food assistance. We cannot allow people to get punished in that way,” said Chris Gunness of the UN Works and Relief Agency.

Israel had been expected to ease its embargo after the truce, intended to last six months, went into effect in June 19, but it argues that attacks by militants have made this impossible.

On Sunday, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told her visiting British counterpart David Miliband that she expected the international community to support the tough stand on Gaza.

“Israel cannot just watch its citizens being attacked... The international community cannot turn a blind eye,” Livni said.

Miliband on Monday toured Sderot, an Israeli town which regularly comes under rocket fire from neighbouring Gaza, and was to hold talks later with Abbas in Ramallah, the West Bank’s political capital.

In his talks with Olmert, Abbas on Monday called for Jewish settlement activity in the West Bank to be halted, saying its continuation “is destroying chances of achieving peace,” Erakat said.—AFP