JERUSALEM — Seeking to build on a shaky cease-fire with the Palestinians, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered Monday to free prisoners, lift checkpoints and release money withheld from the Palestinian Authority in return for decisive steps toward peace.
In one of his most conciliatory speeches, Olmert spelled out Israel's probable concessions as part of a peace accord, including a withdrawal of troops and many of its settlements from the West Bank and the release of "numerous Palestinian prisoners, including ones who were sentenced to lengthy prison terms, in order to increase the trust between us."
"I hold out my hand in peace to our Palestinian neighbors in the hope that it won't be returned empty," he said during a ceremony at the tomb of David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister.
The offer is a shift for Olmert, who had declared in his political campaign in the spring that none of the Palestinian leaders were capable of making a deal with Israel.
Since his election, Olmert has worked to isolate the Hamas-led Palestinian government. On Monday, he invited the Palestinians to help negotiate a lasting settlement, saying they stood at a "historic crossroads."
Olmert's initiative breathed new purpose into his coalition government, which has been divided and increasingly unpopular since the country's summer war against Hezbollah militias in Lebanon. The inability of the army to stop Hezbollah rocket fire into northern Israel deepened Israeli concerns about the country's security, forcing Olmert to shelve his central campaign pledge to pull out of large areas of the West Bank and unilaterally redraw the Jewish state's borders.
But his proposal faces several obstacles, including resistance by some Palestinian militant groups to the 2-day-old cease-fire in the Gaza Strip.
Hours after Olmert's speech, two rockets fired from the Gaza Strip fell harmlessly in the Israeli border town of Sderot, violating the truce and threatening to undercut U.S.-backed diplomatic steps toward a meeting between Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
The military wing of the Fatah Party said it fired the rockets to protest Israel's assaults on fighters in the West Bank, which is not covered by the cease-fire and where Israeli raids have continued.
Palestinian leaders reacted to Olmert's initiative with caution and skepticism.
