JERUSALEM, 22 June 2005 — Israeli and Palestinian leaders failed yesterday to resolve “all the basic issues” facing them at their first summit since a February cease-fire was declared, the Palestinian prime minister said.

The summit between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was “difficult” and “did not live up to our expectations,” Ahmed Qorei told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Sharon and Abbas met for more than two hours at the Israeli leader’s residence in Jerusalem in a summit that was clouded by Israel’s arrest of 52 Islamic Jihad activists and a missile strike in the Gaza Strip.

“In all the basic issues for which we were expecting positive responses, there were none,” Qorei said.

Abbas had been scheduled to speak to reporters after the summit, but sent Qorei instead — an apparent sign of Palestinian disappointment over the results.

Nonetheless, Israeli officials said Sharon told Abbas that Israel would hand over two more West Bank towns and consider releasing more prisoners if the Palestinians take step to end violence.

“When we were in Sharm El-Sheikh you said that you would exert all efforts to stop the terror and begin to remove the infrastructure of terror, but the action never happened,” Sharon told Abbas during the summit, according to video footage of the meeting released by the Israeli government. Abbas and Sharon last met on Feb. 8 in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, where they declared an end to four and half years of bloodshed.

The meeting was meant to step up coordination of Israel’s planned Gaza withdrawal, which is scheduled to begin in less than two months.

Sharon said in a speech after the summit that he and Abbas “agreed during the meeting on full coordination of our exit from Gaza.”

“There will be no pullout under fire. We will not stop the pullout. We will stop the terrorism,” he said.

When asked about the summit, Mohammed Dahlan, the Palestinian minister in charge of coordinating Israel’s Gaza withdrawal, said: “There was nothing, nothing”

Israel Radio reported that Sharon gave Abbas permission to begin preparations for reopening the Gaza Strip’s airport and harbor. The opening of the ports is seen as key to reducing Gaza’s isolation once Israel pulls out of the coastal strip this summer.

Abbas told Sharon that the Palestinian Authority is organizing a force of 5,000 men to ensure calm during the pullout, said Israeli officials who participated in the meeting.

Sharon adviser Ranaan Gissin said the prime minister told Abbas that Israel would hand over the West Bank towns of Qalqilya and Bethlehem to Palestinian control in two weeks, if the Palestinians take steps to stop attacks. Israel was to hand over five towns as part of the truce, but it stopped the process after the first two, charging that the Palestinians had not disarmed fighters in the towns under their control.

In the hours before the meeting, Israeli forces swept through the West Bank, arresting 52 suspected Islamic Jihad activists, its first big crackdown since a February cease-fire, abandoning a policy of restraint.

As the summit opened, an Israeli aircraft fired two missiles at an abandoned structure in the northern Gaza Strip, said Palestinian Interior Ministry spokesman Tawfiq Abu Khoussa. Army Radio said it was a failed attempt to kill an Islamic Jihad militant — meaning resumption of targeted killings suspended with the truce.