Wednesday, May 10 2006 16:12 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Jerusalem: Israel will give the Palestinians until the end of the year to prove they are willing to negotiate a final peace deal, and will unilaterally set its final borders with them by 2008 if they don't, a close associate of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said.

Justice Minister Haim Ramon was the first Israeliofficial to set a deadline for the Palestinians' new militant Hamas rulers to disarm and recognise the Jewish state. The Palestinians' moderate president, Mahmoud Abbas, of the rival Fatah party, has tried to persuade Israel to bypass Hamas and talk peace with him, but Olmert has made it clear that he is not prepared to negotiate with Abbas if Hamas doesn't change its violent ways.

Hamas wasn't immediately available for comment, but even the cutoff of hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid and Israeli transfer payments hasn't been able to pressure it to renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist.

"Through the end of this year, 2006, there will be honest attempts to talk to the other side," Ramon said.

"If it becomes clear by the end of the year that we really have no partner, and the international community is also convinced of this, then we will take our fate into our own hands and not leave our fate in the hands of our enemies," he told Israel's Army Radio.

Olmert, who was a major force behind Israel's summer withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, has said he intends to pull Israeli settlers out of heavily populated Palestinian areas in the West Bank while fortifying major settlement blocs and holding on to the West Bank's Jordan River Valley.