The Palestinians say Israel must freeze settlement construction and agree to return to its pre-1967 lines for peace talks to resume. The Palestinians want to establish an independent state in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip — areas that were captured in the 1967 Mideast war.

Abbas said that if Israel accepts the Palestinian conditions, “we will go to negotiations.” He said the Palestinians have set a Jan. 26 deadline for talks to resume. “After that date, we will take new measures. These measures might be hard,” he said.

Abbas said no decision has been made yet. But Palestinian officials have said they are considering resuming their push for U.N. membership as well as ways to isolate Israel at the United Nations, such as a new resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

Peace talks broke down in September 2010 after an Israeli slowdown on settlement construction expired. The Palestinians say there is no point in negotiating if Israel continues to settle captured lands. Some 500,000 Israelis now live in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

Israel says peace talks should begin immediately without any preconditions. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu already has ruled out a return to the 1967 lines, saying they would be indefensible.

Tuesday’s meeting is taking place under the auspices of the Quartet of Mideast peace makers. The group, which includes the U.S., European Union, Russia and the United Nations, has been trying to restart peace talks for months, with the goal of brokering a peace deal by the end of the year.

In September, the Quartet set forth a four-month target for the sides to present proposals on the key issues of future borders and security arrangements. The Palestinians believe the timeline expires on Jan. 26. Israel says the clock doesn’t start ticking until negotiations are under way.

“Most of Hamas has left Damascus. We have a plan B for leaving if things deteriorate,” said a senior Hamas official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing the inner workings of the secretive group.

Hamas, an Iranian-backed Palestinian group, has been based in Syria for more than a decade. Assad has allowed Hamas, branded a terrorist group by Israel and the West, to use his territory for military training, and provided a valuable headquarters in the heart of the Arab world.

But the uprising in Syria has put Hamas in a difficult place. The U.N. estimates that more than 5,000 people have been killed in violence since March, and Hamas is wary of being associated with the government crackdown.

If Hamas does pull out completely, the move could force it to change the way it operates since the leaders would become dispersed across the region and their new hosts may not give them as much freedom. Hamas’ supreme leader, Khaled Mashaal, for instance, is set to go to Qatar, a Gulf state with close ties to the U.S. Other leaders would go to Egypt, another American ally, while others would end up in Lebanon, Turkey or the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas leader in the group’s Gaza stronghold, says Hamas “hopes that Syria will get out of its difficult internal crisis through a political solution ending further bloodshed in the country.” He said there has been “no decision” to leave Damascus.

The plan is the latest sign of change in the Islamic group amid the convulsions of the Arab Spring across the Middle East the past year. The uprisings have been a mixed blessing for Hamas. On one hand, allies like Syria are in trouble. On the other hand, Islamic groups have made strong gains through peaceful elections. While Hamas leaders say they haven’t abandoned their dream of destroying Israel, they also seem to be realizing that they can advance their agenda through nonviolent means.

In recent days, Mashaal said Hamas would turn focus on nonviolent protests against Israel, though he refused to renounce violence.

He also signaled that Hamas might be willing to accept a Palestinian state alongside Israel in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war. Hamas has in the past endorsed the 1967 lines as the first stage toward eliminating Israel.

Hamas also last week began the process of joining the Palestine Liberation Organization as it reconciles with the rival Fatah movement. The Fatah-dominated PLO has long sought a political settlement with Israel. Joining the PLO could give Hamas a voice, and possibly veto, in future peace efforts.

Israeli officials dismiss any suggestion that Hamas, which has killed hundreds of Israeli civilians in suicide bombings, rocket attacks and other violence, has changed. They cite the hardline speeches delivered at Hamas’ 24th anniversary celebrations earlier this month, when speakers proudly called for “armed resistance” and the destruction of Israel.

“Unfortunately there is no evidence that Hamas has in any way moderated its extremist agenda,” said government spokesman Mark Regev.

Barhoum said the group has not abandoned its ideology. Instead, he said it has merely changed its tactics as it adjusts to the times.

“There is a new environment around us,” he said. “That doesn’t mean Hamas is giving up its rights and its clear program as a resistance faction.”

Hamas began its transformation into a political movement in 2006, when it defeated Fatah in Palestinian legislative elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

A brief power-sharing arrangement disintegrated into violence the following year, leaving Hamas in control of Gaza and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in charge of the West Bank. The sides are now holding reconciliation talks and hope to hold new elections next year.

In Gaza, Hamas on Tuesday marked the third anniversary of an Israeli military offensive in the seaside strip. The offensive, launched in response to months of intense rocket barrages, killed some 1,400 Palestinians, including hundreds of civilians, and caused widespread damage. Thirteen Israelis also died in the fighting.

At memorial ceremonies, speaker after speaker voiced their support for continued armed confrontation with Israel. After suffering heavy losses in the fighting, Hamas has largely maintained a cease-fire with Israel the past three years. Still, it is believed to have restocked its arsenal with more powerful weapons.

But Raed Nearat, a political science professor in the West Bank who is close to Hamas, said that behind the rhetoric, Hamas is in the midst of a significant change.

He said the revolutions across the Middle East, as well as elections that have voted heavily in favor of Islamic movements in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco, have emboldened Hamas.

“The Arab Spring has made Hamas much more confident, pragmatic and open,” he said. “It’s much more confident now that it can lead.”

This week, the prime minister of the Gaza government, Ismail Haniyeh, left the territory for the first time since the 2007 takeover on an official tour of the Muslim world. His first stop was Egypt, with planned visits to Sudan, Qatar, Bahrain, Tunisia and Turkey.

Hamas officials say the goal of the trip is to improve ties with Muslim countries swept up in the uprisings shaking the Arab world. In Egypt, Haniyeh met with the leader of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, the biggest winner in the first parliamentary elections since the Feb. 11 fall of Hosni Mubarak.

Abbas, who is pursuing alternative routes to statehood after a breakdown in peace talks with Israel, quickly embraced those who tried to breach Israel’s borders from the West Bank, Gaza, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

“Their blood will not be spilled in vain, because their blood was spilled for the freedom and rights of our people,” he said.

Flags at public buildings in the West Bank were lowered to half-staff.

Some in Israel suspected an Iranian hand in the attempted border breaches, with the help of Tehran’s allies in the region: Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. Palestinian officials said the marches were a purely Palestinian initiative, organized on Facebook by activists, many living in exile.

Israel said it would file a complaint against Syria and Lebanon at the U.N. later Monday.

Early Monday, the unrest spilled over into Egypt, where riot police fired tear gas and live ammunition to disperse thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters outside the Israeli Embassy in Cairo. The protesters set fire to an Israeli flag, chanted anti-Israeli slogans and called for the expulsion of Israel’s ambassador and the closure of the embassy. Twenty were arrested and 353 people were hurt in the clashes with police, Egyptian officials said.

Israeli security forces were out in large numbers in northern Israel on Monday, having been taken by surprise the day before.

Israel had been expecting Sunday’s unrest to center in the West Bank, as it has in years past.

The most surprising development were the hundreds who poured across the Syrian frontier into the Israeli-held Golan Heights, captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed in a move that has not been recognized internationally.

Four infiltrators were killed in the ensuing clash with Israeli security forces.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said police carried out house-to-house searches in the Golan border village of Majdal Shams looking for Syrians who had burst through the fence.

Police also arrested an unarmed man from Syria who they said infiltrated into the Golan on Sunday and was trying to make his way south into Israel, Rosenfeld said.

On the nearby Lebanese border, 10 people were reported killed Sunday when protesters approached the border fence with Israel. A 15th person was killed in Gaza by Israeli sniper fire; the military said he was trying to plant a bomb.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, said the protesters’ message was clear: Palestinians are determined to liberate their land “regardless of the cost” and Israel will perish.

In Jordan, too, police there clashed with protesters who tried to cross into Israel on Sunday. Twenty-five people, including 11 Jordanian policemen, were wounded, police said.

The unusually violent observance of the 1948 anniversary came at a critical time for U.S. Mideast policy.

President Barack Obama’s envoy to the region, George Mitchell, resigned Friday after more than two years of fruitless efforts. The U.S. president is expected to deliver a Mideast policy speech this week and to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.

In the absence of peace talks, the Palestinians plan in September to seek recognition of statehood at the U.N., with or without a deal with Israel.

In an unrelated development, Israel said it transferred to the Palestinians some 350 million shekels ($100 million) in taxes it had withheld after a Palestinian unity deal opened the door for the Islamic militants of Hamas to become partners in the Palestinian government.

Israel collects tax funds and customs fees from Palestinians who work in Israel on the Palestinians’ behalf. It held up the transfer this month, saying it feared money would reach militants in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

Israel had come under international pressure to release the funds.

The Palestinian unity deal is meant to end a four-year division that created rival governments in the West Bank and Gaza Strip — areas they hope to turn into an independent state.

The rival Fatah and Hamas factions met in Cairo Monday to discuss possible nominations for positions in the new government they hope to form. The caretaker government is to remain in office until new elections next year.

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Teibel reported from Jerusalem.

The Palestinians are also dealing with the fallout from embarrassing media leaks about past peace talks with Israel. Together with deadlock in peace efforts with Israel, these developments have put pressure on Abbas to press forward with reforms.

The Palestinian government said over the weekend that it would hold long-overdue general elections later this year, weeks after saying it would hold local elections in July.

The chief peace negotiator, Saeb Erekat, also resigned in response to the leaks broadcast by the Al-Jazeera satellite channel, which detailed far-reaching concessions that his government was prepared to make to Israel to form a future Palestinian state.

Palestinian spokesman Ghassan Khatib said Fayyad’s Cabinet reshuffle had been planned for weeks.

“It’s not tied to the new changes in the region,” Khatib said.

The Wafa statement said the new Cabinet will help implement Fayyad’s plan to build Palestinian institutions in preparation for eventual independence, and to prepare for parliamentary and presidential elections.

A Fayyad aide said his boss was expected to include members of Abbas’ Fatah party in the Cabinet, members of smaller Palestinian factions, as well as independent technocrats. Fayyad is a U.S.-educated economist.

The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because negotiations had not begun.

The new Cabinet will oversee the affairs of Palestinians in the West Bank, where the Western-backed government has partial self-rule.

The other territory that Palestinians want for their future state — the Gaza Strip, which lies on the other side of Israel — has been ruled by the militant Islamic group Hamas since it overran Abbas loyalists in 2007.

Hamas has rejected Abbas’ reforms and says it will not allow elections to take place in Gaza. Its leaders argue that the two rivals must reconcile before returning to the ballot box.

“This is silly theater,” said Hamas official Fawzi Barhoum. He accused Abbas of trying to fool people into thinking that genuine reform was underway.

The September target date has the month shaping up to be a crucial one for the Palestinians. It also marks the time frame for President Barack Obama’s goal of reaching a peace deal and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s hope of having the foundations of the future state ready.

Fayyad has acknowledged that the recognition drive at the U.N. will not necessarily bring realization of a state. But it helps the Palestinians enshrine their demand that the 1967 borders serve as the basis for drawing their nation’s shape. The Palestinians want their state in the lands Israel captured in the Mideast war that year — the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem.

“Such recognition would create political and legal pressure on Israel to withdraw its forces from the land of another state that is recognized within the ’67 borders by the international organization,” Malki, the foreign minister, told reporters in Ramallah.

He said the Palestinian Authority is working to attain as much recognition as possible for a state by September, when it will call for a U.N. vote. It will initially seek Security Council recognition but, failing that, will turn to the General Assembly, where the decisions are not binding but there is no veto.

The Palestinians have made South America a priority. Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia and Ecuador recognized Palestinian statehood last month, and Uruguay, Paraguay and Peru are expected to join Chile on that list in the coming weeks.

Malki said Asia, Africa and the Caribbean were next in line.

“In the Caribbean there are 12 small states … but these countries have the same vote that China has in the U.N. General Assembly,” he said.

About 100 other countries have recognized statehood — most of them developing nations — after the Palestinians declared “independence” in 1988, and a few others, mostly former Soviet republics, did so after the 1993 Oslo peace accords. In the mid- and late-2000s, Venezuela and Costa Rica followed suit.

Malki said the Palestinians have been talking to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador as well, and that Spain has promised to recognize Palestine in September.

Spain would be the first western European country to do so. Former Communist countries in eastern Europe, including Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, were among those who recognized Palestine in 1988.

The Palestinians appear to have a majority in the General Assembly, but are unlikely to get the go-ahead in the Security Council.

The U.S. routinely vetoes measures Israel considers hostile, and the U.S. House of Representatives last week passed a resolution “condemning unilateral measures to declare or recognize a Palestinian state.”

Israeli officials have called the recognition declarations meaningless and counterproductive to the peace process. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposes withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines, though he says he remains committed to negotiating a partition of the land.