US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton started a visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories on Tuesday to familiarize herself with the guidelines of Israeli Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu's future government.

She is expected to hold off peace talks pressure on the Jewish state while hawkish Netanyahu is cobbling together a coalition and is expected to be sworn in as prime minister within weeks.

Clinton arrived in Israel Monday evening as part of her first official visit to the Middle East that started in Egypt's Sharm el-Sheikh, where she attended an international donors' conference that raised nearly US$4.5 billion in support to aid the Palestinian economy and rebuild the Gaza Strip.

Clinton pledged more than US$900 million in funding for the Palestinians, of which two-thirds is meant to help shore up the Western-backed government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, while the rest is destined for humanitarian aid for Gaza following Israel's 22-day offensive against Hamas in December and January.

Aside from Netanyahu, the right-wing Likud party chairman, Clinton is also scheduled to meet outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak on the Israeli side, and with Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on the Palestinian side.

Netanyahu, who served as Israel's 9th prime minister from June 1996 to July 1999, has expressed his willingness to push the peace talks with the moderate Palestinian side headed by Abbas, but has made it a point to steer clear of a two-state solution.

Netanyahu hopes to boost the Palestinian economy as part of his plan to use "financial peace" as a catalyst to "diplomatic peace."

His reluctance to endorse the outgoing centrist Kadima party-led cabinet's commitment to the 15-month-old, US-sponsored Annapolis peace process could cause some friction with the Obama administration down the line, local analysts said.

Israeli officials have said Washington was expected to apply some pressure on the future Israeli government to adhere to the guidelines set by the Annapolis peace conference in November 2007.

Hillary Clinton has manifested her intention to follow her husband, former US President Bill Clinton's efforts to try to clinch a deal between the Israelis and Palestinians.

After talks with Israeli President Shimon Peres on Tuesday morning, Clinton said the US administration will stand by any Israeli government that comes out of the ongoing cabinet-making process, a message seemingly to play down such concerns.

She, however, stressed that the US government is determined to push forward the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and realize a two-state solution to the decades-old conflict.

Netanyahu has made it clear that his future government, whether broad-based or right leaning, would honor past international agreements.

But the Israeli government would not be coerced into accepting a Palestinian state at a time when many Israelis fear that a unilateral withdrawal from the Fatah-controlled West Bank would lead to Hamas taking over there as it did in Gaza in June 2007, he said.

Professor Gerald Steinberg, Political Studies Department Chair at Bar Ilan University, told Xinhua it was unclear whether the Obama administration really believes that a steady and stable peace process is realistic or it is simply providing the illusion of being involved in order to avoid creating a vacuum and to keep the moderate Arab leaders and the Europeans happy.

"If they really believe that there is going to be a peace process there will be a lot of pressure on Israel and it is likely to end up the same way that Oslo and every other attempt at negotiations ended up," Steinberg said.

"It is hard to see how a Palestinian National Authority that is incredibly weak can reverse the course and retake power from Hamas and at the same time make the necessary compromises that no Palestinian leader has been able to do for years," he added.

Steinberg noted that Clinton was probably well aware of the fact that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would take generations to resolve.

"She is probably just going through the motions and is more hard-headed about expectations and prospects," he said.