US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice launched her planned two-day visit to Israel on Saturday. She plans to press Israel to ease travel restrictions on Palestinians and to improve their daily lives. This includes the promised removal of West Bank roadblocks.

Rice said she wanted to discuss about these issues with both Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defence Minister Ehud Barak. She still hopes for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal by the end of the year.

"We continue to believe it is an achievable goal to have an agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis by the end of the year and by the end of President Bush's term," Rice said after meeting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, according to Reuters.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert confirmed Sunday that he will meet Mr. Abbas on Monday.

Rice told reporters on Saturday that Israel must take down significant roadblocks -- rather than symbolic barriers -- in order to improve the lives of West Bank Palestinians whose movements are restricted by a system of checkpoints.

"I understand that everyone - President Abbas, I, the [US] president, would like to see things move more quickly," she said.

Rice said she will question the "qualitative character'" of some of the roadblocks Israel has already removed.

"We don't want to get into a numbers game where you just remove 'X' number of roadblocks but it's not improving the lives of the Palestinians."

After Rice's last trip in late March, Israel said it planned to remove 61 barriers in the West Bank, but a UN survey later found that only 44 obstacles had been removed. Palestinians see the barriers as signs of collective punishments.