Ramallah: Mohammad Naji's son was killed by Israeli troops. Ron Kehrmann's daughter was murdered in a suicide bombing. Beyond their grief, the two fathers share something else - both are sceptical that next week's summit in Annapolis, Maryland will do anything to end years of conflict between the two peoples.

"I think it's all a big waste of time," Kehrmann said, citing the weakness of leaders on both sides.

"This is not the first conference to be held," Naji said. "None of these conferences produced peace."

Polls show that most Israelis and Palestinians have little hope ahead of the gathering - the first formal attempt to launch peace talks in seven years. More than 4,400 Palestinians and 1,100 Israelis have been killed in the Israeli-Palestinian fighting that followed the breakdown of talks.

Naji and Kehrmann lost their children in vastly different circumstances - and the deaths cannot be equated.

Naji's son, Abdul Moneim, was a militant who was targeted by an Israeli undercover unit in 2004. Kehrmann's daughter Tal was a 17-year-old girl killed four years ago while riding a bus on her way to shop for her high school graduation.

Naji has seven other sons serving time in Israeli prisons for their involvement in deadly attacks and he has little hope of seeing them again.

Israel, hoping to improve the pre-summit atmosphere, has pledged to release this week about 450 of the more than 9,000 Palestinian prisoners it is holding. Keeping with long-standing Israeli policy, none of those slated for release is serving time for deadly attacks on Israelis.

"Israel releases only prisoners who were not involved in killing," Naji said. "That means my sons are excluded." For Kehrmann, the release of Palestinian prisoners as a goodwill gesture touches the rawest nerve of all.

Kehrmann said he doesn't trust the Palestinians' intentions and that it is a mistake to talk peace before the Palestinian leadership reins in militants and changes its mentality.

Survey

"We've been killing each other here for 60 years. Let's give it a year or two of not killing and not talking and then we'll see," he said.

In a poll released this week, 57 per cent of Palestinians said they don't believe the conference will lead to progress in peacemaking. The poll, conducted by the independent Near East Consulting firm, surveyed 1,200 people and had a 3 percentage point margin of error.

A similar Israeli poll, conducted two weeks ago by the Dahaf polling institute, found that 66 per cent of Israeli Jews believed Annapolis would fail. The poll surveyed 500 people and had a 4.5 percentage point margin of error.

Shaaban Abdul Radi, 44, a Gaza farmer, said he doubts the current leadership could bring about a compromise, but said it was worth a try.

"The conference will bring nothing, but it will revive the hope in our hearts," he said. "Hope is all we have."