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 CAIRO -- Arab ministers on Saturday again endorsed staging indirect talks between Palestinians and Israelis, formally resurrecting an American proposal that collapsed last month after Israel announced plans to build new housing in East Jerusalem.

Arab ministers gathered late Saturday at the offices of the Arab League here at the request of the Palestinian leadership, which sought regional support before agreeing, again, to enter into indirect talks.

But while the Palestinians and the Arab ministers agreed to endorse jump-starting peace talks that have been stalled for more than a year, they did not give ground on the issue of settlements.

In a final statement, the ministers said the indirect talks would not become face-to-face negotiations unless Israel stopped all settlement building beyond the 1967 borders.

''We have been engaged in serious talks with the Americans,'' said Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, in a news conference after the meeting. ''We have said again and again: settlements or peace -- they can't have both.''

On Friday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she expected that the indirect talks would resume next week, with the United States' Middle East envoy, George J. Mitchell, shuttling between the two camps. Mr. Mitchell was scheduled to return to the region on Monday.

A committee of foreign ministers from Arab League first voted in March to resume the peace process through American-mediated ''proximity'' talks. But that agreement fell apart when Israel announced during a visit by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. that it planned to build 1,600 homes in east Jerusalem.

The White House followed with a demand that Israel halt construction in East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want to serve as a capital of a future state. But this month, the Israelis formally rejected that demand, reaffirming the Israeli position that all of Jerusalem should remain under Israeli control.

At the Arab League on Saturday, officials expressed an unusual degree of optimism, not because of faith that Israel would meet their demands, but because, they said, they felt that the Obama administration was pressing hard for a positive resolution. The ministers said, however, that they would re-evaluate the concept in several months.

''We do not trust Israel, and we said that before,'' said the Qatari prime minister, Hamad bin Jasim bin Jabir al-Thani, whose country heads the Arab Peace Initiative committee. ''But we have found positive indicators from the American mediators and we are now talking with the American mediators.''

Direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations were cut off after the Israeli invasion of Gaza in late 2008, which Israel said was a response to sustained rocket fire from militants there. Since then Israel has called for resuming talks without preconditions, while the Palestinians have insisted that Israel freeze settlement construction in the occupied territories first. Israel agreed to a partial moratorium, but not a complete freeze.

The vote was in part a response to the sustained diplomatic efforts by the United States. But it was also an effort to offer some political cover to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, who wanted broad Arab support to avoid the political fallout he and his Fatah faction might face if he made the decision on his own.

Mr. Erekat said that the plan would now have to be approved by the political factions in Ramallah, in the West Bank.