WASHINGTON – Outgoing Secretary of State Powell will push the Israelis to lift roadblocks and allow Palestinian Arabs in East Jerusalem to vote in elections this January when he arrives in Jerusalem on Sunday for a brief visit with Prime Minister Sharon, according to State Department and administration officials.

Mr. Powell is scheduled on Monday to meet with the interim chairman of the Executive Committee for the Palestine Liberation Organization, Mahmoud Abbas, where he will likely offer $20 million in aid aimed at assisting the Palestinian Arabs in the period before the elections. The State Department asked the House and Senate committees that oversee foreign affairs to approve the $20 million for the Palestinian Authority.

The visit will be part of the Bush administration’s efforts to create conditions in the territories for orderly and transparent elections when the Palestinian Arabs will elect leaders for the first time since 1996, when the late Yasser Arafat won more than 85% of the vote. Mr. Bush, who has consistently called on the Palestinian Arabs to choose responsible leaders free from terror, has already signaled America’s willingness to provide more aid next month at a conference of major donors to the Palestinian Authority in Oslo, Norway.

So far, Prime Minister Sharon has indicated he is willing to agree in principle to lifting restrictions on movement to allow Palestinian Arab politicians to campaign. An Israeli official in Washington yesterday said, “The message is Israel is going to do everything it can to facilitate the Palestinian elections, the only balance being Israel’s security.”

The Jerusalem Post reported in today’s edition that President Bush told Israel’s foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, that seeking peace between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs was at the top of his administration’s foreign-policy agenda. Messrs. Shalom and Bush spoke at the opening of the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Ark.

Speaking to members of his Likud Party yesterday, Mr. Sharon urged Mr. Abbas to end incitement against Israel in the press and education system.

“The poisonous incitement on television and in the educational system, demonizing Israel, Israelis, and Jews, is the root cause of the suicide bombers and the terrorism, and it is more dangerous than any weapon,” the Jerusalem Post quoted the prime minister as saying yesterday at Likud Party headquarters in Tel Aviv. Likud will hold intraparty elections Sunday, the same day Mr. Powell is set to visit Mr. Sharon.

Rep. Gary Ackerman, a Democrat from New York, told The New York Sun yesterday that Mr. Sharon promised him last Sunday during a visit that his government would not present obstacles to Palestinian elections.

“He specifically said that the presence of troops would be diminished in Palestinian areas,” Mr. Ackerman said.

The New York lawmaker also said Mr. Sharon would allow the estimated 200,000 Palestinian Arabs living in East Jerusalem to participate in the January 9 vote. The Palestinian Arabs in Jerusalem is a particularly touchy subject for Mr. Sharon’s government insofar as the prime minister has not acknowledged a Palestinian claim to the holiest city in Judaism and capital of Israel.

Mr. Ackerman, who is the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, completed a tour of the region, where he met with President Mubarak of Egypt; King Abdullah of Jordan; and the leader of Syria, Bashar Assad. “Everyone said the same thing: ‘This will be a big opportunity,’ ” Mr. Ackerman said. “They also said: ‘There was a strong need for U.S. help in the peace process.’ “

A former senior adviser to four secretaries of state on the Arab-Israeli conflict, Aaron Miller, said yesterday that the Israelis will only agree to lift roadblocks and withdraw troops if they have the option to restore these security measures in the event of a terrorist attack.

“It’s all very unlikely Powell will get a commitment this soon,” he said. “The Israelis will sign up to this the way they signed up to the road map; of course in principle we agree, we are allowing people to move…but what if there are Palestinian Islamic Jihad attacks again?” Mr. Miller said in the absence of Israeli and Palestinian security cooperation, Mr. Sharon would be forced to take measures himself.

Mr. Powell is also set to arrive next week in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, for a foreign minister-level summit on Iraq. Mr. Powell is expected to press Iraq’s neighbors, including Iran, to jail terrorists who have filtered into the country since the liberation of Baghdad in April 2003.

While in Egypt, Mr. Powell is also scheduled to meet with his counterparts from the European Union, the United Nations, and Russia. This constellation, dubbed the quartet in 2002 by Mr. Powell, is the international guarantors of the road map process that President Bush had hoped would lead to a peace conference and final negotiations.