Jerusalem, Ramallah  - Israeli and Palestinian leaders welcomed Wednesday the victory of Barack Obama in the US presidential election, with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni calling it a "badge of honour" and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas urging him to get involved in the peace process "immediately."

"President Abbas looks forward to working with the new US administration to speed up the work and push the peace process forward," his spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh told the official Palestinian Wafa news agency from Budapest, where Abbas is visiting.

Abbas urged Obama to do it "immediately so as to bring security and stability to the Middle East region," he said.

Livni, for her part, said that "Israel looks forward to a continuation of the close strategic cooperation with the new administration, with the new president and with the US Congress, and to the continuation of the strengthening of the special and unshakable relations between the two countries."

Caretaker Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert also said he had "no doubt" that the "special relationship" between Israel and the US "will continue and strengthen in the period of the Obama administration."

Israeli President Shimon Peres sent Obama a brief letter, in which he said "The world needs a great leader. It is in your making. It is in our prayers."

In a statement Peres said the election of Obama was "in a way, the end of racism. There is no longer any way that any white person can claim superiority, nor any black person feel discrimination."

The radical Islamic Hamas movement however, which controls the Gaza Strip aqnd is locked in a bitter political feud with Abbas, said it would base its judgement on Obama according to his actions.

Spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri called on Obama to "rethink American foreign policy towards the Palestinian cause and to stop the clear bias towards the occupation (Israel)."

The US boycotts Hamas because of the organization's refusal to recognise Israel's right to exist, renounce violence, and accept past Israeli-Palestinian agreements.

Another Hamas spokesman, Fawzi Barhoom, called on the president-elect to end the US and international boycott against Hamas, and said the Islamist movement was ready to hold talks with the next US president.

"Obama should learn from the mistakes" of his predecessor, Barhoom said. (dpa)