If you look up above, Rathi said that he had Tomcat 5 (Servlet2.4/JSP2.0)
The issue was probably fixed by updating web.xml to declare itself as 2.4 (see the FAQ)
>And Stefan, is it that only replacing the JSTL jar with the newer version
>will evaluate the EL without the custom tag.
No. Replacing the JSTL jars will not do anything. It is the server itself that needs to be upgraded.
A JSP2.0 container (eg Tomcat 5) will evaluate EL (if web.xml is configured correctly)
A JSP1.2 container (eg Tomcat 4) knows nothing about it.
My post was an attempt to clarify why the case that Benjamin posted might occur (ie where expression in the tag is evaluated, and the one outside the tag is not). Obviously it failed.