Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh met in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday in an effort to restore a cease-fire with Israel.

The meeting ended with the two sides agreeing their factions would meet again.

"We are working to recommit to the truce," Abbas aide Nabil Abu Rdeneh said.

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Haniyeh aide Ghazi Hamad said in a statement that the two leaders called on the international community to protect the Palestinians and pressure Israel to stop the attacks.

Salah Bardawil, a Hamas spokesman, said Israel must stop its attacks if there is to be a cease-fire. "There is no room to talk about a truce while there is Israeli aggression and escalation," he said.

Like Hamas, the Popular Resistance Committees militant group said it would "continue to bombard Zionist settlements with rockets as long as the aggression and bombardment to our people and fighters continues."

Abu Hamza, of Islamic Jihad's military wing, said a truce should be
conditioned on Israel's ending its attacks on militant groups, extending the cease-fire to the West Bank, and retracting threats to go after militant leaders.

In a challenge to that shaky internal truce, gunmen opened fire from a passing car late Wednesday on the Gaza City home of a prominent Fatah official in Gaza, Maher Miqdad, injuring at least two of his bodyguards.

Miqdad, who was outside of his home at the time, at a meeting on how to shore up the cease-fire, blamed Hamas for the attack.

Prior to the Abbas-Haniyeh meeting, a senior Hamas aide said the Palestinians would not agree to a truce that is limited to the Gaza Strip and does not include the West Bank.

"If it is going to be for Gaza only, then no one will be able to convince the Palestinian resistance factions to commit to that," said Haniyeh political advisor Ahmed Yousef.

Abbas arrived in Gaza Tuesday evening, where he is meeting Hamas leaders for talks that will also touch on strengthening the latest cease-fire between rival Palestinian factions. His meeting with Haniyeh was originally scheduled for Tuesday, but postponed until Wednesday afternoon.

On Tuesday, Defense Minister Amir Peretz called for increased international pressure on Hamas to halt the Qassam rocket fire.

He warned that Israel is currently responding to ongoing Qassam attacks from the Gaza Strip with self-restraint, but that it may target Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and launch a ground offensive in Gaza if international pressure was not exerted on Hamas to cease attacks.

"Now this is a test for European diplomacy. It is a test for U.S. diplomacy. It is a test for the diplomacy of the free world. If the rockets do not stop, we will not stop," Peretz told reporters, with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana at his side.

"We have been acting very, very patiently. We have been biting our lip and trying not to get to a situation whereby we have to enter into a wide-scale ground operation," he said.

A source in Jerusalem said Peretz was pressing for international action now, before Israel was forced to take "stronger action on the ground" in Gaza.

Peretz, speaking with Solana, also asked the EU to renew its sanctions on the Palestinian Authority and Hamas and not release frozen funds.

"If the international community does not stop the terror organizations, we will find ourselves in a situation where the Palestinian Authority will completely disintegrate," Peretz warned.

Shortly after Solana's arrival in Israel on Monday, he accompanied Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on a visit to Sderot, which has borne the brunt of Qassam attacks.

Solana denounced the ongoing Qassam attacks and said that, "we are living in a period of increasing violence, and we would very much like to calm the situation and show that it can be resolved diplomatically."

Peretz maintained that, "all the goodwill demonstrated when the Palestinian unity government was formed must now end."

"The unity government is not in control in today's anarchic situation in the Gaza Strip, but instead is legitimizing murder within the Palestinian Authority and the continued rocket fire at Israel. The positive attitude that we showed the [PA] government is now overshadowed by the wave of violence that they initiated."

The defense minister said that Israel had done all it could to maintain the cease-fire.

"We were blamed for showing too much restraint, but as long as Hamas was not involved - as long as it wasn't clear what part the unity government had [in the firing] - we did everything to show restraint. Today, Hamas is the one leading the violence, defending the firing, and we do not intend to stop, unless the firing ceases."

He issued a further warning to Hamas, saying that Israel will take any measures to protect itself.

"The firing won't stop? Then we will be obligated to defend our citizens and children," he said.

Bar-On: Hamas' cease-fire offer is a 'manipulation'
Meanwhile, Interior Minister Roni Bar-On on Tuesday dismissed a cease-fire offer by Hamas, calling it "a manipulation."

The Kadima lawmaker maintained that Israel "will not deal with Hamas. Anything we suffer, they will suffer ten times more. If they disturb the peace in Sderot, they will have no peace themselves."

A Hamas spokesman had said Monday that if Israel agrees to a temporary cease-fire in the West Bank, the Palestinian unity government will be able to get all the Palestinian factions to heed a general cease-fire, including in the Gaza Strip.

Meanwhile, Ahmed Yusuf, a political adviser to Haniyeh and a member of Hamas, announced Monday that there is a possibility of a general cease-fire that all the Palestinian factions would accept, if Israel would agree a tahdiyeh, or "lull," in the West Bank as well.

A tahdiyeh had been in place in the Gaza Strip, but while Hamas largely adhered to it for about six months, other, smaller organizations did not, and Hamas made no move to enforce it. Israel therefore refused to extend it to the West Bank, arguing that only the IDF would or could curtail extremist Palestinian groups operating there.

In a conversation with Haaretz, Yusuf said that "Israel's agreement to extend the tahdiyeh to the West Bank will enable the government headed by Haniyeh to convince the groups to cease firing Qassam rockets. We have the tools to enable us to do this."

Urging Israel to offer a political solution to the recent escalation, he added: "We are interested in a general cease-fire, and the question is whether Israel is also interested in this," Yusuf said.

The Hamas official called on Israel to negotiate a solution to the crisis with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

Seconding this call, Palestinian Minister of Information Mustafa Barghouti said that expanding the cease-fire to the West Bank is necessary in order to restore calm to the Gaza Strip.

Sneh: Not even Haniyeh is immune from IDF strike

Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh hinted Tuesday morning that Israel could target Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas as part of steps to counter the Qassam rocket fire.

Asked if Haniyeh was on Israel's hit-list, Sneh told Israel Radio: "I'll put it like this, there is no one who is in the circle of commanders and leaders in Hamas who is immune from a strike.

"For what does political Hamas do? It gives the operational approval, if not the actual ratification, to those who are doing the fighting," Sneh said.

"When someone preaches that the State of Israel should be destroyed, he is not in the political echelon, he is a terrorist in a suit."

Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas official in Gaza, said in response that, "Any harm to Prime Minister Haniyeh or any Hamas leader would mean a change in the rules of the game and the occupation must be ready to pay an unprecedented price."

U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey in Washington urged Israel to weigh the consequences "both in terms of the possibilities for continued political dialogue as well as what other kinds of reactions there might be."

The London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabiya newspaper reported Tuesday that Hamas militants and former ministers have gone underground in fear of an Israeli airstrike.

A bodyguard of former Palestinian Interior Minister Sayid Siam told the paper that he does not know where Siam is, and cannot reach him. Sources close to former Palestinian foreign minister Mahmoud Zahar also said they have lost contact with him.

Hamas offered Monday to halt the rocket fire if Israel agreed to a temporary truce that extended to the West Bank.

Haniyeh of Hamas vowed Monday that Hamas would fight until "victory or martyrdom," as Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip killed five Palestinians, including four members of an Islamic Jihad Qassam firing squad.

"We will keep to the same path until we win one of two goals: victory or martyrdom," said Haniyeh at a funeral service for a Hamas lawmaker's family members, who were killed Sunday in an IAF strike.

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said Israel's attacks would have "grave consequences for the entire region." he called on militants to end their rocket fire "so as not to give the Israelis the excuse they use to justify their attacks that have killed innocent victims," according to his spokesman, Nabil Amr.

In response to the air strikes, Islamic Jihad threatened to target Israeli leaders. "The Zionist attack will not stop rocket fire against Zionist towns," said Islamic Jihad spokesman Abu Ahmed. "Leaders of the Zionist enemy will pay a price."

Hamas also pledged to strike at "the enemy anywhere in Palestine, whether with suicide attacks or operations against soldiers," said Hamas military wing spokesman Abu Obeida.