Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah holds talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and former Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei in Riyadh on Tuesday. (SPA)

RIYADH/GAZA CITY, 22 November 2006 — Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah held talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas here yesterday and urged the Quartet consisting of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations to revive the Middle East peace process in order to establish an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.

“King Abdullah emphasized the need for the Quartet to resume its efforts to achieve peace and enable the Palestinian people to establish an independent state on their land with Jerusalem as its capital on the basis of Arab peace plans and UN resolutions,” the Saudi Press Agency said in a dispatch following the king’s meeting with Abbas at Al-Yamamah Palace in Riyadh.

King Abdullah and the Palestinian leader reviewed the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories and the suffering of the Palestinian people as a result of repeated Israeli aggressions and its economic blockade. He urged the Palestinians to strengthen their unity by putting aside their differences. The talks were attended by Intelligence Chief Prince Muqrin and former Palestinian Premier Ahmed Qorei.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military launched a three-pronged offensive in the northern Gaza Strip early yesterday, killing a top Hamas commander. An elderly Palestinian woman also died in a gunbattle between troops and fighters.

But fighters persisted with the rocket fire, launching five homemade projectiles, including three that landed in southern Israel. One critically wounded a man in the town of Sderot, a frequent target, striking the ground just half a mile (1 kilometer) away from a convoy carrying the United Nations’ top human rights official, who was touring the town.

The military confirmed operations in northern Gaza, but provided few details. It has intensified its military offensive against rocket-launchers in Gaza in recent weeks, even though rocket attacks have only increased since a weeklong incursion in the northern town of Beit Hanoun earlier this month.

The operation yesterday began as an arrest raid in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City, then fanned out to the outskirts of Jabaliya and Beit Lahiya, about 7 kilometers (4 miles) away. At nightfall the Israelis pulled back from Beit Lahiya, Palestinian security officials said. The military said the movement was routine rotation of forces.

In the Gaza city raid, ground troops, backed by helicopters, tanks and snipers, surrounded the home of Ayman Hassanin, a local leader in the military wing of the ruling Hamas group, witnesses said. Gunmen streamed to the area as troops called on loudspeakers for Hassanin and his brother, Ibrahim, to surrender, said their mother, who identified herself only as Umm Mahmoud. A fierce gunbattle erupted, and Hassanin, 26, was killed, Hamas said.

A 70-year-old woman was also killed in the battle, Palestinian medical officials said.

The army confirmed surrounding Hassanin’s home in an arrest raid, but said troops opened fire at the house only after fighters fired bullets and mortars at the soldiers first. The operation in Gaza City was the first in months in the coastal strip’s largest town. It came hours after two Hamas fighters were killed in an Israeli airstrike after nightfall Monday.

Thousands of Hamas supporters took part in the fighters’ funeral procession yesterday. Gunmen fired rifles in the air, chanting, “revenge, revenge,” as a recorded speech of a Hamas leader assassinated by Israel was broadcast in the background.

By late morning, the troops had left Zeitoun. After dawn, troops entered the town of Jabaliya. Bulldozers plowed over farms, ripping up irrigation systems and destroying greenhouses and fields. A main electricity transformer, which provides about 60 percent of the power to the Zeitoun neighborhood, was also destroyed.

Four people, including at least one Hamas gunman, were wounded when a tank shell hit a group of fighters, witnesses said.

Israeli bulldozers demolished a factory between Jabaliya and Beit Lahiya. Troops also razed land on the outskirts of Beit Lahiya and took up positions on high ground.

A spokesman for Hamas’ military wing, Abu Obeidah, told a news conference that the armed resistance would continue so long as Israeli “aggression” did. He advised Israel to “empty Sderot of its residents” until the “aggression” stops and said, without elaborating, that the fighters’ homemade rockets had become more accurate and longer-range.

— With input from agencies