Nasser al-Shaar, Deputy Prime Minister of the Palestinian Hamas-led government, denounced the Israeli government on Saturday for threatening to expand military operations into the Gaza Strip.

These threats are not new and they refute their allegations of securing freedom and independence, al-Shaar told Voice of Palestine radio.

He, however, stressed that the Israeli threats should be seriously considered, saying "we must look for an exit and we have to conduct many contacts and pressurize to secure there will be no expanded invasion that will, if happened, burn everything."

There must be local and international efforts to ease the situation in order to maintain what could be maintain, he added.

Israel says the reasons behind the intended offensive into the Gaza Strip are to recover its soldier captured by Palestinian militants in June and stop Palestinian rocket attacks against southern Israel.

Meanwhile, tension between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the Hamas-led government seems to be defusing. After leaving the Gaza Strip last Thursday without meeting Prime Minister Ismail Haneya of Hamas, Abbas met today with Haneya's deputy al-Shaar in Ramallah.

The two-hour meeting was held in coordination with Haneya, said al-Shaar, adding they discussed the Qatari initiative on forming a Palestinian national unity government and the general situation in the Palestinian territories.

Qatari Foreign Minister Hamad Ben Jassem al-Thani visited the Gaza Strip last week and brought a new plan with the hope to settle differences between Hamas and Abbas over forming an internationally-accepted unity government, but it failed amid trade of accusations between the two sides on responsibility.

Source: Xinhua