President Mahmoud Abbas said on Saturday that the next Palestinian government will respect agreements signed by the PLO, a reference to the peace accords with Israel.

"The next government will remain committed to the obligations and agreements signed by the Palestine Liberation Organization," Abbas said, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.

Egypt has promised to provide diesel fuel for the Gaza Strip's sole power plant, which went down this week after running out of fuel, a Gaza official said on Saturday.

"Following our contacts with Egyptian officials, there have been serious promises to furnish us fuel from tomorrow (Sunday)," said Ahmad Abu al-Amrin, from the Gaza energy authority.

A rocket fired at Israel on Saturday by Palestinian militants instead hit a house in the Gaza Strip, but there were no casualties, witnesses said.

It apparently exploded prematurely, damaging the house, the witnesses said, without being able to provide further details.

Palestinian militants fired two rockets at southern Israel on Friday evening, causing neither casualties or damage, an Israeli military spokeswoman told Agence France Presse.

"A rocket landed in the Eshkol Regional Council; there was no damage or injuries reported," she said.

Thousands of Palestinians in Gaza City held a rally on Friday in solidarity with an Islamic Jihad member, detained without trial by Israel, on the 62th day of a hunger strike.

"We stand by the heroic symbol of prisoners, brother Khader Adnan, in his unlimited hunger strike," head of the Hamas government in Gaza Ismail Haniya, just back from a tour of Gulf countries via Egypt, told reporters ahead of the event.

A Palestinian in Gaza died early Sunday after being wounded in a series of retaliatory Israeli airstrikes, Gaza medical sources said.

The fatality was identified as Abdel Karim Zatuniya, an elderly man serving as a guard at the barracks in the Zeitun area, south-east of Gaza city, who was wounded in an airstrike late Saturday night in which four other people were wounded. No militant faction in Gaza announced Zatuniya a member.

A rocket fired by Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip hit southern Israel on Saturday night causing no casualties or damage, an Israeli police spokesman said.

"A rocket was fired from the Gaza Strip at the Eshkol region. It landed in an open area without causing any damage or injuries," Micky Rosenfeld told Agence France Presse.

Hamas "will never recognize Israel," its Gaza prime minister said Saturday in a speech in Iran that is likely to complicate Palestinian efforts to form a unity government in the teeth of opposition from the Jewish state.

"They want us to recognize the Israeli occupation and cease resistance but, as the representative of the Palestinan people and in the name of all the world's freedom seekers, I am announcing from Azadi Square in Tehran that we will never recognize Israel," Ismail Haniya said.

The Palestinian leadership on Thursday endorsed the latest agreement between the heads of Fatah and Hamas and called for preparations for elections to be speeded up.

Palestinian President and Fatah head Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal inked an accord in Doha on Monday placing Abbas at the head of an interim government to supervise the run-up to elections later this year.

Two Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were wounded by Israeli airstrikes early Friday morning, Palestinians said, only hours a visit of the U.N. chief to the Hamas-controlled territory.

According to a spokesman for Gaza emergency services, a three-and-a-half-year-old girl was seriously wounded by an airstrike at a home in the northern Gaza Strip town Beit Lahiya, which also left a man moderately wounded.