Israeli warplanes watched two strikes on the Gaza Strip overnight in response to rocket fire from the Hamas-controlled Palestinian territory, an army spokesman said in a statement Sunday.

"In response to rocket fire towards Israel this weekend, the airforce targeted sites of terrorist activity in the south and the center of the Gaza strip during the night," said the spokesman.

Israel warned on Saturday that it would cut the supply of water and electricity to the Gaza Strip if rival Palestinian movements Fatah and Hamas form a unity government.

"The foreign ministry is examining the possibility of Israel pulling out of the Gaza Strip in terms of infrastructure," Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon told the daily Yediot Aharonot website.

Hamas is looking to focus its energies on popular resistance without giving up its right to wage armed struggle against Israel, the Islamist movement's leader Khaled Meshaal told Agence France Presse in an interview.

"Every people has the right to fight against occupation in every way, with weapons or otherwise. But at the moment, we want to cooperate with the popular resistance," the group's Damascus-based leader said in the interview late on Thursday.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal will meet in Cairo this week despite the unrest rocking Egypt, a senior Hamas official said on Tuesday.

The meeting between the exiled Hamas leader and Abbas, who heads the rival Fatah movement, will go ahead "as scheduled on Thursday," Hamas official Ismail Radwan told AFP.

France summoned the Israeli ambassador in Paris to a meeting at the foreign ministry Wednesday to protest after an air strike wounded a French diplomat in Gaza along with his wife and daughter.

A spokesman for the ministry said that France's ambassador in Tel Aviv had complained to Israeli authorities over the bombing, and that Israel's envoy had been required to meet with senior officials in Paris.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas pledged on Wednesday to "speed up" work with Hamas to form a new caretaker government and to prepare for fresh elections.

In an address to the Palestinian leadership timed to mark seven years since the death of veteran leader Yasser Arafat and the 23rd anniversary of their declaration of independence, Abbas vowed to push ahead with efforts to cement a landmark unity deal between Fatah and Hamas.

Israeli air raids on the northern Gaza Strip killed a Palestinian overnight and wounded four others, doctors said Monday, after a rocket attack on Israeli territory.

The raids destroyed a security post of Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, and left two other Palestinians missing, they said.

Israeli warplanes raided the Gaza Strip early Wednesday after a rocket was fired at southern Israel, a military spokesman said.

"The air force targeted a site used for terrorist activities in the south of the Gaza Strip which was hit," he said in a statement.

Three Palestinians were wounded by Israeli gunfire east of Gaza City on Monday, a Gaza medical official and the Israeli military said.

"Three Palestinians were wounded by Israel fire in the Shejaiyah district east of Gaza City," emergency services spokesman Adham Abu Selmiya told Agence France Presse, saying one was moderately hurt and the other two sustained light injuries.

Israel has freed six of 27 passengers and crew who were aboard two ships intercepted by its navy while trying to run the Jewish state's blockade on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, an official said on Saturday.

Commandos boarded the Irish-flagged Saoirse (Freedom) and the Canadian ship Tahrir (Arabic for Liberation) in international waters off Gaza on Friday before the navy escorted them to the port of Ashdod, the military said.