A Tunisian man who set himself on fire to protest unemployment has died, a hospital official said Tuesday, a year almost to the day after a fruit-seller's self-immolation sparked the Arab Spring.

Ammar Gharsalla, a 48-year-old father of three, had been among protestors staging a sit-in outside the Gafsa government office last Thursday to highlight the unemployment problem in the region.

The prime minister in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Sunday promised "difficult days" for Israel, and at a rally in Tunis urged Arab Spring revolutionaries to fight for an independent Palestine.

Ismail Haniya received an ovation from the crowd of some 5,000 men, women and children gathered in a stadium waving Palestinian, Tunisian and Hamas flags.

Youths in Kasserine, a town at the forefront of Tunisia's uprising a year ago, on Sunday heckled the men their revolution brought to power, radio reports and residents said.

President Moncef Marouzki and Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali, who took office last month, were welcomed to the regional capital by a group of 200 to 300 youths chanting "go home".

A visit by Gaza's Hamas leader has angered the official Palestinian representatives in Tunisia who say they were ignored during the talks with the new government, a Palestinian source said Saturday.

Ismail Haniya, prime minister in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, visited Tunis Thursday to meet with the new moderate Islamist-led administration while he was on a tour of the region.

A jobless man set himself afire Thursday in front of the main government office of the poor Tunisian province of Gafsa as three ministers visited the unemployment-hit area, local sources said.

The man was taken to hospital with severe burns and in a critical state, unionist Amar Amroussia said.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe on Thursday urged a "really equal partnership" between Tunisia and its former ruler and voiced support for the new Tunis government's efforts to buttress democracy.

Juppe, who arrived on his second visit to the North African country in less than a year, was met by his counterpart Rafik Abdessalem, with whom he had his first meeting, the official news agency TAP reported.

Gaza's Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya said support for Palestine should be a "religious and nationalist commitment" as he arrived in Tunis Thursday to a welcome from Tunisia's new leaders.

"Palestine is not a banner that we brandish like nobody's business, it's a religious and nationalist commitment," said Haniya after a meeting with Tunisia's moderate Islamist Prime Minister, Hamadi Jebali.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat stated on Tuesday that history has proven that popular movements cannot slow down, but they only gain momentum.

He said citing late Czechoslovakian President Vaclav Havel: “If only Russia and Iran would consider the ‘power of the powerless’ in their approach towards the Syrian crisis.”

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya will begin a tour on Sunday, his office said, his first exit from Gaza since Israel and Egypt imposed a siege in 2007.

Sources in his office told AFP that Haniya would visit Egypt and Sudan, after which he plans to go to Qatar, Turkey, Tunisia, and Bahrain.

Tunisia's new government was sworn in on Saturday by the country's president, who told the ministers to get straight down to work.

Headed by Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali of the moderate Islamist Ennahda party, the 30 ministers and 11 more junior secretaries of state took the oath at the presidential palace in Carthage before head of state Moncef Marzouki.