GAZA CITY, 22 December 2006 — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said yesterday he hoped to meet Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert before the end of the year as both leaders push to resume long-stalled peace talks. A fragile truce held for a second day as Palestinians staged a protest against the internecine fighting while blood banks in hospitals got empty.

Abbas urged all sides to consolidate the truce. No clashes between Abbas’ Fatah party and the ruling Hamas movement have been reported since early Wednesday.

Abbas urged the rival factions to respect the truce again yesterday, following a similar call the night before.

Hundreds of people, waving Palestinian flags, gathered in front of the Parliament building in Gaza to call on the rivals to respect the truce and restart talks on forming a coalition government. “O Hamas, O Haniyeh, we want a government of national unity immediately,” they chanted. “Enough with the battles, we want to live in security.”

Olmert told reporters this week a meeting with Abbas would take place “very soon” but gave no details. Abbas, following a meeting with Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D’Alema, was more explicit.

“We are not revealing a secret when we say that we hope the meeting with Olmert will take place before the end of this year,” he told reporters. If a meeting does take place, it would be the first between the two since Olmert took office in January. Repeated attempts to organize a meeting in recent months have failed amid surges in Israeli-Palestinian fighting and internal Palestinian violence.

The latest push followed a call by Abbas for early legislative and presidential elections after his Fatah faction and the governing Hamas failed to forge a national unity government aimed at lifting Western sanctions.

Olmert has repeatedly said that he is ready to meet with the moderate Abbas, even though the Palestinian government is led by the Islamist Hamas group, which advocates Israel’s destruction.

In an effort to bolster Abbas ahead of any poll, Israel is considering handing over millions of dollars in withheld Palestinian taxes to the president, sources said on Wednesday.

Transferring the funds, which total about $500 million, would mark a shift in Israeli policy, and could allow Abbas to make payments to Palestinian civil servants, who have not received their full salaries since Hamas came to power in March.

In violence in Gaza yesterday, three Palestinians were wounded when a makeshift rocket fired by fighters at Israel malfunctioned and hit a house in Beit Hanoun, in the northern part of the territory, hospital officials said. Medics said the injuries were not life-threatening. Fighters have continued to fire rockets into Israel despite a truce announced on Nov. 26, following a five-month Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip.

An Israeli Army spokesman said 11 rockets were fired at Israel in the past 24-hours, but caused no injuries or damage. Since the truce was declared, fighters have fired dozens of rockets at Israel.

Meanwhile, when Palestinians were wounded by Israeli fire in the past, Gaza’s hospitals used to fill up with blood donors. But after this week’s deadly factional fighting, they’ve been largely empty as residents register their discontent with the violence. For the dozens of people wounded during the battles between Fatah and Hamas, that could soon mean a shortage of badly-needed blood.

“Our blood bank is at its lowest level,” says Dr. Jumaa Al-Saqqa, the hospital spokesman. “People don’t want to donate blood the way they used to during Israeli incursions, because they see no reason why. To be spilt in our streets, by Palestinian shooters? No way! For the time being we can handle the situation, but if there’s an increase in fighting or an Israeli attack, we’re going to be in trouble,” he says.

— With input from agencies