JEDDAH, 12 September 2007 — Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah held talks here yesterday with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and emphasized the need for unifying Palestinian ranks and ending their internal conflicts. The talks took place hours after a rocket fired from Gaza into an Israeli Army base wounded at least 69 soldiers.

“The two leaders discussed the situation in Palestine, the need for ending internal conflicts, unifying Palestinian ranks and normalizing the situation in order to achieve Palestinian demands,” the Saudi Press Agency said after the talks.

The king and Abbas also reviewed international efforts to activate the Middle East peace process.

“The Palestinians must be given their right to establish an independent state on their land with Jerusalem as its capital,” they said in a joint statement.

The two leaders also said that the peace process to end the Arab-Israeli conflict must be based on UN Security Council resolutions and Arab peace initiative, which was originally proposed by King Abdullah and relaunched by the last Arab summit in Riyadh.

Ahead of yesterday’s talks, Palestinian sources in Riyadh said that the meeting would focus on forthcoming international talks on the Middle East called by US President George W. Bush.

The 69 Israeli soldiers sleeping in tents were wounded when the homemade Qassam rocket crashed in the dead of night into the Zikim base in southern Israel not far from the border with Gaza, an army spokesman and medics said. It was the bloodiest Palestinian rocket strike from Gaza in months and came days before the start of the Jewish New Year, increasing the pressure on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s Cabinet to take action to stop the fire.

The premier was meeting senior ministers and military chiefs to decide on a response to the attack which Hamas said was an act of “legitimate resistance.”

“Those who carry out these types of attacks, as well as those who support them should know that they are not safe,” Israeli government spokeswoman Miri Eisin said.

Many of the soldiers were young conscripts due to complete their basic training yesterday.

Anxious parents rushed to the base for news while more than a dozen ambulances and two helicopters were dispatched to evacuate the wounded to nearby hospitals.

The vast majority of the soldiers received only light injuries, one was wounded critically and four seriously, the army said.

The military wing of Islamic Jihad, which launches the majority of rockets into Israel, claimed the attack that it dubbed “The Dawn of Victory.” “The resistance is the only alternative to recover our rights and liberate our holy places,” senior Jihad official Abu Hamzah said at a press conference.

Hamas praised the strike. Spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said it was “legitimate resistance in the face of Israeli aggression and the legitimate defense in the face of Israeli crimes.”

Hours after the attack, a Palestinian man and three of his children were wounded when an Israeli tank shell landed on their house in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanun, medics said.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned recently that Israel was considering launching deep ground operations in Gaza.

“The time may be approaching where it will be necessary to launch a major ground operation to stop the rocket fire,” Barak said.

Israeli officials, however, said that any large-scale military action in Gaza was likely to be postponed until after the holiday season. “We don’t expect another ‘Operation Defensive Shield’ (the large-scale operation in the West Bank in 2002) following the incident in Zikim, but the Israeli forces have already responded and will continue to act against the terror infrastructure and its leaders,” the Israeli Army radio quoted the officials as saying.

— Hisham Abu Taha in Gaza City and Mohammed Mar’i in Ramallah contributed to this report