Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and Islamic Jihad leaders pledged commitment Monday to the cease-fire with Israel, as thousands of Israeli rightist protestors marched toward Gaza's Jewish settlements to oppose Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's pullout plan.

Top Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar declared Monday after a meeting with Egyptian mediators in Gaza that his group would continue to abide by a de facto truce with Israel provided that the Jewish state ceases its aggressions against the Palestinians.

A high-ranking Egyptian security delegation arrived in Gaza Sunday to defuse a confrontation between Hamas and Palestinian security forces over Hamas' recent rocket attacks on Israeli targets.

Armed confrontation erupted in the Gaza Strip last Thursday and Friday as Palestinian security forces tried to prevent Hamas militants from firing rockets.

"We responded to Israeli attacks on Palestinians as a means of self-defense," said Zahar, adding that Hamas would keep to the "period of calm" if Israel stops attacks on Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank.

Zahar also revealed that the Palestinian follow-up committee, newly established to coordinate Palestinian factions before and during the Israeli Gaza pullout scheduled for August, would hold a meeting on Tuesday to "remove all tension inside the Palestinian community."

In another development, the Islamic Jihad insisted on Monday after a separate meeting with the Egyptian delegation that militants had the right to retaliate Israeli violations.

However, senior Jihad leader Mohamed al-Hindi told reporters that his group was also still committed to the truce deal.

The Palestinian Popular Resistance Committee also said on Monday that it is committed to a truce with Israel, but adding that it will resume rocket attacks on settlements if the Israeli army carried out incursion into the Gaza Strip.

If the Israeli army carried out a large-scale operation in the Gaza Strip, the response would be intensive rocket firing at Jewish settlements, said spokesman for the committee, Abu Abber, after a meeting with the Egyptian mediating delegation.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who also held a meeting with the Egyptian delegation, said on Monday that a strong commitment to the truce is necessary in order to end the current crisis in the Gaza Strip.

He warned that continuing to firing homemade rockets at Israel and at their settlements in this critical situation would give the Israeli side an excuse "to escape from their commitments and avoid the pressure exercised on their government."

Amid positive signs in the Egyptian-mediated talks with Palestinian faction leaders, Israeli police on Monday blocked thousands of demonstrators trying to force their way into the Gaza Strip to impede next month's Gaza pullout.

Organizers of the demonstration told Israel's TV Channel Two that some 25,000 people attended the demonstration, but Israel Radio reported that only 10,000 were present at the site.

The settlers billed the protest, a three-day march of an expected 10,000 from the western Negev town of Netivot to the Gaza settlement bloc Gush Katif, as "the greatest protest in Israeli history."

As part of its major deployment to head off the banned protest march, police barred buses from leaving dozens of towns and communities across the country en route to the site.

After a two-hour standoff, settlers said they reached an agreement with security forces to spend the night in Kfar Maimon, a village three km from their starting point. But they pledged to push on toward Gaza in the morning.

The United States urged both Israel and the Palestinian authorities on Monday to refrain from violence and retaliation ahead of scheduled Israeli unilateral disengagement from Gaza and part of West Bank.

"Both parties need to make a maximum effort to make this withdrawal successful. We also urge both parties to exercise restraint and to restore calm," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said at a news briefing.

While noting that the United States has seen the Palestinian National Authority recently take some positive steps to act against violence and terror, McCormack said that still more needs to be done by the Palestinians.

"They need to make every effort, as we talked about, that maximum effort now to stop violence and act to end terror," he said.

(Xinhua News Agency July 19, 2005)