In a sermon to worshipers at a Gaza mosque, Mr. Haniya said his government would stick to its program.

Israeli troops killed two Palestinian women and wounded some 10 others who were seeking to serve as human shields for Hamas militants holed up in a Gaza mosque on Friday after an overnight standoff.

In November 2006, 50 veiled Palestinian women responded to a Hamas radio appeal to act as human shields between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen hiding in a Gaza mosque.

Yussef meanwhile accompanied by a large number of officers visited the Gaza mosque on Saturday for the Moslem feast of Al-Adha, before going to a cemetry to pay his repects to the victims of Israeli represssion, witnesses said.

When I visited him in Tunis, two months before he died, he was worried that the intifadeh's unity might be endangered by a dispute between religious groups over entry to a Gaza mosque; he was arranging for duplicate keys.

"This is an evil time," she said in a Gaza mosque after Friday prayers.

Relatives said he had hitched a ride in a truck to Jaffa after attending early morning prayers at a Gaza mosque.

That year, after a wave of suicide bombings, Mr. Arafat rounded up 600 Hamas militants and even replaced preachers in Gaza mosques with his own more conciliatory men.

Also on Sunday, a preacher from a Gaza mosque, Muhammad Rifati, was abducted and killed.