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©AFP/File / Mohammed Abed

A Palestinian Hamas militant carrying a fake rocket

JERUSALEM (AFP) - A flurry of Middle East diplomacy was marred on Thursday when a man in Israel was killed by a rocket fired from Gaza while the EU foreign policy chief visited the Palestinian enclave.

An agricultural worker, reportedly from Thailand, was killed when the rocket slammed into a kibbutz just a few kilometres (couple of miles) from the Gaza border.

The attack, claimed by the Al-Qaeda-inspired Ansar al-Sunna Brigade, came just as EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton was visiting the impoverished coastal strip which is still struggling with the aftermath of the 22-day offensive Israel launched in December 2008 in a bid to halt rocket fire.

"I condemn any kind of violence," Ashton told journalists after the attack. "We need to move forward to get the peace process to move toward a successful resolution."

Qaeda-inspired group claims deadly rocket attack

Her hours-long visit to the Hamas-run Gaza Strip was a rarity for a senior Western official given that the EU and the United States still blacklist its Islamic rulers as a terrorist group.

Following her visit to the region, Ashton was to head to Moscow to join US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for a meeting of the Middle East diplomatic Quartet.

©AFP / Menahem Kahana

Catherine Ashton has refused to meet any officials from Hamas

Ban in turn plans to visit the Middle East, including Gaza, after the Moscow meeting, hoping to promote new peace talks whose outlook appears bleak amid mounting tension in the region as well as between Israel and the United States.

US Middle East envoy George Mitchell, who brokered a now troubled deal for indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinians on a previous visit, is due back in the region on Sunday, a senior Palestinian official said.

UN chief slams rocket attack on Israel

Mitchell had initially planned to visit this week but he postponed his trip amid a major row between Israel and the United States over the announcement of 1,600 new homes for Jewish settlers in annexed Arab east Jerusalem.

The announcement infuriated the Palestinians and threatened to unravel the hard won deal for proximity.

Peace with Israeli government 'impossible': Assad

Washington was all the more angered as the announcement was made while Vice President Joe Biden was in Jerusalem promoting the talks, but President Barack Obama has insisted there is no crisis.

"We and the Israeli people have a special bond that's not going to go away," he said in an interview with Fox News on Wednesday night.

He called on both Israelis and Palestinians to "take steps to make sure that we can rebuild trust."

Hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet held a late night session to discuss its answer to the US administration's criticism amid concern that delaying the keenly awaited response would further exacerbate the rift between the two allies.

But the prospects for a swift resumption of peace negotiations, halted when Israel launched its devastating Gaza offensive in December 2008, appeared dim.

©AFP / Saul Loeb

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On Wednesday, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman sharply criticised international demands for a freeze of Jewish settlement construction in east Jerusalem, which Israel annexed in 1967 in a move never recognised by the international community.

"This demand to forbid Jews from building in east Jerusalem is totally unreasonable," Lieberman said.

Palestinians consider east Jerusalem an integral part of the occupied West Bank and claim it as the capital of their promised state.

US-Israel ties 'unassailably solid': ambassador

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Wednesday insisted Israel must abide by its "obligations" and "freeze settlement activity in all Palestinian territories, including Jerusalem."

The issue of settlements, which has long been a major hurdle in peace efforts, was certain to come up at the Quartet meeting on Friday.

Related article:Mideast Quartete meet will show support for talks:US

The diplomatic activity comes at a time of heightened religious and political tension that saw several days of clashes between Palestinians and police in east Jerusalem.

©AFP / Gali Tibbon

Lieberman said demands for a halt to building settler homes "unreasonable"

An already charged atmosphere intensified over the opening this week of a rebuilt 17th century synagogue in the Jewish quarter of the Old City, a few hundred metres (yards) from the Al Aqsa mosque compound.

Many Palestinians view Israeli projects near the mosque compound -- Islam's third holiest site -- as an assault on its tense status quo or a prelude to the building of a third Jewish temple there.

Jews call the compound the Temple Mount and consider it their holiest site because the second Temple stood there before the Romans destroyed it in 70 AD.