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Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned on Thursday both Israel's air strikes against the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip and the rockets fired by Gaza militants to Israel.
Abbas made the remarks at a joint press conference in the West Bank city of Bethlehem with British Prime Minster David Cameron, who is on an official two-day visit to Israel and the West Bank.
Abbas also condemned what he described "cold-blood murder" of three Palestinians by Israeli forces in the West Bank earlier this week.
Earlier in the day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed Abbas for not condemning Palestinian's rocket attacks on Israel.
The Gaza Strip has witnessed a military escalation since Israeli troops killed three Islamic Jihad militants in Gaza on Tuesday. The killings led the Islamic Jihad, a group allied with Iran, to fire a barrage of rockets into neighboring Israeli communities.
Israel later reacted with a series of air strikes targeting military sites of the Islamic Jihad and the Hamas movement.
The current tension is the largest since November 2012, when Egypt brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza militants. That deal ended then a week of tit-for-tat violence that killed 184 Palestinians and six Israelis.
Abbas held in-depth discussions with Cameron on Thursday. Both leaders tackled the ongoing U.S.-mediated Middle East peace talks which resumed last July and is expected to end in April.
Earlier Wednesday Cameron also met with Netanyahu to discuss the current peace negotiations.
The Palestinian-Israeli peace talks have not seen any tangible progress since July last year.
On Tuesday Abbas announced that he would not accept to extend the peace negotiations with Israel, adding that they need to focus on the remaining time.
