Hamas PM Ismail Haniyeh has warned Palestinian National Authority (PNA) officials not to "renounce Jerusalem or the refugees" during Tuesday's three-way meeting with the presidents of Israel and the US.
Speaking on Sunday at a ceremony in a Gaza City stadium marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Mr Haniyeh said: "No-one has the right to give up on Jerusalem or the Palestinian refugees. From Gaza, from a place of strength, we say we will not relinquish our rights."
US President Barack Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and PNA President Mahmoud Abbas are scheduled to hold talks on the sidelines of the UN general assembly in New York today.
The meeting is part of US efforts to revive Middle East peace talks, which have been stalled due to Tel Aviv's refusal to stop illegal settlement construction.
Mr Haniyeh insisted that "neither the Palestine Liberation Organisation or any other faction has a mandate to sign an agreement hurting the Palestinian people's principles and rights."
If any such agreement is reached, "it will not be respected by our people," he said.
The de facto prime minister of the PNA blasted proposals made by US Middle East envoy George Mitchell as "no different than offers by previous US administrations," which, he argued, were designed to achieve a compromise at the expense of Palestinians' fundamental rights.
Mr Haniyeh also urged the Arab League and European countries to use "all means" to ensure that a recently released report detailing war crimes committed during Israel's December-January war on the Gaza Strip is brought to the attention of the UN security council and then referred to prosecutors.
"We hope the report will not be doomed to the fate of the dozens of reports that Israel has condemned for decades," he said.
The 575-page UN report drawn up by Richard Goldstone, a former South African judge, confirmed that Israel committed multiple war crimes during the assault, which killed over 1,400 Palestinians.
And it found that those Palestinian resistance fighters who fired rockets into Israeli residential areas also violated international humanitarian law.
Israeli jets struck three tunnels in the southern Gaza Strip morning after Palestinian militants fired two Qassam rockets into the western Negev desert.
And on Sunday, Israeli troops killed two men near the border fence in northern Gaza who had allegedly been planting explosives.
The men were later identified as Abed Hafiz al-Silawi of the Popular Resistance Committees and Mahmoud Natzir of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
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