Mahmoud Abbas used strong language today to condemn an Israeli retaliatory attack in Gaza which resulted in the death of seven Palestinians and injured six more. Several minutes before the Israeli attack, Palestinian terrorists fired mortar shells at Israeli targets from the same area.

Abbas, the frontrunner to succeed the late Yasser Arafat as president of the Palestinian Authority, later said, 'The struggle against the Zionist enemy will continue until the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.'

The terms 'Zionist enemy' or 'Zionist entity' are used almost exclusively by terrorist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad who deny Israel's right to exist and refuse to even refer to the country by name.

The tough talk from the historically moderate Abbas comes after he received criticism from terrorist groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade for saying, that the firing of Kassam rockets and other terrorist attacks against Israel were 'useless and do not help the Palestinians and their cause.'

It is possible that Abbas was speaking in this tough manner as an election ploy to regain the support and/or confidence of these rejectionist groups but it still had Israeli officials concerned. He continued to talk tough at a campain rally in Kahn Younis later Tuesday.

'We are praying for the souls of our martyrs who fell today to the shells of the Zionist enemy,' Abbas told the crowd.

Israeli army sources indicated that four or five of the dead Palestinians were members of Hamas and six of the dead were over the age of 17.

Violence continues in the area with the elections for president less than one week away.