Israel has to no choice but a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said, but the militant Hamas movement countered by calling for the Jewish state to be wiped out by "armed resistance."

"If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished," Olmert told the told the Ha'aretz daily, in remarks published Thursday.

Israel fears that if the nearly four million Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip are absorbed into its territory, within a generation Jews will find themselves outnumbered and Israel will no longer be a Jewish state.

The Israeli leader said Tuesday's international conference at Annapolis, Maryland - on a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which he and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas pledged to try negotiate a peace treaty within one year - was "not a historic turning point, but it is a point that can be of assistance."

The parley "met more than we could have defined as the Israeli expectations," Olmert said, but cautioned that "this will not absolve us of the difficulties there will be in the negotiations, which will be difficult, complex, and will require a very great deal of patience and sophistication."

He said that while Abbas was a partner for peace, "he is a weak partner, who is not capable, and as (special EU envoy) Tony Blair says, has yet to formulate the tools and may not manage to do so."

It was his job as prime minister, Olmert said, "to do everything so that he receives the tools, and to reach an understanding on the guidelines for an agreement."

Representatives from more than 40 countries attended the US-hosted Annapolis conference, at which Israel and the Palestinians pledged to resume peace talks next month with the goal of sealing a deal by the end of 2008.

The formal negotiations get under way next month.

But Hamas, whose control of the Gaza Strip and popularity amongst Palestinians makes it a key player in the Palestinian dynamic, once again reiterated its opposition to Israel's existence in a statement issued Thursday to mark 60 years since the United Nations voted to partition Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states.

"We are determined, with the help of Allah to uproot this cancer (Israel) by armed resistance, no matter what the cost in blood and sacrifices," the statement said.

"What has been taken by force should be regained by force," the statement added.

General Assembly resolution 181, passed on November 29, 1947 with 33 in favour, 13 opposed and 10 abstentions, was rejected at the time by Arab states and the local Palestinian leadership.

As a result of the ensuing 1948-49 Arab-Israeli war, Israel made gains on the territory allocated to it under the partition plan, while the West Bank found itself under Jordanian control and the Gaza Strip under Egyptian.

Hamas, which was not invited to the Annapolis conference because it rejects a two-state solution in favour of an Islamic one in all of historic Palestine, said it rejected the UN vote and stated that "Palestine is one unified geographical unit, and can never be partitioned or sliced by resolutions or agreements."

It said it held the UN responsible "for issuing the unfair resolution 181, which divided Palestine, and for the suffering and pain our people had passed over the past 60 years."

"The resolution legalized the partition of the lands of Palestine between its legal residents, who were expelled out of it by force, and the illegal newcomers of Jews and Zionists," the leaflet claimed.

"There is no compromise on the Arab and Islamic characteristics of Palestine," the Islamist movement said.

Hamas also announced Thursday that four of its militants were killed in two separate pre-dawn Israeli air strikes in the southern Gaza Strip.

Two were killed while on guard duty near Khan Younis and the other two were struck while placing an explosive device near the Israel- Gaza border fence, for use against Israeli troops patrolling the area.