Israel called on the Palestinian Authority Thursday to establish a new leadership founded on peace, stressing that a move towards the path of extremism and terror would make a mockery of the peace it recently achieved.

The remarks, spoken by an Israeli official, reiterated that Jerusalem did not want to see Palestine's unity government to fall back to how it was when it was easily dominated by Hamas. Israeli officials are concerned the unity government would make it possible for Hamas to take control of the West Bank, just like it did in Gaza.

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The official encouraged Palestine to exert authority in the Gaza Strip and ensure that funds injected for the rehabilitation of the region would go through the unity government and not Hamas.

While we fully support the expansion of Palestinian presence in Gaza and the West Bank, we are vehemently against the Hamas doing so, the aide said.

On Thursday, the Palestinian unity government convened in Gaza for its first meeting with the region's rehabilitation and a return to normal life as its main agenda.

The years-long rift among Palestinian militant factions has ended, Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah said, adding that the next objective was bringing back normalcy to the residents of Gaza.

The Palestinian people will persevere to attain the goal of establishing itself as a state with its capital in East Jerusalem, he vowed.

Hamdallah said a special team will prepare a comprehensive proposal for donor states in time for the Cairo conference on Sunday. The proposal is intended to launch the initiative to raise money for the reconstruction of the region.

President Mahmoud Abbas will head the Palestinian delegation in Egypt on Sunday.

He is expected to meet with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry - who will also be attending the conference - at the sidelines to discuss a UN Security Council resolution calling for an end to Israeli occupation in the West Bank and the establishment of an independent state by November 2016.

TagsWar Conflict, politics, Palestinian nationalism, Fatah–Hamas conflict