RAMALLAH, West Bank:

The U.S. secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, held talks on Wednesday with Palestinian leaders over whether Israel's next government would commit to a U.S.-backed peace process leading to a Palestinian state.

A day after pledging that the Obama administration would always protect Israel's security, Clinton visited the Israeli-occupied West Bank to deliver a message of support for President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority.

"We are very committed to your efforts in this leadership of President Abbas," Clinton told Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the point man in Western-backed reconstruction plans for the Gaza Strip that freeze out the territory's Hamas  rulers.

Hamas, which won a parliamentary election in 2006, violently wrested control of the Gaza Strip from Abbas's Fatah faction in 2007. The West shuns Hamas over its refusal to recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept existing interim peace deals.