A leader of the third-largest Palestinian faction told the Egyptian newspaper El-Balad Thursday that the truce with Israel will be brief and that Palestinians are braced for a "more savage and bloody round" of fighting with Israel.

"We are preparing for a new, more savage round," Dr. Mohammed Al-Hindi, a leading Palestinian Islamic Jihad figure told the newspaper. "We are in a short truce (hudna), the Israeli enemy is preparing for further rounds of war in Gaza."

The "resistance factions" must be prepared for the next battle, which will be more violent and "start the curve of the collapse of the Israeli occupation," Al-Hindi said Wednesday night at a ceremony honoring journalists working in the Gaza Strip.

The remarks underscore concerns that the Egyptian-brokered cease-fire will be temporary and that renewed violence is ahead.

Al-Hindi also told El-Balad that implementing the truce last week was delayed for hours because a Palestinian negotiator rejected Israel's demand that a sentence be included stating that the Palestinian terrorists "stop the attacks from the Gaza Strip."

"We will not accept any political solution that does not achieve the minimum demands of the Palestinian people," he said.