"We don't need these futile firings of rockets and they have to cease so that we can reach a reciprocal truce with the Israelis in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank," Abbas told reporters at a press conference with visiting EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
Asked if he believed Israel's arrests of the Hamas members were justified, Solana replied "No," and appealed for an end to Israeli air raids in Gaza, rocket fire and Palestinian infighting.
"The temperature has been going up too much and it's time to get the temperature down," he said shortly before meeting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem.
"No violence is going to resolve any problems."
The Israeli army carried out two new air raids on buildings of Hamas's paramilitary force, wounding four Palestinian passersby in Gaza City, while defiant Gaza militants fired seven rockets and a mortar shell into southern Israel during the day, causing some damage, the army said.
The 33 officials from the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), including Palestinian education minister Nassereddin al-Shaer, three lawmakers and at least seven mayors, were seized in overnight raids centred on the northern West Bank city of Nablus.
The United States had voiced its concern to Israel over the arrests, State Department spokesman Tom Casey said, adding that the detentions "raise particular concerns."
"Certainly Hamas is a foreign terrorist organisation engaged in terrorist attacks against Israel. But we have previously noted when these kinds of issues came up before, that the detention of elected members of the Palestinian government and legislature does raise particular concerns," Casey said.
France condemned the arrests, saying "they could jeopardise the future of the national unity government and the possibility of renewed negotiations between the parties."
Bloodshed in Gaza over the past week and a half a renewed bout of gunbattles between Hamas and Abbas's Fatah and more Israeli air raids has sparked widespread international concern and threatened to torpedo efforts to revive peace talks.
Palestinian information minister Mustafa Barghuti appealed for international intervention after what he said were "kidnappings, a massacre of Palestinian democracy and an aggression against the Palestinian Authority and its institutions.
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Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz said the arrest of members of the majority partner in the Palestinian unity government was "a message to armed wings of terrorist organizations to stop their rocket fire."
On Thursday evening, Israeli troop arrested four militants during a raid on the Balata refugee camp in the West Bank town of Nablus, Palestinian security sources said.
The men belonged to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a group loosely linked to Fatah.
An army spokeswoman confirmed the raid, saying there were exchanges of fire during the operation.
Thursday's arrests came amid continuing Israeli air strikes on Hamas targets in Gaza, which were resumed after a six-month ceasefire in response to a sharp increase in rocket attacks by militants, including those of Hamas.
The Israeli air raids have so far killed 13 civilians and 25 militants, but have failed to halt rocket fire, with nearly 130 crashing inside Israel over the past week and a half, killing one, wounding 16 and sending hundreds fleeing the town of Sderot that has borne the brunt of the barrage.
The Israeli army has also closed several Hamas offices in the West Bank and searched offices of organizations close to the movement.
Last year the army detained more than 60 Hamas officials, including four ministers, in a crackdown on the Islamists after their armed wing claimed joint responsibility for a deadly cross-border raid that seized an Israeli soldier near Gaza.
Thirty-nine lawmakers and two former ministers remain in custody from last year's crackdown.
Shaer was detained last August during the sweep, but ordered released by a military judge a month later for lack of evidence.
U.N.
chief Ban Ki-moon's newly appointed special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, Michael Williams, is also holding meetings with Israeli and Palestinian officials ahead of next week's meeting in Berlin of four international sponsors behind the stalled Mideast peace process.
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