WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush is expected to pressure Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday to do more to end militant attacks against Israeli targets now that Israel has withdrawn from the Gaza Strip.

But on the eve of Abbas's first White House meeting in five months, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also suggested he might get a sympathetic hearing for complaints about Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank.

The dominant view in Washington is that Israel took a major step last month when it ended 38 years of military rule in Gaza, and there is now a chance to revive a U.S.-backed peace "road map" that envisions Palestinian statehood.

"The Israelis are out of Gaza, there are contacts and relationships between the Israelis and the Palestinians that are unknown in recent years because of the work that they did in the disengagement in Gaza," Rice told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday.

Abbas was embarrassed ahead of the White House meeting by the killing of three West Bank settlers in an attack claimed by an armed group in his Fatah movement on Sunday.

"There is more that the Palestinian leadership can do to end violence and dismantle terrorist organizations," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

Palestinian officials said Abbas would tell Bush on Thursday that not only are the hopes raised by the Gaza pullout now in doubt, but so too is Bush's own vision of a viable Palestinian state one day in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

At the top of the list of Abbas's wishes is pressure on Israel to halt settlement expansion in the West Bank and construction of the barrier there that Israel says keeps out suicide bombers and Palestinians call a land grab.

Rice said the United States opposed the Jewish state's planned construction of settler homes in an area known as E-1 between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim, the largest Jewish settlement in the West Bank.

"We have told the Israelis in no uncertain terms that that would contravene American policy," she said. "Indeed, by law, we deduct some of the resources that we provide to the Israelis as a part of their loan guarantees, because of settlement activity."

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has vowed never to give up large West Bank settlement blocs where 245,000 Jews live isolated from the territory's 2.4 million Palestinians.

Abbas also wants to end an argument over border crossings that has left Gaza largely sealed up since the Israelis withdrew. He wants Israel to agree to open the Gaza sea and air ports and to allow a free land route to the West Bank.

In a Wall Street Journal piece, Abbas accused Israel on Thursday of strengthening militant foes who reject his peace agenda by continuing to isolate Gaza after its pullout and expand West Bank settlements.

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