(Adds quotes from British foreign minister, paragraphs 12-13)

By Sue Pleming

DEAD SEA, Jordan, Dec 1 (Reuters) - Militants in Gaza fired a rocket into Israel on Friday and Israeli troops killed a Palestinian in the West Bank, hours after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed hope for a shaky 5-day truce.

Rice, on her seventh visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories in under two years, came away with no tangible results after a series of meetings on Thursday, but said she saw promise in the Gaza ceasefire struck last Sunday.

"This is the kind of thing that takes time," she told reporters after meeting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Jericho in the West Bank and Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem. "You don't expect great leaps forward."

Rice was expected to leave the region later on Friday after holding more meetings at a Dead Sea resort in Jordan.

Early on Friday, Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian in the West Bank city of Hebron after he threw a petrol bomb at Israeli border police manning a roadblock, the army said. His family said he had gone to pray and was not a militant.

In Gaza, militants fired a homemade rocket into southern Israel, raising the number launched since the ceasefire began to more than a dozen. There were no reports of any injuries or damage from Friday's attack.

However, it did underline the shakiness of the truce, which has put at least a temporary halt to more than five months of fighting between Israeli forces and militants in the Gaza Strip.

In that time, more than 400 Palestinians have been killed, half of them civilians. Three Israeli troops have also died.

DIPLOMATIC PUSH

Rice's visit to the region comes at a time of heightened efforts to break months of impasse between the Israelis and Palestinians and advance the peace process, frozen since the militant Palestinian group Hamas came to power in March.

Rice said she saw a "little opening" for reviving talks in the wake of the truce and a speech given by Olmert on Monday in which he reached out for peace if certain conditions were met.

However, rather than any major breakthrough at this stage -- such as a first meeting between Olmert and Abbas -- efforts are focused on consolidating the ceasefire and expanding it to the West Bank, home to 2.4 million Palestinians.

Britain's Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, speaking to reporters at the Dead Sea, seconded Rice's sense that there was a small window of opportunity to push peace efforts forward.

"We do seem to be at the point when there are small but hopeful signs in the Middle East with the ceasefire and with the possibility ... of a meeting with President Abbas and Prime Minister Olmert," she said. "It is very important to help move things forward and get us back on the road toward the road map."

Arab nations and others have criticised Washington for doing too little to push-start stalled Arab-Israeli talks. Some say it must be tackled at the same time as Iraq, which is tipping into civil war 3-1/2 years after Saddam Hussein's overthrow.

U.S. President George W. Bush said in September that he planned a new push on the Arab-Israeli front and said it would be a priority of his final years in office. (Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi)

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