this is good news. hamas has agreed to a truce. I hope that all parties try to turn the truce into long term peace for the people of the region
Hamas agrees to Israel truce: reportFebruary 13, 2009 - 9:19AM Hamas has accepted an Egyptian-brokered 18-month truce with Israel in the Gaza Strip which Egypt will announce in 48 hours, state news agency MENA quoted a senior Hamas official as saying on Thursday.
Mussa Abu Marzuk, the Islamist movement's deputy leader, said after meeting with Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman that Hamas had accepted the truce in return for the lifting of the Israeli blockade of Gaza.
"We have agreed to the truce with the Israeli side for one-year-and-a-half (in return) for the opening of all six passages between the Gaza Strip and Israel," MENA quoted him as saying.
Egypt will announce the agreement after contacting Israel and Palestinian factions, he said.
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev told Agence France-Presse in Jerusalem that he did not wish to comment.
Abu Marzuk, who headed a senior Hamas delegation in Cairo, said difficulties that had prevented an agreement have been resolved, especially the issue of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
Israel had insisted that Hamas release Shalit, whom Palestinian militants captured more than two years ago, as a condition for ending its blockade of Gaza, which it imposed after Hamas violently seized the enclave in June 2007.
Marzuk said Shalit has been removed from the Gaza truce deal and that he would be released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
Osama Hamdan, Hamas's representative in Lebanon, told AFP "we have surpassed the Shalit issue," adding that Hamas did not want to hold Shalit indefinitely but wanted to exchange him for Palestinian prisoners.
Hamas officials have said that Israel offered to open its crossings into Gaza to allow between 70 and 80 per cent of goods into the coastal enclave, barring those it says could be used to make weapons.
Preventing Hamas from obtaining more weapons was a key objective of Israel's 22-day war in December and January on the Islamists.
Mohammed Nasr, a senior Hamas official based in Damascus and a member of the delegation, said on the eve of Thursday's meeting that the delegation would seek guarantees that Israel would not re-impose the blockade after a truce.
Hamdan said after the meeting with Suleiman, who has been mediating between Israel and Hamas as the two sides refuse to talk to each other, that Egypt had offered "reasonable guarantees".
"The truce will open the crossings with guarantees of the passage of needed goods into Gaza," he said.
Ending the blockade has been a key Hamas demand and the reason it says it launched rockets and mortar rounds into Israel after a six-month truce expired in December, 2008.
The rocket and mortar fire led to the war with Israel which killed more than 1,330 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.
Israel and Hamas declared ceasefires to the fighting on January 18, but the fragile calm has been tested by Palestinian rocket attacks and Israeli air strikes.
