Hamas says open to new truce in Gaza

GAZA (Reuters) - Palestinians in Gaza observed a 24-hour halt to rocket fire against Israel at the request of Egyptian mediators who made efforts to restore a longer truce.

Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak invited Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni for talks in Cairo, Livni's office said, after Hamas Islamists said they may consider a new ceasefire if Israel eased a blockade and armed raids on the territory.

Livni's talks with Mubarak would take place on Thursday, and cover "security issues" along the Gaza border, a statement from her office said, adding she would hold additional meetings in Egypt, but gave no further details.

Hamas also enlisted Turkish assistance to help restore a ceasefire, brokered by Egypt last June, as Israeli leaders headed to a February 10 election threatened to escalate military steps to halt rocket fire from Gaza.

On Friday, Hamas had declared the truce to have expired, accusing Israel of reneging on understandings by conducting armed raids and shutting border crossings, disrupting a lifeline for food and fuel supplies to 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza.

Israel blamed security threats for the closures, and many Israelis criticized the truce's failure to advance negotiations for the return of an Israeli soldier held in Gaza since 2006.

Senior Hamas official Ayman Taha told Reuters on Monday Hamas had agreed with other factions to hold rocket fire for a day "to give a chance to the Egyptian mediation and to show that the problem was always on the Israeli side."

Taha said Hamas might consider a long truce if Israel were to lift an embargo on the impoverished territory.

"If a new (truce) offer were made which met our demands, then we would be willing to study it," Taha said.

TWO ROCKETS FIRED

The hold on firing seemed to be observed, with only two rockets and a mortar reported to have been fired on Monday from Gaza, and a rocket and four mortars shot on Sunday night.

Shortly before that respite was set to expire, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh telephoned Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to ask that he urge Israel to lift its blockade on Gaza and to halt its military operations in the coastal strip.

Taher al-Nono, a spokesman for Haniyeh, said Erdogan had assured Haniyeh he would raise these issues in his talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Ankara on Monday.

The ending of the truce on Friday has raised fears that tensions along the Israeli-Gaza frontier could spark wider conflict, as Israeli and Palestinian officials stepped up war-like rhetoric.

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, said on Monday after rocket strikes in which an Israeli was injured and many panicked, following an Israeli air strike that killed a Gaza militant, that Israel "has no intention of accepting the continuation of fire" from Gaza.

Barak also said he had ordered the army to prepare for possible action. But another cabinet minister, Isaac Herzog, said Israel was "ready to consider continuing the calm, on terms that are comfortable for Israel."

Hamas's 1988 founding charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state but in the past the faction has offered to suspend hostilities as part of a long-term accord.

(Additional reporting by Aziz el-Kaissouni in Cairo, Allyn Fisher-Ilan, Dan Williams and Adam Entous in Jerusalem)