Egypt hopes for Gaza truce deal in few days

"There are positive signs that in the next few days we will reach an understanding on a truce and a partial reopening of crossing points (into Gaza)," Zaki said.

Egypt has been mediating indirect talks for a lasting truce since the end of Israel’s massive 22-day onslaught on the Gaza Strip, which killed at least 1,330 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.

The fighting ended when both Israel and the Gaza Strips Islamist rulers called separate ceasefires on Jan. 18.

However, the fragile calm has been tested by Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel and retaliatory air strikes.

On Saturday, a spokesman for Hamas said it expected an agreement with Israel on the reopening of border crossings into the Gaza Strip "within the next few days."

Israeli and Palestinian officials have been shuttling to Cairo for talks with Egypt’s intelligence chief and Middle East mediator Omar Suleiman, hoping for a truce deal with just two days until Israel’s election.

A Hamas delegation from Gaza led by firebrand Mahmud Zahar was in Syria on Sunday for consultations on the truce negotiations with Damascus-based members of the group’s powerful politburo, Hamas official Mohammed Nasr told AFP.

The delegation is due to return to the Egyptian capital on Monday, the Egyptian foreign ministry spokesman said.

Israel, which controls all border crossings except Rafah, which is managed by Egypt, has kept the densely populated strip closed to all but essential supplies since June 2007 when Hamas violently seized power, ousting forces loyal to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

Egypt closed Rafah on Thursday, after opening it to aid and to Palestinians who were wounded during the war. Egypt has refused to permanently open the crossing in the absence of EU monitors and Abbas’s representatives.

Hamas officials have said they are seeking clarifications on an Israeli offer to allow between 70 and 80 percent of goods through its crossings into Gaza, barring those it says could be used to make weapons.

Besides opening Gaza’s borders, Egypt’s truce plan also calls for Hamas and Abbas’s Fatah to reconcile and form a government that would be acceptable to the international community.

Hamas has called in the past for the Palestine Liberation Organization, considered the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people in the eyes of the international community and which dominates the Palestinian Authority, to be replaced.

But Zahar, thought to be the Islamists overall leader in the Palestinian territories, told Al-Jazeera television on Sunday that his group wanted changes to the PLO’s program, not its structure.

"We want to preserve the structure of the PLO but not its political program, of which 28 clauses were cancelled" to conform with the 1993 Oslo accords, he said.

The Oslo accords, which paved the way for the creation of the Palestinian Authority, removed clauses in the PLO charter which called the state of Israel invalid because it was created by force on Palestinian soil.

A 2005 accord to restructure the PLO and include Hamas has remained a dead letter because of continued Palestinian factional infighting.

Hamas has said it wants a new structure that would include it and reflect its support in the Palestinian territories.