CAIRO - The democratically elected movement of 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 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 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, captured by the Palestinian resistance more than two years ago, as a condition for ending its blockade of Gaza.
Marzuk said that Shalit has been removed from the Gaza truce deal and that he will be released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
Osama Hamdan, Hamas's representative in Lebanon, said that that "we have surpassed the Shalit issue," adding that Hamas did not want to hold Shalit indefinitely but wanted to exchange him for Palestinian prisoners.
"There are ongoing efforts for the Shalit issue but they are separate from the truce," he said.
Hamas officials have said that Israel offered to open its crossings into Gaza to allow between 70 and 80 percent of goods into the coastal enclave.
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 reimpose 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 from Beirut.
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.
Israel launched a war on Gaza that killed more than 1,330 Palestinians, mainly civilians.
Israel and Hamas declared ceasefires to the fighting on January 18, but the fragile calm has been tested by Israeli strikes and Palestinian rocket attacks in retaliation.
During the fighting, Egypt had proposed a three-point truce plan beginning with an immediate ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, followed by meetings with Israeli and Palestinian officials to secure a long-term ceasefire.
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