CAIRO — HAMAS has proposed a six-month truce with Israel, aimed at easing a blockade on the Gaza Strip. At a meeting with Egyptian mediators in Cairo on Thursday, the Palestinian group offered to cease cross-border rocket attacks if Israel opens crossing points into Gaza and ends military incursions into the Palestinian territory.

Mahmoud al-Zahar, the former Palestinian foreign minister, speaking to reporters in the Egyptian capital on Thursday, said: “The movement agrees to a truce in the Gaza Strip … fixed at six months, during which period Egypt will work to extend the truce to the West Bank.”

Palestinian factions were to meet in Egypt next week to further discuss the HAMAS plan.

Israel has besieged Gaza since fighters from HAMAS’ armed wing routed Palestinian Authority forces loyal to rival Fatah there in June.

The proposal could be extended to a year-long agreement.

Al-Zahar said other Palestinian factions, including Islamic Jihad and groups based in Damascus, had preliminarily approved the offer.

Ghazi Hamad, a HAMAS spokesman, told Al Jazeera that it would aim to begin improving the situation in Gaza first, and then expand to the West Bank as well.

In exchange, HAMAS would agree to stop firing rockets into southern Israel and attacking crossing points.

Carter’s visit

The proposal appears to be the outcome of a high-profile visit to the region by former President Jimmy Carter. After defying the U.S.-led boycott on HAMAS by meeting its leaders in Damascus, Syria, Carter had told Israelis in Jerusalem Monday that the Islamist militants assured him they would respect a peace treaty ratified by the Palestinian public.

Carter, who was snubbed by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on the trip, reported that HAMAS rejected his suggestion that it declare a unilateral truce with Israel and free Corporal Shalit in return for the release of jailed HAMAS political leaders and Palestinian women and children prisoners. But, he said, HAMAS did agree to forward a letter from Shalit to his parents and to a two-stage prisoner exchange in which the captured soldier would be transferred to Egypt in between waves of prisoner releases by Israel.

Carter also insisted that HAMAS would accept a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in an accord negotiated by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas if it were put to a referendum or a Palestinian legislature is elected with a majority in support.

While HAMAS leaders have said they support a long-term truce with Israel along the 1967 borders of the West Bank and Gaza, they have consistently rejected a peace treaty.

U.N. stops food delivery

The proposal came as the U.N. suspended aid deliveries to more than half a million people in Gaza after its delivery lorries ran out of fuel.

The United Nations Works and Relief Agency (UNRWA), which distributes food and essential commodities to nearly two-thirds of Gaza’s population, had earlier warned it expected to run out of fuel by Thursday afternoon.

The last shipment of fuel to Gaza by Israel — the sole distributor of it to the territory — came before Palestinian fighters attacked an Israeli fuel depot on April 9.

“It’s something that we’ve been warning about since early April, and that is what is so tragic,” John Ging, head of UNRWA in the Gaza Strip, told Al Jazeera.

“Now we’re at a standstill — we just don’t have the fuel to operate the trucks.

“We have the food, and we certainly have hundreds of thousands of desperate people who need it. But this is the situation tonight.”

Israeli actions condemned

Speaking this week about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza, Robert Serry, U.N. special co-ordinator for the Middle East peace process, said it was “wrong for Israel to punish a civilian population for attacks” carried out by Palestinian fighters.

Serry said: “I call on Israel to restore fuel supplies to Gaza, and to allow the passage of humanitarian assistance and commercial supplies, sufficient to allow the functioning of all basic services and for Palestinians to live their daily lives.” 

Bush meets with Abbas

Meanwhile, U.S. President George Bush said in Washington this week he remains confident that a Palestinian state could be formed before his term ends in January 2009.  The U.S. leader met Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, in Washington on Thursday for talks over the next step in negotiations on a final settlement to the conflict with Israel.

“I assured the president that a Palestinian state’s a high priority, for me and my administration, a viable state, a state that doesn’t look like Swiss cheese, a state that provides hope,” Bush said.

Abbas, weakened by HAMAS’ control of the Gaza Strip, was expected to seek increased U.S. pressure on Israel to stop settlement building and ease military checkpoints in the West Bank.

Abbas thanked Bush for reviving stalled negotiations with Israel but warned that “we are in a race against time.”

“We believe that you actually are truly seeking a true, genuine and lasting peace in the Middle East,” the Palestinian president said.

Speaking to Arab Americans in Washington on Wednesday, Abbas said he was committed to a peace deal by the end of the year but that disagreements remained.

Abbas confirmed he would meet Bush for further talks at the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on May 17.

“We would also gladly welcome Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at the summit,” he added, “but we do not know whether this will be the case.” Abbas wants the U.S. to press Israel for a framework agreement for a final settlement to the conflict.

However, negotiations have been stalled by differences over continued Israeli settlement building, violence in Gaza and rocket-firing by Palestinian fighters against Israel.

U.S. okayed settlements?

Also on Thursday the U.S. denied a report in the Washington Post that it had given Israel permission to expand settlements that it would retain as part of a final peace deal with the Palestinians.

Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, was quoted as saying that Bush had given a letter to Ariel Sharon, Olmert’s predecessor, four years ago, allowing Israel to expand the settlements.