Hamas says will seriously consider comprehensive calm

Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, in exile in Syria, was also quoted as urging Arab leaders at their Damascus summit to support its fight with Israel. But he reiterated the Islamist group was open to a conditional truce with the Jewish state.

The Gaza-based website said Mashaal wrote to Arab leaders requesting support for Hamas-Fatah dialogue, after a Yemen-brokered agreement to revive talks between the rival factions appeared to falter this week.

Mashaal called on Arab leaders to "shoulder your national and brotherly responsibility to foster a Palestinian-Palestinian dialogue", according to the report, which was also carried by London-based pan-Arab newspaper al-Hayat. Hamas seized control of Gaza last June after routing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah forces. Abbas then sacked a Hamas-led unity government and pursued US-backed peace talks with Israel.

After months of hostilities, the factions agreed this week to restart direct talks to "return the Palestinian situation to what it was before the Gaza incidents." But an apparent dispute quickly broke out.

Hamas has said talks will start on April 5, while Abbas's office insisted the Islamist group must first relinquish control of the Gaza Strip – a condition Hamas has rejected.

According to the website, Mashaal also urged Arab leaders to support the group's fight against Israel and to protest against an Israeli-led blockade of Gaza, defending militant cross-border rocket attacks from Gaza as self-defense.

But he also reiterated Hamas was ready to discuss a ceasefire with Israel, which regularly launches raids into the territory it says are targeted at militants.

'Lift siege on Gaza Strip'

Several thousand Hamas supporters rallied in northern Gaza to press Arab leaders to do more to end the blockade.

Head of Hamas' government in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, also appealed to the gathering, calling international and Arab leaders to help "lift the siege on the Gaza Strip and to act immediately to reopen the ... border (with Egypt)." Hamas has said any ceasefire would depend on an end to Israeli acts of "aggression" in Gaza and the West Bank and the reopening of Gaza border crossings.

"We want to make clear that the Palestinians will seriously consider a comprehensive and reciprocal calm that would end the Gaza closure and reopen the crossings," Haniyeh said in a televised speech.

Egypt, with US blessing, has been trying to broker a cessation of hostilities between Israel and militants in Gaza.

Israel, denying it is involved in ceasefire negotiations but saying it would have no reason to strike Hamas if salvoes ceased, has stopped targeting the group's Gaza militants in what appears to be a de facto truce between the two enemies.

Hamas has suspended rocket fire, although other militant groups have kept up sporadic attacks.

"All Palestinian factions of resistance have expressed full readiness to deal with the issue of calm, on condition that it be comprehensive, reciprocal and simultaneous," Mashaal was quoted as saying.

The two-day Arab summit opens in Damascus on Saturday.