Israel today dismissed a Hamas proposal for a six-month ceasefire during which time the embargo on the Gaza Strip would be lifted, accusing the Palestinian Islamist group of trying to buy time to "rearm and regroup".

The Hamas offer, issued yesterday after talks with Egyptian mediators, departed from previous demands by the group that any ceasefire apply simultaneously in Gaza and the occupied West Bank - the territories where Palestinians want statehood.

Israel has been reluctant to enter any formal agreement that could shore up the hardline Islamists against their West Bank-based rival, President Mahmoud Abbas, as he pursues peace talks with Israel. Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, signalled flexibility last month by saying that military attacks on Gaza would cease if its Hamas rulers stopped cross-border rocket salvoes.

“Israel is interested in peace. Unfortunately, Hamas is playing games. Hamas is biding time in order to rearm and regroup,” David Baker, an Olmert spokesman, said today.

“There would be no need for Israel’s defensive actions if Hamas would cease and desist from committing terrorist attacks on Israelis,” Mr Baker, referring to Israeli air strikes and commando raids in Gaza.“Israel will continue to act to protect its citizens.”

Hamas announced yesterday that Omar Suleiman, an Egyptian mediator, would discuss the Gaza truce idea with other Palestinian factions next week and then take it up with Israel. Its officials were unfazed today by Mr Baker’s comments.

“We still do not have a clear Israeli position. The ball is in the Occupation’s court,” said Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas official, using the group’s term for the Jewish state.“We are ready for all political and military choices to end the siege.”

Israel pulled troops and settlers out of the Gaza Strip in 2005 but still controls major border crossings and has tightened this cordon since Hamas routed Mr Abbas’s Fatah forces there last June.

Some Israeli officials have said the blockade aims both to pressure Hamas to stop rocket fire and, in the long run, to bring about the collapse of its rule over Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinians, most of whom depend on foreign aid.

The embargo has led to a dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, according to several aide organisations working there. United Nations officials said that the UN Relief and Works Agency (Unwra) and the World Food Programme, who together feed more than one million Gazans, ceased all aid distribution yesterday because of a lack of diesel for the lorries that deliver the food.

Israel claimed that Hamas was preventing distribution of a million litres of fuel delivered about a week ago to the Nahal Oz terminal on the Gaza border. "Hamas is creating an aritificial and dishonest crisis," Arye Mekel, spokesman for the Israeli Foreign ministry, said

Israel stopped supplying petrol and diesel and cut fuel supplies for Gaza’s power plant after Palestinian militants attacked Nahal Oz two weeks ago, killing two Israeli civilian employees. It resumed shipments of fuel for the power plant several days later but again halted deliveries after another attack killed three Israeli soldiers near the crossing.

President Assad of Syria confirmed yesterday that Turkey had relayed a message from Israel expressing a readiness to return land in the north in exchange for peace.

Mr Assad said that Syria was ready to negotiate with Israel through Turkey, but that any direct talks would have to wait until a new US President was elected. Syria had received word, he said, that Israel was willing to give back the Golan Heights, which it captured in the 1967 Six Day war, in exchange for peace.

Syria and Israel last held peace negotiations in 2000, but those talks collapsed over the extent of Israel’s proposed withdrawal from the area, which consists of strategic high ground, vital water resources and farming land.

The heads of Israeli towns in the Golan Heights met urgently to try to thwart Mr Olmert’s effort to return the area. The Golan residents are appealing to right-wing members of the ruling coalition to try and force the issue to a national referendum.

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