GAZA, Jan 9: The spiritual leader of the Hamas group said on Friday his organization would weigh a "temporary peace" with Israel if a Palestinian state was created in all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

But Sheikh Ahmed Yassin said: "We believe the Israeli enemy does not want peace but wants only to have control of the area." "If Israel wants peace, we are ready to give a truce for a certain period of time with condition, so as to remove the occupation and give our people their freedom and their independence on their land," he said.

Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Israeli parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, told Israel Radio that Sheikh Yassin's proposal was "definitely interesting".

But he said: "It is far from being a real change. In the meantime, it's a tactical declaration." Hamas, dedicated to Israel's destruction and on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations, has killed dozens of Israelis in suicide bombings. Hamas says its attacks are in response to Israeli strikes against Palestinians.

Sheikh Yassin said Hamas had been in contact with the United States, "through mediators, journalists and visiting (foreign) delegations, aimed at improving relations" with Washington, but the efforts brought no breakthrough.

He described any truce with Israel as a "temporary peace", saying a cessation of violence must be accompanied by the creation of a "fully sovereign Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank, on the 1967 borders without occupation".

Israel seized the two areas in the 1967 Middle East war and has rejected a complete pullback to the boundary lines that marked the Jewish state's border before that conflict.

Sheikh Yassin said any temporary peace, which he first proposed seven years ago on his release from an Israeli jail, would not entail Hamas recognition of Israel.

The wheelchair-bound Hamas chief rejected media reports of a de facto ceasefire already in place between Israel and Hamas. He said Hamas's military wing, the Izz el Deen al Qassam Brigades, "are not restrained and have a free hand to do what they can to strike the enemy".-Reuters