An unofficial truce between Israel and the Islamist Hamas group which controls the Gaza Strip will hold as long as Egyptian mediation continues, a Palestinian official close to Egyptian-sponsored talks said yesterday.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ordered a "unilateral" end to a devastating 22-day military attack on the coastal territory yesterday week, and Hamas and other Gaza Palestinian militants called their own halt hours later.

Nothing was signed and there is as yet no official ceasefire between them.

But the Palestinian official, speaking on condition of anony-mity, told Reuters he did not expect Hamas or any other faction to call off the truce, since Egyptian leaders were due to meet Hamas officials in Cairo today to discuss conditions for a durable ceasefire.

Hamas official Ayman Taha, a member of the Gaza three-man delegation, said officials from the group's exiled leadership in Syria were also due in Egypt later yesterday for talks.

Hamas said any new deal with Israel must ensure the opening of all border crossings with the Jewish state, which maintains a tight bloackade of Gaza.

Hamas also demands the reopening of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, the Palestinians' only window to the outside world that does not go through Israel, and the lifting of the economic blockade.

"We are here to discuss how a ceasefire can become durable," Taha told Reuters by telephone from Cairo.