GAZA CITY, February 13 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The main Palestinian resistance groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, pledged Saturday, February 12, to maintain a de facto truce and not to immediately retaliate any Israeli aggression, while they weigh a formal ceasefire with Tel Aviv.

“Hamas's position regarding calm will continue unchanged and Israel will bear responsibility for any new violation or aggression,” Ismail Haniyah, a senior leader of the resistance group, told Reuters after talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Gaza.

Islamic Jihad leader Mohammed al-Hindi made similar comments after a later meeting with the Palestinian leader.

Both groups, which had largely abided by a de facto truce over the past several weeks, said they needed more talks before reaching a final decision on a formal ceasefire Abbas brokered with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at a summit in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh on Tuesday, February 8.

They, as well as most Palestinian resistance factions, have made a ceasefire conditional on both an end to incessant Israeli aggressions against the Palestinian people and the release of some 8000 prisoners in Israeli jails.

In a major policy shift, Mahmoud Al-Zahar, a top Hamas leader, said the group would consult with the Palestinian Authority (PA) before responding to Israeli military action that fell short of “incursions and assassinations”.

The arrangement appeared to be aimed at preventing the kind of violence flare-up that occurred on Thursday, February 10, when Hamas retaliated the Israeli killing of two Palestinians a day earlier by firing mortars at Jewish settlements in Gaza.

Abbas told Hamas and the Islamic Jihad leaders that “no faction should be allowed to respond on its own to any Israeli violation,” a Palestinian official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Ending violence is central to Abbas's hopes of reviving the US-backed roadmap that charts mutual steps towards the creation of a Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel by the end of this year.

Both sides have taken recently concrete steps to dispel great distrust.

Palestinian officials confirmed Saturday that Israel gave the green light for the return of Palestinians deported to Gaza and Europe under a deal worked out with the US and the EU to end Israel's five-week siege of Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity in 2002.

Enabling the exiles to return home was a key Hamas demand for a truce.

In Tel Aviv, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz met Abbas’s aide Mohammad Dahlan, a former security chief, and agreed a joint committee would convene on Sunday, February 13, to discuss Israel's promised troop pullback from five West Bank cities.

In late January, Abbas deployed some 4,000 security personnel across the Gaza Strip with “firm instructions” to halt the firing of mortars at Jewish settlements.