GAZA CITY (AFP) - - A fragile truce entered its second day in the Gaza Strip on Friday amid scepticism over how long the Egyptian-brokered deal between Israel and the Islamist Hamas movement would hold.

The six-month truce is the first since the Islamists seized the impoverished Palestinian territory just over a year ago , triggering a crippling Israeli blockade.

"Hamas is determined to respect the truce and guarantee its success," its spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said after the ceasefire took hold Thursday.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman Mark Regev said the Jewish state "will respect all the commitments it made."

As the truce went into effect, Olmert's office announced the premier will travel to Egypt next Tuesday for talks with President Hosni Mubarak.

Israeli negotiator Ofer Dekel is due to fly to Egypt the same day to resume talks on a proposed prisoner swap with Hamas, a senior defence official said.

Israel wants Hamas to release Corporal Gilad Shalit, who was seized by Gaza militants in a deadly cross-border raid two years ago.

"Israel knows it will have to pay a heavy price for Shalit's release and free many Palestinian terrorists," a senior defence official, who asked not to be named, said.

But Shalit's father Noam lashed out at the truce in an interview with Israeli television on Thursday.

From the moment when we no longer have any means of pressure, Hamas can drag out the negotiations (on Gilad's release) for two more years, or five years, or 10 years," he said. "And we might never see Gilad again."

The deal also entails a gradual easing of Israel's blockade of the overcrowded strip of land where most of the 1.5 million population depend on outside aid.

Israeli authorities said this should start on Sunday with an increase of goods allowed into the Palestinian enclave.

The deal was concluded after months of indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel, which had been mulling a wider military offensive in Gaza in a bid to halt rocket fire.

Israel made it clear the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt , the territory's only one that bypasses the Jewish state, would be reopened only if Shalit is released, the Ynet news website said.

Olmert warned on Wednesday that the ceasefire would be "fragile" and could be "short-lived," saying the army stood ready to intervene if it is breached.

The White House cautiously welcomed the deal saying it hoped it meant that Hamas would "give up terrorism."

The United States, the European Union and Israel blacklist Hamas as a terrorist organisation despite its 2006 victory in Palestinian parliamentary elections.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana called the truce "a very welcome development."

"I hope it will provide momentum for the peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians," he said.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon said he hoped it "will both provide security and an easing of the humanitarian crisis in impoverished Gaza, and end rocket and mortar attacks against Israeli targets."

Middle East Quartet envoy and former British prime minister Tony Blair called the truce "a positive development."

"We should be under no illusion, however, that this calm is fragile," said Blair, who represents the diplomatic Quartet made up of the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, whose powerbase has been limited to the West Bank since Hamas seized Gaza, hailed the deal as "good news for us".

Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad called on Israel to halt military operations in the occupied West Bank too.

"All those Israeli military operations in areas under our control must cease," said Fayyad, whose government's writ has been limited to the West Bank since the Hamas movement's seizure of Gaza in June last year.

Syria, home to Hamas supremo Khaled Meshaal, said it supported the deal while the 22-member Arab League said it would be "an important step towards inter-Palestinian reconciliation."