By Dan Williams JERUSALEM, Feb 8 (Reuters) - Israel and Hamas could carry out a long-discussed prisoner swap within six weeks, an Israeli cabinet minister said on Sunday, playing down media speculation that a deal was more imminent. Israel wants to retrieve Gilad Shalit, a soldier held captive in Gaza for 2 1/2 years, as part of Egyptian-brokered talks on consolidating the Jan. 18 truce that ended a punishing Israeli offensive in the impoverished Palestinian enclave. A flurry of press predictions that an exchange of jailed Palestinians for Shalit could be in place in time for Israel's national election on Tuesday was angrily dismissed by outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as "exaggerated and damaging". Pensioners Minister Rafi Eitan, a member of a cabinet team weighing Hamas's demand for the release of 1,400 prisoners -- including 450 senior militants -- said he expected a deal to go ahead before the next Israeli coalition government is installed."There's a strong probability that all comprehensive moves with Hamas ... will happen during the current prime minister's term, as from experience we know it takes around six weeks for them to put together a new government," Eitan told Army Radio. He declined to give details on the state of Israeli deliberations. Local media have said the Olmert government, having previously balked at a lopsided trade, could now allow amnesty for "hundreds" of those on Hamas's roster. Diplomats with knowledge of the talks say the number could be some 1,000. In a sign of seriousness on the Palestinian side, Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar, who had gone to ground during the Gaza war, emerged on Saturday to attend talks in Cairo. He continued on to Syria to confer with Hamas's exiled chief, Khaled Meshaal. "There are positive signals that an announcement on a deal is near, unless Israel backs off at the last minute," a Palestinian official said. PACKAGE DEAL Hamas insists Israel lift a blockade on Gaza's crossings while Israel says it will not do so unless Shalit is freed. Having assaulted Gaza with the stated aim of stopping Palestinian cross-border rocket salvoes, Israel has also demanded a mechanism, administered with international help, to prevent arms-smuggling to the territory from neighbouring Egypt. "Hamas took serious hits. Hamas needs quite a long period of time in order to recover. For this, it needs the crossings open," Eitan said, adding that Israel was treating Shalit and the other ceasefire issues under discussion as "one package". Opinion polls show the Gaza war boosted the electoral prospects of Olmert's successor at the head of the centrist Kadima party, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, as well as of Defence Minister Ehud Barak of the centre-left Labour party. Declaring that Shalit -- a cause celebre in Israel -- is on his way home could give them the edge over the frontrunner, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the rightist Likud party, who has lambasted the Olmert government for not pressing the 22-day Gaza offensive until Islamist Hamas was toppled. Israeli media reported that Olmert was trying to muzzle his ministers on any impending swap. Amnesty for Palestinians jailed over lethal attacks is a touchy matter for a Jewish state that fears bolstering factions like Hamas, which oppose peacemaking. "The recent reports are exaggerated and damaging; they are unnecessary," he told his cabinet in broadcast remarks on Sunday. "This complex and sensitive process requires due caution regarding all that is said." (Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza)
Israel's Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu (C) plants a sapling during a visit to the village of Keshet in the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau which Israel captured from Syria in ...
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