Exiled Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal hailed the sweeping political changes in Egypt, which he said had given the Palestinian people their lives back, in a speech in Khartoum on Sunday.

"Today we are witnessing Cairo returning to its natural state, after it disappeared from that state for a long time," the Palestinian Islamist leader said in a speech broadcast live on Sudanese state television.

"The people in Egypt and Tunisia have given us back our lives," he added.

Meshaal was speaking at the opening of the eighth Al-Quds (Jerusalem) International Foundation conference, being held in the Sudanese capital this year and funded by Iran.

Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979 and President Hosni Mubarak, who came to power two years later after his predecessor was assassinated by Islamists, was overthrown only last month after weeks of nationwide protests.

The toppling of Mubarak was celebrated across the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, which their Egyptian neighbours had blockaded since 2007 when the Islamists seized power, ousting the secular Fatah movement of president Mahmud Abbas whose writ is now limited to the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Hamas, which won parliamentary elections a year earlier, has refused to amend its charter, which calls for the destruction of Israel.

On Sunday, Meshaal called for reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah based on jihad or “struggle,” against the Jewish state.

"The first step [to liberating Jerusalem from Israeli occupation] is refusal to negotiate with Israel... and to establish a new, reconciled Palestinian position based on jihad," he said.

Under Mubarak, Egypt played an active part in trying to revive moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and also sought vainly to reconcile the feuding Palestinian factions.