The Islamic militant Hamas moved a step closer Tuesday to taking power,
winning overwhelming parliamentary approval for its 25-member Cabinet.
Incoming Hamas
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, center, celebrates with other
Hamas leaders outside the parliament building in Gaza City, Tuesday, March
28, 2006. The Palestinian parliament overwhelming approved the new Hamas
Cabinet on Tuesday, setting the stage for the new administration to take
office later this week. [AP] |
The parliament met
as Israelis voted in a historic election billed as a referendum on the future of
the West Bank. Incoming Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said he
opposes plans by the Israeli front-runner, acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, to
draw the country's final borders by 2010.
However, Haniyeh toned down Hamas' militant ideology, saying he was not
interested in perpetuating the cycle of violence with Israel. Hamas has killed
hundreds of Israelis in suicide attacks in recent years, but has largely stuck
to a truce for the past year.
"We're not calling for conflict or the continuation of the bloodbath in this
region. We are a government that looks out for the interests of the Palestinian
people," Haniyeh said.
But even as the Cabinet was approved, Gaza militants for the first time fired
a Katyusha rocket into Israel, the Israeli army said. The launching of the
Katyusha, which has twice the range of the Palestinians' homemade Qassam rockets
and is deadlier, raised fears that rocket fire could reach the southern Israeli
city of Ashkelon.
The militant group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility and said the rocket
attack, which caused no injuries, was timed to coincide with Israel's election.
Israeli security officials said the rocket apparently was smuggled into Gaza
from Egypt.
In Gaza City, Hamas lawmakers broke into chants of "God is great" after
parliament voted 71-36, with two abstentions, to approve the new lineup.
Palestinian legislators swarmed Haniyeh to congratulate him. After the vote,
Haniyeh went to the house of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas founder assassinated
by Israel in 2004, to pray with other Hamas leaders.
On Tuesday evening, thousands of cheering and whistling Hamas supporters
gathered at the parliament building in Gaza to celebrate the vote as Haniyeh
stood on a balcony above and threw candy at the crowd.
"While elections are taking place in the Israeli entity, here the flags of
the government of Hamas and the government of the Palestinians are rising high,"
he told the cheering crowd.
The new Cabinet is to be sworn in by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas
later this week.
Olmert has refused to deal with Hamas' incoming Cabinet and in his victory
speech Tuesday night, he appealed to the Palestinians to accept a scaled-back
dream as Israel has ¡ª as quickly as possible.
If they don't, "Israel will take its fate into its own hands," he said. "The
time has come to act."
Haniyeh said he opposed Olmert's plan to draw Israel's final borders, with or
without negotiations with the Palestinians. Olmert wants to withdraw from large
parts of the West Bank and dismantle dozens of small Jewish settlements, but
annex the large settlement blocs.
"We said from the beginning that any Israeli step that will impose facts on
the ground or undermine Palestinian rights, such as creating so-called temporary
borders, is rejected and unacceptable policy," Haniyeh said.
Hamas is listed as a terror group by the United States and European Union,
and Western countries have threatened to cut off aid to the cash-strapped
Palestinian Authority once Hamas takes over.
Marc Otte, the European Union's special envoy to the Middle East, said the EU
would only work with a Palestinian government that "agrees to the platform of
peace."
The new Cabinet includes 20 Hamas members and five independents. Twelve
ministers are from Gaza and 13 from the West Bank. One is a woman and one a
Coptic Christian. Nine are engineers and the rest have university degrees in
other fields. Fourteen have spent time in Israeli prisons.
The Gaza session was hooked up via video link to a simultaneous session in
the West Bank city of Ramallah, where members of the incoming Cabinet lined up
to receive congratulatory kisses from lawmakers. An Israeli travel ban between
Gaza and the West Bank prevents the whole legislature from meeting in one place.
Haniyeh said he intends to push for an independent Palestinian state with its
capital in Jerusalem and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their
homes in what is now Israel.
Those demands are far more moderate than Hamas' traditional call to replace
Israel with an Islamic state. However, the group, which won Jan. 25 elections in
a landslide, has stopped far short of accepting demands by the international
community to renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist.
Haniyeh said the new government planned a tour of Arab countries "to secure
aid for the Palestinian people and the government and the
authority."