Hamas Assumes Control of Parliament

The cabinet may decide to prevent 4,000 Palestinians in Gaza who work in Israel from continuing to do so, tighten already difficult crossing procedures into Israel from Gaza and the West Bank, and cancel the permits that Palestinian legislators must have to travel between the two territories.

In addition, Israel will likely stop the monthly transfer of about $55 million in sales tax and customs fees it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, depriving the government of about a third of its operating budget.

Although Israeli officials have warned that Hamas could seek funding from Israel's enemies, including Iran, should the roughly $1 billion in annual aid from Western donors cease, Abbas said, "We will not be led into an axis of any sort." President Bush called Iran part of "an axis of evil" in his 2002 State of the Union address.

There were few outward expressions of celebration Saturday either here or in Gaza, where much of the Hamas leadership remained after Israel refused to allow them to travel here for the ceremony. Only when Aziz Duwaik, a Hamas legislator, was elected to the post of parliament speaker did the meeting hall in Gaza erupt in raucous applause. Duwaik, an urban planning professor from Hebron, received 70 votes while 46 legislators abstained.

In person or by video, 116 of the 132 legislators attended the session. Fourteen members of parliament are in prison -- all but one in Israel -- while two others are wanted by Israeli authorities and would not risk traveling in the West Bank. When the prisoners' names were called during the opening roll call, members of the audience held up their framed photographs from the rows of metal chairs.

Hamas lawmakers said they would begin forming a cabinet in the coming days, led most likely by Ismail Haniyeh, the party's consensus choice for prime minister. Abbas has the power to fire the prime minister and disband the cabinet, but not to dissolve parliament.

Fatah officials reiterated their position Saturday that they would not join a Hamas cabinet, saying their secular-nationalist program, which includes negotiations with Israel, is at odds with Hamas's political vision. Many of them have also said that Hamas should be left to suffer the political consequences alone as it tries to govern the occupied territories.

"For us this is not a matter of principle, but an issue of the central problem of governing," said Nasser Kidwa, the outgoing foreign minister from Fatah who attended the parliamentary session, although he is not a member. "At this point there is no question that we cannot join. But if they consider a different political program, then that's something else."

Hamas leaders have said they do not intend to alter their plans after joining the government, although some of them have suggested that a long-term truce with Israel is possible if it withdraws from all territory occupied in the 1967 Middle East war, including East Jerusalem. The party's "Change and Reform" ticket defeated Fatah on a platform that emphasized the need for a change in the government after years of corrupt and inept administration by the former ruling party.

"It looks like we will have a bipolar reality," said Hanan Ashrawi, a legislator from the small Third Way movement that stressed anti-corruption and reform in its campaign. "But whether this leads to a larger clash between the president and Hamas, I don't know. Hamas at the moment seems to be trying to avoid such clashes."

As head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the recognized representative of Palestinians inside and outside the territories, Abbas remains in charge of peace policy. He called for a quick return to the U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan.

Announced in 2003, the plan originally called for creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel by the end of 2005. But the process has been dormant in recent years, and Hamas rejects the two-state solution the plan envisions. Hamas has pointed to Israel's unilateral withdrawal last year from Gaza, where 8,500 Jewish settlers lived for four decades among 1.3 million Palestinians, as evidence that its military strikes are more effective than negotiations.

Abbas maintained, however: "We are confident that there is no military solution to the conflict. Negotiations between us as equal partners should put a long-due end to the cycle of violence."