Hamas Says It Has Formed a Cabinet

Hamas announced Saturday that it had formed a Palestinian government but acknowledged that it had been unable to attract coalition partners whose presence might have made dealings with the Islamist group more palatable to the outside world.

The group refrained from formally announcing its Cabinet lineup pending its presentation to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who was expected to travel to the Gaza Strip today for meetings with the Hamas leadership.

But Hamas officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said key positions would go to Hamas loyalists such as firebrand Mahmoud Zahar, who has been designated foreign minister.

Other senior appointees include lawmaker Said Siyam, who is considered a relative moderate, as interior minister, and economics professor Omar Abdel Razeq, who was jailed at the time of January’s parliamentary elections, as finance minister.

“We respect [other] parties’ decision not to join the Cabinet,” Ismail Haniyeh, the Palestinian prime minister-designate, said at a news conference in Gaza.

Israeli officials declined to comment on the prospective Cabinet lineup, saying they would wait until it was formalized. But one senior official scoffed at the notion that Israel would have any dealings with Zahar, a hard-liner whom it has repeatedly tried to assassinate.

In the wake of its upset victory in the Jan. 25 elections, Hamas wrestled with the question of whether to form a government weighted toward outsiders in order to leave open the possibility of maintaining at least indirect contacts with Israel.

The idea of a broad-based government went by the wayside, however, because more militant elements within the group insisted it must not back down from its stated goal of Israel’s destruction.

That unyielding stance, plus unrelated antagonisms with other Palestinian factions, appeared to have driven off any potential coalition partners, although the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was said to still be deliberating whether to accept some junior Cabinet posts.

Haniyeh, speaking to reporters in Gaza, sought to calm fears that Israel and the United States would now intensify efforts to isolate the Palestinian government.

“We have no doubt of success in the Cabinet’s responsibilities for running Palestinian affairs,” he said. “Those Palestinians who granted us their trust will never starve or be deprived.”

Most Western countries have threatened to cut off or severely curtail aid to a Hamas-dominated Palestinian government. Hamas, which Israel, the United States and the European Union consider a terrorist organization, carried out dozens of suicide attacks during the five-year Palestinian uprising, or intifada, but has largely adhered to a truce over the last year.

The makeup of the Cabinet appeared to dash hopes on the part of Abbas, who was elected a year before the vote that brought Hamas to power and has broad authority of his own, that Hamas might moderate its views sufficiently to avoid an aid and diplomatic boycott.

Abbas must approve the Cabinet lineup before it can be put before parliament. He is expected to try to delay that step until after Israel’s parliamentary elections, scheduled for March 28.

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Times special correspondent Fayed abu Shammaleh contributed to this report from Gaza City.