Hamas Parliament Voids Recent Rulings

The Hamas-controlled Palestinian parliament Monday canceled all decisions made during the last session of the outgoing legislature, signaling a confrontational approach to dealing with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' party.

Also Monday, an Israeli aircraft fired a missile at a car in Gaza City, killing three militants from the Islamic Jihad group and a Palestinian bystander, reports CBS News correspondent Robert Berger. The army said one of the militants was involved in rocket attacks against Israeli towns, which have escalated since the election of Hamas in January. Islamic Jihad promised revenge.

The last parliament, dominated by the Fatah Party, gave additional powers to Abbas. Those included empowering Abbas to appoint a new, nine-judge constitutional court that would have the authority to resolve any dispute between him and the Hamas-dominated parliament or Cabinet.

The court also could veto legislation deemed to violate the Palestinians' Basic Law, a forerunner to the Palestinian constitution.

The previous parliament also approved last-minute appointments of five Fatah members to key government positions, including head of the Palestinian Authority's personnel department.

Fatah legislators walked out in protest before Monday's vote. Fatah lawmakers argued that Hamas was breaking the rules by holding the vote and that the last session of the Fatah-controlled parliament was legal.

During the voting, a dozen Fatah gunmen walked near the parliament building in Gaza City, firing into the air. The gunmen eventually headed to a nearby meeting of Fatah leaders, demanding that their party not join a Hamas government, with one masked gunman saying any Fatah politician joining would be killed.

The session was held simultaneously in the West Bank town of Ramallah and in Gaza City, with legislators hooked up by videoconference.

Also, Israeli security officials said Monday that defense chiefs have drawn up a plan to sharply reduce contacts with the Palestinians, further isolate the Gaza Strip and dismantle more West Bank settlements.

The officials spoke after a key security adviser to acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel would evacuate isolated West Bank settlements and unilaterally draw its border with the Palestinians if Olmert's Kadima Party wins a March 28 election. Kadima is the clear front-runner, according to opinion polls.

Eight people were wounded in the Gaza City attack, doctors said.

A spokesman for the militant group, who gave his name as Abu Dajana, vowed revenge.

"God willing, we are going to get revenge for the honorable blood shed today," Abu Dajana said outside a morgue at the Shifa hospital in Gaza.

Israel has been targeting Islamic Jihad militants, who are responsible for most of the daily rocket attacks from Gaza against Israel.

Support for unilateral Israeli moves has grown since Hamas, the militant group that opposes negotiations with the Jewish state, won Palestinian parliament elections in January.

Confirming newspaper reports, Israeli security officials said defense chiefs drew up plans last week reducing contacts with the Palestinians but were not expected to make a formal proposal until after the Israeli election. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the plan until it has been approved.

The newspaper Haaretz published what it said were details of an emerging plan to halt the current trickle of about 7,000 Palestinian workers and traders allowed into Israel each day, to bar Palestinian travel between the West Bank and Gaza Strip and to gradually cut off the current supply of power, water and fuel to Gaza from Israel.

The paper said that under the proposals, Israel would allow the Palestinians to complete long-frozen projects to build their own air and seaports in Gaza and start running their own imports and exports, rather than shipping through Israeli ports and crossings, as they do now.

The Maariv daily newspaper said Israel's top official responsible for day-to-day relations with the West Bank and Gaza met with defense officials last week and discussed options for cutting contacts with the Palestinians to a bare minimum.

The office of that official, Maj.-Gen. Yosef Mishlav, declined comment.

A senior official close to Olmert said a further West Bank withdrawal was an option, but policy would be determined only after the Israeli election. Haaretz also said the latest proposals would leave the Israeli army controlling the strategic Jordan valley and West Bank mountaintops.

The key security adviser to Olmert, former security service head and leading parliamentary candidate Avi Dichter, told Israel Radio on Sunday that in the event of more pullbacks, the Israeli military would remain in parts of the West Bank emptied of settlers. Dichter told Israel Radio he was speaking with Olmert's approval.

The Palestinians claim all the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem for a state. But the United States has said Israel would not be expected to withdraw completely to the pre-1967 borders, implicitly recognizing Israeli control over major settlement blocs, where most of the 253,000 Jewish settlers live.

Olmert has said that while a negotiated deal with the Palestinians would be preferable, Israel will map out its own borders if talks are impossible. He refuses to deal with a Hamas government unless it recognizes Israel and renounces violence, which it refuses to do.

In a speech Sunday by satellite to a Washington conference of AIPAC, the pro-Israel U.S. lobby, Olmert said Israel would not wait for an agreement to determine its borders.

Israel "will take the initiative if we will find that the Palestinians are not ready, are not prepared, or not mature enough to be able to make the necessary adjustments within themselves in order to be ready for this challenge," he said.