JERUSALEM, March 17 — The leaders of the Islamic group Hamas said today that it would propose a new Palestinian cabinet consisting of Hamas and independent figures, with the participation of no other party. Hamas said it expected to give the list to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, on Saturday after Mr. Abbas's Fatah faction announced, as expected, that it would not participate.
Mr. Abbas may yet reject the new government's program, because it does not explicitly acknowledge the validity of past agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization or support negotiations with Israel. But it is not clear what consequences such a rejection would have in an untested political situation for the Palestinians.
Hamas is expected to take the key portfolios of foreign affairs, finance, education and the Interior Ministry.
An indication of Hamas's position came from its exiled political leader, Khaled Meshal, who said in Damascus today that political power for Hamas was only ‘a means to an end’ and is less important than fighting Israel, according to Reuters news agency.
‘Our fate is to combine resistance and politics, but resistance remains the basis and politics only a branch,’ said Mr. Meshal. ‘Being in power is only a means to an end for Hamas. Power is not our ultimate goal. If it becomes one, let power go to hell. It will not hold us back from our targets which we hold dear.’
Mr. Meshal, who is based in Damascus, was speaking at a memorial gathering on Thursday night. ‘We and the Zionists have a date with destiny,’ he said. ‘If they want a fight, we are ready for it. If they want a war, we are the sons of war. If they want a struggle, we are for it to the end. We have more stamina than Israel and will defeat it, God willing.’
Mr. Abbas was a key negotiator for the P.L.O., but Mr. Meshal criticized its agreements with Israel creating the interim Palestinian Authority. ‘Those who talked about setting up a state before liberation lost both country and land,’ he said. ‘A country can only exist on liberated land.’
Mr. Meshal's comments did not suggest that Hamas would agree any time soon to the international community's demands that a new Palestinian government recognize Israel, forswear violence and accept previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements.
In Brussels, at a meeting of the Quartet — the United States, European Union, Russia and the United Nations — the American assistant secretary of state, David Welch, said: ‘To this date, I have not seen a positive Hamas reaction in respect to any of these principles.’ He said that the Quartet was discussing how to channel humanitarian aid to the Palestinians even after Hamas takes over while trying to avoid sending funds to a government led by Hamas, which is classified by the United States and European Union as a ‘terrorist’ group.
In Israel, the government officially confirmed its first cases of the H5N1 strain of bird flu, saying that the virus had killed thousands of turkeys and chickens in four locations in southern Israel. Three people who worked with infected birds, including a Thai national, have been hospitalized and may be infected.
‘Last night, we informed the World Health Organization that the H5N1 virus has spread to Israel,’ Dr. Moshe Haimovitch, an agriculture ministry official, said in Tel Aviv today. Israeli officials are placing the infected farms under quarantine and will destroy hundreds of thousands of birds in the affected areas.
The European Union immediately banned the import of Israeli poultry, unless the meat is heat-treated or the birds were slaughtered before mid-February.
Separately, Israel's Justice Ministry said it is investigating a hospital that allegedly held a newborn baby as security that the parents of triplets would pay their hospital bill. The mother, an Israeli Arab, gave birth prematurely two months ago and the babies required extensive treatment.
Because the father is a Palestinian resident of the West Bank, the hospital allegedly held one of the babies because it was not certain that Israel's national insurance would cover the bill of some $2,150. After the case was written about in the daily newspaper Haaretz, the ministry ordered the release of the child and said it would ensure payment to the hospital. The woman's family told the newspaper that two other hospitals asked her for a deposit of some $72,500 before they would admit her.