Acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will on Sunday present the cabinet with a new plan which recommends ties between Israel and the Palestinian Authority be reduced gradually after a Hamas-dominated Palestinian parliament was sworn in on Saturday.
According to Israel's Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, the new plan calls for Israel to freeze transfering tax revenues to the PA; close its border crossings with Gaza Strip, preventing laborers from seeking work in Israel and travel with the West Bank, and postpone construction of a planned Gaza airport and harbor. "A Hamas government will mean an authority of terror and murder," Mofaz said.
Meanwhile, Hamas lawmaker Abdel Aziz Duaik, 57, a geography professor from the West Bank, was named as the speaker of the new Palestinian parliament Saturday. Hamas would fulfill its "rightful duty to resist occupation," Duaik said in his first comments as speaker.
