TEL AVIV, Feb 17: The Israeli cabinet decided to submit a range of reprisals against a Hamas-led Palestinian Authority (PA) for government approval, the day after the radical faction takes up seats in parliament for the first time on Saturday.

Chaired by Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Israel’s security and political cabinet examined on Friday a series of punitive measures, deciding to refer the proposed reprisals for formal government approval on Sunday.

Israel is demanding that Hamas, responsible for scores of suicide attacks, recognise the Jewish state’s right to exist and ‘renounce violence’, following its massive election win last month.

“The security and diplomatic and security establishments gave assessments and made recommendations,” the prime minister’s office said. “Olmert decided the issue would be submitted to the cabinet on Sunday.”

Hamas’s likely candidate for prime minister, Ismail Haniya, has slammed Israel for seeking to impose collective punishment on the Palestinians.

The prospect of a Hamas-led government following Saturday’s inauguration of parliament is the biggest crisis facing Mr Olmert since he took over from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has been in a coma since Jan 4.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who joined Mr Olmert and Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz at the talks, has said that once the new parliament is sworn in, Israel will consider the Palestinian Authority ‘a terrorist entity’.

Chief among the recommended sanctions is an immediate freeze on the monthly transfer of millions of dollars in customs duties owed to the Palestinian Authority and which amount to a staggering one-third of the cash-strapped government’s budget.

Mr Mofaz has also proposed a ban on travel between the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and that Gazans be prohibited from working in Israel.

The Israeli government is also mulling the option of taxing all goods destined for the West Bank and Gaza that cross its territory, effectively turning Gaza-Israel checkpoints into international borders.

Major construction projects in Gaza, including plans for a deep-sea port, will be frozen, also smashing hopes of reviving an airport destroyed by Israel after the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising.

The recommendations aim ‘to separate Israel gradually from a Palestinian Authority dominated by Hamas’, said an official in the prime minister’s office.

Mr Mofaz was quoted by the Yediot Aharonot newspaper as saying that parliament’s inauguration is ‘the sounding of the gong’ marking the first steps towards a ‘Hamas-tine’ which is a danger to the state of Israel’.

In Gaza City, Mr Haniya decried Israel’s moves as ‘part of the policy of repression, terrorism and collective punishment against our people’.

The new Palestinian parliament, in which MPs from Hamas will occupy 74 out of the 132 seats, will be inaugurated on Saturday.

The group, which is branded a terrorist organisation by the European Union and the United States, is poised to form a coalition government under Mr Haniya, the prime ministerial frontrunner.

Palestinian Authority president Mahmud Abbas is to ask Hamas to respect all previous agreements between Israel and the Palestinians, including the stalled roadmap peace plan, and reiterate his commitment towards negotiations.—AFP