Mahmoud Abbas
Haniyeh met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Gaza late on Thursday. Abbas aide Nabil Abu Rdeneh said Hamas has not completed formation of its government, and Abbas offered an extra two weeks, as Palestinian law provides.
A meeting between Hamas and Abbas' Fatah also failed to achieve agreement on a joint government, participants said.
Hamas, which has sent dozens of suicide bombers into Israel, does not accept the presence of a Jewish state in the Middle East. Israel considers Hamas a terror group and refuses to talk to its leaders.
In the absence of peace talks, Olmert's unilateral approach is meant as a bold initiative to solve Israel's main security problems, in the image of Israel's unilateral pullout from Gaza last summer under Sharon, but he has come under fire from Israeli hawks and doves, as well as Palestinians.
Dovish parties are sniping at Olmert for undermining efforts to restart peace negotiations, while Likud and other hawks charge that unilateral Israeli pullbacks amount to a reward for Palestinian violence.
Abbas rejected any further unilateral Israeli steps, demanding that future moves should be the result of negotiations.
Abbas, leader of the Fatah Party trounced by Hamas in the January parliamentary vote, was elected separately and has almost three years left in his term.
But Olmert told the Jerusalem Post daily he had no intention of meeting Abbas after Israel's elections because he sees him as part and parcel of a Palestinian Authority dominated by Hamas.
RSS