Hamas Cabinet strives for independent image

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Hamas has assembled a Cabinet that the Islamist militant movement portrays as a team of technocrats and statesmen, above the political fray and distanced from Hamas's record as a designated terrorist group sworn to destroy Israel.

But there's little indication so far that this new Palestinian leadership is convincing Israel or most of the world that it is trustworthy and independent.

More than half of the new government ministers say they are not members of Hamas and joined the government to help reverse the defeated Fatah movement's track record of nepotism, bloated budgets, and corruption.

Top Hamas officials have continued to make equivocal and sometimes inflammatory statements about Israel, and have refused to repudiate the group's commitment to the destruction of the Jewish state. And Mahmoud Zahar, the foreign minister and a founding Hamas leader, still rails against the West from his base in Gaza.

Still, Hamas has persuaded more than a dozen reputable independent Palestinians to join the new government, and has promised to back away from a radical Islamist social and religious agenda in order to implement the ''reform and change" platform that swept Hamas to power.

Hamas brags that 14 of the 24 ministers are professors -- Deputy Prime Minister Nasser Shaar calls it the ''most educated government the Arab world has ever seen."

Only 11 of the ministers officially claim membership in Hamas, although others, such as women's affairs minister Miriam Saleh, blur the definition. She campaigned in the January elections on the Hamas slate, usually wearing a green Hamas shawl, and is a committed Islamist with a doctorate in religious studies from Saudi Arabia -- but classifies herself as an independent.

The most senior Hamas officials located in the West Bank, the ministers of finance and religious affairs, said the Islamist group had studied the track records of religious movements in other Arab countries and had consciously adopted a ''flexible strategy."

''We know it's not practical to make an Islamic state in Palestine," said Nayef Rajoub, a Hamas member and the minister of religious affairs in the new Palestinian Authority government that was sworn in March 29 following Hamas's victory in January elections.

Instead, Hamas members have taken a back seat to independents like Shaar, the deputy prime minister and former university dean who is the face of the new government in the West Bank.

Israel has barred Hamas members based in Gaza, including the prime minister and foreign minister, from traveling to Jerusalem or the Ramallah headquarters of the Palestinian Authority, forcing them to participate in government meetings by videoconference.

So it has fallen to Shaar and finance minister Omar Abdul Razeq to woo diplomats to continue aid to the Hamas-backed authority.

The independents who dominate the Cabinet stand in stark contrast to the Hamas officials who put them in power and the previous Palestinian Authority, full of longtime loyalists of Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction.

When the new government took office this month, it swept aside the old Fatah image -- rugged-looking ex-revolutionaries, with big sunglasses and leather jackets, who flashed Israel-issued VIP cards to fly past lines of fellow Palestinians stalled at Israeli checkpoints.

The new government ministers have no VIP cards -- Israeli officials and American diplomats have instituted a blanket boycott of the new government until Hamas changes its charter and agrees to abide by agreements made by its predecessors in the Palestinian Authority.

Shaar quit his job as dean of An-Najah University in Nablus earlier this month, enthused at the prospect of cleaning up an authority that had spawned opprobrium even among its supporters.

The tourism minister, a Christian from Bethlehem, said he grilled Hamas officials before agreeing to join their government. He said he believes the group will hold back from its Islamist agenda in order to improve quality of life.

At a reception last week to inaugurate the government, 13 ministers and the speaker of parliament packed into the small lobby of the prime minister's office. Gone was Fatah's trademark security -- legions of gun-toting guards and undercover agents with pistols tucked into the back of their belts.

Instead, a pair of uniformed soldiers stood at the front entrance, while dozens of well-wishers streamed in to congratulate the ministers. They answered their own cellphones, got their own coffee, and at times smiled giddily at one another.

Rajoub said he spent more than an hour at an Israeli checkpoint on his way from Hebron to Ramallah for the reception -- a delay that he noted kept him connected to his constituents.

So far, the Cabinet members have been united in their eagerness to present the new government as Palestinian -- and distinctly not a Hamas government. But that stance is under pressure from many directions.

The United States and the European Union are cutting off aid as long as Hamas is in power. Israel won't speak with any of the ministers unless Hamas changes its position against the Jewish state.

And the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, a Fatah faction leader recognized by Israel and the United States, is embroiled in an increasingly bitter power struggle with Hamas over foreign policy, aid, and control of security forces.

Diana Buttu, a former legal adviser to the Palestinian Authority who now works at a think tank, said the new Cabinet really was a Hamas government because members of the movement control the most important aspects of policy.

''They put technocrats in positions that seem like they matter but really don't," Buttu said. ''They've seen the backlash against Hamas and they want to be supported internationally."