Fatah will boycott the parliament session convened by Hamas to block the appointment of the new Fayad government, a senior Fatah legislator said Saturday.

Fatah legislator Abdullah Abdullah announced the boycott in response to Hamas' dismissal of the new Palestinian Authority government Saturday, a day after Salam Fayad resigned as prime minister and immediately resumed the post, as part of a plan by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to form a new interim government.

"This government, from the outset, is unconstitutional," Ahmed Bahar of Hamas, the acting parliament speaker, said Saturday.

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In a countermove, Bahar convened a special session of parliament Sunday to challenge Abbas' decisions.

Abdullah said he and his colleagues consider Sunday's session illegal and will stay away.

By law, any new government requires parliament approval. However, the legislature has been paralyzed as a result of the power struggle between Hamas and Abbas' Fatah movement.

Abbas formed the government last month after breaking with Hamas Islamists over their violent seizure of the Gaza Strip. As the state of emergency had had decreed expired Friday, Abbas needed a formal reconstitution of the cabinet, which Hamas refuses to recognize.

"The prime minister has resigned and the president [Abbas] has reappointed him," Agriculture and Social Affairs Minister Mahmoud al-Habbash said. "Everything took place in line with the Basic Law," he said, referring to the interim constitution.

The appointment of new ministers by Abbas and the resignation and reappointment of the cabinet effectively creates a new government to replace the one formed under Fayad on an emergency basis after forces loyal to Abbas' secular Fatah faction were routed by Hamas fighters in Gaza.

"Salam Fayad will resign along with his government this evening," Abbas media adviser Nabil Amr said earlier. "He will then be reappointed so there will no longer be an emergency government."

"It was agreed to distribute the heavy workload by adding ... ministers to the government. Then it can go to parliament for a vote of confidence - if there's a quorum," Agriculture and Social Affairs Minister Mahmoud al-Habbash told Reuters.

"The president [Abbas] is very keen that all his steps should be legal. He and the prime minister want to expand the current government," an Abbas aide said in Ramallah, in the West Bank, where Fatah remains dominant.

The new Palestinian ministers are Tahana Abu Daka, who will serve as Minister of Youth and Sports, Ibrahim Abrash, who will head the Culture Ministry and Ali Kashan, the new Justice Minister.

Leading lawyers who drafted the Palestinian Basic Law, an interim constitution, had argued that Abbas had the right to dismiss Hamas' Ismail Haniyeh as prime minister, but not to appoint an entire new cabinet without legislative approval - nor the right to suspend parts of the constitution by decree.

Haniyeh, who still considers himself prime minister, told worshippers at a Gaza mosque on Friday that Abbas was failing to seek parliamentary approval. He also renewed Hamas' call for dialogue to end a schism that many Palestinians feel has jeopardized their hopes of establishing a state.

But Haniyeh rejected conditions Abbas has set for talks: "We want dialogue but we will not beg for dialogue."

Abbas' supporters argue that parliament - the Palestinian Legislative Council - has been paralyzed by Hamas and therefore the Chairman must manage his administration without it.

Hamas, whose election victory 18 months ago led to an international embargo on the Palestinian Authority, points out that more than half of its majority bloc have been arrested by Israel. The remainder boycotted a session of parliament Wednesday, called by Abbas, ensuring there was no quorum to begin a new legislative year.

Fayad, a U.S.-trained economist, has strong Western support and leads a largely technocratic cabinet that is backed by Fatah but which is formally made up of independents. Two of the three new ministers are academics, one is a women's rights advocate.

Fayad was finance minister in a Hamas-Fatah unity government formed in March to try to ease the international embargo on Haniyeh's previous Hamas-led administration.