The Islamic militant Hamas moved a step closer Tuesday to taking power, winning overwhelming parliamentary approval for its 25-member Cabinet

Incoming Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said he opposes plans by the Israeli front-runner, acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, to draw the country?s final borders by 2010.

However, Haniyeh toned down Hamas? militant ideology, saying he was not interested in perpetuating the cycle of violence.

Hamas has killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide attacks in recent years, but has largely stuck to a truce for the past year.

?We?re not calling for conflict or the continuation of the bloodbath in this region. We are a government that looks out for the interests of the Palestinian people,? Haniyeh said.

But even as the Cabinet was approved, Gaza militants for the first time fired a Katyusha rocket into Israel, the Israeli army said. The launching of the Katyusha, which has twice the range of the Palestinians? homemade Qassam rockets and is deadlier, raised fears that rocket fire could reach the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon.

<B>?God is great?

The militant group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility and said the rocket attack, which caused no injuries, was timed to coincide with Israel?s election. Israeli security officials said the rocket apparently was smuggled into Gaza from Egypt.

In Gaza City, Hamas lawmakers broke into chants of ?God is great? after parliament voted 71-36, with two abstentions, to approve the new lineup. Palestinian legislators swarmed Haniyeh to congratulate him. After the vote, Haniyeh went to the house of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas founder assassinated by Israel in 2004, to pray with other Hamas leaders.

On Tuesday evening, thousands of cheering and whistling Hamas supporters gathered at the parliament building in Gaza to celebrate the vote as Haniyeh stood on a balcony above and threw candy at the crowd.

?While elections were taking place in the Israeli entity, here the flags of the government of Hamas and the government of the Palestinians were rising high,? he told the cheering crowd. The new Cabinet is to be sworn in by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas later this week.