JERUSALEM (AP) - Israeli officials convened emergency meetings on Thursday to decide how to respond to the militant Hamas group's upset victory in Palestinian elections, maintaining an outward silence while privately blaming each other for the upheaval. Hamas' stunning showing in Wednesday's vote could send tremors through Israel's own political establishment ahead of March elections by bolstering hawks who oppose territorial concessions to the Palestinians.
Official results in the Palestinian balloting aren't expected before late Thursday, but leaders of both the ruling Fatah Party and Hamas said that Hamas, which has masterminded dozens of suicide bombings against Israel, won a majority of Palestinian seats in its first legislative run.
Before the vote, Israel had assumed Hamas would at best be a junior partner in the government, and formulated no public position on how to deal with it.
The militants' surprisingly strong showing threw officials scrambling into action.
Israel's acting prime minister, Ehud Olmert, was to convene his Cabinet and security advisers following the announcement of official results later Thursday, and top security and foreign ministry officials met early in the day to discuss the implications. So, too, did the Likud and Labor parties.
Politicians, academics and analysts were wary, for the most part, of Hamas' rise to power.
Mideast peace accords of the 1990s stipulated that no terror group could participate in Palestinian elections, but Israel was unable to drum up international support for barring the group from contesting the democratic vote.
Right-wing lawmaker Yuval Steinitz of the hardline Likud Party said that's where Israel went wrong.
"This is a tragic failure in the war against Hamas," Steinitz told Israel Radio. "We alone let elections take place with the participation of a terror group that calls for our destruction."
World leaders, uneasy at the prospect of a Hamas-led Palestinian government, immediately exerted pressure on the Islamic militants to recognize Israel and renounce violence as a precondition for ties.
But Israeli politicians were skeptical of the world's resolve.
"After Hamas is elected, can the world not talk to them?" former Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom told Army Radio. "The world will speak to them saying that they were elected in a democratic process ... I think if we had prevented them from participating in the elections this wouldn't have happened."
Lawmaker Ephraim Sneh of the dovish Labor Party said Israel was in part to blame for Hamas' victory by not making concessions to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that would have boosted his standing in the Palestinian public.
Commentators have interpreted the Hamas victory as a protest against Fatah's corruption and inability to restore law and order to chaotic Palestinian streets.
While Hamas didn't pose an existential threat to Israel, "it's a threat to the normal life of Israel if at our doorstep we have a terrorism state," Sneh told CNN.
The upheaval in the Palestinian Authority could sway Israeli elections by fanning hardline sentiments.
Political analyst Hanan Crystal said Hamas' election win would be the main issue in Israel's March elections, predicting it could hurt center-left parties and benefit the hawkish Likud, which opposed Israel's summer withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
Likeliest to suffer is Kadima, the centrist party Ariel Sharon formed in November, after breaking away from Likud, to seek more leeway in setting Israel's final borders. Kadima maintained a strong lead in pre-election polls, even after Sharon was incapacitated by a stroke.
Likud's leader, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, warned that Hamas' dramatic election victory would turn the Palestinian Authority into a radical, Islamic regime.
"It doesn't matter how much makeup they put on Hamas, it will remain the same Hamas," Netanyahu said. "We can't reach understandings with Hamas because their goal is to destroy Israel."
Most Israelis remained skeptical of Hamas' changing its ways, despite its adherence to a year-old truce, but some said the group's electoral victory could lead to a further drop in violence.
"I believe Hamas would like to be part of the political process and will be willing to make some concessions, at least on the declarative level," said Joseph Nevo, a professor of Middle East History at Haifa University.
Left-wing lawmaker Ran Cohen told Army Radio that victory could make Hamas more pragmatic.
"If the Hamas wants to talk about a solution of two states for two peoples, the significance is essentially recognizing the state of Israel, and that means we need to talk, first and foremost about stopping the terror," he said.
Israel Hasson, a former top Shin Bet official, agreed.
"As soon as Hamas talks to us, it's not Hamas any longer," he said.
