Statements by other Palestinian officials made clear, however, that the May 4 date was more theoretical than real because the two sides have to agree first on a government of technocrats to hold the elections, and those negotiations remain stuck.

“We have a long way to go,” Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said by telephone.

Yasser Abed Rabbo, a top aide to Mr. Abbas, told Palestinian journalists that Hamas seemed to be shying away from forming a government before elections. That strategy was a mistake, he said, because it was what Israel wanted — to divide the sides.

He added that he expected little progress on Israeli-Palestinian peace in the coming year because of upheavals in the Arab world and elections in the United States. At the same time, he said, Israel would continue building settlements in the West Bank and altering its landscape. For its part, Israel argues that it is mostly building in areas that it expects to keep in any deal with the Palestinians. For the past four weeks, Israel has withheld tax and duty payments to the Palestinian Authority worth tens of millions of dollars to register its objection to Palestinian efforts to join the United Nations as a state and to share power with Hamas.

But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that because the Palestinians seemed to be slowing down their United Nations membership efforts and because the unity talks with Hamas were more symbolic than substantive, he might release the money in the coming days.

In addition, several rockets were fired on Tuesday from Lebanon into northern Israel, Reuters reported. Two buildings in the western Galilee were damaged in the attack, the first since 2009, but there were no injuries reported, Israeli news media said.