Perhaps the most complicated challenge is how to handle public employees in Gaza: the 70,000 who worked for the Palestinian Authority there before 2007, and an additional 40,000 who were hired during Hamas’s administration of the territory. The new government formed a committee to whittle down the roster, but the committee has not resolved anything. The government’s leaders maintain that the Palestinian Authority cannot pay anyone affiliated with Hamas, which is deemed a terrorist organization by Israel and the United States, for fear of losing international donations, a mainstay.

Hundreds of Hamas employees staged a sit-in on Tuesday at Mr. Abbas’s long-empty house in Gaza, surrounding the four Gaza-based government ministers who use it as an office. The protesters held empty pots and plates to highlight their plight after going unpaid for seven months other than a stipend sent by Qatar.

“These steps are only the beginning of a big escalation if the government remains silent toward our rights,” said Mohammed Siam, the head of the employees’ union.

As Hamas lawmakers gathered Wednesday at the Parliament building in Gaza City without their counterparts from other factions, Ahmed Bahar, the first deputy of the legislative council, warned that the delays in rebuilding Gaza and paying the workers would bring an “explosion in the Gaza Strip.” He condemned Mr. Abbas for participating in a solidarity march in Paris on Sunday, asking, “Is it that tens of thousands of homes destroyed and Palestinian martyrs over the past years are not equal to victims who were killed in France?”

Salah Bardawil, another Hamas leader, said that Mr. Abbas, whose formal term, like those of the lawmakers, expired years ago, “does not have constitutional legitimacy.” Mahmoud al-Zahar, a Hamas hard-liner, declared that “the consensus government has failed.”

Ziad Abu Amr, deputy prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, acknowledged that a recent visit by West Bank cabinet ministers to Gaza had produced no progress, but he insisted that “there is no alternative to the national consensus government.”

“This requires that we make another serious attempt and try to demonstrate to the Palestinian public that the government is trying its best,” Mr. Abu Amr said. “And if Hamas chooses to jeopardize this effort, then Hamas will bear the responsibility. Our mandate as a government is clear, and we like to exercise it. There are problems. Some of these problems are not of our own making.”