RAMALLAH, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- Hamas lawmakers jailed in Israel have welcomed in an official statement published on Monday the intentions to hold a session for the Palestinian parliament, saying they have the right to vote despite being in prison.

    The statement issued by Hamas prisoners' affairs center in Gaza said the movement's jailed lawmakers expressed their support to holding the parliamentary session in a letter they sent on Sunday to the movement through Palestinian lawyers.

    Ahmed Bahar, acting Speaker of the Legislative Council (PLC), said in a statement that Hamas parliamentary bloc can hold the session alone after a quorum is met through authorizations from imprisoned legislators.

    However, other parliamentary groups, mainly the rival Fatah movement led by President Mahmoud Abbas, considered the authorizations illegal as it is a blank in the Palestinian Basic Law.

    In defiance of the opposition, the jailed lawmakers said in the message delivered by their lawyers that the authorizations "were a legal procedure secured by the constitution."

    The Palestinian Basic Law stipulates that the PLC "is the master of itself and the parliamentary blocs are free to draw up their internal system without contradicting the basic law," the jailed lawmakers argued, citing the clause in the law.

    "This is an important step to build pressure on the Israeli occupation to free us," said the jailed lawmakers, who pinned their hope for release on shattering Israeli design to disable the PLC by keeping them behind bars.

    Hamas became the largest political bloc in the PLC in January 2006 when it reaped a landslide victory in parliamentary elections by garnering 47 seats of the 132-seat parliament.

    However, the PLC did not pass any law since then due to the gaps and fighting between Hamas and its rival Fatah movement, which is the second largest party in the PLC.

    The PLC has never normally convened since Israel detained some 40 Hamas lawmakers from the West Bank in the wake of a cross-border abducted raid on an Israeli army post in southern Gaza in June, 2006.