Mr Haniya had been due to answer questions from lawmakers a day after Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas froze talks with the prime minister’s ruling Hamas over a coalition cabinet.
Palestinians hope a coalition cabinet will finally convince Western governments to lift an aid freeze imposed on their aid-dependent administration.
But as his car arrived at the Palestinian Legislative Council compound in Gaza City, hundreds of angry civil workers tried to block its way.
"Haniya, where are our salaries?" the protestors shouted as they swarmed around the premier's car, hitting it.
Police fired into the air over their heads in a bid to disperse the crowd
and Mr Haniya's bodyguards wrestled with demonstrators before his car could enter the government compound.
Two people were hospitalised with injuries suffered in the scuffle.
The civil servants were protesting against the non-payment of full salaries for the six months that Mr Haniya's Hamas movement has been in office, because of a severe fiscal and political crisis.
Mr Haniya did not say why he had called off the parliament appearance or when he would address lawmakers next.
But later he insisted that talks with Mr Abbas's Fatah movement on forming a broad coalition had not reached an impasse.
Yesterday, Mr Abbas said he was freezing talks over a national unity government with Hamas because of disagreements over past peace deals with Israel.
The talks are set to resume when Mr Abbas returns from New York.
Abbas meets Livni
Meanwhile in New York, the United States and Israel have put pressure on Mr Abbas not to cut a deal with a Hamas government that refuses to renounce violence and recognise Israel.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Israel Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told Mr Abbas in separate talks in New York that there could be no compromise on the conditions that had been set by the international community.
"Secretary Rice was very clear about the need to see the three Quartet principles without anything else," Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian lawmaker and close associate of the Palestinian leader, told reporters.
He was speaking after more than an hour of talks between Mr Abbas and Ms Livni, their first in five months, after an earlier meeting between the Palestinian leader and the top US diplomat.
Ms Livni told reporters: "From Israel's perspective, there is a need for any future Palestinian government to meet completely the three requirements of the international community."
After Hamas won the Palestinian election in January, the diplomatic Quartet - the US, Russia, European Union and United Nations, which drew up the Middle East peace "road map" -demanded that the Palestinian government acknowledge Israel's right to exist, renounce violence and recognise past agreements with the Jewish state.
Hamas is considered a terrorist organisation by the US because of its armed conflict with Israel.
The diplomatic moves on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly came ahead of talks between US President George W. Bush and Abbas tomorrow - their first meeting since October 2005.
Mr Abbas also committed to Ms Livni to make "maximum efforts" to help free an Israeli soldier held by Palestinian militants, his aide said.
Hamas, whose armed wing claimed joint responsibility for the June 25 raid in which Corporal Gilad Shalit was captured, said on Sunday that progress has been made in talks to release the conscript.
Mr Abbas called it a "very, very positive meeting. We talked a lot about everything," while Ms Livni said the encounter had been "a very good, important and constructive meeting."
Peace mechanism
Meanwhile, Arab countries are pushing for a new mechanism to relaunch the stalled Middle East peace process after the UN-brokered truce that ended a month-long war between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon last month.
At their request, the UN Security Council has tentatively scheduled a ministerial session on Thursday to discuss a "mechanism" based on a 2002 Arab initiative, which proposed a normalisation of relations with Israel in exchange for the return of all land occupied by the Jewish state since 1967.
In other developments, French President Jacques Chirac has offered his ideas for relaunching the Middle East peace process during a meeting with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
President Chirac and Mr Annan held a working dinner with French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy and some of the UN chief's close aides on the eve of the UN General Assembly debate in New York, presidential spokesman Jerome Bonnafont told reporters.
The French leader proposed an international conference "to identify the guarantees that the international community could give to the Israelis and the Palestinians to help develop a peace accord," Mr Bonnafont said.