Palestinian Authority prime minister and government resign

[sarisataka]

Palestinian Authority prime minister and government resign


Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh and his government have submitted their resignations, he announced Monday.

“I would like to inform the honorable council and our great people that I placed the government’s resignation at the disposal of Mr. President (Mahmoud Abbas), last Tuesday, and today I submit it in writing,” Shtayyeh said in a post on Facebook.

The resignation comes as the Palestinian Authority (PA) comes under intense pressure from the United States to reform and improve its governance in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The PA has long been seen as corrupt by US politicians and Palestinians themselves.

The PA was set up in the mid-1990s as an interim government pending Palestinian independence after the Palestine Liberation Organization signed the Oslo Accords with Israel. It is headquartered in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah and exercises nominal self-rule in parts of the territory.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/26/middleeast/palestinian-authority-prime-minister-resigns-intl/index.html

Unsure if this is a step forward or a recipe for disaster...

[comradebillyboy]

1. It's just replacing one set of corrupt incompetents with an different set

of corrupt incompetents unless the Palestinians can manage to pull off a free and fair election.

[LeftInTX]

2. OMG!

[Beastly Boy]

3. This could be the beginning of something big.

My hunch is that the resignation of Shtayyeh's cabinet and the hostage negotiations in Doha and Paris are tied.

Details are murky, but it appears that hostage negotiations have developed into something more comprehensive. I would speculate that the Arab states like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan, who are eager to establish an alliance with Israel, played a role in this development. Some reports suggest that the purpose of the resignation of the current government is to replace it with a technocratic pragmatic government that is capable, first and foremost, of ending internal divisions among the Palestinian factions and, secondly, form an independently functioning self-sufficient government - something that the Palestinians never had before. It would be interesting to see who will replace Shtayyeh, and even more interestingly, who will replace Abbas (I have little doubt that Abbas will resign before or shortly after the new cabinet is formed). If Shtayyeh, himself a technocrat, replaces Abbas, the signs are unmistakable: this will signify a complete turnaround for the Palestinian governance in the direction that will be conducive to forming a legitimate Palestinian state.

The implications are far-reaching. It is unclear how this development will affect Israel or Hamas, but I am pretty sure both will be affected to a significant degree.

It is anyone's guess in what direction this seemingly unremarkable by local standards event will eventually turn for the Palestinians, but at the very least it is a departure from the status quo.

[Cha]

4. Thank You for this news, sarisataka

We'll see what changes this precipitates.