The Palestinian National Authority (PA) launched this Monday a renovation of uncertain dimensions, but which points to the much-invoked post-Israeli war stage in Gaza. The prime minister, Mohammad, took advantage of the cabinet meeting in Ramallah to announce to President Mahmud Abbas his resignation and that of his government “in view of the unprecedented escalation in the West Bank and Jerusalem, and the war, the genocide and hunger on the strip”.
It is a measure that, according to the economist and academic in office since March 2019, he wants to give rise to “new governmental and political agreements that take into account the new reality in Gaza and the need for an intra-Palestinian consensus based in national unity and the extension of the sovereignty of the ANP over the entire land of Palestine”.
Although Abbas has asked Xtaieh to serve as an interim until a new executive is created, the resignation comes in response to U.S. pressure for the PNA to build a political structure to take over the government of Gaza once it is end the Israeli invasion.
At the same time, Xtaieh’s mention of the “consensus” is a sign of complicity with Hamas, just when another meeting of Palestinian factions will be held in Moscow this Wednesday, which will include the Islamist group and the secular Al-Fatah party of Abbas. “The resignation of Xtaieh’s government only makes sense if it is given in the context of a consensus on the agreements for the next phase,” Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior Hamas political official, told Reuters.
According to Inès Abdel Razek, executive director of the Palestinian Institute of Public Diplomacy (PIPD), the leaders of the ANP “have pressure from different fronts”. On the one hand, from “the United States, Israel’s allies and the Arab countries, who want to advance a plan with the ANP for the ‘day after’ of Gaza”; and on the other, from “the people, the people”, who “want integration of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad”, “a clear plan for elections” and “a Palestinian leadership that includes all factions”.
In a Palestinian Authority taken over by Abbas and his circle, and strongly delegitimized by its inefficiency, corruption and, in Palestinian eyes, too much collaboration with Israel, the prime minister has little real power, hence the importance of the exit de Xtaieh lies more in its symbolism, as a gesture of openness to change.
Changes that in principle go through the formation of a government of technocrats – managers without a marked political identification, similar to the recipe used between the years 2007 and 2013 with Salam Faiad as prime minister – which could take shape at the end of this week, according to the pan-Arab media Asharq News.
To lead this administration, the name of Mohammad Mustafa, member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and president of the Palestine Investment Fund (PIF), has emerged. A US-educated economist with ties to the World Bank who spearheaded the Gaza reconstruction plan in 2014 while serving as deputy prime minister. “He is not marked by a faction, but he is a figure of capitalism and the economic sector” of the West Bank, a profile that would fit Washington’s requests to lead the transition in Gaza.
Regarding this, Abdel Razek points out that “people do not have confidence in the ANP as it works now because the situation in Palestine, increasingly an annexation and ethnic cleansing by Israel, will change” but “they are ready for the ANP is a manager, only if there is a political plan that accompanies this kind of transitional-technocratic management” and that it is not “the puppet of the Israelis and the Americans”. “If these new faces are not accompanied by a clear plan to democratize the ANP and the OAP and to integrate all the factions within the leadership – adds the analyst to La Vanguardia – then this will be a smoke screen “.
While these possible reforms are being cooked up, one of the big questions is how the ANP can return to govern in Gaza in the face of the resounding refusal of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government – which does not intend to leave the strip anytime soon – and the disastrous image that would mean to return immediately behind the halo of Israeli destruction.
