Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh announced his resignation on Monday to allow the formation of a broad consensus among Palestinians on political arrangements following Israel’s war against the Islamist group Hamas in Gaza.
The move comes as the United States puts increasing pressure on President Mahmoud Abbas to reorganize the Palestinian Authority as international efforts intensify to end the fighting in Gaza and begin work on a political structure to govern the enclave after the war.
His resignation has yet to be accepted by Abbas, who could ask him to stay on until a permanent replacement is named.
In a statement to the cabinet, Shtayyeh, an academic economist who took office in 2019, said the next step will need to take into account the emerging reality in Gaza, which has been devastated by nearly five months of heavy fighting.
He said the next step “would require new governmental and political arrangements that take into account the emerging reality in the Gaza Strip, national unity talks and the urgent need for inter-Palestinian consensus.”
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Furthermore, it would require “the extension of the authority of the Authority over the entire territory, Palestine.”
The Palestinian Authority, established 30 years ago under the Oslo interim peace accords, exercises limited governance over parts of the occupied West Bank, but lost power in Gaza following a struggle with Hamas in 2007.
Fatah, the faction that controls the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas have been making efforts to reach an agreement on a unity government and are due to meet in Moscow on Wednesday. A senior Hamas official said the move must be followed by a broader agreement on governance for the Palestinians.
“The resignation of Shtayyeh’s government only makes sense if it is part of a national consensus on the arrangements for the next phase,” senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters. .
Israel has pledged to destroy Hamas and says that for security reasons it will not accept Palestinian Authority rule over Gaza after the war, which erupted following an attack by the Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, which killed some 1,200 Israelis and foreigners. , according to Israeli counts.
So far, according to Palestinian health authorities, nearly 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in the fighting in Gaza, and almost the entire population has been driven from their homes.