The Palestinian cabinet resigned Monday, as the desire for change that has swept Tunisia and Egypt percolated to the West Bank and Gaza, dpa reported
Acting Prime Minister Salam Fayyad submitted his resignation to President Mahmoud Abbas, who immediately asked him to form a new cabinet, the president's office in Ramallah confirmed.
Fayyad will have three weeks to do so, with the option of a two- week extension if required.
Abbas has long been under pressure from within his own Fatah party to include more of its members in the government.
The outgoing 21-member cabinet consisted mainly of technocrats and independents. Fayyad, also finance, information and Jerusalem affairs minister and a renowned international economist, is an independent himself.
Analysts in Ramallah said that any attempt by Fayyad to resist pressure for greater Fatah representation could bring him into conflict with the dominant political party in the West Bank. Fayyad and Fatah have clashed in the past over the issue of hiring Fatah members to fill government posts.
The cabinet's resignation appeared to be part of a Palestinian Authority (PA) campaign to quench public thirst for change and to gain legitimacy, in light of the events in Egypt and Tunisia.
But observers also speculated that Fayyad wanted to rid his cabinet of three ministers who have been accused of corruption and immoral behaviour. They are unlikely to be reappointed and Fayyad will be spared having three of his minsters indicted.
Abbas has also announced long overdue elections by next September.
So far, he has been unable to hold these on time because of the political split between the West Bank, run by the PA and dominated by Fatah, and the Gaza Strip, which is administered by the Islamist Hamas movement, Fatah's great rival.
Presidential elections should have been held in early 2009 and parliamentary elections in 2010.
Hamas seized sole control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, the culmination of a fierce power struggle with Abbas and his secular Fatah party. The Islamist movement had beaten Fatah in a 2006 parliamentary poll, one year after Abbas won separate presidential elections.
"It's no secret that Abbas has been talking with Fayyad for a while now regarding a cabinet change," government spokesman Ghassan Khatib told reporters in Ramallah.
Hamas was quick to denounce the move as "illegal."
Sami Abu Zuhri, the movement's spokesman in Gaza, reminded Palestinians that the outgoing Fayyad government was never ratified by the Hamas-dominated parliament, and that any new cabinet would be illegitimate without such ratification.
"This measure is illegal and rejected. The government must gain the confidence of the parliament only," he said in a statement.
He charged the Palestinian government's status was no different to that of the toppled leaderships in Tunisia and Egypt, and that the move was aimed at diverting attention from classified documents leaked to broadcaster Al Jazeera in January, exposing highly sensitive negotiating sessions with Israel.
"This measure aims at mixing the papers, and this status is similar to what happened in Tunis and Egypt, to hide the scandals that were published by Al Jazeera last month," said Abu Zuhri.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat resigned on Saturday from his position as head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Negotiations Affairs Department, taking responsibility for the leak from within his office.
...