Abbas-Fayyad reconciliation meeting postponed

A meeting scheduled to take place in Ramallah Saturday between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has been postponed until at least next week, when Abbas returns from a visit to Kuwait, Palestinian media reported.

The two leaders were set to meet to discuss Fayyad’s resignation, a move announced earlier in the week.

US Secretary of State John Kerry asked the two to bury the hatchet in a phone conversation with Abbas overnight Friday.

Conflicting reports regarding Fayyad’s resignation abounded in local media Thursday, as Fatah officials spoke of a deep schism between Fayyad and Abbas, as well as with other party leaders.

The immediate reason for Fayyad’s reported resignation on Wednesday was a disagreement with Abbas over the resignation of finance minister Nabil Qassis in early March.

Fayyad accepted Qassis’s resignation, tendered while Abbas was overseas. But according to an unnamed “knowledgeable source” who spoke to Ma’an news agency, the Palestinian president was outraged by the move and decided to sack Fayyad.

Tensions between Abbas and Fayyad, an American-trained economist and political independent who enjoys the confidence of the West, have resulted in numerous resignation announcements by Fayyad in the past, none of which has materialized. Some skeptical observers believed that this new resignation was just another public relations maneuver by the disgruntled prime minister.

Last October, Fayyad offered to quit amid a sharp financial crisis and reconciliation talks with Islamic movement Hamas, which views his liberal economic and political positions with suspicion.

Abbas reportedly told Fatah’s Central Committee and Revolutionary Council that Fayyad now faces two options: either to reinstate Qassis or be fired. The source told Ma’an that Fayyad insisted on submitting his resignation upon Abbas’s return from an official trip to Qatar on Thursday, to preempt being dismissed by Abbas.

“There is a deep and serious problem between [Fayyad] and Chairman [Abbas],” Qadoura Fares, a former Fatah official who now deals primarily with Palestinian prisoners, told The Times of Israel. “The story with Qassis only intensified the problem.”

Fayyad, widely regarded as the mastermind behind the PA’s economic policies, was the main brunt of economic protests that swept the West Bank last September.