PA intends to form new government soon, sans Hamas, Fatah official says

The Palestinians intend to form a new Palestinian Authority government made up of Palestinian factions excluding Hamas in the near future, a senior Fatah official said on Sunday.

The Palestinians formed the current PA government in 2014 with the support of both Fatah and Hamas. Since its establishment, however, PA President Mahmoud Abbas has carried out at least two cabinet reshuffles without Hamas’s consent.

“We plan to form a new government of factions soon in response to Hamas’s failure to undertake its national responsibility in handing over the Gaza Strip to the legitimate PA,” Azzam al-Ahmad, a senior Fatah and Palestine Liberation Organization official, told The Times of Israel on Sunday. “Hamas helped form the last government. This time, it will not participate in its formation or be a part of it.”

Two other senior Palestinian officials did not respond to requests for comment.

Fatah and Hamas have been at loggerheads since 2007, when the terror group forcibly ousted the Fatah-dominated PA from Gaza.

While the two rival parties have signed multiple agreements to advance reconciliation, they have not implemented them. In recent months, Abbas has threatened to cut off budgets the PA allocates to Gaza, if Hamas does not turn the territory over to the Ramallah-based body.

The PA sends $96 million to Gaza on a monthly basis, Abbas and other PA officials have said.

Azzam al-Ahmad gives a press conference at a hotel in Cairo, August 13, 2014. (AFP/Khaled Desouki)

Asked who would serve as prime minister in a new PA government, Ahmad said the Ramallah-based Palestinian leadership including Fatah has not discussed  the names of any possible candidates.

“Until now, absolutely no names at all have been discussed. All the rumors are totally false,” the senior Fatah official said. “Even my name has come up and no one has asked me about the job, nor have I asked about it myself.”

The Kan public broadcaster earlier Sunday had quoted Palestinian sources as assessing that Fatah Central Committee member Muhammed Shtayyeh was the front-runner to become the next PA prime minister.

Shtayyeh, a native of Nablus, formerly served as a Palestinian negotiator and PA minister of public works and housing; he has long worked on government and donor-funded infrastructure projects in the West Bank.

The report said that Palestinian sources had also assessed Saeb Erekat, the secretary-general of the PLO Executive Committee and top Palestinian negotiator; Hussein al-Sheikh, the head of the PA commission that liaises with Israel on civil issues; and Muhammed Mustafa, Abbas’s economic adviser, were candidates to become the next PA prime minister.

The present PA government is largely made up of technocrats, but some ministers are Fatah members and former and current Abbas aides.

Ahmad said that while he hoped “as many PLO factions will participate as possible,” it was not yet clear which factions would make up the new government.

There are 11 factions in the Palestine Liberation Organization.

A Hamas official in the Gaza Strip said the formation of any new government without consulting the terror group would be “weak” and “unrepresentative of the Palestinian people.”

“Any government must be formed in consultation with all national and Islamic parties including Hamas,” the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Times of Israel. “The government should represent all Palestinians, not just Fatah or some of the factions that agree with it. Therefore, any government formed without consulting all Palestinian parties including Hamas will be weak and unrepresentative of the Palestinian people.”