Palestinian PM Fayyad said to tender resignation

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad offered to resign his post Wednesday after an apparent falling out with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, sources said Wednesday.

Fayyad, a US-educated economist seen as a linchpin of Palestinian state-building efforts, has long been at odds with the leadership in Ramallah, which is wary of his heavy backing by Western states.

According to a report in Reuters, citing two sources, Fayyad tendered his resignation after relations with Abbas worsened over the past month over the departure of the Palestinian finance minister, whom Abbas wanted to stay on.

It is not clear if Abbas, who will return to the West Bank from Jordan on Thursday, will accept Fayyad’s resignation.

On Friday, AFP reported that Abbas was considering sacking Fayyad over the departure of finance minister Nabil Qassis, which took place while the president was abroad.

“I am angrier than all of you at the government… but I don’t want to say more than that now. Just wait for three days,” a source quoted Abbas as saying at a meeting of the Fatah council in Ramallah.

Fayyad has offered to resign several times in the past, both to help push along unification efforts between Fatah and Hamas, which would likely take over the prime minister’s office in any unity deal, and as a nod to popular protests against the rising cost of living in the Palestinian street last year.

Fatah, which rules the PA, has increasingly turned against Fayyad in the wake of financial turmoil in the West Bank, which worsened over the last few months after Israel withheld tax transfers for political reasons.

According to Reuters, Fayyad, who hails from the small Third Way party, was rebuked for not finding a way to head off the budget shortfalls.

“The policies of the current government are improvised and confused in many financial and economic issues,” the party said.

Earlier this month Fayyad was hospitalized with abdominal pain. The 61-year-old politician suffered a heart attack two years ago.

While Fayyad is a darling in the West, where he is largely credited with helping foster several years of economic prosperity in the West Bank and increasing international aid to the territory, he has little support on the Palestinian street, and is seen as something of a loose cannon among much of Ramallah’s tightly-controlled leadership, at times publicly challenging Abbas.

In August, Fayyad called for new Palestinian elections, despite Abbas’s position that a vote should only follow a unity deal with Hamas.

In a New Republic profile published last year, Abbas was said to see Fayyad as “one giant headache,” according to an unnamed Palestinian source.