BICOM

An expected announcement over the composition of the new Palestinian unity government has been delayed. However, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas yesterday asked current PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah to head the new government.

The agreement in April between Abbas’s Fatah faction and Hamas to form a unity government prompted Israel to suspend peace talks with the PA, given that Hamas remains committed to Israel’s destruction. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has since then clarified that there can be no peace negotiations with a government backed by Hamas, unless the organisation itself repudiates violence and embraces peace.

Abbas has claimed that a unity government will be comprised of apolitical technocrats, rather than ideologues. Indeed, Hamdallah is not closely identified with any specific faction. At a brief ceremony yesterday, Abbas said, “This letter designates Dr Rami Hamdallah to form a new transitional government. I wish him luck in this difficult task.”

The delay in selecting the rest of the new government suggested that several difficulties and disagreements between Fatah and Hamas remain. Times of Israel commentator Avi Issacharoff says that Abbas wants incumbent Riyad al-Maliki to be appointed Foreign Minister, which Hamas opposes and the two factions have yet to agree on an Interior Minister or a Prisoner Affairs Minister. The Jerusalem Post says that there are other obstacles too. These include a Hamas demand that 40,000 of its supporters be placed on the PA’s payroll and its insistence that Fatah-dominated security forces should not return to the Gaza Strip.

International leaders, including those from the United States and Europe, have made clear that the new Palestinian government must adhere to the conditions set out by the Middle East Quartet; namely to recognise Israel, renounce violence and adhere to previous Israel-Palestinian agreements. Yesterday, Hamas’s Prime Minister in Gaza Ismael Haniyeh further indicated that his organisation would not endorse such guidelines, telling reporters that the “resistance that liberated the Gaza Strip is also capable of liberating the West Bank.”