By Ali Sawafta
RAMALLAH (Reuters) -Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh He said on Monday that he was resigning to allow the formation of a broad consensus among Palestinians on political agreements following Israel’s war against the Islamist group Hamas in Gaza.
The move comes amid growing US pressure on President Mahmoud Abbas to shake up the Palestinian Authority as international efforts have intensified to stop the fighting in Gaza and begin work on a political structure to govern the enclave after the war.
His resignation must still be accepted by Abbas, who may ask him to remain in charge until a permanent replacement is named.
In a statement to the cabinet, Shtayyeh, an academic economist who took office in 2019, said the next stage would have to take into account the emerging reality in Gaza, which has been devastated by nearly five months of intense fighting.
He said the next stage “will require new governmental and political arrangements that take into account the emerging reality in the Gaza Strip, the national unity talks and the urgent need for an inter-Palestinian consensus.”
Furthermore, it would require “the extension of the authority of the Authority to the entire territory, Palestine.”
The Palestinian Authority, formed 30 years ago under the interim Oslo peace accords, exercises limited governance over parts of the occupied West Bank, but lost power in Gaza after a fight with Hamas in 2007.
Fatah, the faction that controls the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas have made efforts to reach an agreement on a unity government and will meet in Moscow on Wednesday. A senior Hamas official said the move had to be followed by a broader agreement on governance for the Palestinians.
“The resignation of the Shtayyeh government only makes sense if it occurs in the context of a national consensus on agreements for the next phase,” a senior Hamas official, Sami Abu Zuhri, told Reuters.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas and says that for security reasons it will not accept Palestinian Authority rule over Gaza after the war, which broke out following a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, in that some 1,200 Israelis and foreigners died. , according to Israeli counts.
So far, nearly 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza fighting, according to Palestinian health authorities, and almost the entire population has been expelled from their homes.
(Reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo; Writing by James Mackenzie Editing by Gareth Jones and Philippa Fletcher)