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2024-02-28 Israel-Palestine-Jordan
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‘Cosmetic’ PA reshuffle seen as bid by Abbas to hold power, avoid demanded reforms
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[IsraelTimes] Ramallah’s new prime minister is likely to be another loyalist to the PA president, who appears to be trying to preempt US pressure for structural changes to revitalize the body.
The resignation of the Palestinian Authority’s government on Monday — formally accepted by PA President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday — was meant to mark a major step toward the revitalization of the administrative body, a move demanded by the US and the international community if it is to have a role ruling post-war Gaza.
But some Palestinians are less than optimistic that the plan to replace PA Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh and others with a group of technocrats will be enough to salvage the ailing authority.
“It’s mostly a superficial change, not a significant one,” said veteran Ramallah-based journalist Mohammed Daraghmeh, a correspondent for the Saudi-owned Asharq TV news channel.
“This move was expected. Abbas was under international and local pressure to have a new government to get ready for the ‘day after’, so he had his cabinet resign to appease the international community,” Daraghmeh said.
Shtayyeh is to remain as a caretaker prime minister until a new technocratic government is formed, likely under the leadership of Mohammad Mustafa, the current head of the government’s investment fund and a former deputy prime minister and economy minister.
But as before, the overall authority will still reside with Abbas.
Seeking more radical reforms within the PA, Washington has reportedly been pushing for a genuine transfer of power from the president to the prime minister, while letting Abbas retain a ceremonial role. The octogenarian leader, in office since 2005, however, seems to have turned a deaf ear to calls to loosen his grip.
“The change is purely cosmetic, but Abbas is not able to understand that nobody will buy his cosmetics,” quipped Samer Sinijlawi, a Palestinian political activist from East Jerusalem and head of the Jerusalem Development Fund, which specializes in Palestinian humanitarian affairs.
Outside Ramallah’s halls of power, some influential Palestinian political figures have been seeking to formulate a vision for a reformed PA, chief among them Mohammad Dahlan. The former PA security head in Gaza, ousted from the Strip by Hamas in 2007 and exiled by Abbas to the UAE in 2011, has repeatedly called for fresh leadership.
The PA’s move to announce a new government was ostensibly designed to neuter calls by Abbas’s critics for him to empower an independent government, with a mission and a timetable for carrying it out. 
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Posted by trailing wife 2024-02-28 2024-02-28 03:42||
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File under: Palestinian Authority
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Posted by Grom the Reflective 2024-02-28 07:30||
2024-02-28 07:30||
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