Jaafar Ashtiye/AFP/Getty Images
On December 27, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh attended a cabinet meeting in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah.
CNN
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Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh and his government announced Monday that he has submitted his resignation.
“I would like to inform the Honorable Council and the great people of our country that last Tuesday I submitted my resignation from the government to the discretion of the President (Mahmoud Abbas) and submitted it in writing today,” Shtayeh said in a Facebook post. I want to.'' .
The resignation comes as the Palestinian Authority (PA) comes under intense pressure from the United States to reform and improve governance in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Palestine has long been considered corrupt by U.S. politicians and the Palestinians themselves.
The Palestine Liberation Organization was established in the mid-1990s as a transitional government until Palestinian independence, after the Palestine Liberation Organization signed the Oslo Accords with Israel. It is headquartered in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah and enjoys nominal autonomy in parts of its territory.
A government dominated by the Fatah party ruled the Gaza Strip until 2007, after Hamas won parliamentary elections in the occupied territory in 2006 and was expelled from the strip. Israel rejects the possibility of the Palestinian Authority returning to Gaza after the war, and also rejects the idea of establishing a Palestinian state in the area.
However, the US supports a reformed PA controlling both the West Bank and Gaza as part of a future independent state.
Steyer, who was appointed prime minister in 2019, told CNN in October that there is no way to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without the US, but that the current US administration lacks the political will to end the conflict. added. . “They're managing it,” he said.
The PA is also highly unpopular among Palestinians, who consider it unable to provide security in the face of regular Israeli military incursions into the West Bank. According to a survey conducted in December by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Research, more than 60% of Palestinians want the PA to be disbanded. Meanwhile, support for President Abbas, who has held the position since 2005, has collapsed. According to a poll, 92% of respondents in the West Bank want him to resign.
The post of prime minister in Palestine was created in 2003 after the second Palestinian intifada, when the United States, European Union and Israel called for reform. This was the first serious move toward power sharing by then-President Yasser Arafat since the establishment of the PA. At the time, President Arafat appointed Abbas as prime minister. After President Arafat died in 2004, Abbas became president.