The Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh announced his resignation and that of his government.
He submitted the resignation to President Mahmoud Abbas in writing.
“I submitted the government’s resignation to President Mahmoud Abbas on February 20, 2024, and today I submit it in writing,” Shtayyeh said.
This decision “comes in light of the political, security, and economic developments related to the aggression against Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, and the unprecedented escalation in the West Bank, including the city of Jerusalem,” he added.
Shtayyeh cited ongoing conflict with Israel, including the war in Gaza, intensifying settlements, financial pressure, and the need for Palestinian political reforms.
The resignation could lead to a reshuffling seen as necessary to strengthen the Palestinian Authority and govern Gaza once the fighting ends.
“It comes in light of what Palestinian people, our Palestinian cause, and our political system are facing from a ferocious and unprecedented attack, genocide, attempts at forced displacement, starvation in Gaza, intensification of colonialism, colonizers’ terrorism, and repeated invasions of camps, villages, and cities in Jerusalem and the West Bank,” he said.
However, Abbas must still decide whether to accept the resignation.
Shtayyeh said the challenges require new government and political arrangements based on national unity and consensus, with sovereignty over all Palestinian lands.
“Its re-occupation, unprecedented financial strangulation, attempts to liquidate the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Refugees, repudiation of all signed agreements, gradual annexation of Palestinian lands, and striving to make the Palestinian National Authority a security administrative authority with no political content,” Shtayyeh said.
“We will remain in confrontation with the occupation, and the Palestinian Authority will continue to struggle to establish the state on the lands of Palestine,” he said.
“In the midst of all this, the government was able to achieve a balance between meeting the needs of our people, and the requirements of providing services worthy of them, such as infrastructure, legislation, reform programs, civil peace, municipal elections, chambers of commerce, and so on – and preserving our political and national rights, and protecting them, confronting settlement, supporting the confrontation areas and Area C, and internationalizing the conflict with the occupation,” he said.
“Accordingly, I see that the next stage and its challenges 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 based on a national basis, broad participation, unity of ranks, and the extension of the Palestinian Authority’s sovereignty over the entire land of Palestine,” he said.
