An attendee of the 15th Fatah Revolutionary Council conference led by President Mahmoud Abbas told Ma'an Tuesday that the council will form an entirely new unity cabinet rather than pursuing efforts to reform the existing government.Hamas is upset:
Abbas announced that the government would resign within the next 24 hours, several senior Fatah officials attending the conference told AFP, with the new government formation expected to be carried out in a matter of several days.
The announcement comes as Palestinian leadership in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have struggled to maintain a unity government pieced together in June 2014.
Hamas rejected any unilateral dissolution of the Palestinian unity government on Wednesday, hours before Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah was expected to meet President Mahmoud Abbas to present his government’s resignation and discuss the formation of a new government.Only a few years ago Hamas was the one calling the shots - its Gaza leader flying all over the world acting as heads of state, seemingly unlimited funding from Iran, absolute support from Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood leaders.
The rejection comes as senior Fatah officials reported Tuesday night that Abbas announced during a Fatah council meeting that the government would be dissolved and entirely reformed.
"Hamas rejects any one-sided change in the government without the agreement of all parties," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told AFP.
"No one told us anything about any decision to change and no one consulted with us about any change in the unity government. Fatah acted on its own in all regards."
Governmental sources told Ma'an that Hamdallah is expected to be assigned to the task of forming a new government that would potentially include the Hamas movement and other PLO factions.
Spokesperson of the national consensus government Ihab Bseiso meanwhile denied reports by Israeli media that forming a new government would not include representatives of Hamas.
Now Iran has limited its support for Hamas because it wouldn't support Assad in Syria. Egypt treats Hamas as an enemy and Gaza as enemy territory. Hamas is working to prevent rocket attacks on Israel because it cannot afford another war. And instead of defining the agenda of the "unity government" as it did in earlier failed attempts, now it is sidelined and complaining over how no one asks its opinion.
The worst thing you can do to Arabs is not to defeat them but to humiliate them, and being ignored is the ultimate humiliation.