Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei handed in his resignation on Thursday, just two days after being sworn in by Yasser Arafat and as another suicide bomber blew himself up in the West Bank.
”Ahmed Qorei has submitted his resignation to the president,” a source close to Arafat said after a key session of Parliament was postponed.
It was not immediately clear if Arafat had accepted the resignation.
The news came after a session of the Palestinian Parliament, at which Qorei was due to outline his programme of government, was postponed amid differences over the Cabinet’s status.
When Arafat formally named Qorei to the post on Sunday, he also declared a state of emergency, with Qorei to have headed a small emergency Cabinet.
Some MPs had argued that while Arafat had the right to declare a state of emergency, there was no provision in the Palestinian Constitution for an emergency Cabinet and that Qorei’s team would require parliamentary approval.
Sources said a meeting of senior members of the mainstream Fatah movement had broken up acrimoniously, with Arafat objecting to the presence of Nasser Yussef, who was slated to be the new interior minister but who refused to take the oath of office at a ceremony on Tuesday when Qorei and six other ministers were sworn in.
Arafat wanted approval of the emergency Cabinet, while Qorei, in the speech he was due to deliver during the postponed session, was to advocate a ”normal limited cabinet”.
”Abu Alaa stormed out of the meeting,” a source said, using Qorei’s nickname.
Qorei was first nominated as prime minister by Arafat a month ago after his United States-backed predecessor, Mahmud Abbas, quit over a power struggle with Arafat, whom both Washington and Israel have accused of undermining the peace process.
In an interview with AFP earlier this week, Qorei said he would make a mutual ceasefire with Israel the top priority of his new government in a bid to bring an end to a cycle of bloodshed between the two sides.
But there was no respite in the violence on the ground on Thursday as a suicide bomber wounded at least two Israeli soldiers and one Palestinian near a checkpoint in the West Bank town of Tulkarem, Israeli military sources said.
The blast, which killed the male bomber, took place around 2pm (noon GMT) at a booth where permits are issued for residents of the West Bank to travel and also close to an army checkpoint, the source said. One of those wounded was in a serious condition, the source added.
Responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, an armed offshoot of Fatah.
A female suicide bomber from the Islamic Jihad group killed herself and 19 other people on Saturday at a restaurant in the northern Israeli city of Haifa.
Israel has maintained a tight closure of the Palestinian territories since then, and was poised on Thursday to mobilise four reserve units in a bid to thwart potential attacks by militants.
Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz had decided to deploy the units from October 22 to the West Bank towns of Jenin, Tulkarem, Qalqilya and Ramallah, as well as in the Gaza Strip, Israeli radio reported.
Mofaz said the call-up of the reservists was needed as ”the Israeli people will not tolerate a new attack like last Saturday’s in Haifa”.
There was no immediate confirmation of the decision. An army source said the ”option of deploying a limited number of reserve forces is being examined”, and that a decision had already been made to halt training courses in order to free up troops for deployment. — Sapa-AFP