Ahmed Qorei chaired a meeting of his emergency Cabinet in Ramallah on Monday for the first time after reluctantly agreeing to stay on as Palestinian premier until the end of the month, amid international concern over the divisions within the leadership.
Qorei reached a deal with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat over the weekend to head the emergency government for the moment, but he cast doubt on whether he would continue in his post much beyond the end of October.
Arafat and Qorei have been at loggerheads over the choice of interior minister, a position that was originally meant to be filled by Nasr Yussef, who later refused to take the oath of office.
A senior official said on Monday that Arafat had named a close ally, Hakam Balawi, as interim interior minister even though Qorei has been continuing to push for Yussef to be given the job.
Qorei indicated on Sunday that he was prepared to walk away at the end of the emergency government’s brief tenure.
”The [emergency] government will work for 20 to 25 days and after that there will be a new government and a new prime minister also,” Qorei said in a brief statement to reporters, without elaborating.
It was not immediately clear whether it meant that Qorei would not seek to head up a government that would succeed an emergency government.
The uncertainty over the long-term direction of the Palestinian leadership has undermined any hope of a resumption in peace talks with Israel.
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana lamented on Monday the ”disproportionate” time it was taking to form a permanent government.
”We need a government rapidly … I think we need something more solid,” he added.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw also said it was vital that the leadership end its differences and set up an ”effective” government.
”All of us regret the fact that internal political divisions have made this so much more difficult,” he told reporters in Luxembourg.
With talks between the Palestinian and Israeli governments in deep freeze, leading intellectuals from both sides have been working on their own alternative peace plan.
Although full details of the blueprint thrashed out over the weekend in Jordan have yet to be revealed, MP Haim Oron of Israel’s left-wing Meretz party said it included an acceptance by the Palestinians that Israel was a Jewish state and there could be no right of return for Palestinian refugees.
Right-wing Israeli ministers dismissed the project and its backers, such as former Labour opposition party leader Amram Mitzna, as irrelevant.
”We have a government in Israel and it is its prerogative to handle these matters … Everything else is just hot air,” said Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom.
Former Labour prime minister Ehud Barak charged that it enabled Arafat ”to argue that the impasse [in peace negotiations] stems not from terrorism but from [Israeli Prime Minister] Ariel Sharon’s uncompromising policies”.
Palestinian MP Qaddura Fares vowed to work to ensure that the plan was more than a mere academic exercise.
”We are ready to campaign to win support for this plan on the Palestinian street because we want a better life and we believe we’ve found a way to achieve it,” he told Israeli radio.
Meanwhile, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNWRA) said on Monday it was struggling to find shelter for more than 1 200 Palestinians left homeless after a controversial Israeli army raid into Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.
”The agency’s relief and social services office in Rafah camp is struggling to deal with the demand for assistance from the newly homeless but has so far established that 1 240 individuals were made homeless,” an UNWRA statement said.
Israel’s weekend operation targeting cross-border tunnels allegedly used to smuggle weapons into Gaza from Egypt left eight Palestinians dead. — Sapa-AFP