INCOMING PALESTINIAN PRIME MINISTER FORMS NEW CABINET IN WEST BANK AMID WARTIME ECONOMIC DEVASTATION

Incoming Palestinian Prime Minister Forms New Cabinet in West Bank Amid Wartime Economic Devastation

Mohammad Mustafa, replacing Mohammad Shtayyeh, announced the new government will be sworn in on Sunday and will put Gaza reconstruction at the top of its agenda

March 29th, 11AM March 29th, 11AM

Incoming Palestinian Prime Minister, Mohammad Mustafa, presented his cabinet on Thursday to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The new government is due to be sworn in on Sunday.

Mustafa, a former chairman of the board of the Palestine Investment Fund, said that the new government would put the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip as its top priority. He will face the challenges of a lack of Palestinian consensus about the government and opposition to it by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

He declared a host of goals for the new government, including stabilizing the economic situation in the West Bank, administrative reform within the PA, fighting corruption and improving public services. Mustafa also noted that the government will promote a plan to reconstruct Gaza and will pursue reconnecting Palestinian institutions in Gaza and the West Bank. The ongoing fighting in Gaza will make it harder to accomplish such a task, and it's unclear how such government activity would even look like.

The new cabinet will number 24 ministers, among them four women. Mustafa will take the foreign minister portfolio, replacing Riyadh al-Maliki. Omar al-Bitar will be the finance minister, replacing Shukri Bishara. Interior Minister Ziad Hab al-Reeh, a close associated of Abbas, will stay in the position he has held since 2022.

In the letter in which Mustafa announced the formation of his new cabinet, the new prime minister remarked that unemployment in the Gaza Strip stood at 41 percent on the eve of October 7 but has since climbed to 89 percent. According to PA statistics, 73 percent of Gaza's economic infrastructure was destroyed through January, while 83 percent of commercial structures have been destroyed.

In the West Bank, Mustafa stated, 200,000 workers have lost their source of income. The economic damage over the first four months of the war was estimated to be $2.3 billion, averaging $18 million per day. Mustafa also noted that the Palestinian government has accrued debts of $7 billion, including $745 million in salaries and social benefits for PA civil servants.

Mustafa, a 69-year-old economist, was the leading candidate to replace Mohammad Shtayyeh, who resigned last month. Many consider him a senior bureaucrat, far from the political and strategic realm, who is capable of running an administration.

Abbas has been under increasing pressure during the war on the Palestinian, Arab and international fronts to pursue a new government reflecting national consensus. However, Fatah officials sent him messages that giving the job of forming a new government to someone within his close circle is liable to push Hamas to counter with forming a government of its own in Gaza.

2024-03-29T08:50:22Z dg43tfdfdgfd