7 May 2011

No to Salam Fayyad

"Abbas will try to convince his Hamas partners to accept the reappointment of Fayyad to curb Israeli overtures to brand the new government as illegal" Except that the appointment of Salam Fayyad was illegal in the first place. Ismail Haniyah was the leader of the party which won a majority of seats in the elections and thus gets first chance to form a 'government'. The President can sack the Prime Minister but cannot replace him only parliament can elect a new PM and until it does so the initial PM remains. Abbas certainly had no right to just unilaterally make Salam Fayyad Prime Minister when his party got a whopping 2% of the vote at the last election. But according to Israel any Palestinian government that isn't handpicked by them is illegal.

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