New Palestinian cabinet takes power, widening rift

WEST BANK: The Palestinian rift widened on Wednesday after a new government, again headed by Western-backed Salam Fayyad took power, with Hamas categorically rejecting the cabinet.

The new cabinet was sworn in Tuesday in the West Bank town of Ramallah, a day after reconciliation talks between president Mahmud Abbas’s secular Fatah faction and the Islamist Hamas movement ended in Egypt without a deal. Fayyad and the previous cabinet resigned in March to pave the way for a unity deal between the two factions which have been at loggerheads since Hamas seized power in the Gaza Strip in June 2007.

The Islamists were quick to denounce the new cabinet, which does not include any Hamas members and comes ahead of Abbas’s first official meeting with US President Barack Obama in Washington on May 28.

“This government is illegal and we will not recognise it,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum said in a statement, adding that, with its creation, Abbas was “deliberately sabotaging the Palestinian dialogue.”

Analysts said the new government would only deepen the divide between Abbas’s West Bank-based leadership and the Islamist masters of Gaza.

Ramallah, Friday, AFP