The Palestinian Authority’s Prime Minister and his government submitted their resignation Monday to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, citing the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, according to official statements.
“At the beginning of the cabinet session, I would like to inform the honorable council, and our great people that I put the resignation of the government at the disposal of the President, last Tuesday, and today I am proceeding with it in line,” read a translation of the first in a series of Facebook posts by Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh.
Shtayyeh blamed his government’s resignation on “political, security, and economic developments related to aggression against our people in the Gaza Strip, the unprecedented escalation in the West Bank, and Jerusalem City, and what our people, our Palestinian cause, and our political system are facing from a fierce, unprecedented, genocide, forced evacuation attempts, starvation in Gaza, intensification of settlement, settler terrorism, and repeated invasions of camps, villages, and cities in Jerusalem and the West Bank,” according to another of his Facebook posts.
Shtayyeh also said that the “re-occupation [and] unprecedented financial strangulation” of the West Bank as well as “attempts to liquidate the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Refugees, repudiation of all signed agreements, gradual annexation of Palestinian lands, and striving to make the Palestinian National Authority a security administrative authority with no political content,” were additional reasons for his government’s resignation, according to a translation of the post.
He added that his government “worked under complicated circumstances, and faced battles imposed on us” but that his government “remained loyal to the martyrs and prisoners, to our victims in the Gaza Strip, to our Palestinian national project, to our school curriculum, to Jerusalem, to our sanctuaries, and to our heroic people, despite the unprecedented siege imposed on us,” another of his posts read.
“I see that the next phase and its challenges require new governmental and political arrangements,” Shtayyeh said, while urging toward “unity of ranks, and the extension of the Palestinian Authority’s sovereignty over the entire land of Palestine,” according to the translation. He thanked his “brother” Abbas, fellow “brothers ministers” and Palestinians. (RELATED: REPORT: Israeli Forces Arrest Eight United Nations Employees For Alleged Terror Ties)
Meanwhile, Israel’s Operation Swords of Iron rages on in Gaza in response to Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel, recent Israel Defense Forces updates showed.
The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry claims 29,782 Palestinians have died and 70,782 have been injured since Oct. 7, according to Anadlou Ajansi, a Middle-Eastern news network.
Several Hamas officials and fighters reportedly have also been killed, including a senior police officer Majdi Abdel-Al and two Hamas commanders, Ahmed Siam and Ali Qadi, the alleged Oct. 7 terror attack kingpin.