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New Palestinian cabinet takes power, widening rift
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New Palestinian cabinet takes power, widening rift
AFP - Thursday, May 21
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AFP) - - 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.
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Fayyad and the new ministers took the oath of office in the West Bank town of Ramallah on Tuesday, a day after a fifth round of reconciliation talks between president Mahmud Abbas's secular Fatah faction and the Islamist Hamas movement ended in Egypt without a deal.
The premier and the previous cabinet resigned in early 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 members of the Islamic Resistance Movement 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.
"The new government will entrench the divide between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip," said Mahdi Abdel Hadi, a political analyst.
"The (intra-Palestinian) differences are too big. This cabinet will not be able to bridge them and, on the contrary, is likely to exacerbate them," he said.
The divisions were on stark display on Tuesday, when Hamas prevented two Fatah members who are due to be ministers in the new cabinet from leaving Gaza to take the oath of office in Ramallah.
Others said the new government was formed as a result of pressure by Washington ahead of the meeting between Abbas and Obama.
"Unfortunately the Quartet (on Middle East peace that comprises the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States) and especially the Americans have become key players on the Palestinian political stage and get involved in the smallest details," said independent MP Hassan Khreisheh.
Reconciliation between the two camps is crucial for reconstruction of Gaza following Israel's devastating 22-day offensive in December and January, and for progress on Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
International donors pledged 4.5 billion dollars to Abbas's Palestinian Authority at an Egyptian conference in March, much of it for the reconstruction of Gaza, but many refuse to channel their funds through Hamas, insisting the Palestinian Authority must supervise the spending.
Israel meanwhile argues that a final peace deal with the Palestinians is impossible as long as Hamas, still blacklisted as a terror group by most Western governments, runs the smaller half of the Palestinians' promised state.
Hamas swept Palestinian parliamentary elections in January 2006 and formed a government two months later, but the cabinet was boycotted by Israel and the West over the group's refusal to renounce violence and recognise Israel and past peace deals.
Hamas and Fatah managed to form a unity government in March 2007 after Saudi mediation following months of often violent tensions.
But in June 2007, the tensions erupted into Gaza street clashes that saw unprecedented violence between the two factions and ended with Hamas in control of the impoverished territory of 1.5 million people.
Abbas then formed a new cabinet with Fayyad at the helm in July 2007.
Fayyad is a former World Bank and International Monetary Fund employee who won accolades in the West for his anti-corruption measures during his stint as Palestinian finance minister between 2002 and 2005.
Hamas, however, despises him for having taken office at all and for what they say has been a crackdown on their members in the West Bank.
And even some in Fatah dislike the bespectacled economist fluent English speaker for the power he wields despite not being a member of the once-dominant party.
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Enlarge Photo
Palestinian men sit in front of a poster marking 61 years since the "Nakba" (Catastrophe) on Israel's controversial separation barrier in the West Bank village of Azariya on May 18, 2009. 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.
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