Palestinian resistance movement Hamas on Friday criticised the “unilateral” decision by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to appoint Mohammad Mustafa as new prime minister.
Mustafa, a leading business figure and a Fatah ally, has been designated to the position with a mandate to help reform the Palestinian Authority (PA) and rebuild Gaza.
Mahmoud Abbas made the announcement at a time when there is mounting pressure from the US to reorganise the governing body.
Hamas slammed the move as they argued that the Palestinians are in need of a unified leadership involving all components of their society.
“We express our rejection of continuing this approach that has inflicted and continues to inflict harm on our people and our national cause,” Hamas said in a statement on Friday.
“Making individual decisions and engaging in superficial and empty steps such as forming a new government without national consensus only reinforces a policy of unilateralism and deepens division,” it added.
The other signatories of the statement include Islamic Jihad, the second-largest resistance group in Gaza, the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Palestinian National Initiative.
Palestinians have increasingly grown frustrated at abuses carried out by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.
Majority of those arrested during the raids conducted by PA Police were Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) activists.
The fact that a large portion of the people being arrested are imprisoned in Israeli jails, makes the detention by the PA more controversial for Palestinians.
At present, while Israel pushes for a post-war scenario devoid of Hamas presence, the reemergence of Fatah, which governs much of PA, appears to be quite contentious.
Moreover, Abbas has introduced Mustafa as an ambassador of Gaza’s rebuilding process. This has led to critics raising questions about the intentions of Fatah.
Meanwhile, Hamas said any attempt to exclude it from the political scene after the war was ‘delusional.’
In a recent warning, it had stated that any attempt to cooperate with Israel’s plans to administer Gaza would be seen as ‘treason’ and met with an ‘iron fist.’
However, Fatah fired back at Hamas’ criticism of Abbas, and blamed it for what had befallen Gaza since it carried out ‘Al Aqsa Floods’.
Mustafa, a long-trusted adviser on economic affairs for Abbas, was appointed to replace former PM Mohammed Shtayyeh, who along with his government, resigned in February.
Analysts have pointed out that Mustafa’s closeness to Abbas would limit chances for any reform in the attitude of the Palestinian Authority.
Arab and international mediators have so far failed to reconcile Hamas and Fatah, who make up the backbone of the Palestinian leadership.
Abbas’s authority was reduced to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, when Hamas democratically took over Gaza in 2007. Since then, Fatah’s intolerance with Hamas’ growing acceptance among Palestinians has been resulting in clashes.
Nevertheless, Palestinians deem Hamas resistance as significant and want both territories as the core of a future independent state.
With no truce in sight, Israeli forces continue to massacre Palestinians in Gaza.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 31,645 have been killed, and 73,676 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.
