Palestine’s hapless prime ministers - Who’s up next?

RAMI HAMDALLAH was often accused of being a yes-man. As head of the Palestinian elections commission, it was said he would ring up President Mahmoud Abbas before taking big decisions. As dean of al-Najah in Nablus, Palestine’s biggest university, he transformed the campus from being the most turbulent on the West Bank to one of the most pliant. When Mr Abbas asked him to replace Salam Fayyad, a single-minded economist, as prime minister, he duly said yes.

Yet after only a single cabinet meeting and 18 days into the job, Mr Hamdallah resigned, protesting that Mr Abbas was violating his constitutional rights and treating him like his puppet. Mr Abbas, he fumed, was running the government through two presidential advisers he appointed as deputy prime ministers without even consulting him. The final straw was when one of them signed up to a World Bank loan without Mr Hamdallah’s knowledge. At first it seemed that his resignation was, as so often in Palestinian politics, a bargaining ploy to strengthen his position—prior to staying on. But so far he has stood his ground.

Mr Abbas, as president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), has several other people he could choose to succeed Mr Hamdallah. In any case, he might yet persuade him to stay on as caretaker (of what was already a caretaker government) for another couple of months, while waiting to see whether John Kerry, America’s secretary of state, manages to get negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians going again. Or he might appoint Ziad Abu Amr, one of Mr Hamdallah’s two deputies.

Though Mr Abu Amr, a Gazan, won his parliamentary seat thanks to backing from Hamas, the Islamist movement which rules Gaza, he has since shifted camp.

 

Or Mr Abbas might take the post himself, and hold both presidential and prime ministerial titles. Or he could bow to pressure from Fatah, the secular nationalist faction he heads, and appoint an apparatchik from the past. Of that lot, Muhammad Shtayyeh seems the most likely candidate.

Though the president can probably wiggle his way out of the latest crisis, Mr Hamdallah, whom he appointed in the expectation that he would be obedient, has hurt him badly by refusing to do his bidding. Having lost a second prime minister in two months and with no elections in the offing, Mr Abbas—in the eyes of many Palestinians—looks despotic. “He’s more of a dictator than Yasser Arafat ever was,” says Hani al-Masri, a veteran Palestinian commentator, who remembers when Mr Abbas, as prime minister a decade ago, protested against President Arafat’s interference. “At least Arafat listened.”

In any event, many Palestinians are asking what the PA is for. Mr Abbas has failed to make progress in talks with Israel that were supposed to lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state. Nor has he made headway towards conciliating Hamas, with a view to reuniting the West Bank and Gaza. “The emperor has no clothes,” says a diplomat. “The PA is ripe for his collapse," adds Mr Masri.

So Mr Hamdallah’s exit may expose the Palestinians’ 79-year-old president. Until now, he has used his prime ministers to shield him from criticism, for instance when the PA lacks the cash to pay salaries. With a budget deficit of $4.2 billion in the run-up to the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which starts on July 9th, Mr Abbas himself may now be attacked for delays. Desperate to shift attention, PA radio and television stations under Mr Abbas’s sway for several days ran live coverage of a regional song contest, “Arab Idol”, which was won by a Palestinian from Gaza.

Friends and foes of Mr Abbas are poised to exploit the crisis. Muhammad Dahlan, an estranged adviser now challenging Mr Abbas from exile in the United Arab Emirates, has accused him of monopolising power. And Hamas has its own problems, so it welcomes Mr Abbas’s.