RAMALLAH, West Bank, 11 March 2003 — The Palestinian Legislative Council (parliament) created the post of prime minister yesterday under international pressure to delegate strong powers that President Yasser Arafat could be reluctant to give up. The man Arafat has tapped for the job, leading Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) moderate Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, has said he first wants to see the measure of authority he would be granted before accepting the position. Arafat has been under intense pressure from a “quartet” of peace mediators — the United States, European Union, Russia and United Nations — to rid the Palestinian Authority of corruption and violence with wide-ranging reforms and appoint a powerful prime minister to govern its day-to-day affairs.
The legislature voted 64-3, with four abstentions, to ratify Arafat’s request to create a premiership and was expected to approve Abbas for the post in a later vote and designate the powers of the office. But Palestinian Cabinet minister Nabil Shaath said Arafat, shunned by Israel and the United States after 29 months of violence in an uprising for statehood, intended to continue to set peace-making policy and keep control of security forces.
Officials from Arafat’s own Fatah faction, who dominate the 88-seat Parliament, also want the Palestinian leader to share his powers, though to varying degrees. Hatem Abdel Kadr, a Fatah deputy for Jerusalem, said before the session started that “we in the Fatah coalition are willing to give wide powers to the prime minister, mainly in the administrative area, but we still want the main powers in the hands of the president.”
But Jibril Rajoub, a member of Fatah’s Revolutionary Council, said on Sunday: “What we want is to have a prime minister with real powers in a position that guarantees the work of our institutions and the due process of law.”
As the legislature met, Israeli tanks and troops began withdrawing from the northern Gaza Strip four days after seizing a chunk of territory in an operation which the army said was designed to prevent Palestinian rocket attacks against Israel. Palestinian witnesses and security sources said troops had pulled out of positions they had taken on Friday outside the Jabalya refugee camp and two towns.
Israel’s incursion had raised speculation that Israel was setting up a Gaza “security zone”. Israeli military commanders had said that the operation was open-ended, a shift in the army’s strategy of launching brief raids into the Gaza Strip during the uprising.
The Israeli Army blew up the apartment in Hebron yesterday of a Hamas activist who had attacked a West Bank settlement Friday, killing two Israelis before being gunned down by soldiers, sources on both sides told AFP. Mohsen Qawsmi had infiltrated the Kiryat Arba settlement with an accomplice.
His flat in the southern West Bank town of Hebron was dynamited, causing major damage to the rest of the building, Palestinian sources said.
The army demolished three activists’ houses Sunday, among them those of Qawsmi’s accomplice and the suicide bomber who killed 16 people when he blew himself up aboard a bus in the northern Israeli town of Haifa last Wednesday.
