RAMALLAH, 18 February 2004 — Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei told Cabinet members he is thinking of quitting following heated words with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat over reforms, a senior official said yesterday.
Qorei has applied similar pressure on Arafat before, threatening to resign over the formation of a Cabinet late last year when he took over as prime minister from Mahmoud Abbas, who resigned after accusing the president of obstructing him. Arafat came under intense world pressure to appoint a prime minister to fight corruption, pursue peacemaking and carry out reforms in the Palestinian Authority. If Qorei were to resign it could further isolate the veteran leader.
“A heated argument took place between Arafat and Abu Ala (Qorei) on Saturday following a decision taken by the Cabinet to make security and financial reforms,” a senior Palestinian official told Reuters. “Arafat rejected the Cabinet decision and considered it an infringement on his powers,” another official said.
“But an angry Abu Ala told ministers after his argument with Arafat that he wants to resign and that he’s thinking of quitting because he can’t go on like this any more.”
Qorei, currently on a European tour, declined to comment on his reported resignation threat.
Palestinian officials said Arafat, besieged in his battered headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah for more than two years, has agreed to make some administrative and financial reforms, but would not hand over control of security.
“Qorei is seriously thinking of carrying out a Cabinet reshuffle which could include changing the interior minister and bringing in lawmakers to strengthen his standing in the Legislative Council,” one senior official said.
Meanwhile, Palestinian security chief Jibril Rajob yesterday vowed not to let the Islamist group Hamas take over the Gaza Strip should Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon carry out plans to evacuate settlements there. Meanwhile, Israeli MPs thumbed their nose at Sharon when the Parliament’s finance committee approved $20 million in spending for settlement expansion. “We’ll fight them (Hamas) and we won’t let them take over the Gaza Strip,” Rajob, who serves as Arafat’s security adviser, was quoted as saying by Israeli military radio.
Rajob’s comments referred to Sharon’s recently announced intention to evacuate 17 Gaza settlements, possibly by next summer, as part of a larger plan of unilateral disengagement from the Palestinians.
The Israeli daily Haaretz reported yesterday that the United States would ask Israel to coordinate its Gaza pullout with the Palestinian Authority “to avoid any chaos that might emerge in the areas Israel quits.”
“The US administration is thus trying to prevent Hamas from taking over Gaza after Israel withdraws,” wrote the paper, also echoing an Israeli fear raised in local media in recent weeks. Sharon will present his disengagement plan to US Middle East envoy William Burns and two other senior US officials who will arrive in the region “with the next 48 hours,” a US diplomat told AFP. The plan also involves dismantling a few isolated West Bank settlements.
But Sharon, a long-time champion of settlements, took a blow at home when the Knesset’s finance committee approved $20 million late Monday to build more West Bank settlements and protect the homes of Jews in annexed east Jerusalem, including Sharon’s own house in the Old City. Opposition members cautioned against extreme-right Housing Minister Effi Eitam’s attempt to divert some of the funds for settlement activity in Gaza, despite Sharon’s evacuation plan.
Sharon potentially suffered yet another blow when Eitam announced he would introduce a bill preventing the army from evacuating settlers and dismantling settlements. “For the army’s sake, for that of the state and that of the nation, the Israeli Army can no (longer) be involved in such a sensitive matter, which divides the nation and which must be incumbent upon police and border police forces,” he said.
Meanwhile, Israeli ministers addressing a two-day conference on Israel and the European Union said they welcomed the EU’s upcoming enlargement while stressing that the bloc should take a more balanced approach to the Middle East conflict.
“The Europe we’ve got used to over the last decade is changing ... Not to upgrade relations with the European Union will be a dramatic mistake,” said Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The 15-strong EU will admit an additional 10 member states on May 1.
In Gaza, hundreds of Palestinian workers blocked access to the Erez industrial zone, just inside Israel, to protest lengthy security controls which they said cost the life of a colleague who was crushed to death the day before. Elsewhere, students at Jenin’s American University, in the northern West Bank, launched a week-long protest campaign against the separation barrier being built by Israel by holding a demonstration in a village west of Jenin.
