Somebody here, I think, thinks Twitter and Facebook don’t matter…
This is more than just a symptom — it is a syndrome. It’s because communication doesn’t really matter, here.
Communication is expected to follow formalistic rules. A political statement uses certain prescribed terms and is delivered in loud and rising tones. An elegant and polite person would never take such a strong stand as Rami Hamdallah did when he resigned last week [it’s considered “too divisive” — and this, in a place where division has wreaked havoc since January 2006 parliamentary elections brought a surprise win for the Hamas-backed Change and Reform Party, which stood for the first time].
At least, Hamdallah is behaving well enough to say, as requested, until something new is put together…
Daoud Kuttab wrote today [though with a somewhat vague timeline] that “The apparent conflict of authority between the president and the prime minister in the Palestinian areas is certainly not new: But, Kuttab wrote, The bias toward the presidency escalated after Haniyeh and his Hamas supporters rejected the authority of Abbas, forcing [!] the Palestinian
president to dismiss Haniyeh and appoint Salam Fayyad in 2007. The defacto suspension of the Palestinian Legislative Council meant that the appointed government did not gain a vote of confidence from the Palestinian representatives. When Fayyad attempted [recently] to question the power of the Palestinian presidency — with the refusal to allow back the resigned Minister of Finance Nabeel Kassis — he found himself on the losing end of a power struggle, and eventually had to hand in his resignation in April 2013. Hamdallah appears to have noticed this issue much earlier and seemed to have rinsisted on retaining all the legal and administrative powers that came with the office … Without a parliament to vote confidence into a government, the relations between the presidency and the prime minister’s office can get complicated. Technically, every prime minister takes on a legal position after being sworn into office in front of the president.
These consecutive governments in Palestine are known to be governments of Abbas, and he holds ultimate power to keep or dismiss the prime minister. However, the Palestinian Basic Law, which functions as a temporary constitution, gives the prime minister a lot of power, including being the reference point of all his ministers”. This is posted here.
Kuttab doesn’t stress enough, however, the fact that the Palestinian Basic Law has not yet been approved precisely because the Palestinian Legislative Council is in a state of “de facto suspension”…
In his piece, Kuttab does report that Hamdallah, after his appointment, publicly stated that “he hoped to stay prime minister until Aug. 14. On this date, an agreed-to prime minister — as part of the reconciliation process — would be found. [So] Hamdallah has not officially resigned from his academic post [as head of an-Najah University], but rather has taken a leave of absence”…
Kuttab also notes that “The fact that Hamdallah had clearly accepted a temporary position seems to have led some to believe that the real prime minister is one of the deputies”…
Continue reading Hamdallah still in office: Facebook page[s] + Twitter account[s]