Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday appointed his longtime economic adviser to be the next prime minister, in the face of United States pressure to reform the PA as part of Washington’s postwar vision for the Gaza Strip.
Mohammad Mustafa, a US-educated economist and political independent, will head a technocratic government in the West Bank that could potentially administer Gaza ahead of eventual statehood, according to the US. But those plans face major obstacles, including strong opposition from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Israel-Hamas war that is still grinding on with no end in sight after more than five months.
It’s unclear whether the appointment of a new head by a close Abbas ally would be sufficient to meet US demands for reform, as the 88-year-old president would remain in overall control.
“The change that the United States of America and the countries of the region want is not necessarily the change that the Palestinian citizen wants,” said Hani al-Masri, a Palestinian political analyst. “People want a real change in politics, not a change in names… They want elections.”
He said Mustafa is “a respected and educated man,” but will struggle to meet public demands to improve conditions in the West Bank, where Israeli restrictions imposed since the start of the war have contributed to an economic crisis.
In a statement announcing the appointment, Abbas asked Mustafa to put together plans to re-unify administration in the West Bank and Gaza, lead reforms in the government, security services and economy, and fight corruption.
Outgoing PA Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh resigned along with his government last month, saying different arrangements were needed because of the “new reality in the Gaza Strip.”
Mustafa will now have several weeks to assemble a cabinet, during which Shtayyeh will remain at the helm, a Palestinian official, a senior European diplomat and a US official said earlier this week.
In recent weeks, he has been holding consultations with prospective cabinet members, and members are expected to be a group of technocrats unaffiliated with Abbas’s Fatah party — many of whom were educated in the West — the officials said.
Mustafa was born in the West Bank town of Tulkarem in 1954 and earned a doctorate in business administration and economics from George Washington University. He has held senior positions at the World Bank and previously served as deputy prime minister and economy minister. He is currently the chairman of the Palestine Investment Fund.
But he is also a longtime Abbas confidant, leading to tapered expectations in Brussels that the new technocratic government will indeed be able to implement necessary reforms to the PA, which has long faced allegations of corruption, the European diplomat said.
One of the main reform demands that international stakeholders have made of Abbas in recent months is for him to transfer some of his powers to the prime minister. Even if Abbas does take this step, its significance would be questioned given his close relationship with the man he’d be handing over those powers to, the diplomat speculated.
Once Mustafa’s technocratic government is in place, regional stakeholders will be able to move forward with plans to establish an interim committee in Gaza responsible for providing civil services and internal security in the enclave.
The US would like this committee to be linked to Arab allies as well as Ramallah so as to ready the PA for fully taking over governance in Gaza. Major donor countries like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have stressed that they will not contribute to the post-war management of Gaza unless it is in tandem with the creation of a pathway to a two-state solution.
Abbas’s top aide, PLO Executive Committee Secretary-General Hussein al-Sheikh, held high-level meetings on Wednesday in the UAE as Ramallah seeks to coordinate with Arab allies on the steps it’s taking to maintain their support.
As for countries such as Turkey and Qatar, which host Hamas’s leaders, it is unclear whether the choice of Mustafa will satisfy either of them. They each hosted Abbas earlier this month for consultations regarding the installation of a technocratic government and planning for the management of Gaza after the war.
The Palestinian Authority was established in the 1990s through interim peace agreements and was envisioned as a stepping-stone to eventual statehood.
But peace talks repeatedly collapsed. Hamas seized power in Gaza from forces loyal to Abbas in 2007, confining his limited authority to major population centers that account for around 40 percent of the West Bank.
Abbas is deeply unpopular among Palestinians, many of whom view the PA as little more than a subcontractor of Israel because it cooperates on security matters. His mandate ended in 2009, but he has refused to hold elections, blaming Israeli restrictions. Hamas won a landslide victory in the last parliamentary elections, in 2006, and despite being considered a terrorist group by Israel and Western countries, it would likely perform well in any free and fair vote.
Abbas, unlike his Hamas rivals, has said he is committed to a negotiated solution that would create an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, a goal that is shared by the international community.
Mustafa, like Abbas, has expressed his belief that a negotiated solution to Palestinian statehood is the solution to ending the conflict.
Speaking at Davos on January 17, Mustafa described the October 7 Hamas assault as “unfortunate for everybody.”
“But it’s also a symptom of a bigger problem… that the Palestinian people have been suffering for 75 years non-stop,” he said. “Until today, we still believe that statehood for Palestinians is the way forward, so we hope that this time around we will be able to achieve that so that all people in the region can live in security and peace,” he added.
Mustafa said the PA could do better “in terms of building better institutions, providing better governance so that… we can reunite Gaza and the West Bank.” But, he added, “if we cannot remove occupation, no reformed government, no reformed institutions can actually build a good successful governing system, or develop a proper economy.”
Israel has long criticized the PA over payments it makes to the families of Palestinians who have been killed or imprisoned by Israel, including terrorists convicted of murdering Israelis. The PA defends such payments, claiming it is a form of social welfare for families harmed by the decades-old conflict.
The PA’s refusal to end the practice has led Israel to suspend some of the taxes and customs duties it collects on behalf of the PA, contributing to years of budget shortfalls. The PA pays the salaries of tens of thousands of teachers, health workers and other civil servants.
The US has called for a reformed PA to expand its writ to postwar Gaza ahead of the eventual creation of a Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Netanyahu has ruled out any role for the PA in Gaza, and his government is opposed to Palestinian statehood altogether.
Following the shock terror assault of October 7 — in which thousands of Hamas-led terrorists slaughtered some 1,200 people and seized 253 hostages, most of them civilians, in a murderous rampage across southern Israel — Israel vowed to dismantle Hamas, topple the terror group’s 16-year rule of the Gaza Strip and maintain open-ended security control over the Palestinian territory.
In the wake of the October 7 massacre, Israel launched an aerial campaign and ground operation in Gaza, which the Hamas-run health ministry says has left more than 31,000 people dead. These figures cannot be independently verified, however, and do not differentiate between civilians and combatants, of whom Israel says it has killed some 13,000.
The PA has said it will not return to Gaza on the back of the Israeli offensive, and that it would only assume control of the territory as part of a comprehensive solution to the conflict that includes statehood.