Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas swears in new government
Ramallah, Apr 14: A new government for the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority was sworn in Saturday, led by a veteran peace negotiator and harsh critic of Gaza's Hamas rulers.
President Mahmoud Abbas picked Mohammed Ishtayeh as prime minister, a move that deepens the internal Palestinian divide at a time when prospects for a peace deal with Israel are possibly at their lowest point ever.
A longtime adviser to Abbas and a senior member of his Fatah party, Ishtayeh and his 24-member cabinet took the oath of office at Abbas' headquarters in Ramallah.
Ishtayeh faces tremendous challenges, with the PA in a deep financial crisis following US sanctions and Israel's withholding of USD 138 million in key tax revenues it collects on behalf of the Palestinians. Israel says the slashed sums were designated for families of Palestinian who carried out attacks against Israel.
The new cabinet replaces a technocratic government formed by Rami Hamdallah in 2014 after an agreement between Fatah and Hamas, the Islamic militant group that has run the Gaza Strip after ousting Fatah and evicting the PA in 2007. Despite enormous Egyptian efforts, the attempted unity government failed to reconcile the two groups.
Abbas' firing of Hamdallah and assigning Ishtayeh, a British-educated economist, to lead the next government reflects his frustration over the narrowing chances of an inter-Palestinian unity accord.
As peace talks with Israel ran aground years ago and the Trump administration will likely put forward a peace plan that the Palestinians say favors Israel, Abbas badly needed to garner power at home and extend his control back to Gaza, which Hamas governs separately.
But Hamas accused Abbas of acting unilaterally, saying in a statement Saturday that swearing in a "separatist" government "boosts the division between Gaza and the West Bank as a practical step to implement the 'deal of the century,'" the name the Palestinians use to refer to the undisclosed US peace plan.
In a meeting with the new cabinet, Abbas, 83, called on them to continue "to fight the (Israeli) occupation with all legal means," referring to UN organisations, as well as through "peaceful popular resistance." He said Israel should bear the "consequences" if it did not withdraw from territories it occupied since the 1967 Mideast war.
Nickolay Mladenov, the UN Middle East envoy, said he hoped the new government would receive support "to overcome internal divisions." Last year, the Trump administration recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, triggering the Palestinian Authority to sever its ties with Washington.
The Palestinian leadership fears that Israel would retain major Jewish settlements in the West Bank and that the seat of the future Palestinian state would be in Gaza instead.
Ishtayeh's government, which controls those parts of the West Bank on which the PA has autonomy, doesn't feature significant changes from its predecessor. Five members, including those of foreign affairs, finance and the two premier deputies, retained their posts. Ishtayeh holds the interior and religious portfolios.
The Palestinian government runs day-to-day affairs while Abbas and the PLO's Central Committee, which he also heads, manage the political decision-making.
Ishtayeh, 61, holds a PhD in economic from University of Sussex and had been a minister in previous governments. He was also a member of the Palestinian negotiating team.
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Voting begins for high-stakes civic polls in Maharashtra; all eyes on big battle for Mumbai
Mumbai (PTI): Voting in 29 municipal corporations across Maharashtra began on Thursday morning with spotlight on Mumbai, where the BJP-led Mahayuti alliance is locked in an intense battle with the reunited Thackeray cousins for control of India's largest and richest civic body.
Polling for 2,869 seats spread across 893 wards in these municipal corporations began amid tight security at 7.30 am and will conclude at 5.30 pm. A total of 3.48 crore voters are eligible to decide the fate of 15,931 candidates.
In the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), whose annual budget is over Rs 74, 400 crore, 1,700 candidates are vying for 227 seats in elections being held after nine years, after a four-year delay. More than 25,000 police personnel have been deployed across Mumbai to oversee elections.
Except for Mumbai, the other urban bodies have multi-member wards. Vote count will take place on January 16.
These are the first BMC polls since the 2022 split in the Shiv Sena when Eknath Shinde, now Deputy Chief Minister, broke away with a majority of the party’s MLAs and allied with the BJP to become the chief minister.
The undivided Shiv Sena held sway over India's richest civic body for 25 years (1997-2022).
In a significant political turn of events ahead of the elections, estranged cousins Uddhav and Raj Thackeray, who head Shiv Sena (UBT) and MNS, respectively, reunited last month after two decades in their bid to consolidate Marathi votes even as rival NCP factions forged a local alliance in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad.
The Congress, once a formidable political force in Maharashtra, has asserted its presence in Mumbai by stepping out of the shadow of its Maha Vikas Aghadi allies - Shiv Sena (UBT) and NCP (SP).
The grand old party has joined hands with Prakash Ambedkar’s Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) and the Rashtriya Samaj Paksh in the state capital.
Elections to the 29 municipal corporations are being held after a gap of several years, with terms of most of them having ended between 2020 and 2023. Of these, nine fall in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), the most urbanised belt in India.
Voting is underway in the following municipal corporations: Mumbai, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Navi Mumbai, Vasai-Virar, Kalyan-Dombivli, Kolhapur, Nagpur, Solapur, Amravati, Akola, Nashik, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Pune, Ulhasnagar, Thane, Chandrapur, Parbhani, Mira-Bhayandar, Nanded-Waghala, Panvel, Bhiwandi-Nizampur, Latur, Malegaon, Sangli-Miraj-Kupwad, Jalgaon, Ahilyanagar, Dhule, Jalna and Ichalkaranji.
