Palestinian President appoints new PM amid Hamas anger

PanARMENIAN.Net - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas named British-educated political independent Rami Hamdallah as new prime minister on Sunday, June 2 a move that was immediately condemned by Gaza Strip rulers Hamas, Reuters reported.

Abbas and the militant Islamist group agreed in principle last month to form a unity government for the divided Palestinian territories, and a Hamas spokesman said Hamdallah's appointment threw that into doubt.

Fawzi Barhoum told Reuters "Abbas should have implemented the reconciliation (deal)" achieved in Cairo last month, rather than name his own independent candidate as prime minister.

The group called Hamdallah's appointment "illegal."

But official Palestinian news agency, WAFA, said that in naming Hamdallah, Abbas, who has sought to end abuse of the Islamist group's activists by security forces in the West Bank, had "stressed his commitment to reconciliation" with Hamas.

A little known figure outside the Palestinian territories, Hamdallah is a professor of linguistics who has been president of An Najah National University in the West Bank's largest city since 1998. He will replace Western-favored economist Salam Fayyad who quit in April and formally leaves office this month.

Led by the secular Fatah party, Abbas' Western-backed Palestinian Authority has pursued surveillance, firings, arrests and torture to bar its Islamist rivals from public life in the West Bank, since Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip enclave in 2007.