New Palestine government should take ‘full responsibility’ both in West Bank, Gaza: FM

A new government in Palestine should take “full responsibility and action” both in West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Palestinian Foreign Minister, Riyad Al-Maliki said on Wednesday, Anadolu Agency reports.

“Maybe the current government which resigned was not seen or heard for such responsibility,” Riyad Al-Maliki told a press conference organised by the UN correspondents’ association in Geneva.

Al-Maliki said the time now is “not for the government where Hamas would be part of it because, in this case, then it will be boycotted by a number of countries as it happened before.”

“We don’t want to be in a situation like that. We want to be accepted and engaging fully with the international community. We want to get contributions that help in order for us to be able to provide, first of all, the necessary services to our people, emergency services, then to talk about how we can reconstruct Gaza after such devastating destruction.”

“Later when the situation is right, we can contemplate that option,” he added.

The Foreign Minister said he believes that the idea is to establish today “a technocratic government” that is based on experts, individuals who are completely permitted to take up the reins and responsibility for this period.

He said Palestine might be able to think about elections after the war, but the most important thing for now was a ceasefire.

The Palestinian government of Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh, which governs the West Bank, resigned on Monday.

Nearly 29,900 Palestinians have been killed and over 70,000 others injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since the Oct. 7 Hamas incursion. Nearly 1,200 Israelis are believed to have been killed in the initial Hamas attack.

However, since then, it has been revealed by Haaretz that helicopters and tanks of the Israeli army had, in fact, killed many of the 1,139 soldiers and civilians claimed by Israel to have been killed by the Palestinian Resistance.

The Israeli war has also led to mass displacement, destruction and created conditions of a famine in the Gaza Strip.

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