Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad insisted today that his government must lead reconstruction efforts in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip as it rebuilds after a devastating 22-day war.
Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad insisted today that his government must lead reconstruction efforts in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip as it rebuilds after a devastating 22-day war.
The Palestinian people "demand the immediate movement towards national unity, without any hesitation," Fayyad told reporters in the occupied West Bank, the only Palestinian territory still controlled by his government.
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"This is a time of absolute, extreme, national emergency," he said about the war that killed more than 1,300 Palestinians and devastated vast swathes of the already impoverished territory.
"The scale of the disaster is unprecedented," he said. "Can't we minimally agree on 20 people out of a population of 3.8 million in a 24-hour period or a 48-hour period?" he said, referring to president Mahmud Abbas's proposal for a transitional national unity government.
Fayyad was appointed prime minister after the Islamist Hamas movement drove forces loyal to Abbas out of Gaza in a week of bloody street fights in June 2007, cleaving the Palestinians into two hostile, rival camps.
Arab leaders meeting in Kuwait this week are expected to pledge USD two billion (1.5 billion euros) to rebuild Gaza.
European countries have also offered financial assistance.
But Fayyad warned that bypassing the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority could deepen the separation between the territories and fatally wound the decades-old struggle for a Palestinian state
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