Online from the United States where he teaches, Salam Fayyad has ” a little flexibility In his schedule. Above all, he wants to ensure that his message gets through to a Western audience, he, the technocrat once acclaimed by the Americans and the international community. The former prime minister, rather popular at the time, does not hide it: he would like ” take part in the conversation ”Within the Palestinian Authority (PA), in full slump for years and seriously adrift since the death of an opponent, Nizar Banat, probably tortured to death by the Palestinian security forces on June 24. The protests that followed were severely repressed.
After a long absence from the political scene since his resignation in 2013, the former official of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) returned to the game in March, presenting a list in the legislative elections then scheduled for May. The polls predicted him enough to pass narrowly the electoral threshold, set at 1.5%.
At the end of April, warning shot: the ballot is postponed sine die. Officially because the holding of the elections was not “guaranteed” in Jerusalem, subject to the goodwill of the Israelis who occupy the city; much more likely because Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas saw it as a threat to his stay in power, he who has not appeared at the polls since 2005.
Peace through unity
” The answer now is not: “Reschedule elections tomorrow!” Cause it won’t happen Says Mr. Fayyad. Instead, this pragmatist is trying to find a place for himself on the Palestinian political scene by working for reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, enemy brothers since the bloody tear of 2007 following which the Islamist movement took control of Gaza. At the end of June, he met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and then spent three days in Gaza with Hamas leaders. What fuel the rumors on his account: we already saw him prime minister of a government of national unity. ” There was never any question of me taking on this role », Assures the person, who formerly had set up a party baptized “Third way”, neither Fatah nor Hamas and whose relations with the president have not always been in good shape.
He first advocated peace through the economy. Between 2007 and 2013, Prime Minister, he imposed his trademark, renamed since the “Fayyadism”. Its policy is to equip the Palestinian Authority with the finery of a modern state, in order to prove that it can function as a country and then attempt to negotiate its independence in the framework of peace talks with the Israelis.
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