Israel's final threat of Rafah offensive increases pressure ahead of Ramadan: As negotiations over a hostage deal continue in Doha, the PLO prime minister has announced his resignation.
The announcement of his resignation came as a surprise, as Mohammed Shtayyeh had recently announced a Palestinian summit in Moscow at the Munich Security Conference, equally surprisingly, on Monday. The meeting in the Russian capital initially remained eerily quiet. Maybe that will happen in the next few days.
And the Palestinian prime minister is in no hurry to withdraw either. He announced that he had already submitted his resignation last Tuesday. The Palestinian president has not yet accepted, so Shtayyeh remains in office on an interim basis. A change of Palestinian guard, which is apparently taking place under pressure from the US and some Arab states, which have been pushing for the renewal of the Palestinian government for months.