Palestinian Finance Minister Resigns Amid Cash Crisis
Minister of Finance Nabil Qassis found himself cornered and unable to deliver proposed reforms to address the Palestinian Authority’s financial crisis, writes Daoud Kuttab.
Khalil Abu Arafeh’s cartoon, which ran in the Sunday, March 3 edition of the leading Palestinian newspaper Al Quds, left no doubt as to the reason behind the resignation of Nabil Qassis, the Palestinian minister of finance. Abu Arafeh showed an empty safe, with Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s hands folded next to the empty cash box.
But while the absence of cash is probably the main cause for Qassis' resignation, the only report about it in the Palestinian media — on the Ma’an news agency’s website — drew a more complicated picture. According to the Bethlehem-based online news agency, Fayyad accepted the resignation and commended Qassis for his efforts, but President Mahmoud Abbas refused to accept the resignation and asked his chief of staff to convince the minister to withdraw it.
