Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas attends a Palestinian Liberation Organization executive committee meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah, 13 May (Photo: Reuters)
A reshuffled Palestinian cabinet in the West Bank with seven new faces is to be sworn in on Wednesday, labour minister Ahmad Majdalani told AFP.
"The government will be sworn in at (President Mahmud) Abbas's office at 6:00 pm (1500 GMT)," he said.
The reshuffle has been on the cards since the previous cabinet resigned in February 2011, shortly after the Palestinian leadership announced it would hold legislative and presidential elections "in the coming months."
Abbas tasked prime minister Salam Fayyad with forming a new government, but this was put on ice after the surprise announcement in April of a reconciliation agreement between Abbas's Fatah movement and its Islamist rival Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip.
Since then, the reconciliation agreement, which envisaged the creation of an interim cabinet of independents selected by the two factions that would prepare for elections, has largely stalled, leaving the revamped government on hold.
According to a source in Fayyad's office, seven new ministers will take up the portfolios covering health, tourism, national economy, justice, agriculture, transportation and telecommunications.
Although the new ministers have been chosen, the source said it was possible there could be changes before the swearing in ceremony.
Majdalani confirmed there would be seven new ministers in what will be the 14th Palestinian cabinet.
And he insisted that the swearing in of a new government instead of the interim consensus cabinet envisaged under the unity deal was not a sign that the reconciliation process had collapsed.
"No, we still hope that the reconciliation will happen. But we need to reshuffle the government to deal with the population's everyday life," he said.
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