RAMALLAH: A new Palestinian government in the West Bank was sworn in on Wednesday at a ceremony in the West Bank town of Ramallah, in a move that has angered the Hamas government in Gaza.
Ministers, including returning prime minister Salam Fayyad, took the oath of office in the presence of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.
The swearing in of the 25-member government comes more than a year after the last cabinet resigned in February 2011.
At the time, the Palestinian leadership had said it would hold legislative and presidential elections "in the coming months," and Abbas tasked Fayyad with forming a new government.
But the process was put on ice after the surprise announcement in April 2011 of a reconciliation deal between Abbas's Fatah movement and its Islamist rival, Hamas.
The agreement called for the creation of an interim cabinet of independents selected by the two factions, which would prepare for elections that were rescheduled to happen by May 2012.
The deal has largely stalled, and Abbas said on Wednesday that the impasse had left his administration paralysed, spurring him to call for the formation of a new cabinet.
But the Hamas government in Gaza slammed the decision to form a new cabinet, accusing Abbas's Palestinian Authority and the Fatah movement he heads of abandoning reconciliation.
"This strengthens the division," Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum told AFP, saying it "shows clearly that the Palestinian Authority and Fatah are far from implementing" the unity agreement.
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