The Jewish Chronicle reported his additional remarks: "Israel acts above the law and does not respect UN resolutions, and also we know this aggressive state of Israel is... nuclear armed and a centre of a colonial regime that is based on apartheid against the Palestinian people." Shtayyeh, whose tenure ran from 2019 through 2024, told members of the 202-year-old institution that certain Israeli legislators envision national boundaries stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates. His closing statement declared: "We all should say that Israel is the biggest cause of destabilisation in the region."

In my debate tonight at the Oxford Union, I said that their proposition—"Israel is a greater threat to regional stability than Iran"—struck me as deep satire, but then I recalled that 501 of their members voted to back the student chair who cheered the killing of Charlie Kirk.

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) November 13, 2025

Following the debate, Neuer wrote on X: "In my debate tonight at the Oxford Union, I said that their proposition – 'Israel is a greater threat to regional stability than Iran' – struck me as deep satire, but then I recalled that 501 of their members voted to back the student chair who cheered the killing of Charlie Kirk," The Telegraph noted. The October controversy surrounding George Abaraonye, who held the title of president-elect at the Oxford Union, resulted in his removal following widespread criticism of his apparent approval of Kirk's shooting death, The Telegraph reported.

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"Israel continues to attack cities and villages in Areas A, B and C on a daily basis and treats them all as areas under its security and civilian control," Shtayyeh said at a cabinet meeting in Ramallah.

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"Therefore, we will deal with all places as if they are part of Area A," which is under PA security and civilian control, he added.

Under the 1993 Oslo Accords, the West Bank was split into three areas of control: Area A, which is under Palestinian civil and security control; Area B, under Palestinian civil controls and shared Israeli-Palestinian security control; and Area C, under full Israeli civil and security control.

The Palestinian premier's comments referred to buildings that Israel demolished two weeks ago in Wadi Hummus, near east Jerusalem, which is under control of the PA.

Israel said the structures were built too close to the security fence and posed a threat to civilians and security personnel. Local residents denied the accusation and said they had the required construction permits from the PA.

The United Nations and the European Union condemned the demolitions in Wadi Hummus, but Palestinians are worried that a new precedent has been established for Israeli demolitions in Palestinian-controlled areas.

Shtayyeh also rejected the Trump administration's peace plan for Israel and the Palestinians.

Ibrahim Milhem, Shtayyeh's spokesman, said the PA premier's comments mean Ramallah will begin issuing building permits to Palestinians in Area C.

Last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet granted some 700 building permits to Palestinians in Area C and approximately 6,000 others to Israelis.

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Washington billed the two-day workshop in Bahrain as the first stage of its broader blueprint to resolve the Middle East conflict. US Gulf Arab allies said the economic initiative had promise if a political settlement is reached.

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Shtayyeh, however, said he felt the initiative "will not really materialize and it's not going to go anywhere."

"Bahrain was just simply a terrible exercise. I think it's an economic workshop that has been fully and totally divorced from reality," he said in his office in the West Bank city of Ramallah. "[It was] no more than an intellectual exercise."

The Bahrain "Prosperity to Peace" workshop called for a $50 billion investment fund to stimulate the Palestinian and neighboring Arab state economies, more than half to be spent in the Palestinian territories over 10 years.

But Palestinian leaders boycotted the conference and are refusing to engage with the White House – accusing it of pro-Israel bias after US President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital in 2017. The Palestinians demand east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.

The political details of the long-delayed plan, which is spearheaded by Trump's senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, remain a secret known only to a handful of people.

Kushner and Trump's Mideast envoy Jason Greenblatt have said the political elements will be unveiled later, possibly after a second snap Israeli election set for September.

But Palestinians fear the Trump team may abandon the "two-state solution," which envisages the creation of an independent Palestinian state co-existing alongside Israel.

"We haven't seen in the paper any reference to [Israeli] occupation, to settlements, to Palestine, to two states, to 1967 borders, to Jerusalem and so on," Shtayyeh said.

Of the Israelis, he said: "The debate in Israel today, it's very unfortunate that it is not between those who want to end occupation and those who want to maintain occupation. The debate in Israel today is between those who want to maintain the status quo and those who want to annex certain parts of the West Bank."

Shtayyeh, a member of PA President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction, was named in March to replace Rami al-Hamdallah, who had spearheaded reconciliation efforts with Fatah's principal internal rival, the Islamist Hamas organization, which rules Gaza.

Shtayyeh formerly headed PECDAR, the Palestinian Economic Council for Development and Reconstruction.

But he inherited a government squeezed by steep US aid cuts, the crisis exacerbated by a political dispute with Israel over the withholding of some 5% of the approximately $190 million monthly tax revenues that Israel transfers to the Palestinian Authority, over the PA's refusal to stop paying terrorists and their families monthly stipends.

The mounting financial pressures on the PA have sent its debt soaring to $3 billion, and led to a severe contraction in its estimated $13 billion GDP economy, according to the PA's top central banker.

Shtayyeh warned that this situation could soon weaken the PA security forces that work closely with the IDF in the West Bank.

"Can we maintain this situation? I'm not sure about that. If the policeman has no petrol in his car, he will not be able to maintain law and order in the streets. That is where the problem is," he said.

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The Palestinians have already made it clear that they will not accept it, sight unseen.

The narrow Palestinian cabinet, recently cobbled together by PA President Mahmoud Abbas, appears ill-equipped to deal with the PA's pressing political, diplomatic and economic troubles. There is major disunity among the Palestinians, Hamas and Fatah, which are nowhere near reconciliation, and the PA is losing money fast.

While Shtayyeh is a foreign-trained economist – and many in the international community have high hopes for him – he is also a "promoter of the BDS boycott-Israel movement, is in favor of ending security coordination with the Israel Defense Forces and seeks to end the Paris Protocols that refer to a joint economy with Israel," said Pinhas Inbari at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

However, Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Jewish News Syndicate that "the appointment of Mohammad Shtayyeh is quite significant."

He said that the previous prime minister, Rami Hamdallah, was "a very minor player" with "very little clout" within the ruling Fatah Party, and had "few respected skills." By contrast, Shtayyeh, according to Schanzer, "has the respect of his party and is known as a serious economist."

With an ever-widening intra-Palestinian rift, Schanzer said this is an effort by Abbas "to consolidate power across the various arms of the Fatah party and the PLO." Set up as part of the 1993 Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority was originally slated to be the interim government of the Palestinians until a final resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was solidified. However, the PA has become beset by corruption, internal Palestinian disputes and increasing authoritarianism under Abbas. The PA last held elections in 2006 and has since been exclusively run by Abbas and Fatah in the West Bank after several failures at reconciliation with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.

According to the Saudi-run Arab News site, Shtayyeh clarified that he would pursue an austerity program since the PA's financial situation is critical and Abbas has appealed to Arab countries to provide him with a safety net. This comes after Israel decided to withhold $138 million in monthly tax revenues that it collects on behalf of the PA.

In response to Abbas's appeal, at an Arab League meeting in Cairo on Sunday, Arab foreign ministers committed to paying $100 million per month to the floundering PA. They also rejected any peace plan that does not follow the Arab Peace Initiative and other international demands.

'No different from its predecessors'

Schanzer said the new government is part of Abbas' efforts to prepare for the Trump administration's upcoming Mideast peace plan, commonly referred to as the "deal of the century."

So, are the Palestinians trying to repair the damage in relations they caused when they cut off ties with the U.S. administration in December 2017?

"The Palestinians expect to see a bad deal," said Schanzer. "And they expect to be punished for rejecting it. Abbas is preparing accordingly."

This, noted Schanzer, could explain why Shtayyeh said in his remarks that "we must separate the Palestinian-American relations from the peace process or the political process that is going on."

Perhaps Shtayyeh was attempting to step back from the original Palestinian hard-line position that saw no relations between the PA and the United States when he said, "The stalemate of the peace process must not be met with punishment or blackmail from the American administration of the Palestinian people. We want it to be an honest peace-broker."

Efraim Inbar, president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, appeared determined to set the record straight and remove any misplaced hope. He told JNS that the new Palestinian government "is no different from its predecessors. They all are beleaguered by corruption, nepotism and ineptitude. A Herculean effort would be needed to overcome the political culture bequeathed by [former Palestinian Authority chairman] Yasser Arafat."

He added, in a resigned sort of way, that the PA "continues to subscribe to maximalist unrealistic positions that ensure the continuation of conflict between the two national movements."

This article is reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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