RAMALLAH: Unlike outgoing Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, his likely successor, Palestinian Legislative Council Speaker Ahmed Qorei, has backing from the ruling Fatah movement and from his own parliament but not enough support among the Palestinians in the streets.

Abbas resigned from the premiership on Saturday after less than four months in the post. Throughout his tenure his popularity rating was extremely low and he was seen by many Palestinians as an Israeli and American puppet.

Public opinion polls have shown Qorei, often known as Abu Ala, also has a low popularity rating, which does not match that of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat or even incarcerated Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, not to mention Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, spiritual head of the Hamas Islamic Movement.

But Qorei does have the crucial backing of the Fatah movement and its leader Arafat, who is one of 18 members of its Central Committee, the highest authority in the movement.

Central Committee member Abbas Zaki said Qorei was their one and only choice to succeed Abbas, who until recently, was also member of the same Committee.

Even with backing from his own parliament, the Fatah movement and with supporters in Israel, Europe and in the United States, not to mention the Arab countries, Qorei still needs to convince his own people he is the right choice for this job.

This will happen if he will be able to deliver in the political process and can improve the daily life of the more than three million Palestinians living in very difficult conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

This, say analysts, explains why Qorei has conditioned his accepting the post on changes on the ground in the Palestinian areas.

This means an Israeli withdrawal from autonomous Palestinian cities, the removal of military checkpoints, ending the closure of the occupied territories and halting Israel’s virtual siege of Arafat, who has been more or less permanently confined to his Ramallah headquarters since December 2001.

Palestinians see Qorei as the architect of the ill-fated Oslo Accords which failed to bring about the creation of an independent the Palestinian state.

It was Qorei’s secret talks with Israel in the early 1990s which led to the signing of the Oslo Agreement on the White House Lawn in September 1993.—dpa