Candidate for Palestinian Premier Emerges

JERUSALEM, Nov. 13 -- A former university president in the Gaza Strip emerged Monday as the top candidate to head a Palestinian national unity government now being assembled in a bid to end the economic sanctions that have crippled the Hamas-led administration.

Officials from the rival Hamas and Fatah movements said Mohammed Shubeir, 60, is the consensus choice to serve as prime minister in a future power-sharing government whose creation has proved elusive for months.

Shubeir is not a member of Hamas, the radical Islamic movement that has run the Palestinian Authority since soon after it won January parliamentary elections. But he is closely identified with Hamas in Gaza City, where he served as president of the Islamic University of Gaza -- a key training ground for the movement's leadership -- for 12 years before stepping down in 2005.

Shubeir's selection would mark a significant step toward resolving the months-long political crisis that has battered the Palestinian economy and set off a surge of partisan fighting in the territories, especially in Gaza. As prime minister, he would be part of a new cabinet that, in addition to ministers from Hamas and Fatah, would include technocrats from outside the two main parties, including some who have worked closely with the United States.

But officials from both parties warned that work remained to be done on the future government's political program, which international donors say must recognize Israel's right to exist, renounce violence and honor previous agreements with the Jewish state in return for a resumption of aid.

"It's not a done deal yet," said Saeb Erekat, a Fatah lawmaker and the Palestinians' chief negotiator with Israel, who called Shubeir "a very strong candidate" who would be nominated only if a deal is reached on a governing platform. "For the Quartet, it's the program. That's what will matter most."

After Hamas's electoral victory, the United States, the United Nations, Russia and the European Union, known collectively as the Quartet, cut off aid that accounted for nearly half of the Palestinian Authority's operating budget. Israel also froze the roughly $55 million in monthly tax revenue it collects on the Palestinians' behalf. Israel, the United States and the European Union classify Hamas, whose founding charter calls for Israel's destruction, as a terrorist organization.

Hamas leaders refused to meet the Quartet's conditions. Their popularity in the territories slipped amid deepening economic hardship. The authority's 165,000 civil servants, more than half of them in the security forces, have received only a small fraction of their salaries in the past nine months.

Until now, Hamas officials in Gaza and the West Bank have shown more willingness to compromise than the group's hard-line political leadership in exile, led by Khaled Mashal in the Syrian capital of Damascus. Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, an Islamic University graduate, has already agreed to step aside so an independent official can lead the next government.

Hamas and Fatah officials said Mashal has endorsed Shubeir, who has a doctorate in microbiology from West Virginia University. Shubeir's father was a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic movement from which Hamas emerged. His candidacy also fulfills a demand by Hamas that the next prime minister come from Gaza.

But Hamas officials are still seeking assurances from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, a member of Fatah, that international donors will restore aid if they dissolve the government. Those guarantees have not been given, although U.S. officials have been consulting closely with Abbas during the process.

Micaela Schweitzer-Bluhm, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem, said that regardless of who is in the next cabinet, it must meet the Quartet's criteria to receive aid.

"It is not the United States' role to decide who is and who is not in the Palestinian government," she said. "That is for them to decide."