Ismail Haniya, head of the Hamas government in Gaza, announced a cabinet reshuffle on Sunday, appointing seven new ministers including a new finance minister.
Haniya said the reshuffle was “normal procedure after nearly six years of work by some ministers and in order to achieve specific goals for the current period.” And he said the new cabinet was partly a reaction to the changing landscape of the Middle East in the wake of uprisings in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and other Arab countries.
“This shuffle will give us an opportunity to deal with these changes,” he said.
The reshuffle was approved by Gaza-based Hamas MPs from the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) or parliament, which comprises legislators from across the Palestinian territories.
The Hamas-dominated parliament came into being in 2006 after the Islamist group won a crushing electoral victory, but it has been largely largely non-functional since then.