Palestine prepares to accept the ‘new reality’ in Gaza Strip with a fresh government

Palestinian Authority's government resigns amid U.S. reform push, facing legitimacy and relations challenges, amid Israel-Hamas war.

The Palestinian Authority (PA)’s Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh announced his government's resignation on Monday, seen as the first step in a reform process urged by the United States as part of its latest ambitious plans to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But it will do little to address the authority's longstanding lack of legitimacy among its own people or its strained relations with Israel. Both pose major obstacles to U.S. plans calling for the PA, which administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, to govern postwar Gaza ahead of eventual statehood.

That's assuming that the war in Gaza ends with the defeat of the Hamas militant group — an Israeli and U.S. goal that seems elusive nearly five months into the gruelling war that has killed almost 30,000 Palestinians and pushed the territory to the brink of famine.

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Here's a look at the government shakeup and what it means for the Israel-Hamas war.

The PA was created in the early 1990s through interim peace agreements signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, then led by Yasser Arafat.

It was granted limited autonomy in parts of the West Bank and Gaza ahead of what the Palestinians hoped would be full statehood in both territories as well as east Jerusalem, lands that Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.