The appointment of a Mahmoud Abbas loyalist as Palestinian prime minister will “reinforce divisions” and demonstrate the Palestinian Authority’s “disconnection from reality”, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other groups charged today.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas appointed one of his close aides, economist Mohammed Mustafa, as prime minister on Thursday in a bid to bolster his weakened leadership and regain credibility.

“The formation of a new government without national consensus will exacerbate (intra-Palestinian) divisions,” the Islamist group Hamas warned in a statement posted on its website. Islamic Jihad and the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (FPLP), two organizations also considered terrorist by Israel, co-signed the statement.

The appointment of the new prime minister proves “the deep crisis within the Palestinian Authority and its disconnection from reality”, according to the statement which denounces the “gap between the Authority and the (Palestinian) people”.

Since the fratricidal clashes began in June 2007, the Palestinian leadership has been divided between Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited power in the West Bank, a territory occupied by Israel since 1967, and Hamas, which has power in the war-torn Gaza Strip.

In recent months, many Palestinians have criticized 88-year-old President Abbas, who was last elected in 2005, for his “incompetence” in the face of Israeli incursions into the Gaza Strip.

In a letter accepting his mission to President Abbas, Mustafa says he is “aware of the critical phase the Palestinian issue is passing through” and insists on the need for a Palestinian state uniting Gaza and the West Bank.

The role of the Palestinian Authority when the war ends remains largely unknown, due to its limited influence and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to consider a future Palestinian state.