http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salam_Fayyad

Salam Fayyad, a Palestinian politician, on June 15, 2007 was appointed the Prime Minister of the Palestinian National Authority. Fayyad had been the Finance Minister in the Fatah government from 2002. Fayyad is highly respected in the Israeli establishment and has close ties with the Bush administration. His Ph.D. in economics is from the University of Texas at Austin, a student of William A. Barnett, did early research on the American Divisia Monetary Aggregates [growth rate of the aggregate is the weighted average of the growth rates of the component quantities], and was on the staff of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. An economist and a former World Bank official who lived in the United States for twenty years, he was an official of the World Bank from 1987-1995 and subsequently became the International Monetary Fund representative to Palestine until 2001, before becoming Finance Minister of the Palestinian National Authority.

Abbas Signs New Government Decree

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B212594B-B6FC-4C81-BCBC-9AA6191EE1C7.htm

June 17, 2007

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has signed a decree allowing a Palestinian emergency government to take office without parliamentary approval. The decree came after reports that Abbas was expected to swear in Salam Fayyad, an economist. A US envoy told Abbas that the US would lift a direct ban on aid to the government once the new administration was announced. Jacob Walles, the US consul-general in Jerusalem, said: "I expect that we are going to be engaged with this government.”

Fatah remains in control of the West Bank.

Abbas Appoints New Palestinian PM

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6756079.stm

15 June 2007

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has appointed a new prime minister, a day after dissolving the Hamas-led coalition. Finance Minister Salam Fayyad has been asked to take over and form an emergency government. It comes amid political upheaval in Gaza, where Hamas has forcibly taken control from its Fatah rivals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas

Hamas is listed as a terrorist organization by Canada, the European Union, Israel, Japan, and the United States.

Gaza: Not Just a Prison, a Laboratory by Naomi Klein

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/15/1901/

June 15, 2007

Israel’s economy isn’t booming despite the political chaos that devours the headlines, but because of it. This phase of development dates back to the mid-nineties, when Israel was in the vanguard of the information revolution - the most tech-dependent economy in the world. After the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, Israel’s economy was devastated, facing its worst year since 1953. Then came 9/11, and suddenly new profit vistas opened up for any company that claimed it could spot terrorists in crowds, seal borders from attack and extract confessions from closed-mouthed prisoners.

Overlooked is Israel’s huge and expanding export business. Israel now sends $1.2 billion in “defense” products to the United States-up dramatically from $270 million in 1999. In 2006 Israel exported $3.4 billion in defense products-well over a billion more than it received in US military aid. That makes Israel the fourth-largest arms dealer in the world, overtaking Britain.

Much of this growth has been in the so-called “homeland security” sector. Before 9/11 homeland security barely existed as an industry. By the end of this year, Israeli exports in the sector will reach $1.2 billion-an increase of 20 percent. The key products and services are high-tech fences, unmanned drones, biometric IDs, video and audio surveillance gear, air passenger profiling and prisoner interrogation systems - precisely the tools and technologies Israel has used to lock-in the occupied territories.

The chaos in Gaza and the rest of the region doesn’t threaten the bottom line in Tel Aviv, and may actually boost it. Israel has learned to turn endless war into a brand asset, pitching its uprooting, occupation and containment of the Palestinian people as a half-century head start in the “global war on terror.”