A Palestinian security chief resigned on Thursday, complaining to President Mahmoud Abbas that too little was being done to halt lawlessness in the West Bank and Gaza, officials said. "I cannot work under these conditions," Tawfik Tirawi, head of Palestinian Intelligence in the West Bank, wrote in a letter of resignation that he gave Abbas after a meeting of security commanders at the president's headquarters, the officials said.
Tirawi, the most senior security official to resign since Abbas's election in January, quit a day after half a dozen gunmen from the ruling Fatah faction fired at the presidential Muqata compound in Ramallah and then rampaged through the city. There was no immediate word if Abbas, who officials said gets along well with Tirawi, would ask him to reconsider. The officials said Tirawi complained that other heads of Palestinian security organizations had not done enough to impose the rule of law Abbas had promised after taking over from the late Yasser Arafat. |