The move came ahead of a deadline to find a successor to Salam Fayyad, who quit on April 13 over differences with Abbas.

The 54-year-old new caretaker premier is the president of Al-Najah University in the West Bank city of Nablus.

Rami Hamdallah told AFP that he is been charged to form a new cabinet in the coming days.

“Most ministers of the outgoing government will stay, and I will bring in a new finance minister," the French news agency quoted him as saying.

This comes as the two main Palestinian factions of Hamas and Fatah are still at odds over a unity government. On April 27, Abbas announced that consultations had started to form the unity government in accordance with a reconciliation deal between Fatah and Hamas.

The two Palestinian factions had signed the reconciliation deal for a transitional unity government in 2011. It was supposed to pave the way for legislative elections before the end of May 2012. However, the process failed and is yet to be implemented.

The Palestinian factions have been unable to patch up some differences since Hamas won the parliamentary elections in January 2006. The Israeli regime reacted to the victory by imposing a blockade on the Gaza Strip.