Salam Fayyad was born in Nablus[3][4][5] or Deir al-Ghusun[6][7][8] in northern West Bank on 12 April 1952[7][8][9][5] (according to some sources in 1951[10][11]).

[13] Fayyad has a PhD in economics, which he received from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was a student of William Barnett and did early research on the American Divisia Monetary Aggregates, which he continued on the staff of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

He held this post until November 2005, when he resigned from the cabinet to run as founder and leader of the new Third Way party in the legislative elections of 2006 alongside Hanan Ashrawi and Yasser Abd Rabbo.

[24] On 4 May, however, Abbas and Khaled Mashal signed the Cairo agreement to form a transitional government of technocrats to prepare for legislative and presidential elections.

In June, the negotiations were postponed indefinitely and Abbas changed the focus on a bid for UN recognition for Palestinian statehood in September 2011, instead of forming a unity government.

Following the February 2012 Doha agreement and the successive May 2012 Cairo accord, which also failed to be implemented, Mahmoud Abbas asked Fayyad to form a new Cabinet, without Hamas' involvement.

[32] A major component of Fayyad's plans was modernizing and professionalizing of the Palestinian Security Services under the banner of "One Homeland, One Flag, and One Law".

The officer in charge of the vetting, training, equipping, and strategic planning of these special battalions was Lieutenant General Keith Dayton, the United States security coordinator (USSC) for Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Together they have largely disbanded Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, attacked Islamic Jihad groups, and all but eliminated Hamas's social institutions, financial arrangements, and military activities in the West Bank.

Abbas accepted his resignation but asked him to remain as interim prime minister of the Palestinian Authority until a new government could be formed.

In September 2017, The Middle East Initiative (MEI) at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs announced that Salam Fayyad, former prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, will join the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) community as a Senior Fellow that academic year.

"[41] On 29 June 2011, in contravention of the Palestinian Authority's official position, and that of president Mahmoud Abbas, Fayyad expressed skepticism about its approach to the United Nations for a vote on statehood, saying it would be only a symbolic victory.

[45] Thomas Friedman, an American columnist, praised Fayyad for trying to build functioning institutions of a Palestinian state, and not focusing on Israel.

Unlike Yasser Arafat, Fayyad "calls for the opposite—for a nonviolent struggle, for building non-corrupt transparent institutions and effective police and paramilitary units, which even the Israeli Army says are doing a good job; and then, once they are all up and running, declare a Palestinian state in the West Bank by 2011.