Friday, May 19, 2006
Glick draws several threads together in one place:
As the researcher Arlene Kushner pointed out in an article published this week by Ynet those miserable unpaid PA employees include some 4,000 Palestinian terrorists who Abbas placed on the PA payroll. Terrorists sitting in Israeli prisons get $4 million a month. Several million more go to paying the families of dead terrorists. Kushner quoted former PA and Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan admitting that of the $10 billion in international aid that the Palestinians have received over the past 12 years, some $5b. has gone missing.
Abbas, who politely warns against "explosions," himself controls up to $1b. that he prefers not to use to save his people from that "humanitarian disaster" he's so bent out of shape about. As Kushner reminds us, in 2002, Salam Fayyad, who then served as the PA's finance minister, set up the Palestinian Investment Fund (PIF) in an attempt to prevent Arafat from absconding with all the PA's money. At least $700m. should still be deposited in the PIF which had been valued at $1b. in recent months.
Abbas, who bemoans the poor Palestinian doctors and teachers that have not received their March salaries, decided last summer - against the expressed warnings of the International Monetary Fund - to give significant pay increases to the PA's employees. Civil servants were given raises of some 15-20 percent and militia members were given raises of 30%-40%. Kushner notes that at the time of Arafat's death in November 2004, his grieving widow Suha refused to unplug his respirator until Abbas and the PA prime minister Ahmed Qurei agreed to her demands for a significant cut of her husband's personal wealth which was assessed at some $3.1b. Apparently it hasn't occurred to anyone that Arafat might have liked to use that money to avert a "humanitarian disaster" among his beloved people.
EVEN WITHOUT Kushner's data, the Palestinians themselves demonstrated this week their contempt for the West and its "humanitarians" who concern themselves with the Palestinians' dire financial straits. On Wednesday, the PA deployed its newest 3,000-man militia. The militia, comprised mainly of Hamas terror operatives and operatives from the Popular Resistance Committees made up of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah terrorists, made its first appearance in Gaza. Its troops were all decked out in new uniforms and shiny rifles...
[h/t: mal]