Over and over again, the meme is repeated: The palestinians are starving. They are living on nothing. They have no food, no medicines, no jobs, no money. The boycott is causing untold misery.
Every single one of those claims is a lie.
Despite the boycott against the government, foreign aid keeps coming. Last year, it even went up, from $1 billion in 2005 to more than $1.2 billion in 2006. But the funds are no longer being sent to a single address, the Finance Ministry.
Instead, the money now goes either to Abbas’ office or directly to civil servants and welfare recipients, bypassing the government. The Hamas-run Finance Ministry handles local revenues, and Cabinet minister have carried $68 million in cash across the Egypt-Gaza border because banks refuse to handle the government’s money transfers.
Look at the bolded words. The palestinians received $200 million more in 2006 than they did in 2005–under the aegis of a terrorist group that openly states its desire to destroy Israel.
What is happening is not that there is no money. What is happening is that again (or still), the money is being channeled into the hands of the terrorists and the kleptocrats that run the Palestinian Authority.
Fayyad said he is determined to restore the single account and end some of the more dubious practices, such as Hamas’ cross-border cash runs. “I will not allow having different channels of revenues and expenditures,” he said. “I will not allow anyone to sabotage the modern system we built.”
What a lie. He has no power to stop the flow of bribery and extortion. He didn’t even truly stop Arafat from stealing billions.
However, some critics say Fayyad did too little to go after those who stole public funds in the Arafat era.
“Salam Fayyad consolidated all Palestinian governmental investments, but he did not tell us about the history of these investments,” said Nasser Abdelkarimm, an economist at Bir Zeit University.
Fayyad says he was focused on making improvements at the Palestinian Treasury at the time, and hoped the guilty would eventually be put on trial.
So what’s this article about? The AP is spinning it as good for the palestinians to have formed the “unity” government so that the boycott can end—because then the palestinians will stop stealing from international aid donations. The writer seemingly has no opinion about ending the boycott only when Hamas meets the requirements of not trying to murder Jews and destroy Israel. No, what’s important is ending the boycott so that the corruption of the palestinians should end.
And so the moral decline of the West continues, led by its anti-Israel media.
The corruption there will never end. That’s the way Arab governments work. Hell that’s the way Israel works, if not so massively as in Arab countries, although they can probably get a better handle on it the less socialism they have.
Fayyad sounds about as close to being a good guy as the Palis are likely to have for the foreseeable future. I’ll bet some Hamas or Fatah thug shoots him. I notice he talks about economic relations with Israel. He must be the only Arab looking forward to those. Most of the Arabs are terrified of the clever Jews tricking them out of all they own if they ever make peace and have normal economic relations with Israel. They are even more afraid of Israel the economic power than they are of Israel the military power.
I did not see in the story where the money is coming from. The EU? Washignton? I hope not. Keep the Palis cut off. If the Wahhabist Entity wants to subsidize the Palis, or if Iran wants to secretly fund their pathologies, fine by me. Every penny they spend on the Palis is one they can’t use for nukes or madrassas in Central Asis. And the Palis will mostly steal the moola anyway.