In Gaza power plant surprising profit generator, Dion Nissenbaum notes that a recent report shows that foreign aid indirectly flows to Mahmoud Abbas’s sons.
The power plant story follows another investigative piece by Entous that examined lucrative US contracts given to the PA president’s sons.
“A review by Reuters of internal U.S. government records about aid programmes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip found that construction and public relations firms managed by Tarek Abbas and Yasser Mahmoud Abbas received over $2 million in contracts and subcontracts since 2005, when their father became president,” according to Reuters.
Now it’s hardly surprising because this is the way that business has always been done in the PA.
Nor is this the only example of Fatah’s corruption that’s been in the news recently.
THE MOST serious scandal involves former PA Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei, who currently heads the Palestinian negotiating team with Israel. According to a document released by PA ambassador to Romania, Adli Sadek, Qurei deposited $3 million of PLO funds into his private bank account.
Though Nissenbaum suggests that corruption is limited to the more “moderate” Fatah, that’s not accurate. As I’ve pointed out before, Hamas takes care of its own well connected people at the expense of the general population. And the Hamas bank will be channeling funds to its own employees.
When someone else is funding your government, the money doesn’t need to be spent wisely. So the PA is always in financial straits despite being the highest per capita recipient of foreign aid. The money doesn’t go to the people it’s supposed to help but to the leaders who have decided that doing well is more important than doing the right thing for their people. Corruption in the PA: it’s a feature not a bug.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
And there is no incentive for the pal leaders to change the status quo like making peace because they will make less money.