Barry Rubin Palestinian Authority Corruption

BARRY RUBIN: CURRENT US POLICY VIS-A-VIS THE PALESTINIANS SABOTAGES IT’S OWN POLICY……..

We must be insane!
The whole idea behind funding your sworn enemies (especially with no strings attached or safeguard mechanisms to ensure exactly where the aid money is going to) has to be one of the biggest blunders in Western history. The amount of money continually dumped into the swamp known as the Palestinian Authority, that is squandered, is staggering.
A Tundra Tabloids reader, Anna, sent the following economic report by the Research Institute in Ramallah’s chairwoman, Dr. Ghania Malhis, which gives a rather bleak picture of the financial fiasco that has resulted from the insane Western policy of “humanitarian aid” money being handed over with no reasonable oversight and accountability whatsoever.
despite the considerable economic help from various institutions of the international community and NGOs – about 20 billion US Dollars over the last 15 years – in her own words “it has been almost impossible to trace any positive impact of these mobilized resources on the ground” and “the GDP of 2009 is 13% lower than the GDP of 1999, and the GDP per capita is 30% lower for the same years”.
While the report states that it doesn’t know where all the money went to, signs of it abound throughout the PA administered areas, where luxurious homes dwarf villages filled with house of squalor-like conditions, and fancy Western automobiles pass people riding on the backs of donkeys. The money can be traced, at least some of it, but due to tribal affiliations and fear of retribution, the trail stops cold.
This is why the statements, claims and campaigns by the many pro-Palestinian activists about the supposed “occupation creating misery and poverty” falls on deafs ears as far as the TT is concerned. In a “Courage to Refuse” seminar, some 6-7 years ago in Helskin, hosted by the the University of Helsinki, the TT was there to ask an important question about corruption, in Yasser Arafat’s PA run regime.
It suffices to say that no one there on the hard Left panel, including the Finnish Greens’ Anne Sinnemäki, (who said she was there to learn) were interested in discussing the issue, other than to slough it off as a ME problem, including Israel’s. But for those of us who know better, it was a mixing of apples with oranges, for there is corruption, and then there is corruption, and at the time, Arafat’s private bank accounts were a taboo subject for the Western media to report on, only until Stinky Arafat died did the media “discover” Arafatian corruption, with over 5 billion unaccounted for.
Here is now Barry Rubin’s timely article that explores the reasons why pumping yet more and more money into the PA which then funnels money into Hamas run Gaza is not a good idea, as well as the need to overthrow Hamas, or at least understanding the good reasons behind doing so, and US policy that effectively works againsts its own best interests. KGS 

A Shocking Secret in Plain Sight: U.S. Policy Sabotages U.S. Policy

U.S. Deputy Ambassador to the UN Alejandro Wolff made a fairly good speech in the Security Council. But it contained the following remarkable section:
“The Palestinian Authority is, in effect, a lifeline to more than half a million people in Gaza, making sure that PA salaries are paid and social welfare payments are made on time. The PA plans to devote roughly half of its $3.9 billion budget to Gaza in 2010.”
Now it isn’t my job to correct factual mistakes made by U.S. government officials in their speeches. Is half the money the Palestinian Authority (PA) spends, which largely comes from Western donors, going to Gaza where-whatever humanitarian intentions exist-it shores up the Hamas regime? No, that would be around $2 billion. The correct figure in total PA aid for the last year is $500 million.
Still, doing this is the equivalent of sending massive economic assistance to the Taliban government in Afghanistan on the rationale that it is helping poor Afghans. And that this were done while the Taliban was making possible the September 11 attacks on the United States. Essentially, the United States and Europe are (indirectly) subsidizing an Iranian client state.
Oh yes, and it also means that in per capita terms the Hamas domain is one of the largest recipients of Western aid on a per capita basis in the world. Even when corrected to a half-billion dollars that means that Gaza Strip residents get more Western aid per capita than Israel. Israel’s aid all comes from the United States. Most of the money is tied to buying weapons from U.S. companies. In comparison, the money going into Gaza has no strings attached. Of course, it goes to individuals but bolsters the local economy and a lot of it ends up in the pockets of Hamas and its institutions.
In theory, the PA is spending the money to bolster its influence in the Gaza Strip and to retain its popularity there. But it has no power in the area at all and its operations have been either closed down or taken over. The situation is sort of parallel to the Free French under Charles de Gaulle during World War Two receiving U.S. and British money which it then sent in as aid to collaborationist or German-ruled France.

More here.

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