Love of the Land: Palestinian Authority: Still Stealing "Hundreds of Millions," Hamas Taking Over

Palestinian Authority: Still Stealing "Hundreds of Millions," Hamas Taking Over

Khaled Abu Toameh
Hudson New York
23 February '10

Donor countries have yet to respond to revelations by former Palestinian intelligence official Fahmi Shabaneh that top Palestinian Authority officials are continuing to pocket millions of dollars earmarked for financial aid to the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Shabaneh expressed frustration over the way the international media has been handling his exposures: “Don’t the Americans, Europeans and Arabs care about their money that is being stolen? If they continue to turn a blind eye to the corruption of the Palestinian Authority, Hamas will eventually take over the West Bank the same way they took the Gaza Strip.”

Nearly a month after Shabaneh, who headed the anti-corruption unit in the General Intelligence Service, revealed in an exclusive interview with The Jerusalem Post that some of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s close aides and loyalists had siphoned off hundreds of millions of dollars to private bank accounts, decision-makers in the US and EU continue to bury their heads in the sand.

The foreign media has continued to cover the story as if it were only a “sex scandal” in Abbas’s bureau - a reference to a videotape revealed by Shabaneh showing Rafik Husseini, director of the president’s bureau, naked in a woman’s bedroom.

Following are examples of some of how, according to Shabaneh, international aid to the Palestinians is being “hijacked” by “thieves and thugs in the inner circle of Mahmoud Abbas.”

Thousands of civil servants whose names appear on the payroll of the Palestinian Authority either do not exist or have never reported for work. The Palestinian Authority has more than 150,000 registered civil servants whose salaries are paid by American, European and Arab governments. Shabaneh’s investigations showed that senior officials in the president’s office and the Palestinian Ministry of Finance have been “diverting” millions of dollars of these payments to their private bank accounts every month.

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Love of the Land: Palestinian Authority: Still Stealing "Hundreds of Millions," Hamas Taking Over

Love of the Land: "Fatahgate"

"Fatahgate"

Khaled Abu Toameh
Hudson New York
16 February '10

This is the kind of stuff that drives a young Palestinian man or woman to take a gun or a knife and kill the first Jew he or she meets on the street:

By telling Palestinians that the sex scandal is an Israeli “conspiracy” to weaken Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and force him to make political and territorial concessions, the Palestinian leaders are generating still more hatred among Palestinians against the Jewish state. Only a few dared to demand an inquiry into the sex scandal or cases of financial and administrative corruption revealed by former Palestinian intelligence official, Fahmi Shabaneh.

Blaming Israel and the Jews for everything that goes wrong has long been the accepted norm in the Arab and Islamic world. This is how Arab dictators divert attention from the real problems at home. If the economy in an Arab country is bad, then it’s because of Israel and the Jews. If there is no democracy and stability, then its Israel’s and the Jews’ fault, too.

Rafik Husseini was caught with his pants down in the bedroom of an Arab woman and, of course, it’s the Jews’ fault. Never mind that he was caught red-handed soliciting sex from the woman by members of his own security forces, who also filmed him while he was bad-mouthing Abbas and his predecessor, Yasser Arafat. Instead of responding to the charges made by Shabaneh, the Palestinian Authority rushed to accuse him of “collaboration” with Israel. The official Palestinian version is that the Israeli government had recruited the whistle-blower to incriminate Abbas because of his refusal to return to the negotiating table with Israel.

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Love of the Land: "Fatahgate"