UPDATE 10 am Israel time Monday:
No major Palestinian terrorist incidents reported in Israel overnight. Check the israelstreet breaking news ticker in the right hand column for events occurring throughout the day.
TODAY’S BLOG:
Here we go again with the PLO/Palestinian Authority crying wolf for the one millionth time. President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad have been traveling far and wide with hat in hand begging for money from whomever they think might be willing to donate funds to their sinking ship.
The wolf story this week is that the PLO/PA is bankrupt to the point of not being able to pay its “public workers” their full salaries as Ramadan approaches. Each worker has only been paid 60% of his or her salary.
Your humble servant thinks it might be illuminating today to briefly analyze the Palestinian economic situation.
To begin with, the PLO/PA has a bloated payroll of some 149,000 “public officials”, including civil servants, teachers and 28,000 “security officers” such as policemen and bodyguards for Fatah’s elite members. In fact, the PLO/PA is by far the largest employer of Palestinians in Judea and Samaria.
To pay the salaries of these “public officials”, the PLO/PA needs $160,000,000 per month.
Virtually all of this money in the past has come from “donor countries” in the Arabian Gulf–primarily Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates as well as from the European Union (U.S. money is primarily earmarked for infrastructure projects through the Agency of International Development). The PLO/Palestinian Authority takes little to no responsibility whatsoever for generating funds for its own economic survival.
The problem is that the money has dried up. After decades of massive donations to build up the so-called Palestinian economy, there is absolutely nothing to show for it–because most of the money has gone into the pockets of corrupt PLO/PA officials.
The fattest of the corrupt PLO/PA fat cats is Mahmoud Abbas himself. Abbas is noted for his many luxurious homes--this is a picture of his villa in Gaza, seized by Hamas in 2007 but recently returned to him.
None of the Gulf countries is anxious to pour any more money down the Palestinian drain (though Saudi Arabia just agreed to pony up $100 million in “emergency” money for PLO/PA). And as the European monetary crisis grows, so has the European motivation to continue to pay the PLO/PA evaporated. As the donations have dried up, the PLO/PA has borrowed money from Palestinian banks (in other words from their corrupt selves) to the tune of $1.3 billion dollars.
But wait . . . there is one other donor country out there that is always willing to help the “poor victimized” Palestinians. And that country, of course, is Israel.
An unnamed official in the Netanyahu government announced yesterday that Israel is not only giving the Palestinians a 180,000,000 shekel ($45 million) advance to help pay for Palestinian public workers’ salaries at the beginning of Ramadan but is also increasing by 5000 the number of Palestinian workers allowed in Israel.
And why would Israel do this? According to the official: “These gestures were necessary to preserve the Palestinian economy.”
The notion that Israel has a responsibility to “preserve the Palestinian economy” is absurd–and, of course, it is not the Palestinian economy that Israel is preserving, but Mahmoud Abbas and his corrupt cohorts–who are now running neck and neck with Hamas in Palestinian political polls (polls in which the Palestinians identify Mahmoud Abbas as the primary source of the economic problems besetting them).
By the way, according to a PLO/PA official, why is the need so acute now that Ramadan has begun? Because during Ramadan expenses triple with new clothes and toys for children, gifts of money to family and friends, and iftar feasts each family has each night of Ramadan as daily fasts are broken.
The next time you hear about the Palestinians’ critical need for money–consider where the money is going . . . and ask yourself the question: what are the Palestinians doing to improve their own economic situation?
Suggested Reading: click on the following link to read an article written two months ago by Khaled Abu Toameh about the corruption in the PLO/PA (click here).
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