The Abbas Kleptocracy: Nepotism, Corruption and Its Consequences - by Ziva Dahl

...The West is fixated on creating a Palestinian state no matter how corrupt. Given Abbas’ perfidious dictatorship, such a state is doomed to failure. All indications are that President Obama will reward this reprehensible behavior with a rapid path to statehood. Why is the Abbas kleptocracy illegitimate in the eyes of the Palestinian people, but acceptable in the eyes of Obama and the West?

Ziva Dahl..
The Hill..
15 November '16..

The Abbas family’s corruption is a hot topic in the territories, but not here in the U.S. Tareq Abbas, son of the Palestinian Authority president, is a multi-millionaire owning villas in Amman, a Beirut rooftop pad and a luxury London flat. His older brother, Yasser, has made a fortune from, among other things, his monopoly sale of U.S.-made cigarettes in the Judea and Samaria a.k.a. the West Bank.

Leaked records from a Panamanian law firm show that PA President Mahmoud Abbas and his two sons used power and influence to control the two major Palestinian economic boards (Arab Palestinian Investment Company, Palestinian Investment Fund) and built a West Bank economic empire worth more than $300 million. Abbas’ authoritarian rule has allowed his family’s Falcon consortium to dominate the West Bank’s commerce and labor markets including owning shopping centers, media and insurance companies and distributing food, cigarettes, cosmetics and other consumer items. Falcon touches every aspect of Palestinian commercial life.

These documents, reports from senior Fatah officials and Palestinian social media reveal extensive corruption at the highest levels — the Abbas family and a Palestinian elite manipulating the political and financial systems to benefit themselves at the expense of the people.

The 1993 Oslo Accords established Palestinian self-rule over 98 percent of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza. Since then, the PA received an estimated $25 billion in financial aid from the U.S. and other Western countries, the highest per capita assistance in the world.

Instead of creating the independent and robust civil institutions necessary for good governance, promoting peace with Israel and improving the lives of its people, the billions of dollars of international aid were used to create a corrupt dictatorship focusing on enriching its elites, inciting its people against Israel, advocating terrorism and waging a massive international campaign to demonize, delegitimize and destroy the Jewish State.

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