Question. Where are the missing billions of the Palestinian Authority? - by Maurice Hirsch, Adv.

The requirement that the PA adhere to even basic standards of financial transparency is only useful if something is actually done with that information. If the countries that donate considerable aid to the PA do not demand that the PA explain why it squandered billions of shekels of aid - including by providing funding to non-functioning bodies and terrorist organizations - as it cries poverty and begs for aid, then the PA will continue to use and abuse the goodwill of the donor countries. Allowing the PA to continue these practices does nothing to achieve any peace related goal. The opposite is true. When the international donors turn a blind eye to the PA’s obvious abuses, they simply embolden and facilitate the PA to deepen the rifts.

Maurice Hirsch, Adv..
Palestinian Media Watch..
04 November '19..

Since its creation, the Palestinian Authority has received tens of billions of dollars of international aid. Just since 2011, the European Union, the United States, and other countries have provided the PA with hundreds of millions of dollars and euros of aid.

While the PA has constantly complained about its financial difficulties, scrutiny of the PA’s own financial records for the years 2011 - 2018, shows that the PA transferred from its coffers over 7 billion shekels to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), some of which was then given to terrorist organizations. In that same period, the PA also spent over 440 million shekels to fund its non-functioning institutions.

Funding to the PLO and internationally designated terrorist organizations

The PLO, which is also headed by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, is an umbrella organization for several Palestinian groups. The largest and most dominant member is Abbas’ Fatah party. Other members include groups designated as terror organizations by the US and the EU such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Palestinian Liberation Front. PLO members are entitled to and receive funding from the PLO.

While international donors have demanded that the PA show financial transparency, the PLO is not subject to any financial regulation or demands of transparency. Accordingly, it is impossible to know what happens with billions of dollars of donor money the PA has given and continues to give today to the PLO.

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