Palestinian Authority: Direct the Heat Toward Israel

Khaled Abu Toameh
Hudson New York
02 March '10

The Palestinian Authority is once again trying to divert attention from its problems at home, and the best way to do this is being escalating tensions with Israel - the Palestinian Authority’s policy since its inception after signing the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993.

To distract attention from charges of financial corruption and embarrassing sexual scandals, the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank has stepped up its anti-Israel rhetoric. Allegations of “ethnic cleansing,” “destruction and desecration of Islamic religious sites,” “apartheid,” “racism,” “land theft” and “conducting medical experiments on Palestinian prisoners” are directed every day toward Israel by Abbas and his top officials and spokesmen.

These charges are often backed up by threats to launch a “third intifada” or to resume suicide bombings against Israel.

Given Abbas’s growing predicament, the likelihood of a new wave of violence in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip seems to be more realistic than ever.

Yasser Arafat was the first to employ this policy to divert attention from the fact that his regime was stealing hundreds of millions of dollars of international aid to the Palestinians. Almost each time that the issue of financial corruption and bad government was raised, Arafat and his aides would step their rhetorical attacks on Israel under various pretexts. The incitement, which in the beginning led to periodic outbursts of violence against Israelis, finally saw the eruption of the second intifada. Now Mahmoud Abbas and his administration in the West Bank are employing the same policy.

In recent months, Abbas has been facing growing criticism from many Palestinians who, on the one hand accuse him of turning a blind eye to corruption in the Palestinian Authority and, on the other hand, denounce him as a “puppet” in the hands of Israel and the US.

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BBC and New York Times Omit Coverage of Palestinian Corruption Story

Steve Stotsky
CAMERA Media Analysis
23 February '10

The Jerusalem Post has published a series of articles relaying accusations by the former head of the Palestinian Authority’s anti-corruption department, Fahmi Shabaneh, that close associates of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas engaged in embezzlement, land theft and fraud. According to Post correspondent Khalid Abu Toameh, Shabaneh possesses numerous documents exposing the theft of government money, much of which comes from foreign donations.

These revelations are only part of the story. An equally troubling aspect of this scandal is the accusation by Shabaneh that he offered his information to foreign journalists and they refused it for fear of offending the Palestinian government. According to the Jerusalem Post story on Feb. 11, 2010, Shabaneh claims he

decided to talk to the Post after Palestinian, Arab and foreign media organizations refused to interview him out of fear of being "punished" by the PA. Shabaneh explained further, "Al-Jazeera and other Arab media outlets told me that they are afraid to publish anything that angers the Palestinian Authority."

Unfortunately, the Arab media is not free to publish what they would like, but the same excuse does not apply to Western journalists. The Jerusalem Post report continues,

Shabaneh said that even some foreign journalists based in the country had refused to publish his statements, citing various pretexts, including fear of retribution by the PA.

"Some of the foreign journalists don’t want to hear negative things about Fatah and Abbas," he said. "That’s why they didn’t want to cooperate with me and why I decided to go to the Post."

Even after the story broke on Jan. 29, 2010, there was nearly total silence about Shabaneh’s accusations. A search of major publications indicates the National Post of Canada was the only western print media to cover the story for nearly two weeks after the Jerusalem Post published the revelations.

(Read full article)
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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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The Fatah fairy tale

Israel's is the only government that can force the rest of the world to recognize that Abbas is not an ally.


Caroline Glick
Column One
20 February '10

Fahmi Shabaneh is an odd candidate for dissident status. Shabaneh is a Jerusalemite who joined the Palestinian Authority’s General Intelligence Service in 1994.

Working for PA head Mahmoud Abbas and GIS commander Tawfik Tirawi, Shabaneh was tasked with investigating Arab Jerusalemites suspected of selling land to Jews. Such sales are a capital offense in the PA. Since 1994 scores of Arabs have been the victims of extrajudicial executions after having been fingered by the likes of Shabaneh.

A few years ago, Abbas and Tirawi gave Shabaneh a new assignment. They put him in charge of a unit responsible for investigating corrupt activities carried out by PA officials. They probably assumed a team player like Shabaneh understood what he was supposed to do.

Just as Abbas’s predecessor, Yasser Arafat, reportedly had full dossiers on all of his underlings and used damning information to keep them loyal to him, so Abbas probably believed that Shabaneh’s information was his to use or ignore as he saw fit.

For a while, Abbas’s faith was well-placed. Shabaneh collected massive amounts of information on senior PA officials detailing their illegal activities. These activities included the theft of hundreds of millions of dollars in international aid; illegal seizure of land and homes; and monetary and sexual extortion of their fellow Palestinians.

Over time, Shabaneh became disillusioned with his boss. Abbas appointed him to his job around the time he was elected PA head in 2005. Abbas ran on an anti-corruption platform. Shabaneh’s information demonstrated that Abbas presided over a criminal syndicate posing as a government. And yet rather than arrest his corrupt, criminal associates, Abbas promoted them.

Abbas continued promoting his corrupt colleagues even after Hamas’s 2006 electoral victory. That win owed to a significant degree to the widespread public revulsion with Fatah’s rampant corruption.

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Fatahgate Fallout: Where are the Media? "Editors Are Not Interested Unless It Has an Anti-Israeli Angle"

Nina Rosenwald
Hudson New York
17 February '10

Jerusalem. The new corruption scandal, first exposed by Khaled Abu Toameh, has rocked the Palestinian Authority and left its leaders in a state of disarray -- But where are the media?

The revelations of Fahmi Shabaneh, the former senior intelligence officer of the Palestinian Authority's Anti-Corruption Department for the past four years, first appeared as a banner headline in the Jerusalem Post on January 29th ("Corruption will let Hamas take W. Bank"), five days before Israel’s Channel 10 TV picked up the story. The station, however, failed to note that its “exclusive scoop” had already been published by Abu Toameh (who also writes for Hudson New York.)

Shabaneh, who lives in East Jersualem, Israel, said he decided to break the story to Abu Toameh after most of the Arab and Western journalists, including those at Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, refused to listen to him. Shabaneh said the journalists cited various reasons, including fear of retribution from the Palestinian Authority; a lack of desire to publish anything that would reflect negatively on the Palestinians; fear of "losing access," and, “Editors are not interested in a story unless it has an anti-Israeli angle.”

Shabaneh presented a written letter, which he had sent to the Al Jazeera bureau in Ramallah: it included an offer to expose cases of corruption among the high echelons of the Palestinian Authority.

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"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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Palestinian Authority: Where the Money Ends Up

Khaled Abu Toameh
Hudson New York
02 February '10

“If the current state of corruption in the Palestinian Authority continues, we will lose the West Bank to Hamas,” said Fahmi Shabaneh, a 49-year-old intelligence official who until recently, headed the "anti-corruption unit" in Mahmoud Abbas's General Intelligence Service. “What happened in the Gaza Strip will repeat itself in the West Bank.”

Shabaneh, who lives in Jerusalem with his wife and five children, is now willing to speak out because, he explains, he has reached the conclusion that Abbas and his authority are not serious about ending the corruption.

The international community, particularly the donor countries, need to ask themselves: How come Hamas’s chances of extending its control from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank remain so high after all the billions of dollars in financial aid that has been poured on Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad?

The Palestinian intelligence official has a clear answer to this question. "But," he continues, “The Americans and the Europeans don’t want to listen to people like me.”

His advice to the US and the EU: “Please don’t give money unconditionally. Yes, the Palestinians need your financial assistance and thanks for your willingness to help, but you must follow up to see where the money ends up.”

Shabaneh says he has evidence that huge sums have been stolen by senior Palestinian officials. “The money hasn’t been going to the right hands and places,” he charged. “Had some of this money been invested for the welfare and prosperity of the Palestinians, we would be in a much better situation today."

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Related: Corruption will allow Hamas to take W. Bank
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‘Corruption will let Hamas take W. Bank'

Dramatic warning delivered by Abbas’s former corruption-buster Fahmi Shabaneh.

Khaled Abu Toameh
JPost
29 January '10

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has surrounded himself with many of the corrupt officials who used to work for his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, and that’s why Hamas will one day take control of the West Bank, Fahmi Shabaneh, who was appointed by Abbas four years ago to root out corruption in the Palestinian Authority, said on Thursday.

In an exclusive interview with The Jerusalem Post, Shabaneh, who until recently was in charge of the Anti-Corruption Department in the PA’s General Intelligence Service (GIS), warned that what happened in the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007, when Hamas managed to overthrow the Fatah-controlled regime, is likely to recur in the West Bank.

“Had it not been for the presence of the Israeli authorities in the West Bank, Hamas would have done what they did in the Gaza Strip,” Shabaneh told the Post. “It’s hard to find people in the West Bank who support the Palestinian Authority. People are fed up with the financial corruption and mismanagement of the Palestinian Authority.”

Shabaneh said that many Palestinians in the West Bank have lost hope that the PA would one day be reformed. “The Palestinian Authority is very corrupt and needs to be overhauled,” he said.

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