A Subject Always Worth Revisiting: What do Palestinian Arabs think? - by Arnold Roth

...“I think this is just the tip of the iceberg of corruption in the Palestinian Authority, considering that we couldn’t have access to more important information,” said Majdi Abu Zeid, a researcher at the anti-corruption watchdog group Aman. The leaks coincide with a report by Aman finding that the government has improperly filled senior government jobs without advertising them, appointed officials’ relatives to senior posts and refused to disclose budgets of the presidential office and security forces.

The PA Cabinet, presided over by
prime minister Rami Hamdallah in 2017

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
04 June '19..

Knowing what the Palestinian Arabs think - not what their elites say they think or what outside reporters guess their opinions are but what they tell trusted fellow Palestinian Arabs who happen to be professional pollsters about the things they actually believe - is a subject always worth revisiting.

Most of our previous poll-centered posts have been based on the published data of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), headed by Dr. Khalil Shikaki. Click here to go to those previous posts - we started analyzing them in 2011. We do that again below.

But first, stop and note an Associated Press report issued this afternoon that drives home something every Palestinian Arab knows but that gets poorly reported for reasons obvious to anyone who pays attention to the journalistic values that shape reporting of the Palestinian Arab conflict with Israel. (That's not meant as a compliment to reporters or editors.)

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Meanwhile, as Palestinians mark another year of dictatorship and failed leadership - by Khaled Abu Toameh

On April 9, Israelis will again celebrate democracy by voting in a free and democratic election. The Palestinians, meanwhile, will mark another year of dictatorship and failed leadership, and will continue to dream about heading to any ballot box at all.

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
28 February '19..

Israelis are scheduled to head to the ballot boxes on April 9 to vote for a new parliament (Knesset). This will be the fifth general election in Israel since 2006.

The Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, on the other hand, have, since 2006, failed to hold a single election for their parliament, known as the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC).

Since its inception in 1994, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has held only two legislative elections: the first in 1996 and the second in 2006. The PLC is elected for four years only, but political rivalries among Palestinian factions have blocked any agreement on holding the vote on time.

Since 1994, the Palestinians have also held only two presidential elections: the first in 1996 and the second in 2005. Yasser Arafat won the first election with 88.2% of the vote. His only opponent was a Samiha Khalil, a prominent female charity worker, who got only 11.5% of the vote.

Mahmoud Abbas won the second presidential election, which took place on January 9, 2005. After winning 62% of the vote, he was elected to a four-year term as the new president of the PA. The 83-year-old Abbas was one of seven candidates who ran in the election.

Israel has held seven general elections since the establishment of the PA in 1994, and has since elected five prime ministers: Shimon Peres, Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert. The Palestinians, by contrast, have only elected two presidents in the past 25 years: Arafat and Abbas.

At this stage, it seems unclear whether the Palestinians will manage to hold the long-overdue presidential and parliamentary elections. Abbas has just entered his 15th year of his four-year-term, while the Palestinian parliament has been inoperative since 2007, the year Hamas violently seized control of the Gaza Strip.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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The Occupation Causes Palestinian Arabs To Smoke, Have Heart Attacks, Depression... - by Sheri Oz

...So now the occupation is a chronic disease! But chronic corruption on the part of their leadership who steal monies meant for development and infrastructure, that must be our fault too. Quick! Prescribe an antidepressant for the victims of their own leadership and blame Israel!

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
01 August '18..

A study published in the academic journal, Conflict and Health, claims that Israel is to blame for cardiovascular disease (CVD) suffered by Palestinian Arabs in the Palestinian Authority (PA). Doctors interviewed by the authors of this article claimed that smoking, having an unhealthy diet and lack of exercise is due to THE OCCUPATION. Here are a few quotes to show how they make this linkage:

All study participants [12 doctors interviewed] referred to stress and insecurity as the main risk factors for the notable increase of CVD in the West Bank. According to them, stress was related to (a) structural determinants, particularly to the Israeli occupation, with its political instability, lack of freedom of movement and military presence and (b) daily stressors including economic hardship, unemployment and family conflicts.

It is so convenient to blame the Israeli so-called occupation for political instability instead of the civil war raging between Hamas and Fatah, corruption and embezzlement on the part PA leaders, and the fact that Abu Mazen is in the 13th year of his 4-year-term. Easy to blame Israeli checkpoints for lack of freedom without mentioning that there were no checkpoints and very little military interference before PA Arabs started murdering Jews. Easy to blame the occupation for economic hardship and unemployment rather than the PA leadership who do not invest in make-work initiatives or the BDS fools who made sure to close down industries such as Sodastream that had Jewish and Palestinian Arab employees working side by side, sending the Arabs out into the street without work.

Shush! Let us not remind them that the Barkan Industrial Area gives Palestinian Arabs a good paycheck and social benefits. Would not want to endanger their livelihoods.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Surprise! Palestinians continue to prioritize paying terrorists over paying hospital staff. (So does the world, incidentally.) by Elder of Ziyon

...To put this in context, the PLO budgets over $28 million a month to pay both prisoner salaries and and families of "martyrs." They willingly pay 100 times the amount needed for keeping hospitals open - to terrorists.

Elder of Ziyon..
12 February '18..

From Times of Israel:

Shifa Hospital, the largest medical complex in the Gaza Strip, announced on Sunday that it was suspending all surgeries, with the exception of emergency cases, due to a cleaners’ strike over unpaid salaries.

“It has been decided to postpone all scheduled surgeries, including those for patients with tumors,” the hospital said, noting that the decision excluded “life-saving cases.”

The strike, which began on Sunday, threatens patients’ and workers’ lives because of the dangerous accumulation of medical garbage in the hospital, the staff warned.

It was the second time in recent weeks that the hospital cleaners in the Gaza Strip went on strike.

Last month, the cleaners agreed to return to work after the Palestinian Authority government promised to pay them their salaries. However, the government has since paid salaries for only two months, prompting the cleaners to renew their strike.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Marching Their People Towards Yet More Harm and Grief. How Palestinians Silence Palestinians - by Khaled Abu Toameh

...Al-Dayeh is far from the main protagonist here -- although his personal story might make for interesting reading. This is about the silencing of critics. This is about human rights violations perpetrated not only by the Palestinian Authority, but by Hamas as well. This is about how Palestinian leaders continue to march their people towards yet more harm and grief. This is also about the ongoing failure of the international community to note any of the above. Al-Dayeh is just a bit player, then, in a much, much greater dictatorial drama.

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
30 December '17..

Most people probably do not know him by name, but the image of Mohammed Al-Dayeh was a public one for many years. The tough-looking, mustachioed man in military garb served as the trusted bodyguard of former PLO leader Yasser Arafat.

His proximity to Arafat turned Al-Dayeh into one of the most powerful figures in the PLO leadership, especially during the 1990s and 2000s. If you wanted anything from Arafat -- from money to springing your son from prison -- Al-Dayeh was your man.

He was glued to Arafat night and day. He accompanied him on his persistent globe-trotting. You can hardly find a photo of Arafat without Al-Dayeh. Insiders say Arafat "adopted" him after he was orphaned from his parents during the civil war in Lebanon.

Al-Dayeh's fall from grace was rapid once his boss, Arafat, died in 2004. This is typical for dictatorial regimes that are run as a one-man show. Arafat managed the Palestinian Authority (and PLO) as if it were his private fiefdom. When the emperor falls, so do many of those around him, particularly his personal picks.

In the past week, Palestinians were surprised to learn that the man who was an icon of power of the Arafat era was now being held in detention in a Palestinian Authority prison in Ramallah. Reports about the incarceration of Al-Dayeh first appeared on social media, and many Palestinians were convinced that these were just rumors and gossip. How could the man once so loved by Arafat be behind bars? What crime did Al-Dayeh, who holds the rank of "brigadier-general" in the Palestinian Authority, commit? It would have to have been quite a misstep on Al-Dayeh's part.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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The True Enemies of the Palestinians? Like to Guess? - by Bassam Tawil

...Instead of removing Hamas from power, Abbas appears to be moving towards emboldening his Islamist enemies, who continue to denounce him as a "traitor" and "puppet" in the hands of Israel and the US. Even if the new agreement is implemented, Hamas and Abbas's Palestinian Authority will continue to be at each other's throats. Yet the two do have something in common: both are true enemies of the Palestinians, who continue to pay a heavy price for corrupt leaders who only care only for their jobs and bank accounts.

Bassam Tawil..
Gatestone Institute..
20 September '17..

Since 2007, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) have announced at least four "reconciliation" agreements to end their rivalry, which began a year earlier when Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections. This week, under the auspices of the Egyptian authorities, the two rival Palestinian parties announced yet another deal to patch up their differences and achieve "national unity."

The latest agreement between Hamas and the PA requires the Islamist movement to dismantle its shadow government in the Gaza Strip -- known as the Administrative Committee. It was this shadow government that prompted PA President Mahmoud Abbas to impose a number of punitive measures against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, including cutting off salaries to civil servants, forcing thousands of employees into early retirement, halting payments for electricity supplied by Israel and reducing medicine supplies to hospitals in the Gaza Strip.

The Egyptian-engineered "reconciliation" agreement is being described by some Palestinians as a "historic" deal and a "positive development" toward ending the schisms and discord among the Palestinians. But judging from the reactions of Palestinians, the agreement holds little promise. Only the non-skeptical few think that the agreement will differ from all the previous, non-implemented ones.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Palestinians' Real Enemies: Arabs - by Khaled Abu Toameh

...the Palestinian (non)leadership. What has it done to help its people in the Arab countries? Nothing. No Palestinian leader will urge an emergency session of the UN Security Council to expose the ethnic cleansing and killing of Palestinians in Arab countries. No Palestinian leader will demand that the international media and human rights organizations investigate the atrocities perpetrated by Arabs on their Palestinian brethren. We are sure to see more such criminal silence when Abbas meets with the president of the United States.

Nahr al-Bared refugee camp
July 2007

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
17 April '17..

Palestinians living in refugee camps in the Arab world are facing ethnic cleansing, displacement, and death -- but their leaders in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are too busy tearing each other to pieces to notice or even, apparently, care much.

Between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas, it looks as if they are competing for the worst leadership, not the best. Clearly, neither regime gives a damn about the plight of their people in the Arab world.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who is scheduled to visit Washington in the coming weeks for his first meeting with US President Donald Trump, spends most of his time abroad. There is hardly a country in the world that he has not visited since he assumed office in January 2005.

Hamas, for its part, is too occupied with hunting down Palestinians suspected of "collaboration" with Israel, and arming its members as massively as possible for war with Israel, to spend much time on the well-being of the two million people living under its thumb in the Gaza Strip. Hamas does have resources: its money is otherwise designated, however, to digging attack tunnels into Israel and smuggling weapons into the Gaza Strip.

The globetrotting Abbas, treated to red-carpet receptions wherever he shows up, has no time to attend to his miserable people in the Arab countries. Abbas devotes more than 90 percent of his speeches to denunciations of Israel, uttering barely a word about the atrocities committed against his people in Syria, Lebanon, Libya and Iraq. The 82-year-old PA president is, as always, fully preoccupied with political survival.

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Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist, is based in Jerusalem.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Terrorist Aid Hijacking: Learning from the World Vision Case

..."World Vision's failures in Gaza highlight the problems of a multi-billion dollar NGO industry that remains largely unregulated and unexamined. While World Vision is currently the focus of attention following the arrest of El-Halabi and the scale of the allegations, this should be a cautionary moment for many other international aid organizations that have similar operations in Gaza, such as Oxfam, Care, Christian Aid, and UNRWA - the United Nations Relief and Works Agency."

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA..









NGO Monitor August 7, 2016
Terrorist Aid Hijacking and NGO Oversight Failure: Learning from the World Vision Case

On August 4, 2016, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) revealed that Mohammed El-Halabi, manager of the Gaza operations of the international humanitarian NGO World Vision, funneled 60% of the World Vision Gaza budget to the terrorist group Hamas. The Israeli indictment and media reported that these funds were used in the construction of Hamas tunnels, military installations, and other terrorist activities.

In response, Prof. Gerald Steinberg, President of NGO Monitor noted, "To avoid enabling murderous Hamas attacks, and compounding the suffering of people in Gaza, aid groups need to apply surveillance and intelligence technologies, particularly regarding employees and their activities."

NGO Monitor identified World Vision as susceptible to aid diversion in its 2015 book, Filling in the Blanks, concluding that there is "little doubt as to World Vision's willingness to negotiate and coordinate with armed groups. This raises questions as to whether the group would prevent components of its aid from being misappropriated by terrorist organizations, if it felt that taking a stand would jeopardize the organization's ability to continue its operations in a given area."

Failure and the Palestinians’ Homemade Misery - by Evelyn Gordon

...An Israeli withdrawal wouldn’t make Hamas stop stealing cement from its people; it wouldn’t end the PA-Hamas feud over who should pay Palestinian water bills, and it wouldn’t stop the PA from impeding its people’s business activity. Thus, anyone who actually wants to see a functioning Palestinian state emerge would be better off focusing less on an immediate Israeli withdrawal and more on improving Palestinian governance. Otherwise, based on the record of both the PA and Hamas to date, any Palestinian state that did arise would be just another failed Arab state. And another failed Arab state are the last thing the world needs right now.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
07 April '16..

Something truly shocking happened this week: A UN official publicly called out Hamas for “stealing from their own people and adding to the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza.” The shocking part is that someone from the UN actually bothered to comment. Usually, international officials prefer to ignore such malfeasance, lest admitting it undercut their claim that Palestinian suffering is Israel’s fault. Yet exacerbating Palestinian suffering is actually standard practice for both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, as demonstrated by several media reports from the past two weeks alone.

The incident that outraged Nickolay Mladenov, the UN’s special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, came to light last Friday when Israel suspended shipments of cement to Gaza’s private sector. A senior Hamas official had been confiscating sizable portions of those shipments for the organization’s own use – i.e., to build tunnels with which to attack Israel. By seizing cement earmarked for the private sector, Hamas was violating the terms set by international donors, who are funding Gaza’s reconstruction after the Hamas-Israel war of 2014. Moreover, as Mladenov pointed out on Monday, this cement is critically needed to rebuild the houses damaged or destroyed in that war and “to enable much-needed infrastructure and development projects” in impoverished Gaza, where the unemployment rate stood at 38.4 percent in fourth-quarter 2015. Hence, his rare outburst against Hamas.

But the ongoing water crisis in Gaza has not elicited such passion. As Haaretz reporter Amira Hass noted ten days before the cement shipments were suspended, a whopping 95 percent of tap water in Gaza is already undrinkable due to over-pumping. The UN foresees irreversible damage to the aquifer by 2020. As Hass correctly argued, the quickest and cheapest way to solve Gaza’s water shortage would be to buy more water from Israel, but the PA rejects this solution. Instead, it’s working with international donors to build a desalination plant, which won’t be ready for years.

The official reason for this decision is a desire to reduce Palestinian dependence on Israel. But as Hass, who can’t be accused of pro-Israel sentiment, pointed out, the PA “has no problem buying more water from Israel for the West Bank – 50 million cubic meters annually, double what is specified in the Oslo Accords.” Therefore, she wrote, the PA’s real reason apparently lies elsewhere:

It fears that the Hamas government will not bother to pay the water bills, as has happened with the electricity bill. Israel will then deduct what is owed directly from the customs duties it collects for the PA and transfers to Ramallah. Once again, the Palestinian people are trapped by the Fatah-Hamas feud.

In short, Gaza is suffering a completely preventable humanitarian crisis because the Palestinians’ two rival governments can’t agree on who should pay for more water. Yet the international silence has been deafening.

Great Question! Who Is Stealing Palestinian Land?

...The lands that once housed Jewish settlements were supposed to transform the Gaza Strip into the Middle East's Singapore. Instead, all the grandiose and ambitious plans went right down the drain when Hamas seized control over the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007. Since then, the entire Gaza Strip has been transformed into a base for various Islamist groups. In addition to suppressing and intimidating the local population, these groups, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other jihadi militias, have used the Gaza Strip to launch terror attacks against Israel and threaten Egypt's national security on the other side of the border.

At least they agree on one thing: Confiscating land.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (right) 
shakes hands with Hamas's leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh,
 during negotiations in 2007 for a short-lived unity 
government. (Image source: Palestinian Press Office)

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
04 December '15..

The beleaguered Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas, has found an original way to solve its financial crisis. The movement is now planning to pay its unpaid civil servants with former Israeli settlement land in the Gaza Strip.

Abandoned by Israel in 2005 as part of the "disengagement" from the Gaza Strip, the land was supposed to provide a solution to the severe housing crisis in the Palestinian-controlled area. Back then, there was much talk about building new housing projects for thousands of Palestinian families in the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli "disengagement" prompted some oil-rich Arab countries to propose plans to help solve the severe housing crisis in the Gaza Strip. The lands that once housed Jewish settlements were supposed to transform the Gaza Strip into the Middle East's Singapore.

Instead, all the grandiose and ambitious plans went right down the drain when Hamas seized control over the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007. Since then, the entire Gaza Strip has been transformed into a base for various Islamist groups. In addition to suppressing and intimidating the local population, these groups, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other jihadi militias, have used the Gaza Strip to launch terror attacks against Israel and threaten Egypt's national security on the other side of the border.

The Palestinian Authority (PA), which was ousted from the Gaza Strip by Hamas, has since failed to provide any kind of assistance to the 1.8 million Palestinians living there. Today, it is clear that the PA's chances of returning to the Gaza Strip are zero. The Palestinian Authority is, in fact, lucky still to be in power in the West Bank.

Were it not for the presence of the Israel Defense Forces in the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority would have collapsed long ago and Hamas leaders would be sitting today in the office of PA President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah.

Several attempts during the past few years to end the dispute between Abbas's ruling Fatah faction and Hamas have failed to bridge the wide gap between the two parties. For now, it appears that Palestinians will have to live, for many more years, with the reality that they have two separate states -- one in the West Bank and another in the Gaza Strip.

The cheque for Gaza is in the mail, or whatever

...Not for the first time, it's evident that the death and mayhem that results from Islamist hatred and jihad has cash at its heart. And what of the rights, the interests, the well-being of the Gazans? We estimate they rank about as high up the ladder of Arab concern as the safety and security of the Syrians, the Iraqis and the Libyans and the countries they lived in until mind-numbingly vicious Arab-on-Arab savagery descended upon them.

The headline from Aljazeera's coverage of 
the October 2014 donor conference in
Cairo posed a question to which we
now have the answer [Image Source]

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
27 May '15..

Money, who has it and who does not, the corruption that accompanies it, and the frequent silliness of those providing it, plays a key role in the terrorism that has long been at the heart of the Arab/Israel conflict.

Exactly half a year ago, we wrote ["23-Nov-14: Gaza's wealth and where it is - and is not - going"] that Hamas had emerged as the world's second wealthiest terror organization; its annual income is on the order of a billion US dollars.

Along with the wealth controlled by the organization itself, its kleptocratic, blood-stained leadership [details here: "27-Jul-14: Gaza's death toll keeps rising but for Hamas insiders it's all worth it"] has made out like thieves - in particular Mousa Abu Marzouk and Khaled Mashaal who despite their lowly origins are generally reckoned today to be personal billionaires. As we said last November, invoking one of the world's wealthiest despots, Arafat would have admired their cynical brazenness.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter, 
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(Update) Gaza cement being diverted to black market - and taxed by Hamas

...These articles also make clear that cement that is supposed to be earmarked for specific projects have already been diverted, as they talk about cement traders and private buyers who are selling and buying cement. The UN mechanism to control the distribution of cement is clearly failing.

Elder of Ziyon..
03 December '14..

You know how all the cement that is being imported to Gaza is supposed to be used only for specific international projects? How the UN says it created a mechanism ensuring that the cement will not be diverted?

Yesterday, Gaza journalist Hazem Balousha tweeted this:

Yesterday, 600 tons of cement were sent into Gaza. Assuming that Balousha is telling the truth, here's where some of it ended up.

(Continue)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter, 
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Palestinian Corruption, Refugees and the "Death Boats" Scandal

...As the past few weeks have shown, hundreds, if not thousands, of Palestinians would rather risk their lives at sea than live under Palestinian governments and leaders whose only goal is to enrich their bank accounts.

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
27 September '14..

Over the past few weeks, dozens of Palestinian immigrants from the Gaza Strip have been killed or injured while trying to reach Europe by sea.

At least 500 Palestinians have gone missing after the boats carrying them sank in the sea. Some reports have suggested that rival gangs deliberately sunk the boats. The gangs are fighting for the cash the Palestinians are prepared to pay to leave the Gaza Strip. Palestinians refer to the situation as their "Death Boats" scandal.

The Palestinian immigrants are said to have paid thousands of dollars to Hamas officials and Egyptian smugglers to facilitate the exodus from the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki claimed that each Palestinian paid $1,000 to Hamas personnel at the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. Others are believed to have paid $5,000 each to leave the Gaza Strip.

Malki said that preliminary investigations have revealed that the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have fallen victim to Hamas and Egyptian gangsters who managed to lure them with false promises.

According to various reports, some 13,000 Palestinians have already fled the Gaza Strip to Europe with the help of the gangsters. Most left through Hamas's smuggling tunnels or by bribing its security officials at the Rafah terminal.

Another 25,000 Palestinians from the Gaza Strip have applied to various European countries for immigration.

Although Hamas has denied any connection to the mass exodus, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip revealed that the Islamist movement had set up special offices to register those wishing to start a new life in Europe. They said that Hamas officials are providing the emigrants with forged visas and travel documents to enable them to enter Europe.

For Hamas insiders it's all worth it

...Not for the first time, it's evident that the death and mayhem that results from Islamist hatred and jihad has cash at its heart.

Hamas insiders at 2012 Gaza rally: Things
have been working out surprisingly well
for them; not so great for ordinary Gazans
[Image Source]

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
27 July '14..

An analytical piece with the improbable title "Meet the Hamas billionaires" appeared in Israel's main business newspaper, Globes, on July 24, 2014. It takes a close look at the extraordinary phenomenon of

how much the Hamas leaders, the Arab world's new tycoons, are worth, and how they, born and raised in refugee camps, who raise aloft the cause of their people's welfare, have become so wealthy and reclusive.

Authored by Ella Levy-Weinrib, it is largely based on original research by Dr. Moshe Elad of the Western Galilee Academic College in Acre. His career in the IDF included three decades of senior positions in Judea and Samaria.

Elad's thesis is that the founders of the Hamas terrorist organization accumulated phenomenal personal wealth from tapping into Islamic charitable sources. These initially came from Syria and Saudi Arabia. At a later stage, Iran took a major role that today has been eclipsed by the stupendously-wealthy rulers of Qatar.

He tracks the rise of the personal fortunes of several key Hamas figures.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Check-it out!
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The Package Deal of Palestinian Corruption and Terror

...If the Palestinians are to go on shaking down Western governments for contributions to pay their people for no-work or no-show jobs, they at least need to put a halt to terrorism. Sympathy for Palestinian workers is easy. But so long as the Israeli teenagers remain missing—and with each passing day hope for their safe recovery may be dimming—the West needs to refuse to go on doing business as usual with the corrupt Palestinian bureaucracy that turns a blind eye to, and subsidizes, terror.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
26 June '14..

As the second week of the search for the three Israeli teenagers abducted by Hamas terrorists comes to an end, the announcement of the names of two prime suspects in the kidnapping is all that passes for progress in the search. But while these Hamas operatives are still on the loose, the international community is grappling with what it seems to consider a more important problem: how to pay 42,000 Hamas employees in Gaza.

The 42,000 Hamas workers seem to be the big losers in the Fatah-Hamas unity agreement that put an end to Secretary of State John Kerry’s Middle East peace initiative. The unity deal was motivated in large measure by the fact that the Islamist group has run out of money due to its break with its former Iranian sponsors and the shutting down of smuggling tunnels to Egypt by the military government in Cairo. They hoped the shortfall would be resolved by going into business with their Fatah rivals in control of the Palestinian Authority. The PA, which is subsidized via aid from the European Union and the United States, was supposed to pay the salaries of the 42,000 Hamas government employees. But since the Fatah-run kleptocracy has also been paying the salaries of the workers that it employed in Gaza since the Hamas coup in 2007, it has now said that it can’t afford to pay both them and the Hamas staff.

This both exposes the corruption at the heart of Palestinian governance and also raises some serious questions about how and why the U.S. can go on in its relationship with the PA.

The fact is Fatah governs the West Bank largely by the traditional Tammany Hall tactic of spreading around the wealth. The roster of Palestinians with government jobs of the no-work and the no-show variety is so vast that estimates vary. But no matter what the actual number is, the point is that Fatah uses foreign aid money to support large numbers of West Bank Palestinians in this manner. Hamas played the same game in Gaza before the cash ran out. Neither group cares much about actually using their funds to provide even basic services for Palestinians. The point of jobs that are in the gift of either Fatah or Hamas is to secure political loyalty and all that it entails when you are dealing with organizations that have both “political” and “military” wings.

That fact doesn’t come across in the latest sympathetic piece about life in Gaza from the New York Times. In it, the paper profiles two Gazans. One, a Fatah supporter, has been living the Palestinian version of La Dolce Vita since 2007 as he collected his full salary without ever doing a day’s work in the last seven years. The other, the Hamas supporter, made peanuts and was actually forced to perform some duties while his friends were in power. But now that they’ve run out of money, he’s been plunged back into poverty. The upshot of all this is that the international community needs to step up and give him his old salary back even though the tiny, though overpopulated Gaza Strip does not need two bloated sets of civil servants.

The business of terror and the impact of money-making and power on the search for peace

...That WSJ report prompts us to recall what we wrote here 15 months ago when Schanzer's allegations appeared. We noted how dishonesty and embezzlement on a colossal scale in the Palestinian Authority had not been interred with the dead Arafat, the exhumation of whose body was then also a news item.

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
04 October '13..

Corruption, money and terrorism have always been closely intermingled and nowhere more than in terrorism's Palestinian Arab variant. Illustrating this again, the Wall Street Journal carries an article today by Sohrab Ahmari, entitled "An American Blogger vs. Palestine's First Family".

It opens with this:

In June 2012, Jonathan Schanzer, a vice president at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, wrote online for Foreign Policy magazine about allegations of corruption surrounding the sons of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, Tarek and Yasser... Schanzer had detailed Yasser Abbas' business empire, noting that it includes a monopoly on the distribution of some U.S. cigarette brands in the Palestinian territories; an engineering firm that in 2005 built a sewage system in Hebron with $2 million paid by the U.S. government; the chairmanship of a publicly traded insurance company; and a construction firm that has also received U.S. taxpayer funds... In September 2012, Yasser Abbas filed a libel suit against Schanzer and Foreign Policy. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan tossed out the case last week, concluding that the suit was intended to silence critics...

Schanzer's Foreign Policy article ["The Brothers Abbas | Are the sons of the Palestinian president growing rich off their father's system?", June 5, 2012] is online here.

That WSJ report prompts us to recall what we wrote here 15 months ago when Schanzer's allegations appeared. We noted how dishonesty and embezzlement on a colossal scale in the Palestinian Authority had not been interred with the dead Arafat, the exhumation of whose body was then also a news item. Arafat's widow Suha had for years embodied the brazenness and venality [see our post from May 16, 2012] that characterize the ongoing exploitation by higher-up Palestinian Arabs of those lower down.

Following Arafat, his successor Mahmoud Abbas became the focus of enquiring investigators. Published analysis in July 2012, and no less true today, remind us again of the practical reasons why peace, reconciliation and mutual understanding with the Palestinian Arabs are, and remain, so elusive.

(Continue)

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Gaza and the perils of Arab solidarity

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
02 October '12..

We posted here a few days ago [28-Sep-12: In Gaza, children die and families are outraged; their anger is channeled at Hamas] about the rising tide of anger directed at their Hamas overlords by parts of Gaza's oppressed and under-served population.

Hamas-controlled Gaza is one of the world's most repressive regimes. The levels of fear and intimidation there are well-known to people who come into contact with ordinary Palestinian Arab Gazans, as we heard today from people who interact with Gaza and Gazans every day. The willingness of the 1.7 million population to continue to be cowed and held captive to a messianic-Islamist vision of over-running the hated Israelis and destroying their state at huge cost to the Gazans has limits... Whenever people take to the streets and scream their anger at the Islamist thugs of Hamas, there's hope for some degree of change in the future. [More]

In the past hour, the Bethlehem-based Palestinian news agency Maan has reported on more of the same:

Gaza: 5 hurt as officers remove illegal structures
Published Tuesday October 2, 2012 at 6:31pm

GAZA CITY (Ma’an) – Five people including two police officers and a land authority officer were injured Tuesday in the northern Gaza Strip during clashes between police and locals. Security sources in the Hamas-run government in Gaza told Ma’an that police officers escorted a land authority officer to remove illegal structures erected on public lands. Suddenly, added the sources, locals started to pelt stones at the officers injuring two and a land authority officer moderately.

Spokesman of the Hamas-run ministry of interior Islam Shahwan said police officers were taken by surprise, and they tried their best to convince the stone-throwers to stop. As stones continued, he added, officers fired warning shots into the air and as a result two people were moderately injured. Shahwan said in a statement that police were carrying out its normal duties helping the land authority officers.

He expressed his sorrow for the drastic results asserting that police officers were obliged to do what they did because the citizens insisted to continue to throw stones at them.

Palestinian Authority polls 70% as irreparably corrupt. And in 2nd place...

Hamas's Corruption..

Jonathan Schanzer..
Pundicity/JPost..
24 August '12..



The regional standing of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist faction born in 1987 as a Muslim Brotherhood splinter group, has undoubtedly been buoyed by the meteoric rise of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.

But a potentially bigger factor has been the precipitous decline of its rival, the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority government, led by the secular Fatah faction.

A recent poll indicated that the PA's flat-lining support stems, in part, from the widespread perception (more than 70 percent of those polled) that the longtime leaders of the Palestinian movement have become irreparably corrupt. From allegations of squelching free speech to amassing great personal wealth, the PA has been on the ropes.

But a closer look reveals that – surprisingly – Hamas is not much better in the corruption department. The poll that slams the PA, conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, also found that 57% of Palestinians believe there is widespread corruption in Gaza's institutions, too. Thus, despite the successful electoral campaign in 2006 that promised to clean up corruption, it appears that the Islamist faction that rules Gaza has succumbed to the temptation of financial vice.

As one Gaza businessman told The National, "After the takeover, people thought it might get better if the religious guys were in charge of the money, that security would improve and corruption would end. But they're just as corrupt."

Getting a handle on corruption in Hamas-controlled Gaza is not easy. The de facto government is stingy with its journalist permits. Moreover, there have been reports of journalist crackdowns and rough-ups when reporting casts the Gaza mini-state in a negative light.

Palestinian Corruption Matters and Why

Seth Mandel..
Commentary/Contentions..
11 July '12..



In 2005, an extremely wealthy old friend of Yasir Arafat’s, Munib al-Masri, spoke about the missed opportunities he witnessed during Arafat’s time in power for an article in the Atlantic. Here is what he told the author of that piece, David Samuels:

With three hundred, four hundred million dollars we could have built Palestine in ten years. Waste, waste, waste. I flew over the West Bank in a helicopter with Arafat at the beginning of Oslo, and I told him how easy we could make five, six, seven towns here; we could absorb a lot of people here; and have the right of return for the refugees. If you have good intentions and you say you want to reach a solution, we could do it. I said, if you have money and water, it could be comparable to Israel, this piece of land.

It doesn’t sound like a lot of money, a few hundred million dollars. Yet since that helicopter ride, according to a new Congressional Research Service report, the U.S. has given the Palestinians about $4 billion. They didn’t build the state, as al-Masri hoped.

But as the report indicates, we had our own goals for the money:

Palestinian Corruption and Humanitarian Aid

FreeMiddleEast
24 July '10

The Palestinian Authority is accused of corruption by many but receives more humanitarian aid per capita from the international community than any other country in the world. The billions of dollars that are meant for schools, hospitals and infrastructure have been spent on luxury villas, casinos and payments to terrorists.



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