Update from AIJAC

The PA - Reform or Collapse

First, Dan Diker and Khaled Abu Toameh look in detail at the growing signs of Palestinian dissatisfaction with the failure to carry out the political and economic reforms called for in the roadmap and elsewhere, Arafat's role in blocking reform, and attempts to do something more radical to end the lawlessness and corruption which afflicts the lives of Palestinians. This is an important article, and to read it, CLICK HERE.

Next, the Washington Post combines evidence that the PA is in more disarray than ever with evidence that for Arafat and some others, this may be a deliberate strategy. To read all the details, CLICK HERE.

Finally, this piece by Daniel Schwammenthal of the European Wall Street Journal suggests that Europe is helping keep the corrupt terrorist PA in power without reform not only by allowing it redirect aide without accountability, but by also directly funding the PLO. For this valuable article, CLICK HERE.

What Happened to Reform of the Palestinian Authority?

Dan Diker and Khaled Abu Toameh

JERUSALEM ISSUE BRIEF
Vol. 3, No. 20     3 March 200

• According to public opinion polls, Palestinians support an end to rampant corruption and lawlessness, which they increasingly associate with Yasser Arafat. A Palestinian poll released on February 9, 2004, revealed that only 27 percent of the Palestinian public expressed "strong support" for Arafat.
  

• According to Israeli and American assessments, Arafat has engaged in "a willing suspension of control" since 1994, following a strategy of "organized chaos" and playing security forces against one another to prevent any one group from becoming too powerful. As a result, the PA has lost legitimacy in the eyes of the public since it has left the control of Palestinian cities and towns to competing armed militants and terror groups.

• Since Israel's Operation Defensive Shield in the spring of 2002, there has been a growing chorus of criticism of Arafat by Palestinian legislators, academics, and NGO leaders.

• Palestinian reformers have refrained from demanding the complete cessation of violence against Israel. Former U.S. Middle East envoy Dennis Ross noted that Palestinian reformers have not offered any concrete suggestions for tackling the problem of Palestinian terror and incitement.
  

• According to Ramallah banker Omar Ibrahim Karsou, who has called for Arafat's ouster and the replacement of the entire PA leadership, Palestinians want first to regain normalcy in their everyday lives. That means an end to violence, full employment including the possibility of working in Israel, and the ability to travel freely throughout the territories.

Anarchy in Palestinian-Controlled Areas

The latest Palestinian suicide bombings in Jerusalem - one on February 22, 2004, that killed eight Israelis and wounded more than 65 others, and one on January 29, 2004, that killed 11 people and wounded 50 - are the latest indications of the Palestinian Authority's failure to reform its security forces, as called for by President Bush, the Quartet, and the U.S.-backed road map to peace.

These terrorist assaults confirm the current anarchy in the Palestinian-controlled areas and in the PA security forces, in particular. The terrorists in both bombings were members of the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's PLO Fatah faction. The bomber in the January 29 attack, 24-year-old Ali Ja'arah from the PA-controlled city of Bethlehem, was a PA policeman and also a member of Hamas. Arafat's continued control of the Palestinian cabinet, parliament, and security forces has blocked security and political reforms, as well as attempts to create financial transparency in the PA.

Palestinians Support an End to Corruption and Lawlessness

According to public opinion polls, Palestinians support an end to rampant corruption and lawlessness.1 The Palestinian street now believes it has the moral high ground opposite an isolated Arafat and a failed PA, especially after paying the price of 3,000 dead in the "Al Aksa intifada." In an unprecedented move, on February 7, 2004, more than 300 members of Arafat's own Fatah party resigned en masse due to the PA's failure to end official corruption and Arafat's refusal to enact democratic reforms.2 Furthermore, a Palestinian poll released on February 9, 2004, revealed that only 27 percent of the Palestinian public expressed "strong support" for Arafat.3

Palestinian human rights activist Bassem Eid and West Bank reformer Omar Ibrahim Karsou (whose outspoken criticism of Arafat forced him to flee Ramallah in 2001) have even called for the deployment of Jordanian, Egyptian, and Turkish troops to exercise security responsibility for Gaza and parts of the West Bank until a new, more legitimate, and democratic Palestinian leadership emerges.4

One example of what Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie termed "the chaos of weapons" occurred on February 18, 2004, when masked gunmen opened fire at PA Health Minister Jawad Tibi in Jenin.5 In another incident, in early February 2003, members of the PA Preventative Security forces stormed the Gaza City headquarters of the PA civilian police, killing one police officer and wounding 10 others. According to Palestinian sources, the attackers, dispatched by former Minister of Security Mohammed Dahlan, beat up Gaza Police Commissioner Ghazi Jabali for having publicly insulted Dahlan.

Arafat Continues to Undermine PA Reform Attempts

It is well known in Palestinian circles that Arafat was responsible for sabotaging the reformist former PA Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, who resigned in September 2003 after only four months in office. Abbas had committed the Palestinians to ending terrorism as a political tool and implementing full political and financial reform. Yet Arafat employed almost every possible tactic to undermine Abbas and was intent on proving that Washington's attempts to sideline him as PA leader were doomed to fail.

In October 2003, Arafat appointed long-time Fatah loyalist and Palestinian Legislative Council Speaker Ahmed Qurie as prime minister. Arafat also appointed long-time confidant Hakam Balaawi, a novelist and playwright, as interior minister,6 while simultaneously naming himself head of the newly established National Security Council. Balaawi immediately implemented Arafat's decision to re-divide control over PA security forces between different commands in Gaza and the West Bank, thereby erasing all the security reforms that had been previously ordered by Abbas and Dahlan.7

Arafat's Strategy of "Organized Chaos"

According to Israeli and American assessments, Arafat has engaged in "a willing suspension of control" since 1994. As chairman of both the Palestinian Authority and the PLO terror organization, Arafat has played security forces against one another, a move that has prevented any one group from becoming too powerful.8 A West Bank Palestinian who recently lost a family member to factional violence described the PA as a thousand competing authorities each with its own militia.9 As a result, the PA has lost legitimacy in the eyes of the public since it has left the control of Palestinian cities and towns to competing armed militants and terror groups.10

While most Israeli and Western media reports have focused on Palestinian terror and IDF responses, scores of local Palestinians have also been killed by the reigning anarchy. In the city of Nablus, for example, dozens of local residents have been summarily executed as collaborators or have been caught in the deadly crossfire of gang feuds over profitable rackets in stolen cars, drugs, and extortion.11 The PA has neither prosecuted nor arrested any suspects, who continue to roam West Bank streets terrorizing the local population. Despite his declared commitment to the road map, Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie said he has no intention of forcibly uprooting Palestinian terror groups. "We will not confront, we will not go for a civil war," he said.12

Ongoing Corruption Undermines Palestinian Reform

In November 2003, the CBS program "60 Minutes" revealed that Arafat controls a secret portfolio worth at least one billion dollars that has been skimmed from public Palestinian funds since the establishment of the PA in 1993. According to the program, whose meticulous research was assisted by reformist Palestinian Finance Minister Salim Fayad, himself a former IMF official, Arafat maintains secret investments in a Ramallah-based Coca Cola plant, a Tunisian cellphone company, and venture capital funds in the U.S. and the Cayman Islands.13 A BBC investigation the same month revealed that Arafat was distributing $50,000 monthly to hundreds of members of the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade.14 While Fayad nearly resigned on a number of occasions, he has been partially successful in implementing a direct deposit system for paying the salaries of thousands of PA workers, designed to end the system of cash payments by Arafat through which he had wielded much of his power.

Bolder Palestinian Calls for Reform

On January 29, 2004, former Arafat advisor Imad Shakur, writing in the London-based Asharq al-Awsat, blamed Arafat for "failing to govern, and for turning the Palestinian Authority into an amalgam of fronts and militias ruled by extremists."15 Shakur demanded that Arafat end the intifada and disarm terror groups such as the PLO's Tanzim. Shakur's article was reprinted by the PA's main newspaper, Al Ayam, published in Ramallah; in the competing Al Quds, published in Jerusalem; and in the Jordanian newspaper A-Ra'i.16

In fact, since Israel's Operation Defensive Shield in the spring of 2002, there has been a growing chorus of criticism of Arafat by Palestinian legislators, academics, and NGO leaders, including former cabinet minister Abdel Fattah Hamayel, PLC legislator Husam Khader, former Minister of Agriculture Abdel Jawad Saleh, and Mohammed Muqbel, a senior PLO official and director in the Ministry of Sport. A number of these reformers and other Palestinians have been arrested and beaten for their direct criticisms of Arafat and his loyalists in the Palestinian Authority.

Palestinian newspapers have publicized reform efforts, albeit carefully, largely limiting their reporting to coverage of local NGO-sponsored academic seminars on reform. Local Palestinian and Arab reporters are well aware of the dangers of criticizing Arafat and his senior loyalists by name, however, resulting in broad self-censorship. But Palestinian journalists have begun to battle the PA's muzzling of the local press. On February 15, 2004, 200 Palestinian journalists marched into the chamber of the Palestinian Legislative Council in Gaza City and refused to leave until a senior Arafat aide promised to launch an investigation into attacks on Palestinian journalists.17

While some Palestinian leaders have demanded an end to armed militias, Palestinian reformers have refrained from demanding the complete cessation of violence against Israel.18 Former U.S. Middle East envoy Dennis Ross noted that Palestinian reformers have not offered any concrete suggestions for tackling the problem of Palestinian terror and incitement.19 One Washington, D.C.-based Palestinian affairs analyst noted that Palestinian reformers have "disembodied" political violence from their corpus of demands for democratic reforms to maintain credibility with the Palestinian public that largely supports terror actions against Israel.

Ramallah banker Omar Ibrahim Karsou has called for Arafat's ouster and the replacement of the entire PA leadership. According to Karsou, "Arafat's brutal dictatorship, corrupt rule, and use of terror and incitment have prevented a democratic Palestinian state from emerging."20 Karsou is part of a group of West Bankers with strong ties to Jordan who believe that the key to a stable Palestinian government is to replace the Fatah-dominated PLC with a broad-based representative Palestinian leadership stemming from local democratic governing councils in the West Bank and Gaza where there had been strong local leadership before Arafat's arrival in 1994.

Karsou also noted that Israel can do much to advance the interests of local Palestinian leaders like himself by making some magnanimous gestures to assuage the overriding fear among Palestinians that Israel is still interested in annexing the entire West Bank.

According to Karsou, Palestinians want first to regain normalcy in their everyday lives. That means an end to violence, full employment including the possibility of working in Israel, and the ability to travel freely throughout the territories. "Once Palestinians establish and enforce the rule of law and create a new sense of trust with Israel, we can move forward in the democratic nation-building process and negotiate final status issues in due course," he said.21
*     *     *
Notes

1. According to recent Palestinian public opinion polls, 50-80 percent of Palestinians demand an immediate "reorganization of the Palestinian Home." Dr. Khalil Shikaki also made reference to this in a presentation to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in October 2002.
2. Wafa Amr, "Hundreds Resign En-Masse from Arafat's Fatah Group," Reuters, February 7, 2004.
3. Poll no. 120, Palestinian Center for Public Opinion (PCPO), prepared by Dr. Nabil Kukali, February 9, 2004.
4. Bassem Eid, "The Rule of the Thugs," Ha'aretz, January 28, 2004. These comments were reiterated in an interview with Palestinian dissident Omar Ibrahim Karsou, February 3, 2004.
5. Arnon Regular, "Palestinian Health Minister Survives Restaurant Shooting," Ha'aretz, February 18, 2004.
6. Arnon Regular, "Arafat Continues to Divide and Rule the Security Forces," Ha'aretz, November 13, 2003.
7. Regular, "Arafat Continues to Divide."
8. Ehud Yaari, "The Israeli-Palestinian Confrontation: Toward a Divorce," Jerusalem Issue Brief, Vol. 2, Number 2, June 30, 2002. See also Professor Nathan Brown, "The Palestinian Reform Agenda," Peaceworks, U.S. Institute for Peace Studies, Washington, D.C., December 2002, p. 36; http://www.usip.org/pubs/peaceworks/pwks48.html.
9. Mark Heinrich, "Anarchy in Nablus Evokes Disorder of Arafat's Rule," Reuters, February 5, 2004.
10. Eid, "Rule of Thugs."
11. Heinrich, "Anarchy in Nablus."
12. Mohammed Daraghmeh, "Palestinian Security Nominee Refuses Oath," Associated Press, October 7, 2003.
13. Khaled Abu Toameh, "Closing the Books on Arafat," Jerusalem Post, November 13, 2003.
14. Abu Toameh, "Closing the Books."
15. Nazir Majally, "Something Important is Happening in the PA," Ha'aretz, February 6, 2004.
16. Majally, "Something Important."
17. Khaled Abu Toameh, "Arafat Meets the Fourth Estate," Jerusalem Post, February 20, 2004.
18. Brown, "The Palestinian Reform Agenda," p. 39.
19. Dennis Ross, "Requirements for Reform in the Palestinian Authority," Washington Institute for Near East Policy, October 2002.
20. Interview with Omar Ibrahim Karsou, November 29, 2003.
21. Interview with Omar Ibrahim Karsou, February 22, 2004.
*     *     *

Dan Diker is a Knesset and economic affairs reporter for Israel Broadcasting Authority's English News, and media affairs consultant at the Institute for Contemporary Affairs. Khaled Abu Toameh reports on Palestinian affairs for the Jerusalem Post.

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Palestinian Authority Broke and In Disarray

Collapse Is 'Real Possibility'

The PLO's European Paymasters

By DANIEL SCHWAMMENTHAL

Wall Street Journal - Europe, March 2, 2004

Why have five European countries been funding the Palestinian Liberation Organization, an organization that still maintains open links to terrorists? And what types of controls, if any, have been attached to those funds? That's what Nick Lambert, research director at the European Institute for Research on the Middle East, has been trying to find out. He says getting information from the five governments was like "pulling teeth, just less pleasant."

Until now, Palestinian funding scandals have mostly centered on charges that Yasser Arafat and other Palestinian Authority officials have been siphoning off hundreds of millions of euros, possibly from EU donations, to enrich themselves and help finance the more than three-year-old terror campaign against Israel. But the donations Mr. Lambert discovered involve aid from individual European countries on top of the EU's collective funding. And unlike other international support for the Palestinians, which is usually channeled to the PA and can at least claim a modicum of legitimacy, the five European countries are giving their money directly to Arafat's PLO.

According to Mr. Lambert, the U.K., Sweden, Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands have paid at least €20 million to a PLO unit ostensibly devoted to restarting peace negotiations with Israel. Only, far from going to peaceful ends, the PLO unit uses its funds to, among other things, spread anti-Israeli propaganda and stir up sympathy for Palestinian suicide bombers. The same unit has actively worked to further the Palestinian case at the International Court of Justice against Israel's security barrier.

The irony here is that both the EU and Norway (not an EU member) oppose the court's involvement in this case. In effect, the five governments pay the Palestinians to undermine their own official Middle East policy.

The transfers date back to 1998, when the PLO asked the U.K. government for technical and legal support for final-status talks with Israel. Britain's Department for International Development, run until recently by Clare Short (of the U.N.-spy allegations fame), agreed to help create the PLO's Negotiation Support Unit or NSU. The other four countries then also contributed funds. Under Ms. Short, who first supported and then resigned over the Iraq war, Britain became by far the largest donor of the five countries, having given more than €13 million so far.

While supporting the PLO's legal team may have been worth trying in 1998, this can no longer be claimed today. Arafat proved that he didn't negotiate in good faith when he walked away from the Clinton-Barak peace plan in January 2001 and launched the terror campaign that has already claimed thousands of casualties. After the talks collapsed, the parties quickly found a new purpose for the NSU: to "encourage the resumption of permanent-status talks." It defies all logic to believe that funding Arafat, the man responsible for the breakdown of the talks, could in any way resurrect meaningful negotiations. Given reports that Arafat and his cronies are involved in widespread corruption and terrorism, sending checks to the PLO seems particularly reckless.

But even if there is no diversion of funds, the NSU's official job description should give European taxpayers enough reason to question their governments. Part of the money is for the NSU's "Communications Department." According to the organization's Web site, it aims to "inform and influence international opinion . . . to mobilize local and international civil society." European governments spend their taxpayers' money so that the PLO can lobby the same taxpayers for support and more money.

One of the NSU's most prominent spokespersons is Michael Tarazi, Arafat's legal adviser. The Kuwaiti-born, Harvard-educated lawyer is skilled at making the Palestinians' case to a Western audience. But even the soft-spoken Mr. Tarazi has at times called Israel an apartheid state and accused it of having forged documents that link Arafat to terrorism. He has excused suicide bombers and perpetuated the myth that Israelis committed massacres against Palestinian civilians when Israeli troops raided the West Bank town of Jenin in 2002 to root out terrorists (a charge of which Israel was cleared by the U.N.). Mr. Tarazi's new boss at the NSU is no other than Saeb Erekat, the very man who invented the infamous tale about Israeli massacres.

Mr. Tarazi and the equally eloquent Diana Buttu, another lawyer working for the NSU, have also been at the forefront of the propaganda war against the security barrier Israel is building to stop terrorists. The NSU's Stephanie Koury is a member of the Palestinian legal team in The Hague. While the EU is also critical of the barrier, it opposes the court hearing because, as it told the court, it "will not help the efforts of the two parties to relaunch a political dialogue."

Of the five governments, only the U.K. had returned calls, but the answers weren't very reassuring. The International Development Department doesn't monitor the funding itself but says the money is delivered through a contract with Adam Smith International Ltd. (ASI), a government consultancy said to be "accountable" for the use of the funding. Asked about the NSU's support for the court case and how this might compromise the U.K. government's own policy, the ASI's director, Peter Young, said it would be "inappropriate for the British government to dictate the details of the Palestinian position."

In Oslo, the city where Arafat's return from the wilderness was launched more than 10 years ago, I was told that Aud Kolberg, the person handling this particular file, was recently transferred to another job and no successor has been appointed. Repeated attempts to reach Ms. Kolberg were unsuccessful. Sweden has hardly been more forthcoming. Stockholm initially said that information about funding to the PLO was classified, oddly enough given that Sweden prides itself on being one of the world's most transparent countries, where all government documents are public information. After repeated appeals from Mr. Lambert's institute, the Swedish government reversed itself and on Feb. 12 declassified the case, authorized fresh funds for the PLO and provided some but not all answers. Interestingly, the Danish money comes from a special government program to support "Democracy, Good Governance, Rule of Law and Human Rights." If the Danes really want to promote these values, they should talk to one of the 200 Palestinian journalists who earlier this month protested against violent attacks on colleagues who dared to criticize Arafat's corrupt regime.

As long as Europe insists on funneling money to the organs most responsible for keeping Arafat in power and his propaganda machine well-funded, democracy, good governance, the rule of law and human rights will remain alien concepts in the Palestinian territories -- and so will peace with Israel.

Mr. Schwammenthal is an editorial writer at The Wall Street Journal Europe.

Updated March 2, 2004

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Last Updated 9 March, 2004