The corrupt leadership of Palestine

[Guest Frank Zappa Mask]

from www.detroitnews.com

 

Palestinian anger builds over leaders' alleged corruption

Officials are afraid full rebellion may erupt

 

By Mary Curtius / Los Angeles Times

 

 

Brian Walski / Los Angeles Times

 

Ziad abu Amr, a Palestinian legislator, says Palestinians are fed up with seeing officials abuse their leadership positions.

 

JERICHO, West Bank -- Tucked away on a quiet side street, the sand-colored mansion built two years ago by Ahmed Korei, speaker of the Palestinian legislature, was meant to be a haven for the busy politician.

Instead, the 12-room home -- with its swimming pool, lush landscaping, privacy wall and guard tower -- became an embarrassing liability. Why, Palestinians began to ask publicly, were senior officials living in luxury while the continuing fight with Israel drove their people deeper into poverty?

Two months ago, Korei, an architect of the 1993 Israeli-Palestinian peace accords, abandoned the Jericho home. He dedicated it, according to the plaque tacked onto the perimeter wall, to Samed Institute, Workshops of the Children of the Martyrs.

Korei, better known as Abu Alaa, is abroad recovering from a heart attack and could not be reached for comment. But a lone guard at the house told a visiting reporter that the building will be remodeled as a vocational school for children of men killed fighting Israel.

Korei's gesture is testimony to the alarm among senior Palestinian officials at the seething anger of a people who are beginning to blame their leaders' alleged corruption and incompetence, and not just Israeli measures, for their misery.

So great is the people's wrath toward their leaders that some Palestinian officials fear that a full-blown rebellion could erupt that will sweep aside Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and the revolutionaries who came with him from exile in 1994 to build a Palestinian state. Some even fear internal assassinations.

No one has produced hard evidence linking any senior Palestinian official directly to corrupt practices. In fact, an investigator for the World Bank said recently that he found the levels of corruption within the Palestinian Authority "no worse than that of other Third World nations."

But the lavish lifestyle of senior officials and the mansions built by Korei, senior negotiator Mahmoud Abbas, security chief Mohammed Dahlan, Social Affairs Minister Intisar Wazir and others are proof enough for many Palestinians that their leaders have enriched their cronies and lined their pockets with money intended for the public coffers.

 

People cry corruption

Many Palestinians now accept as fact allegations that officials take kickbacks and bribes from contractors and have misappropriated funds from Arab states meant to rebuild homes and businesses destroyed by the Israeli army.

"We are poor, we are critical, we are angry, and also we have a cause," said Ziad abu Amr, a Palestinian legislator and academic. "This is a small society, and cases of corruption are highly visible. People believe that we are supposed to be clean, because we are fighting for our rights. So, objectively speaking, in relative terms, our corruption may be less than people think, but it doesn't matter."

Palestinians, Abu Amr said, are fed up with seeing "an official whose salary is $1,000 a month who buys property worth millions. There was a lot of stealing, extortion, bribery."

"Where have the millions gone?" shouted thousands of unemployed workers who poured into the streets of Gaza City in a demonstration against the Palestinian Authority this month. It was a not-so-subtle question about how millions of dollars in aid from Arab countries and the international community have been spent by the authority since fighting erupted in September 2000.

"Soon, the situation will become so dangerous that people will start accusing everybody, including people like me, of being the symbol of destruction, of defeat," said Abbas Zaki, a Palestinian legislator from the West Bank city of Hebron and veteran leader in Arafat's Fatah movement.

This generation of leaders, Palestinian critics charge, has failed dismally both at making peace and at making war.

"For the people, they're finished," said Salah Abdul Shafi, a Gazan economist. "People now even talk about Arafat, and this is completely new."

Abdul Shafi said he worries that unless Arafat institutes the top-to-bottom reforms he has promised, "there will be a wave of internal assassinations." Palestinian ministers, the economist noted, no longer attend the funerals of Palestinians killed in clashes with Israeli troops, "because they are afraid of the people."

 

Arafat openly criticized

Palestinian officials offer little defense against the charges of corruption and mismanagement. Some publicly acknowledge that corruption has been endemic, and now enthusiastically embrace the cause of reform. Some have left government and slipped away from the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the face of growing unrest.

Nabil Amr, the former minister for parliamentary affairs who quit the Cabinet in April, said he left because he was disgusted by the conduct of senior officials.

"The Palestinian Authority made the mistake of distributing jobs as though they were royalties," Amr said. "Everyone from Fatah, everyone who had someone in their family who spent time in Israeli jails or who was martyred demanded jobs. And anyone who did not get a job began to talk about corruption."

Amr and others, including Zaki, now harshly criticize Arafat and the government he built.

At 60, Zaki has lived most of his adult life as a senior Fatah official. His personal history is entwined with the tumultuous history of the Palestine Liberation Organization. He lived through the defeat of Palestinians and other Arab forces in 1967, when Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan, and survived Jordan's bloody expulsion of the PLO from its territory in 1970. He witnessed Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon and its crushing of the PLO infrastructure there.

But "none of them compares with this defeat," Zaki said. "Then, I always felt that I was on the right path. We could understand all the defeats that we suffered outside, because we are not on our soil. But now, we are on our ground and we had enough time to succeed. Instead, we are going back to square one."

[Guest Invader3k]

Oh...Israel should just expell all the Palestinians and send them to countries that actually supposedly want them, like Jordan and Saudi Arabia. It's clear at this point that the Arabs won't accept anything less than the extermination of the Jews from the Middle East.

[Guest Vern Gagne]

The U.S. has had numerous Presidents, Isreal numerous Prime Ministers. Let's see what group has add the same corrupt leader in power the entire time.

If the Palestinians want to keep Arafat in power, than I seriously question how much they want a democracy.

[Guest DrTom]

"So great is the people's wrath toward their leaders that some Palestinian officials fear that a full-blown rebellion could erupt that will sweep aside Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and the revolutionaries who came with him from exile in 1994 to build a Palestinian state. Some even fear internal assassinations."

 

Good. As long as that worthless piece of shit ends up with a few dozen bullets in him, I really don't care who pulls the trigger. There won't be peace between Israel and Palestine as long as Arafat is in power. If the Palestinian people truly want peace, taking out that shithead "leader" of theirs would be a good place to start.

[Guest 4Life]

"So great is the people's wrath toward their leaders that some Palestinian officials fear that a full-blown rebellion could erupt that will sweep aside Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and the revolutionaries who came with him from exile in 1994 to build a Palestinian state. Some even fear internal assassinations."

 

Good. As long as that worthless piece of shit ends up with a few dozen bullets in him, I really don't care who pulls the trigger. There won't be peace between Israel and Palestine as long as Arafat is in power. If the Palestinian people truly want peace, taking out that shithead "leader" of theirs would be a good place to start.

I think both Sharon and Arafat are dirty. Sharon is a war criminal (I know it's hush hush). I hate his guts!

[Guest TheMikeSC]

QUOTE (DrTom @ Jul 23 2002, 03:53 PM)

"So great is the people's wrath toward their leaders that some Palestinian officials fear that a full-blown rebellion could erupt that will sweep aside Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and the revolutionaries who came with him from exile in 1994 to build a Palestinian state. Some even fear internal assassinations."

 

Good. As long as that worthless piece of shit ends up with a few dozen bullets in him, I really don't care who pulls the trigger. There won't be peace between Israel and Palestine as long as Arafat is in power. If the Palestinian people truly want peace, taking out that shithead "leader" of theirs would be a good place to start.

 

I think both Sharon and Arafat are dirty. Sharon is a war criminal (I know it's hush hush). I hate his guts! >>>

 

 

That's nice.

 

Not even close to being relevant to the topic at hand, mind you, but nice.

-=Mike

 

...I hate carrots. I figure irrelevancy must be cool

[Guest Cancer Marney]

I'm just surprised Chris posted this.

[Guest Frank Zappa Mask]

Honey, I'm full of surprises.....