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news report
 Monday March 10, 2003 08:28 by Avi H.
 Arafat - One of the World's Richest Leaders The Palestinian leader has more than Israeli tanks to worry about. Frozen out by the Bush Administration and hemmed in by the Israeli military, Yasir Arafat is now facing a new threat: the cutoff of funds from his very own Palestinian Authority. Financial reforms might succeed in hampering the flow of money to terrorists--might even end up toppling Arafat himself. Money keeps Arafat in power. With a tight grip on much of the $5.5 billion in international aid that has flowed into the PA since 1994, he appears to have overseen virtually all disbursements, from $600 payments to alleged terrorists and $1,500 in "tuition" for security officers, to $10 million, reportedly paid by a company controlled by friends of Arafat, for a 50-ton shipment of weapons from Iran. Take the money out of his hands, reform a corrupt financial system and you could reduce the violence. That's the thinking of U.S. and European officials who insisted on the appointment of a new finance minister for the PA. Salam Fayyad, 50, is the chain-smoking Palestinian technocrat armed with little more than a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Texas who got the finance job last June. Israel has responded by resuming the transfer of $30 million or more per month in tax revenues to the PA, disbursements that were frozen in December 2000 following an outbreak of terrorist bombings. Israel may even release the $500 million-plus that piled up during the freeze. "I am here to tell you it's not Arafat's money anymore," says Fayyad, sitting in his office in Ramallah, three miles from the Arafat base that Israeli tanks have all but destroyed. A portrait of the Palestinian leader looms above him. "I'm not going to accept anything but total transparency." He is using standard accounting to take control of the PA's mysterious finances and open them up for all to see. Arafat's three main sources of cash: foreign aid, Israeli tax transfers and profits from PA-controlled companies. Fayyad's first move was to consolidate the PA's funds into a single treasury account under his control. That change ended the autonomy wielded by ministerial fiefs that were free to collect their own revenues and redistribute the funds as they saw fit. It amounts to a direct attack on Arafat's elaborate patronage system, which ensures the loyalty of the Palestinians' fractious factions. "He is always ready to pull money out of his pocket to buy people," says Said Aburish, an Arafat biographer. An Israeli intelligence report pegs Arafat's personal holdings at $1.3 billion (a claim dubbed "ridiculous" by the Arafat camp), but Israeli officials say Arafat uses his largesse mainly to buy friendships. "Until the last six months PA money was a power instrument for Arafat," says Eran Lerman, a retired colonel in Israel's military intelligence. "Calling what Fayyad is doing a threat to Arafat is an understatement." Fayyad, for his part, dismisses any such notion. Arafat, he says, "is the person who appointed me, and I am confident in a few months we will have one of the most accountable systems around." In late December Fayyad took another step toward that goal. He submitted the first publicly disclosed PA budget, a $1.3 billion plan approved by the Palestinian Legislative Council. Auditing of the spending is being supervised by Ernst & Young, hired by the United Nations, and Deloitte & Touche, hired by the U.S. His latest move: the February delivery of the first meaningful annual report, conducted by Standard & Poor's, on the finances of ten PA-owned businesses once controlled by Arafat. Fayyad has lumped these and other interests together in the Palestine Investment Fund, of which he now is chairman, though the fund is managed by Arafat's trusted financial adviser, Mohammed Rachid. The businesses include a 23% stake in the Jericho casino (worth $28.5 million) and 20% of a Tunisian telecom company ($50 million), as well as a $55 million firm that controls most of the cement imported into the territories and 13 accounts holding an estimated $73 million. At Fayyad's behest S&P is now valuing the fund's other 50 or so holdings, including a gasoline monopoly that is believed to net $1 million a month. Israeli officials began releasing tax proceeds in July, beginning with a trickle of $14 million payments, rising to $58 million in February. The money, which is deposited into the central account Fayyad controls, includes excise taxes of up to $8 million a month collected by Israel on oil sold to Palestinian-controlled areas. The oil-tax collections--some $500 million from 1996 to 2000--previously flowed into a separate account controlled by Arafat and Rachid. |
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Comments (23 of 23)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has rejected as "despicable political libel" the allegation that he received an improper $1.5 million loan.
He told reporters that he would "refute this libel with documents and with facts".
The liberal Israeli daily Ha'aretz has alleged that the prime minister and his sons received the loan to cover debts from Mr Sharon's campaign for leadership of his Likud party in 1999.
" I was very happy to help - it's what anybody would do for a friend "
Cyril Kern
Businessman
I don't think verbal abuse is a very persuasive argument. I have just as much right to post things here as you do. This is a democratic forum, after all, dedicated to free speech, supposedly. If you don't like my viewpoint, that is your problem, but I would certainly suggest that you express your views more skillfully and intelligently. Doing otherwise only undermines your case (if you have one).
Was the impetus for this new approach to European and EU associated Mediterean funding of the Palestinian Authority linked in any way to the destruction of more than 2 billion € worth of infrastructural investment collateral by the Israeli army?
this is a summary of the Jan 14 2003 PLA london conference updated 10 March 2003.
http://www.pna.gov.ps/details.asp?subject_id=302
and a list of all investment stuff like roads, airport I do remember one airport a €paid airport, schools, and once upon a time there were plans for a rapid transit system.
look at the Palestinian Authority Statistics
www.pcbs.org
Avi, do you think ending the funding of Palestine will make the schools come back? and the hospitals? and the airport?
Avi have you ever been to Tunisia? Did you know that Tunisia has the best, oh dear, the only underground rapid transit system. "The envy" of many arabic and african urban planners?
SHALOM = SALEEM
neither of these words means sheckel, dollar or Euro.
You make your point about verbal abuse Avi, but you seem to have no answer when it comes to Mr. Sharon's illegal activities. Do you suffer from selective blindness?
You seem also more than willing to use Nazi revisionism or other extreme postings as a cover for your own agenda dismissing all opposition to the Israeli governments policies as Nazi/ant-Semitic/anti-Israeli etc.
I suggest contrary to your view that it is both valid and reasonable to be against the Israeli government without being either anti-Semitic or against the state of Israel per se, as I am.
dear dear Avi, if this is the best you can do in the way of propagandising for israel. so arafat is a gangster, lets kill a few hundred palestinians, or a few thousand, or better yet lets climb into bed with pat robertson and his christian outfit who, like your new govt partners moledet, endorse the idea of ethnic cleansing of palestinians opening the way for the building of the third temple and the conversion of the jews to christianity. unbelievable but true, meaning of course that your biggest pals in america are down with the program as a means of getting rid of judaism once and for all. arafats appalling corruption pales in comparison.
less seriously israels consistent policy of removing by assasination or imprisonment any real opponent to arafat has insured his enduring domination of the plo for the past 30 years. marwan barghoutti is but the most recent example, a straight shooter, fluent in arabic hebrew and english and extremely popular leader of the first intifada, an outspoken opponent of targeting civilians and of arafat, in fact he has been denouncing arafats corruption for many years more than your mossad sources. yet he has effectively been dissapeared by the gangster state of israel since he made an international mockery of his own show trial there some months ago.
arafat is a clown and utterly useless as a leader, he is interested primarily in his own power and survival and worse still, he serves the interests of israel more than those of the palestinians with his dissembling and incoherence. there is a story, only half in jest, that is whispered in the west bank that arafat is, shhh, jewish.
As usual any sign of opposition and Avi is off to the next rebuttal opportunity. A bit like the US and UK really, always looking for the quick fix with no interest in the long term.
Maybe he should change his moniker from Avi to ADD!?
Funny for much of HIS life " King " Abdulla the 1st was so short of money he kept asking the Brits to help him out .
He even wanted Jewish settlements in Trans Jordan in the 1930 s and 1940s as he wanted to see how the desert could bloom with land under irrigation as the kibbutzim ahd done .
Meanwhile King Hussein in less than 40 years managed to accumulate homes in 4 or 5 overseas sites and a few palaces in trans Jordan --so where did he get his dough from ?. We know he used it to procure women whenever he was away from Amman but whose taxes did he use ? Was it the taxes from the West Bank Arabs when he ran the place from 1948 until 1967 ? Lanzarote was a favourite hunting ground of his -for birds . Many stories have ben told of his efforts in the beat hotel In Cosat del Guisee there with his official procurer wandering rund the grounds looking out for talent .
So is ut the taxes from West bank Arbs which Arafart has put in his own pocket ?
So Arafarts wife is still in Gay Paree spending his dosh and he is holed up in his hell hole and the Arabs are the only refugees who dont seek asylum on these shores or dont get settled anywhere . They are the only ones who increase in numbers --they never die -just get born . They never settle or asimilate with others. What is going on ? He has got the dough -who has the bread ? How come no one has resettled them ? How come " his people " suffer and he has all this dough stassed away ?
About time some one sorted the so and so out --some one like Osama the holy might do the trick .
Tabloid exposes should be sent to the mirror or the sun mr. "half-baked" pretzel .. your posting adds nothing to the already dubious posting of mr. avi "Attention-Defecit Disorder" harari ... come back when you've got something of substance (not what you've obviously been snorting up your nose) to contribute!
Part of the problem is that the Palestinians are completely incapable of governing themselves.
Arafat's method is simply to hand out cash to all and sundry, basically bribery and sod any ideas of laws or a constitution. Everyone around him is a yes man, being bribed with $40,000 a month or whatever.
Even the new appointee to the office of prime minister, Abu Mazen, is a guy who got his PHD in Moscow writing a thesis that denies the holocaust. In any case, he will prove nothing more than a puppet, as Arafat is unlikely to give him real power.
So, there are no free elections, no rule of law. There is no economy to speak of. Most of the Arabs in Israel were drawn there during the last century because of the employment opportunities offered by the Jews, who, unlike them, are a people of high energy. Therefore, like the geniuses that they are, the Palestinians decided to bite the hand that fed them and launched the Intifada. Lo and behold, after they were murdering Jews right left and centre, the Jews locked them out of Israel, which was where they all went to work. Now, they are poor and live on handouts from the World Bank, the EU etc. Hello??
So, they can't govern themselves, they have no independent economy, they brainwash their kids with racist hatred - all of which is well documented. In fact, they are such losers that they can't even take responsibility for their own mess: they have to blame it on us. They feel such rage and shame, because the comparison with Israel is so unfavourable: the country of the Jews is one of the most technologically advanced in the world, while the Palestinian Arabs live in slums under the tyranny of gangs - Hamas, Hezbollah, Fatah, etc. What a bunch of also-rans the Palestinians are.
"The Palestinians are completely incapable of governing themselves."
This has to be the most blatantly patronising, untrue and racist statement that has appeared on indymedia in a long time. Avi, I could easily argue that the dumb fucking Americans are incapable of governing themselves, but I wouldn't dare, because I believe in democracy and freedom and, believe it or not, democracy and freedom means governing yourself.
Also, Arafat was elected freely, whether you and your murderous Zionist friends admit it or not.
"Most of the Arabs in Israel were drawn there during the last century because of the employment opportunities offered by the Jews, who, unlike them, are a people of high energy."
This is another piece of disgusting racist propaganda that has no basis in truth. The Palestinians - and indeed Arabs in general - are considered among the best construction workers in the world.
"In fact, they are such losers that they can't even take responsibility for their own mess: they have to blame it on us."
You fucking created the mess, you murder-supporting piece of shit. Anyone with a semblance of intelligence can see that the Israeli occupation, the illegal settlment of Palestinian land, the deliberate destruction of the Palestinian economy, the ongoing humiliation and slaughter of the Palestinian population is the reason why Palestine is a mess. You and your fucking racist countrymen are the reason, Avi, and no amount of bullshit will change that...
Verbal abuse towards a poster discredits any case you might be trying to make. It is not very impressive.
From the National Review online:
Seven years ago, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) made its grand conversion from bloody terrorist outfit to a governing body with ostensibly fair elections. Over 600 international observers, including Carter, gave the process a seal of approval, and newspapers from Berlin to Los Angeles trumpeted the triumph of democracy in the Palestinian territories.
But the Palestinian people were conned — they believed a real election had taken place, and why wouldn't they? Throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip, every wall and every street light had played host to posters with the red, green, black, and white colors of the Palestinian flag, and people walked into voting booths just like people in real democracies do.
There were over 700 candidates from a multitude of parties and slates, and politicians were pressing the flesh on every street corner. Turnout topped 70 percent, and Palestinians honestly believed that they had embarked on a path to true democracy.
But what seemed like a legitimate election was little more than an elaborate charade, a fraud perpetrated on the Palestinian people. The shenanigans started a few months before the international observers set foot in the Middle East.
Much like American primaries, Fatah held internal elections to decide the people to represent the party on the ballot for each given seat. Arafat, however, didn't like the results, so he cast them aside and created his own slate. Come Election Day, most of the "independents" who actually won council seats were Fatah members kicked off the official slate by Arafat.
Several groups, including Peace Watch, noted that Arafat and his minions had, in the months leading up to the election, intimidated political activists, arrested some political opponents, and bribed others to exit races.
Despite heavy-handedness by Arafat in the races for the 88-seat Palestinian National Council (PNC), at least there were real challengers for many of those contests. At the top of the ticket, however, Arafat only faced what could generously be described as token opposition.
The lone person to oppose Arafat on the ballot was a 72-year-old social worker, Samiha Khalil. She shocked the international press with what the New York Times labeled a "surprisingly high" number of votes. Her final, "surprisingly high" tally? 9.3 percent of the vote.
Even if a credible politician had taken on Arafat, however, he would have been unlikely to clear all the hurdles in mounting a serious challenge. Arafat had a stranglehold on the media, one he proved willing to maintain with force when necessary.
In a one-week period shortly before the election, Arafat had more than nine hours of speaking time on television, yet his opponent was never mentioned during those seven days. In response to criticism from foreign journalists, Khalil was finally granted 47 minutes on air at the eleventh hour.
When Arafat didn't have a media outlet in his pocket, he would bully and intimidate editors to get the press coverage he desired. A month before the election, Jerusalem's largest Palestinian newspaper, Al Quds, was told by the PLO to run a story about Arafat's meeting with a Greek Orthodox leader on the front page. On the same morning the story ran on page 8, PLO armed guards arrested Al Quds editor Maher al-Alami, "detaining" him for six days.
Upon his release, al-Alami, who was not the only Palestinian journalist arrested that month by the PLO, unsurprisingly had sharp words about the influence of the man then poised to win the rigged election, noting that "the Palestinian media follow his instructions out of fear."
Fear is a tactic well-known and long-employed by Arafat. "Arafat has a long history of using violence and the threat of violence to beat back perceived threats to his leadership of the PLO and now the PA," says Jim Phillips, Mideast policy expert for the Heritage Foundation.
That an older woman who could barely attract handfuls of curious onlookers at her campaign events was the only challenger at the top of the ticket should come as no surprise. Someone with an actual chance of garnering public support likely would have faced reprisals, including arrest, torture, or worse.
Former CIA director Jim Woolsey dismisses claims that Arafat was democratically elected, quipping, "Arafat was essentially elected the same way Stalin was, but not nearly as democratically as Hitler, who at least had actual opponents."
Given that potential opponents were intimidated or bribed to drop out of races, Arafat dominated television airtime, and there was only token opposition in the campaign for chairman, the natural assumption would be that the international observers would expose the election for the sham that it was. That assumption would be sadly mistaken.
I will continue to abuse you for as long as I like because your hatred for Arabs is disgusting. Your horrible fucking murderous homeland is the reason why the Middle East is a powder-keg. Your fucking scumbag Zionist rulers are among the most despicable human beings ever to grace this shitty planet and, frankly, I have had enough of reading the hate-filled muck that you continue to propagate on this website. If you were here in person I'd kick your fucking Zionist teeth in. Is that abusive enough, you fascist fucker?
You and your ilk robbed the Palestinian people of their land, their wealth and their dignity. You and your ilk are colonisers, you set up in a foreign land, massacre the native Arabs, continually push your boundaries into territory that is not yours, occupy land that is not yours, you victimise people who live in refugee camps, blowing up their meagre homes and the only belongings they have in this entire world. The Zionist State is a fucking embarassment to the notion of humanity, a state that assassinates Palestinian politicians, that deliberately impoverishes men, women and children because their sons or their fathers or their brothers were so driven to desperation that they blew themselves up while fighting back in the only way they know how.
Fuck you Avi. Fuck you very much. May you be sodomised by an elephant (repeatedly).
Your posting is a trail of lies and Zionazi propaganda as your previous efforts have been. I find it laughable to see you playing the anti-Semitic card when you hold such racist views yourself ... shame on you!
The Palestinians were subjected to foreign domination by the Turks and the British before the Israelis so your assertion that they cannot govern themselves has no basis in fact ... they have never had the opportunity.
Your own criminal mass-murdering friend and Sharon hands out favours to all of his minority parties to placate them. This is simply a more sophisticated form of bribery.
Abu who? Who cares? His PhD is of no relevance and will end up in the dustbin where it belongs along with a legion of worthless Zionist PhDs before it!
As for your assertion that Arabs came to Israel to live as second class citizens and work in menial positions it is frankly, rubbish. The Jews were a tiny minority (<10%) as recently as 1917 http://www.pcbs.org/english/phc_97/phc_hist.htm.
Finally when they had had enough of Sharon and his colleagues they decided to bite the Zionazi hand that oppresses them!
Finally the only reason Israel is so technologically "advanced" is that the technology is imported and subsidised, not a function of your own efforts. Ireland by the way is much the same.
What you are very anvanced in is in torture, ethnic cleansing, assassination, bombing your own populace as Saddam does, ignoring UN resolutions and developing banned weapons of mass distruction and best of all manipulating the media to make Israel seem like the victim!
Verbal abuse is a fundamentally fascist reaction. It discredits anyone who engages in it. Zionazi is a term of abuse. Intelligent, truly open-minded readers will draw their own conclusions accordingly.
Verbal abuse is a fundamentally fascist reaction. It discredits anyone who engages in it. Zionazi is a term of abuse. Intelligent, truly open-minded readers will draw their own conclusions accordingly.
Avi I have yet to see any sensible posting from you and any contestation of your "work" predictably ends in a denunciation of being ant-semitic, anti-Israeli or facist.
You assume this lets you off the hook. It doesn't!
The way your government is behaving in rounding up Palestinians and putting them into concentration camps in the West bank and Gaza is Facist, Nazi or Zionazi take your pick!
Obviously there are many sane Israelis who do not agree with these policies and I'm sure they find you and your opinions as detestable as I. You personaly are obviously not one of them and are a racist given your postings and a thug seeking legitimacy and hiding behind the veil of anti-semitic accusations when it suits you.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the Palestinians: they are human beings, just like the rest of us, and perfectly capable in theory of scaling the heights of human endeavour. The problem lies with their collective culture, which, being very backward, holds them back.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the Palestinians: they are human beings, just like the rest of us, and perfectly capable in theory of scaling the heights of human endeavour. The problem lies with their collective culture, which, being very backward, holds them back.
avis racism reminds me that the origins of Zionism are the german romantic tradition of which nazism is also a descendant. his paranoia reinforces the idea that the intelectual defense of israel, concieved and realised as a racist utopia, can only be achieved at the cost of serious mental disease. the middle east is changing fast and as an important site of imperial planning its days are numbered, 30 or perhaps 40 years worth of oil left there by which time oil will have been superceeded by other energy sources. Israel will become a footnote, under the weight of its internal (only 70-75% of the population are jewish and this number is dropping fast) contradictions, nevermind the external ones, israel cannot survive as it is presently constituted. Sharon and his gangs realise this and so believe in getting the best possible arrangement militarily, but there is nothing they can achieve within their sordid military zionism that will put off the inevitable, that israel constitued as a jewish supremacist state cannot survive. if the population of israel dont come up with some other demovcratic solution the country and idea of it will dissapear.
Avi, one minute the Palestinians are human beings and the next minute wild animals, which is it?
If it is the former then I am glad that there is some humanity in you, and hence some hope that you might see the error in the Israeli governments policies vis-a-vis the Palestinians.
I live in hope of a peaceful future and coexistence as do the great majority of the Palestinian people.
Strangely enough, I don't happen to engage in personal abuse and slander of other contributors just because I don't like their opinions, unlike some...
On the subject of co-existence, there is no evidence to support the idea that the majority of Palestinians want to live peacefully with the Jews. In fact, quite the opposite: A public opinion poll recently conducted by the Palestinian Center for Political and Statistical Research shows that the vast majority of Arabs living under PLO-rule support terror activities against Israel. More than 50 percent of those surveyed said they support terror against civilians within pre-1967 Israel. The results of the poll were published on September 15 in the Palestinian daily Al-Ayam. If any of you speak Arabic, you could read it for yourselves.