United Nations Must End Hamas and PLO Stranglehold On Power

[Published 9 September 2016]


The United Nations effort to create a second Arab State in former Palestine — in addition to Jordan — has suffered another death blow following the Palestinian Supreme Court ordering the suspension of local elections in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and the Gaza Strip scheduled for October 8.

No parliamentary elections have been held since the 2006 - which Hamas won — but which the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) refused to accept. A bitter internecine struggle saw Hamas end up governing the Gaza Strip and the PLO controlling areas “A” and “B” in Judea and Samaria.

No Palestinian presidential election has been held since PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas was elected in 2005.

Hamas boycotted the last Palestinian municipal elections in 2012 - but was due to participate this year.

In the absence of a popularly elected Government exercising complete authoritative and legislative control over the Gazan and West Bank Arab populations — any prospects of reaching a binding agreement with Israel in relation to Gaza and Judea and Samaria remains an impossible pipedream.

Both the PLO and Hamas have used the slogan “End the Occupation” to demand that Israel totally withdraw from Area “C” in Judea and Samaria over which Israel exercises complete administrative and security control under the Oslo Accords.

The United Nations has repeatedly reinforced that slogan by maintaining its flawed position that building in Area “C” by Israel is illegal in international law — completely ignoring that Jews have the legal right to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in Judea and Samaria under article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations very own Charter.

The United Nations has allowed the conflict between Hamas and the PLO to career out of control for the last 10 years — allowing Hamas and the PLO to:

1. consolidate their power structures and political dominance within their own separate fiefdoms

2. allow corruption and nepotism to become entrenched and

3. pursue policies of confrontation with Israel that have proved disastrous for their respective long-suffering populations.

The United Nations has failed to insist that elections be held to enable such stranglehold on power to end and allow the people to have their say on who should govern them — the “self-determination” the United Nations has long been demanding but is being denied by Hamas and the PLO.

Ramzy Baroud - editor of PalestineChronicle.com - summed up the hopelessness of the political stalemate between Hamas and the PLO as long ago as 12 November 2013:

“In an initially pointless exercise that lasted nearly an hour, I flipped between two Palestinian television channels, Al Aqsa TV of Hamas in Gaza and Palestine TV of Fatah in the West Bank. While both purported to represent Palestine and the Palestinians, each seemed to represent some other place and some other people. It was all very disappointing.

Hamas’ world is fixated on their hate of Fatah and other factional personal business. Fatah TV is stuck between several worlds of archaic language of phony revolutions, factional rivalry and unmatched self-adoration. The two narratives are growingly alien and will unlikely ever move beyond their immediate sense of self-gratification and utter absurdity.”

Nothing has changed.

These irreconcilable differences between Fatah - the dominant faction in the PLO - and Hamas - not a member of the PLO — are still omnipresent in 2016.

The United Nations should be demanding that Hamas and the PLO end their decade-long occupation of power by allowing their respective populations the right to vote in internationally supervised elections.

“End the occupation” would then become a meaningful metaphor rather than a meaningless signpost that continues to lead to nowhere.

Palestine - Billions In International Donors Funds Go Missing

[Published 20 October 2013]


Billions of euros in European aid to the PLO and Hamas between 2008 and 2012 may have been misspent, squandered or lost to corruption - according to an unpublished report by the European Court of Auditors - a Luxembourg-based watchdog - disclosed in an article appearing in The Sunday Times on 14 October.

Brussels reportedly transferred more than US$2.64 billion to the West Bank and Gaza in that four year period - but had little control over how it was spent - the auditors said in the damning report seen by The Sunday Times.

EU investigators who visited sites in Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank noted “significant shortcomings” in the management of funds sent to Gaza and the West Bank.

These disturbing revelations followed closely on the heels of a report in Ma’an News on 10 October claiming that the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) anti-corruption commission - established in 2010 - was working to retrieve PLO-owned land registered to individual PLO leaders - according to commission chief Rafiq al-Natsheh.

The commission had recovered around 400 dunums of PLO-owned land in 2012 - al-Natsheh told Ma’an.

Natsheh’s remarks were made after comments by him in in the Jordanian newspaper al-Dustour the previous week that PA officials were moving deposits from Jordanian banks to foreign accounts.

“If suspects accused of stealing public money (are moving funds abroad), that falls within our jurisdiction, We will ask these countries to help us restore the stolen public money, Transferring money anywhere (abroad) will not prevent us from calling suspects to account and restoring that money,”

In rare comments on the location of assets belonging to the PLO - al-Natsheh admitted that bank deposits and real estate collected by the PLO dating back to its inception in 1964 had been entrusted to “trustworthy individuals” and had yet to be recovered.

According to al-Natsheh, some of the money and property - which was supposed to be have been deposited into public accounts when the PA government was established in 1994 - still remains in private hands.

Any possibility of an embedded culture of corruption on a grand scale within the PLO and Hamas - as alleged in these news reports - could well be influencing any reconciliation between the PLO and Hamas who themselves have been locked in an internecine power struggle since 2007 creating two separate fiefdoms where corruption easily flourishes - ensuring that the continuing plunder of large injections of international donor funds will always trump any efforts at reconciliation.

Systemic corruption in the PLO could also be a powerful driver in influencing the continuation of the current status quo with Israel - enabling unjust enrichment of PLO officials to continue at the expense of the West Bank Arabs for whose welfare and advancement such funds received from international donors were to be ostensibly applied.

According to Mona Chalabi on Guardian Datablog:

“The Palestinian economy is dependent on international aid and around 4 in 5 Gazans rely on donations for their survival…

... In 2011, the single biggest donor to Palestine was the United States followed by the EU who gave $281m and $206m respectively.”

Other large donors in 2011 (in US dollars) included the UK (82.8 million), Sweden (76.4 million), Germany (57.5 million), France (43 million), Norway (39.6 million), Spain (34.9 million) Canada (34.3 million) and Italy (31.9 million).

In 2012 the Palestinian Authority only received 80% of the promised US$1 billion - well down from the $1.8 billion in 2008.

Continued mismanagement of dwindling international funds spells increasing economic hardship for West Bank and Gazan Arabs.

These donor countries must certainly be concerned at the allegations aired in The Sunday Times.

If the European Court of Auditors Report is confirmed - these countries will have no option but to call for an independent and transparent investigation into the possible misappropriation of foreign donor funds by the PLO and Hamas.

Transparency International - a Berlin-based watchdog monitoring corporate and political corruption - confirms that the state of paralysis afflicting the Palestinian parliament since 2007 as a result of the split between the PLO and Hamas has “given the executive unlimited management over public funds.”

A Palestinian opinion poll conducted in July 2012 found that 71 percent of respondents believed that corruption existed in PA institutions under the control of President Mahmoud Abbas. Some 57% of respondents said the same of Hamas-controlled institutions in the Gaza Strip.

Similarly, a hearing held at the US House of Representative’s Committee on Foreign Affairs in July 2012 heard evidence accusing the Palestinian political establishment of “chronic kleptocracy”

Transparency International seems to have pinpointed the crux of these monetary and financial woes affecting Palestinian Arab politics and policies with these few well chosen words:

“Presidential, legislative, and local elections are needed to restore the legitimacy of government institutions. This will also reinforce citizens’ interests, political accountability and the rule of law.”

Whilst the PLO and Hamas continue to deny West Bank and Gazan Arabs the right to vote on who should govern them - any prospects of investigating claims of misappropriation of international donor funds remains a distant dream.

The soon to be released report of the European Council of Auditors could prove to be the catalyst for ending the six year election drought in the West Bank and Gaza - resulting in the appointment of freely elected leaders implementing fully transparent and independent financial structures.

Such imperatives have become all the more urgent following these latest allegations.