Your tax dollars/euros at work: 95.5% of 'Palestinians' say 'Palestinian Authority' is corrupt
Here's an astounding statistic from an AP story on
corruption in the 'Palestinian Authority.'
A recent poll found that almost all Palestinians — 95.5 percent —
believe there is corruption in Abbas' government. Nader Said, a veteran
pollster, surveyed 1,200 people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip last
month. Among Gaza residents scoring the performance of the territory's
Hamas rulers, the figure was 82 percent.
"This is the highest rate I have ever seen in all the polls I have
done," Said, who runs an independent polling agency called AWRAD, told
The Associated Press. The margin of error was 3 percentage points.
Experts say perceptions of corruption tend to be overblown. The World
Bank, for example, found in a survey of Palestinians several years ago
that far more people believed there was corruption than actually
experienced it.
But critics say secretiveness among Abbas and his advisers and a lack
of responsiveness have fanned suspicions among the public that the
political elite enjoy privileges and special deals at the expense of
everyone else.
For example, the government hasn't submitted annual budget reports
for mandatory audits for four years, effectively preventing scrutiny of
how millions of dollars are spent, said corruption monitor Aman, the
Palestinian branch of Transparency International.
...
Hamdallah's predecessor, Salam Fayyad, was credited by international
donors with making public spending more transparent. Fayyad resigned in
2013 amid tensions with Abbas and Fatah, including over the budget.
Abbas then installed Hamdallah, an academic without political experience.
"Fayyad used to host us and brief us every year," Afaneh said. "In
the current situation, we don't hear from the government or the Finance
Ministry."
Finance Ministry officials did not respond to requests for comment.
The government does post its spending plans online. But the listings are bare-boned and often puzzling, said Afaneh.
For example, out of the government's development budget of $17.9
million for the first three months of 2014, $9.4 million went for Abbas'
small presidential plane and $4.4 million for "other" expenses. A
development budget typically goes to projects that benefit the
community.
Afaneh said plane expenses shouldn't be listed under development and
that portraying one-fourth of the development budget in that quarter as
"other" raises questions.
The public has complained loudly over issues of nepotism and
disproportionately high salaries for select senior officials, some of
whom make $10,000 a month, about 10 times the average for government
employees.
"It's rare to find someone who got a job based on his
qualifications," said Diaa Abu Dhaher, 23, who has an undergraduate
degree in business administration but works as a waiter in a Ramallah
restaurant.
95.5% is the kind of number you usually see in polls in a dictatorship... oh... wait... this is a dictatorship. But usually you don't see wall-to-wall opposition to the dictator.
But the US Left and the Europeans continue to shower money on their beloved 'Palestinian Authority' because... anything to hurt the Jews.
Those villas at the top are part of the story, by the way, and they are not Jewish. They're located in Ramallah.
Read the whole thing to see who owns them and how they got them. Yes, that's part of it. And this story too is part of the Obama #Legacy.
Labels: Abu Mazen, Palestinian Authority corruption, Ramallah, Rami Hamdullah, Salam Fayyad
That was quick: 'Palestinian Prime Minister' Rami Hamdallah resigns
Less than a month after he was appointed, 'Palestinian Prime Minister' Rami Hamdallah has submitted his resignation. '
Moderate' '
Palestinian' President
Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen has not yet decided whether to accept the resignation. The reason for the resignation is apparently that Abu Mazen
wants him to be a yes-man.
A source close to Hamdallah said that he submitted his letter of
resignation to Hussein al-A'raj, director of the PA president's bureau.
The
source attributed the resignation to a power struggle between Hamdallah
and his two deputies - Mohamed Mustafa and Ziad Abu Amr - who were
appointed by Abbas.
"The prime minister feels that his deputies have been encroaching on his powers," the source said.
After
submitting his resignation, Hamdallah left his office in Ramallah alone
and drove in his private car to his home in the village of Anabta in
the northern West Bank.
A senior PA official told the
Bethlehem-based Ma'an news agency that Hamdallah had not clashed with
Abbas. The official said that the real dispute was between Hamdallah and
his two deputies.
On Thursday evening, senior PA officials headed from Ramallah to Hamdallah's home to persuade him to withdraw his resignation.
Another
source said that Hamdallah, who was appointed by Abbas on June 2,
quickly found himself in the same situation as his predecessor, Salam
Fayyad.
"Hamdallah discovered that the Palestinian Authority
president wants him to serve as a yes man with no powers," the source
explained. "Abbas wanted a prime minister who would play no role and
only carry out orders from the president's office."
Abbas's
decision to appoint two deputy prime ministers with expanded powers to
the new government was the first sign of the PA president's intention to
curtail the powers of Hamdallah.
Some Palestinians pointed out
that the real prime minister was Deputy Prime Minister for Economic
Affairs, Mohamed Mustafa, who also serves as the director of the PLO's
Palestine Investment Fund.
Mustafa was initially reported to be
Abbas's favored candidate to replace Fayyad. It remains unclear,
however, why Abbas finally preferred Hamdallah over Mustafa.
"Hamdallah
quit because he was lacking any authorities," said Palestinian
political analyst Hani al-Masri. "He discovered that he was just another
employee with the rank of prime minister. He had two deputies who were
in charge of the political and economic portfolios."
You don't think Abu Mazen is insecure or something, do you?
Labels: Abu Mazen, Palestinian Authority, Rami Hamdullah, Salam Fayyad
'An obscure academic with no experience in governing'
Jennifer Rubin reports
Jonathan Schanzer's reaction to the
appointment of Rami Hamdallah as 'prime minister' of the 'Palestinian Authority.' This is from the first link.
Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies
concurs. He tells me, “Hamdallah is an obscure academic with no
experience in governing. His appointment marks a consolidation of power
for Mahmoud Abbas. He is expected to be a ‘yes man’ — the opposite of
Salam Fayyad, who openly disagreed with the Palestinian president on
core issues, including transparency and institution building.” What is
really going on here is the consolidation of corrupt Fatah’s authority.
(Fayyad was never a Fatah member, which in large part accounted for his
independence and the antipathy he generated.) Schanzer observes,
“Unfortunately, Abbas is not only getting a weak prime minister. He is
also weakening the institution of the position. This means less checks
and balances in the Palestinian political system. Abbas, who is already
four years past the end of his legal presidential term, has taken the
institution of the presidency back to the future.”
It is noteworthy that the most significant accomplishment regarding
the PA in the past few years was the ejection of Yasser Arafat and the
division of authority between the president and prime minister. Now, as
Schanzer notes, Abbas’s “ironclad grip on Palestinian politics rivals
that of Yasser Arafat in his prime.”
Indeed.
Labels: Abu Mazen, Palestinian Authority, Rami Hamdullah, Salam Fayyad
'Palestinians' appoint new 'Prime Minister'
'
Moderate' '
Palestinian' President
Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen has appointed British-educated English professor Rami Hamdullah as his new '
Prime Minister.' Hamdullah replaces Salam Fayyad.
The Wafa agency said Abbas appointed academic Rami Hamdullah on Sunday
evening. Hamdullah replaces Salam Fayyad, a respected U.S.-educated
economist who was seen as being too independent and frequently clashed
with Abbas.
Hamdullah is a member of the Fatah Party led by Abbas. He is now tasked with forming a new technocratic government.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters.
Hamdullah has no prior political or government experience. He is a
British-educated English professor and dean of al-Najah University in
the West Bank.
Back in April, I reported that Hamdullah, the President of an-Najah University, was
a candidate for the position.
I'm sure that the US and the Europeans would be thrilled to have
Hamdallah. Educated in Jordan and England, Hamdallah has been the president of An-Najah since 1998. The picture below was taken at An-Najah University in September 2001, a month after the Sbarro suicide bombing took place:
And indeed, US Secretary of State
John FN Kerry has rushed to laud Hamdullah.
In a congratulatory statement, Kerry said Hamdallah's appointment
"comes at a moment of challenge, which is also an important moment of
opportunity."
Kerry also praised Fayyad for his contributions to Palestinian institutions.
Kerry is scheduled to address the three-day American Jewish Committee
parley on Monday and discuss his ongoing efforts to get the sides back
to the table.
He is also expected to visit Jordan “within days” to continue
efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Jordanian Foreign Minister
Nassar Judeh said in Ramallah on Sunday following talks with Palestinian
Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
"Together, we can choose the
path of a negotiated two-state settlement that will allow Palestinians
to fulfill their legitimate aspirations, and continue building the
institutions of a sovereign and independent Palestinian state that will
live in peace, security, and economic strength alongside Israel," Kerry
said in the statement addressing Hamdallah's appointment.
Hamas has described Hamdullah's appointment as '
illegal' because it was not approved by the 'Palestinian Legislative Council, and if the rule of law existed in the 'Palestinian Authority,'
Hamas would be correct.
Hamas denies that Abbas has the authority
to appoint Salam Fayyad as prime minister, because Abbas is not legally
the president of Palestine under Article 65 and because Fayyad has not
been empowered as prime minister by the Palestinian Legislative Council
as required by Article 66 of the Basic Law. Neither his first
appointment, on June 15, 2007, nor his reappointment on May 19, 2009,
was confirmed by the PLC as required. Hamas, which controls the majority
in the PLC, considers the legal prime minister of the Palestinian
Authority to continue to be Ismail Haniyeh, a senior political leader of
Hamas. Haniyeh was empowered by the PLC to be prime minister of
Palestine in February 2006. Abbas dismissed Haniyeh from the office on
June 14, 2007, after the Gaza coup, but Haniyeh counters that this
decree violated articles 45, 78, and 83 and that he continues to
exercise prime ministerial authority under Article 83. The PLC also
continues to recognize Haniyeh's authority as prime minister. Here
again, Hamas has the law on its side.
So let's sum this up: Abu Mazen has illegally appointed as Prime Minister someone with no government or political experience, who has spent the last 15 years as President of a university that has served as a center of terrorism, and who is not acceptable to the majority party in his own 'legislative council.'
US Secretary of State John FN Kerry must have really been grasping at straws when he 'lauded' this appointment. It's not like Hamdullah was appointed Commissioner of the IRS or to some other position whose only job is supposed to be persecuting Obama's enemies.
What could go wrong?
Labels: Abu Mazen, An-Najah University, Fatah, Hamas, Palestinian Authority, Rami Hamdullah, Salam Fayyad
For there to be peace, the 'Palestinians' would have to get real
David Horovitz argues that the path to peace between Israel and the 'Palestinians' doesn't require a $4billion injection for the 'Palestinian' economy. It requires that the 'Palestinians' become
realistic about their demands.
As the businesspeople who fashioned “Breaking
the Impasse” correctly recognized, the path to an accord requires
compromise and pragmatism by the politicians. It requires a Palestinian
leader like the English-speaking Abbas, who told Channel 2 last year
that there would be no third intifada under his leadership, that he had
no demands on pre-1967 Israel, and that he felt he had no “right” to
return to live in Safed, the town of his birth in today’s northern
Israel. It does not require a Palestinian leader like the
Arabic-speaking Abbas, who went to the UN last November seeking
statehood without the inconvenience of negotiating modalities with
Israel, told the watching world Israel was born in fundamental sin
through ethnic cleansing, and who, at the Dead Sea on Sunday, delivered a
speech made all the more unpalatable and extreme by the plaintive call
for peace from the business community that preceded it.
In the Abbas account of the conflict as
detailed on Sunday, Israel’s refusal to simply up and leave from the
West Bank is plain incomprehensible. After all, he argued, the
Palestinians have never and would never harm so much as a hair on an
Israeli’s head.
Why on earth, he wondered — this picture of
bafflement, this elderly, well-intentioned gentleman, rendered impotent
by the stupidity of those aggressors on the other side of that
inexplicably constructed wall — would Israelis be wary of what might
happen were they to pull out of the West Bank? What harm might possibly
befall them? The Second Intifada? Obviously a figment of Israel’s
imagination. The no-nonsense ousting of Abbas from Gaza by Hamas, with
its acutely worrying implications for a post-IDF West Bank? Presumably,
never happened.
Israel in 1999 threw out Netanyahu because it
believed there was a peace deal to be made with Arafat, and that the
intransigent prime minister was missing the chance. There was no such
sentiment when Israelis voted four months ago — no sense that
opportunities for peace were going begging because of obdurate,
settlement-building Netanyahu. Arafat shattered Israelis’ confidence in
their Palestinian negotiating partners. Abbas has signally failed to
restore it. And the collapse of stability in the Middle East is working
against all those who seek to heal the rift.
Absurd rhetoric about billions in private
investment is not going to change any of that. What it does, however, is
make a fool of the secretary of state who utters it, and makes plain
that salvation from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, rarely more
elusive than today, is not going to come from Washington, DC.
It is time that we become realistic. Peace is not going to happen. The 'Palestinians' goal is not to have 'two states living side by side together in peace and security,' it's for 'Palestine' to replace the Jewish state. It is time for us to recognize that goal and to move on.
Labels: Abu Mazen, John Kerry, Palestinian economy, Salam Fayyad
Report: Kerry caused Fayyad's resignation
Haaretz's Barak Ravid reports that US Secretary of State John FN Kerry has given Israeli and 'Palestinian' negotiators
something upon which they can agree.
About one thing, there’s no disagreement between Jerusalem and
Ramallah: Kerry has a lot of good intentions and a real sense of
mission; he truly wants to make peace in the Middle East. But despite
his good intentions, Kerry so far looks like a naive and ham-handed
diplomat who has been acting like a bull in the china shop of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Or as former Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan
once put it, he’s a good chap in the worst sense of the term.
Over
the last two months, Kerry has managed to upset both sides and make
both more suspicious of him by a series of misguided moves and
statements. In early April, for instance, at the end of a visit to
Jerusalem and Ramallah, he said that within a few weeks, he would launch
a plan to rescue the Palestinian economy. But an Israeli source said
the enthusiastic Kerry forgot one small thing − to coordinate the
statement in advance with the Israelis and Palestinians.
Ravid reports that Kerry's clumsy attempts to prevent the resignation of 'Palestinian Prime Minister' Salam Fayyad probably brought about Fayyad's resignation.
Senior Israeli and Palestinian officials both said that Kerry’s telephone calls to Fayyad and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, in which he applied heavy pressure to prevent the resignation, did more harm than good.
...
The incidence of these phone calls leaked out, and Fayyad was painted as
an American puppet. The furious prime minister then declared that he
was determined to leave. “This was Kerry’s biggest mistake,” a senior
Palestinian official said. “If he hadn’t intervened, Fayyad wouldn’t
have resigned.”
Kerry sounds like an older clone of President Hussein Obama. Kerry sees a
fierce moral urgency to bringing about peace between Israel and the 'Palestinians' and believes for good measure that
only he can bring it about.
Since taking office, Kerry has devoted many hours to the
Israeli-Palestinian issue, perhaps more than to any other issue. A large
portion of this time has been spent in one-on-one meetings and phone
calls with Netanyahu and Abbas.
Kerry
calls this “personal diplomacy.” He thinks that his main advantage over
everyone else when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian issue is his
long years of acquaintance with both leaders and the relations of trust
he has built with them. He believes that this will enable him to bring
about a breakthrough in the peace process. But it’s not clear on what
Kerry bases this belief. After two months of such conversations, neither
Netanyahu nor Abbas has yet displayed any flexibility.
A
senior Israeli official who has met with Kerry several times said the
secretary of state has a messianic enthusiasm for the
Israeli-Palestinian issue and acts like someone who was sent to bring
the redemption. A Western official familiar with Kerry’s activity agreed
with this assessment.
“Sometimes
there’s a feeling that Kerry thinks the only reason his predecessors in
the job didn’t bring about a peace agreement is that they weren’t John
Kerry,” he said.
I didn't care much for Hillary Clinton either, but perhaps because she was very publicly betrayed by her philandering husband, she at least did not have the ego of Kerry or Obama.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Abu Mazen, Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, John Kerry, Middle East peace process, Palestinians, Salam Fayyad
Fayyad's resignation is a crisis for Abu Mazen - but does he recognize it?
There's an interesting
analysis in the 'Palestinian' Maan daily explaining why the
resignation of Salam Fayyad is a crisis for '
moderate' '
Palestinian' President
Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen .This is from the first link.
But Fayyad’s loss has severe consequences outside the internal Fatah
struggle. First, it will remove the minimal but sole aspect of non-Fatah
checks and balances on the political system.
The resignation
will also further expose Abbas and Fatah to public criticism at a time
when there is a great deal of internal turmoil -- over the budget, over
the government’s political program and over the remaining division with
Hamas. Among his other roles, Fayyad was a buffer zone, providing Abbas
and Fatah with a shield against the intensifying domestic unrest.
Moreover,
President Abbas seems to have difficulties choosing from the various
options he now has before him. The option of choosing a Fatah prime
minister is like opening a Pandora’s box of rivalries, jealousies and
fiefdoms. He could also appoint an independent personality as a prime
minister. That seems difficult, however, because he does not have a
qualified candidate, and more importantly, because a growing number of
Fatah leaders do not want to repeat the Fayyad phenomenon, believing
that it is time for Fatah to run the government directly. Likewise, a
compromise with Fayyad is not possible, as the prime minister seems
unwilling to let the status quo drag on indefinitely, without elections.
The relatively “best” option is for Abbas to implement the
signed but stalled agreement with Hamas, which stipulates forming a
government of independent (non-Fatah and non-Hamas) ministers headed by
President Abbas for six to 12 months, during which elections should take
place. That would be the most popular option. The Palestinian public
seems to strongly support ending the political and geographic division
that has sullied their cause since the fractious fighting between Hamas
and Fatah came to the fore.
The price of this option, however,
would be going against the US administration, which has just renewed
political efforts that President Abbas is keen on pursuing. (One must
say, however, that the bleak scenery in Israel after its recent
elections means that there really isn’t an opportunity to be missed
here.)
Not liking any of these three options, Abbas seems to be
resorting again to his favorite magic solution: not doing anything. In
this case, Fayyad and his government will remain de facto caretakers --
no new prime minister has been appointed -- for as long as possible, or
until it is politically feasible to appoint him again to form the next
government.
I would bet that Salam Fayyad will be Prime Minister for a long time. And I would bet that Abu Mazen has no problem with that.
What could go wrong?
Labels: Abu Mazen, Fatah, Hamas-Fatah reconciliation, Salam Fayyad
Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Wednesday, April 24.
1) Friedman resurrects "Fayyadism"
Some time ago, Thomas Friedman coined the term "Fayyadism," a concept that, according to Nathan Brown, never had a chance.
Why Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad never had a chance to meet the high expectations placed on him atfp.co/10hH6rY
— Foreign Policy (@ForeignPolicy) April 18, 2013
(No I don't agree with everything Brown argues, but the fourth and fifth paragraphs are good observations.)
In his most recent column, Goodbye to Fayyad Thomas Friedman boasts about his neologism:
Who is Salam Fayyad? A former economist at the International Monetary
Fund, he first came to prominence when he was named finance minister of
the Palestinian Authority in 2002, after donors got fed up seeing their
contributions diverted for corruption. Shortly after he became prime
minister in 2007, I coined the term “Fayyadism” — the all-too-rare
notion that an Arab leader’s legitimacy should be based not on slogans
or resistance to Israel and the West or on personality cults or security
services, but on delivering decent, transparent, accountable
governance.
Whether he used the term "Fayyadism" in other fora, I don't know, but
the earliest mention of it in a column was in a 2009 column, Greet Shoots in Palestine.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to the wider Middle East what
off-Broadway is to Broadway. It is where all good and bad ideas get
tested out first. Well, the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, a
former I.M.F. economist, is testing out the most exciting new idea in
Arab governance ever. I call it “Fayyadism.”
Fayyadism is based on the simple but all-too-rare notion that an Arab
leader’s legitimacy should be based not on slogans or rejectionism or
personality cults or security services, but on delivering transparent,
accountable administration and services.
...
Things are truly getting better in the West Bank, thanks to a
combination of Fayyadism, improved Palestinian security and a lifting of
checkpoints by Israel. In all of 2008, about 1,200 new companies
registered for licenses here. In the first six months of this year,
almost 900 have registered. According to the I.M.F., the West Bank
economy should grow by 7 percent this year.
While it's possible that Friedman came up with "Fayyadism" in 2007, the
context of the 2009 mention suggests that the term was based on the
results of Fayyad's governance, so I believe that Friedman is mistaken
about his own record.
But what's worse than this possible lapse is that Friedman demonstrated
his absolute ignorance of Palestinian politics. Over the time that he sporadically advertised "Fayyadism" as the path to peace, Freidman wrote in a 2011 column, Bibi and Barack:
And it is equally silly for the Palestinians to be going to the United
Nations for a state when they need to be persuading Israelis why a
Hamas-Fatah rapprochement is in their security interest.
Hamas made it absolutely clear that it wanted Fayyad sidelined
and yet Friedman told us that a Fatah-Hamas agreement would be to
Israel's benefit. This suggests that "Fayyadism" is one more empty
Friedman phrase. "Fayyadism" was a handy rhetorical stick with which to
beat Israel. Sure Fayyad is more honest and transparent that any other
Palestinian leader, but he is also a leader without an internal constituency.
If Friedman could tout a peace killing alliance between Fatah and Hamas
the same time he promoted "Fayyadism" as the only way to peace, it
demonstrates that he is disingenuous, if not illogical and ignorant.
In today's column, Friedman also asserts:
Fayyad also played the leading role in rebuilding the Palestinian
security services in the West Bank, which even the Israeli military grew
to respect, and in trying to build Palestinian institutions, on the
argument that the more Palestinians built their institutions — finance,
police, social services — the more Israel’s denial of them of a state
will be unsustainable.
Lately there's been a rise in attempts to kidnap Israeli soldiers and rock attacks against Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria,
suggesting that the Palestinian security forces are helpful, when they
want to be, but can hardly be relied upon. Furthermore, even with the
built up institutions, the PA is still way too dependent on foreign aid.
(This is something that Friedman implicitly acknowledges later in the
column, but he, of course, blames the shortfall on Israel for holding
back tax monies, ignoring the ineffectiveness of Palestinian
governance.)
Hamas hated Fayyad, and many Palestinian Authority officials were
jealous of him, but success protected him until 2011. President Mahmoud
Abbas, frustrated by the right-wing Israeli government’s refusal to
strike a land-for-peace deal, decided to seek recognition of Palestinian
statehood at the United Nations. The United States retaliated by
cutting off aid, and Israel did so by withholding Palestinian tax
receipts. I thought it foolish for Abbas to go to the U.N., but I
thought it irresponsible for America’s Congress to cut off aid to the
Palestinians for doing so — when we’ve never retaliated for the even
more obstructionist building of settlements by Israel.
"Hamas hated Fayyad," and yet Friedman wanted Fatah to join with Hamas
for Israel's "security!" Going to the UN wasn't foolish, it was a
violation of the premises of the peace process Friedman claims to
support. Friedman and the PA may not like settlements but they were
allowed by the Oslo Accords, even if Israel has largely restricted any
building in them to existing communities. (Though Israel gets precious
little credit for this.)
At the end of his column, Friedman presents 4 "takeways." The second and
third are ludicrous, but the first one makes a lot of sense:
For Palestinians, particularly Abbas and Fatah, who so easily turned
their most effective executive into a scapegoat, if there is no place
for a Salam Fayyad-type in your leadership, an independent state will
forever elude you.
Fayyad's failure isn't a failure of Israel or of Israel's settlers. It
is a failure of Palestinian culture. (Though he'd be loath to admit it,
Friedman's making a similar argument to the one Mitt Romney made last
year!)
The problem is that most of the rest of the column is at odds with this
observation as Friedman blamed everyone else but the Palesitnians for
Fayyad's failure!
Friedman's fourth "takeaway" is:
“There is nothing inevitable about a liberal order emerging from any of
these Arab awakenings,” argues the pollster Craig Charney. Indeed, to
produce that outcome takes someone like a Fayyad with the consistent
help of external parties as well as a loyal base at home ready to see it
through. In the end, Fayyad had neither. Add another nail in the coffin
of the two-state solution.
Note that first Friedman suggested that the Palestinians bear the blame
for their failure to achieve statehood, then he writes that he despairs
of a two state solution. The evidence is before him but he is blind to
what it means. The occupation (his obsession) is mostly over. What is
left is for the Palestinians to achieve independence. That's not
something that is dependent on Israel, but on the Palestinians changing
their political culture. Had Fayyad managed to win political support -
either in the Palestinian leadership or in the street - maybe he'd be
more than a footnote right now.
Jonathan Schanzer laments some in Congress are seeking to pressure Abbas to draft a new succession law.
Hamas’ anticipated rise to power in the PA could lead to a
cut off in critical U.S. aid dollars and foster an even more fraught
relationship with Israel and America, according to the Rep. Peter Roskam
(R., Ill.), the House’s chief deputy whip.
“It’s one of the things Congress will have to monitor closely,” Roskam said in an interview.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, he said, are poised to “encourage
the PA to deal with their succession plan. The notion of a default
position of a Hamas official being the head of the PA is complete
unacceptable and if the PA were to make that decision to have that
leadership, the consequences are quite significant.”
The failure of Friedman's fabled "Fayyadism" is unconnected to Israel.
Until the Palestinian culture is about openness and opportunity rather
than despotism and grievance, reform and self-governance will elude the
Palestinians. As long as Thomas Friedman continues blaming his
ill-informed and mendacious arguments he is covering for, not fighting
Palestinian malfeasance and misrule.
2) Getting around with Hezbollah
Last month the National Post reported Hezbollah deliberately seeks Canadians because of internationally accepted passports: senior CSIS official:
The terrorist group Hezbollah has been seeking operatives with Canadian
passports, a senior intelligence official told MPs reviewing a bill
Thursday that could strip terrorists of their citizenship.
Appearing before the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration,
the Canadian Security Intelligence Service official said Canadian
passport holders were being actively sought by terrorist groups.
...
The RCMP is also investigating allegations a Lebanese-Canadian Hezbollah
member was behind last July’s bombing of a bus full of Israeli tourists
at Sarafovo airport on the Black Sea coast. The suspect, who now lives
in Lebanon, had used his Canadian passport to travel to Bulgaria.
Now it's been reported that Iran agent monitoring Chabad arrested in Bulgaria:
Bulgarian police officers last summer arrested a Canadian citizen linked
to the Iranian government who engaged in surveillance of the local
Chabad center in the capital of Sofia, a well-placed and reliable local
source told The Jerusalem Post last week, on condition of anonymity due
to security reasons.
An Iranian-sponsored female agent in her 50s, holding a Canadian
passport, traveled from Istanbul to Sofia several weeks after the
bombing of the Israeli tour bus in the Black Sea resort town of Burgas
in July 2012. She was arrested on her first day in Sofia after the
Bulgarian police, on high alert, noticed she was monitoring the Chabad
center.
While it isn't certain that this agent was working for Hezbollah, the
possibility certainly can't be ruled out since Hezbollah is a proxy of
Iran and Syria.
And how is Hezbollah funding its international operations? The Jerusalem Post reports:
Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research for the Foundation for
Defense of Democracies, says exchange houses have been used more
frequently in recent years by the Islamic Republic in Iran to fund its
nuclear program, as sanctions have increasingly restricted its access to
resources.
“It’s not insignificant that Europe is identified as a place where Hezbollah is apparently selling drugs,” Schanzer said.
...
Experts say that Hezbollah’s asymmetric fund-raising campaign has kicked
in to high gear as the regime of Bashar Assad in Syria has lost ground
in its war against his fellow countrymen. The Assad regime, and the
Ayatollah regime in Iran, are Hezbollah’s primary patrons.
With Iran and Syria limited in the resources it can provide Hezbollah,
the terrorist organization is turning to drugs and money laundering to
finance its operations.
Labels: Bulgaria, Canada, Hezbullah, Iran, Middle East Media Sampler, Salam Fayyad, Soccer Dad, Tom Friedman
Abu Mazen's plan
With various 'Palestinian' officials saying how it 'wouldn't be fair' for the Americans to cut off aid money as a result of Salam Fayyad's resignation, '
moderate' '
Palestinian' President
Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen has a plan to
keep the aid money flowing.
Palestinian law requires the president choose Fayyad's replacement
within two weeks, but Abbas has outstayed his own term by four years and
parliament has been defunct for years.
He may yet wait for an elusive Hamas-Fatah pact before he appoints a unity cabinet, which could take months.
In other words, Abu Mazen won't appoint a replacement. He'll have an 'interim government' headed by... Salam Fayyad... and the American (and European) aid money will continue to flow, at least until there is a reconciliation with Hamas (at which time Congress would likely force a cutoff in aid money anyway).
What could go wrong?
Labels: Abu Mazen, Palestinian Authority, Salam Fayyad, US foreign aid
It's official: Fayyad is gone; replacement head of university that mocked Sbarro massacre?
'
Moderate' '
Palestinian' President
Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen has
accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, despite being urged not to do so by the United States and the European Union. Abu Mazen has asked Fayyad to head a 'transitional government' until....
Fayyad submitted his letter of resignation to Abbas during a 20-minute meeting in the PA president's office in Ramallah.
It was not immediately clear who would replace Fayyad. However,
Palestinian sources mentioned two names as possible candidates: Mohamed
Mustafa, head of the PLO's Palestine Investment Fund and Rami Hamdallah,
president of An-Najah University in Nablus.
I'm sure that the US and the Europeans would be thrilled to have Hamdallah. Educated in Jordan and England, Hamdallah has been the
president of An-Najah since 1998. The picture below was taken at
An-Najah University in September 2001, a month after the Sbarro suicide bombing took place:
On well, if Abu Bluff selects Hamdallah, we all get the message.
In any event, Abu Bluff has accepted Fayyad's resignation.
"President Abbas informed Fayyad that he has accepted his
resignation," the statement said, adding that the PA president asked
Fayyad to head a caretaker government until the establishment of a new
government.
Abbas and Fayyad were scheduled to meet late Thursday
to discuss the crisis. However, the meeting was called off without any
explanation.
Palestinian sources said that the US and some EU
countries tried over the weekend to prevent Fayyad's resignation, but to
no avail.
The sources said that US Secretary of State John Kerry phoned Abbas and urged him to keep Fayyad in office.
...
According
to the official, Fayyad had submitted his resignation to Abbas in
February, but the PA president asked Fayyad to delay his resignation
until after the visit of US President Barack Obama to the region.
Fayyad's
decision to quit is believed to be linked to a sharp dispute that
erupted between him and Abbas over the resignation of PA Finance
Minister Nabil Qassis.
Qassis, who was handpicked by Abbas, was
appointed as Finance Minister last year. While Fayyad accepted Qassis'
resignation, Abbas demanded that the finance minister be reinstated.
Fayyad's decision is also linked to recurring attacks against him and his government by senior Fatah officials.
In
recent weeks, several Fatah officials have publicly demanded the
resignation of Fayyad, holding him responsible for the sharp financial
crisis in the Palestinian territories.
What could go wrong?
Labels: Abu Mazen, An-Najah University, Palestinian Authority, Salam Fayyad, Sbarro terror attack
Abu Bluff told he can't just let Fayyad resign
Maybe the West isn't quite as dumb as we thought they were. The western countries that donate money to keep the 'Palestinian Authority' running are pressuring '
moderate' '
Palestinian' President
Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen not to accept the resignation of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the only 'Palestinian' whom the West entrusts with money.
Aides to Abbas, speaking on condition of anonymity, were scathing in
their assessment of the Texas-educated Fayyad, hinting that the
president would be pleased to see him go.
However, a Western
diplomat expressed dismay at the political in-fighting at a time when
the United States is making a concerted effort to revive
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and boost the flailing economy.
"Pressure
is being put on Abbas to sit on this resignation offer for at least two
months to see what comes of the US initiative," said a senior European
diplomat, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the
issue.
US diplomats were due to visit Ramallah on Thursday and was expected to press Fayyad's case, another diplomat said.
The US initiative is going nowhere - it's been rejected by both sides already. But that's just an excuse. The real question is whom the 'Palestinians' have that the West would trust to replace Fayyad. The answer right now is no one.
Labels: Abu Mazen, Palestinian Authority donors, Salam Fayyad
Report: Fayyad tenders resignation
Reuters is reporting that 'Palestinian' Prime Minister Salam Fayyad
tendered his resignation on Wednesday, and '
moderate' '
Palestinian' President
Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen seems likely to accept it on Thursday. Representatives of the 'international community' may be uncomfortable giving money to the 'Palestinians' without Fayyad's presence. This is from the first link.
Western governments have offered staunch support to Fayyad ever since
he became prime minister in 2007, seeing him as the architect of
Palestinian state-building efforts, and his departure could complicate
their ties with Abbas.
Long-strained relations between the
61-year-old Fayyad and Abbas worsened last month when the prime minister
accepted the resignation of his finance minister, against the wishes of
the president.
Initially successful in revitalizing a sluggish
Palestinian economy, Fayyad ran into trouble last year when Israel and
the United States withheld vital funds to punish the Palestinians for
seeking de facto statehood at the United Nations.
They said the
unilateral move ran counter to previous accords and their financial
penalties meant Palestinian public sector salaries went unpaid, stoking
street protests.
Abbas's Fatah party accused Fayyad of failing to
foresee the turmoil and the party's council issued an unprecedented
rebuke last week, saying: "The policies of the current government are
improvised and confused in many financial and economic issues."
...
Speaking earlier on Wednesday about the rumors of a division between
Fayyad and Abbas, a senior diplomat in Jerusalem said Western aid donors
would be very upset to see the respected prime minister leave his post.
"Fayyad's
departure would have a serious impact on relations with the
international community," said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of
anonymity. "It is hard to overstate how important Fayyad has been."
The
diplomat added that Fayyad's institution-building drive in the West
Bank had been "the single best thing" that had happened in the
Palestinian territories in recent years, adding that the premier was
also highly trusted by Israeli leaders.
I doubt that there is anything Fayyad could have down to fend off the economic disaster that resulted from the 'Palestinians' unilateral turn to the UN last fall. That was just plain stupid.
On the other hand, the western donors have brought this upon themselves by continuing to
encourage Abu Mazen to move forward with unity talks with Hamas. Hamas hates Fayyad and will not agree to reconcile with Fatah so long as Fayyad is in the government. I'd be pleasantly surprised if Fayyad's resignation caused any of them to turn off the aid spigot. Abu Mazen has figured that out too.
What could go wrong?
Labels: Abu Mazen, Hamas-Fatah reconciliation, Palestinian Authority donors, Salam Fayyad
In a second term, he can be more flexible: Did Fayyad ask for asylum?
I'm sure you all remember President Hussein Obama telling Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev that he could be '
more flexible' in his second term, and Medvedev promising to pass that on to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Apparently, Obama's flexibility didn't just apply to nuclear weapons treaties with Russia. 'Palestinian' sources are now claiming that Obama is now 'softening' his opposition to a Hamas-Fatah unity government. Presumably that means that Obama is now willing to accept such a 'government' without Hamas accepting the quartet conditions (recognizing Israel's 'right to exist,' renouncing terrorism and accepting past agreements between Israel and the 'Palestinians').
While neither the State Department nor the 'Palestinians' would comment on the contents of US Secretary of State John FN Kerry's meeting with '
moderate' '
Palestinian' President
Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen on Friday, it is now clear that 'Palestinian' Prime Minister Salam Fayyad will be gone in a matter of days, and that
Abu Mazen is going to meet this week with Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshaal to form a unity government.
Azzam al-Ahmed, a
member of the Fatah Central Committee and a senior adviser to Palestinian
Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said that US opposition to the unity idea was
“less strong.”
Ahmed’s comments came hours after Abbas met in Ramallah
with US Secretary of State John Kerry to discuss American efforts to revive the
stalled peace process with Israel.
Ahmed said that Abbas would meet with
Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in Doha, Qatar, later this week to discuss the
formation of a Palestinian unity government.
...
The
Fatah official said he would head to Cairo on Tuesday to meet with Hamas senior
official Musa Abu Marzouk to prepare for the Abbas-Mashaal summit.
Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is about to resign, and had a bizarre meeting with Kerry on Monday.
Abbas’s renewed attempts to achieve unity with Hamas came amid
reports that PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad was planning to submit his
resignation to the PA president.
In a surprise move, Fayyad met on Monday
in Jerusalem with Kerry. It’s not clear why the two chose to meet in Jerusalem
and not in Ramallah.
Sources in Ramallah said that Fayyad was expected to
quit or face being sacked by Abbas after months of escalating tension between
the two men.
...
Abbas is also reported to have been enraged over the fact
that US President Barack Obama, who visited Ramallah last month, met separately
with Fayyad.
They met in Jerusalem, because Fayyad was probably afraid he'd be killed if they met in Ramallah.
If Fayyad is really gone (and he apparently is), he's probably asking for asylum. The only question is whether he asked Kerry for asylum in the US, or whether he asked Kerry to arrange for asylum in Israel.
What could go wrong?
Labels: Abu Mazen, Barack Hussein Obama, Hamas-Fatah reconciliation, John Kerry, Khaled Meshaal, Salam Fayyad
Abu Mazen killing the goose that's laying his golden eggs
It's been more than four years since '
moderate' '
Palestinian' President
Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen's term in office expired, and he apparently doesn't understand that while he has a lot of support in the West, the only reason they're actually putting their money where their mouths are is because of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.
Now, Abu Mazen is about to kill the goose that keeps laying the golden eggs.
He's about to fire Fayyad.
Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas may dismiss Palestinian Prime Minister Salam
Fayad, according to an AFP report quoting a member of Fatah's
Revolutionary Council on Friday.
Speaking on condition of
anonymity, the member said that the president “is leaning towards
dismissing Fayyad from the head of the
government and forming a new one.”
According to the member, the
conflict between Abbas and Fayad arose following the resignation of the
Palestinian Authority's finance minister Nabil Qasis when Abbas refused
to accept the resignation but Fayad agreed to.
The official
said "Abbas informed Fayyad that if Nabil Qasis did not return to the
finance ministry... Abbas would dismiss his government and form a new
one," AFP reported.
Faster, faster.
Labels: Abu Mazen, Palestinian Authority donors, Salam Fayyad
Netanyahu's double victory
Lee Smith and
Charles Krauthammer argue that Prime Minister Netanyahu won two stunning victories during President Obama's visit to Israel. The two victories were won over Turkey and the 'Palestinians,' respectively. Here's Krauthammer.
So what was the point of Obama’s Jerusalem speech encouraging young Israelis
to make peace, a speech the media drooled over? It was mere rhetoric, a
sideshow meant to soften the impact on the Arab side of the really
important event of Obama’s trip: the major recalibration of his position
on the peace process.
Obama knows that peace talks are going
nowhere. First, because there is no way that Israel can sanely make
concessions while its neighborhood is roiling and unstable — the Muslim Brotherhood taking over Egypt, rockets being fired from Gaza, Hezbollah brandishing 50,000 missiles aimed at Israel, civil war raging in Syria with its chemical weapons and rising jihadists, and Iran threatening openly to raze Tel Aviv and Haifa.
Second, peace is going nowhere because Abbas has shown Obama over the past four years that he has no interest in negotiating. Obama’s message to Abbas was blunt: Come to the table without preconditions, i.e., without the excuse of demanding a settlement freeze first.
Obama
himself had contributed to this impasse when he imposed that
precondition — for the first time ever in the history of Arab-Israeli
negotiations — four years ago. And when Israel responded with an equally unprecedented 10-month settlement freeze, Abbas didn’t show up to talk until more than nine months in — then walked out, never to return.
In Ramallah
last week, Obama didn’t just address this perennial Palestinian dodge.
He demolished the very claim that settlements are the obstacle to peace.
Palestinian sovereignty and Israeli security are “the core issue,” he
told Abbas. “If we solve those two problems, the settlement problem will
be solved.”
Finally. Presidential validation of the screamingly
obvious truism: Any peace agreement will produce a Palestinian state
with not a single Israeli settlement remaining on its territory. Any
settlement on the Palestinian side of whatever border is agreed upon
will be demolished. Thus, any peace that reconciles Palestinian
statehood with Israeli security automatically resolves the settlement issue. It disappears.
I don't consider that such a great victory, because I don't believe that the 'Palestinians' deserve a
Judenrein state, nor do I believe that the 'Palestinians' can be trusted to abide by an end of conflict clause or anything else that ensures Israel's security. But it probably doesn't matter, because the 'Palestinians' are unlikely to come back to the table without a 'settlement freeze, including in Jerusalem' and given that the President of the United States is not pressuring Netanyahu on that score, it's more unlikely to happen than ever.
Moreover, Abu Mazen and Salam Fayyad have NO authority to make concessions on behalf of the "Palestinians.' So even if negotiations somehow started, they would go nowhere.
Then, there's Turkey. Here's Smith:
The reality is somewhat different than the
official administration account. Jerusalem has long been looking to mend
relations with its onetime strategic ally in Ankara. Contrary to
popular narrative, it was Erdogan who was intransigent—not Netanyahu.
Nor was Obama the prime mover here, “prodding” the Israeli prime
minister to do his bidding. If anything, it was Netanyahu who used the
commander in chief as something like a blunt instrument to force Erdogan
to accept the same deal that his government had first put on the table
at least 18 months prior: Israel would apologize; it would pay
compensation; but it would not, as Erdogan had demanded, end the
maritime blockade of the strip.
From Netanyahu’s perspective, it’s all to the good that Obama is
getting the credit for the reconciliation. Bibi got what he wanted from
Erdogan and gave Obama a big trophy to put on his shelf. The Turkish
premier, despite his bluster, has little choice but to swallow it, and
the American president now owes Bibi a favor. Netanyahu—often denigrated
as a clumsy politician and preachy ideologue—is in fact a much more
adroit statesman than he is typically believed to be.
...
Clearly Erdogan’s three conditions were not
met, a disappointment that he apparently came to terms with last month,
when Turkish and Israeli negotiators hammered out the exact terms of the
deal that came to pass last week. As the Turkish newspaper Radikal explained,
Israel would apologize for “operational mistakes,” pay compensation,
and Ankara would drop the demand that Israel lift the blockade. Thus,
the stage was set for Obama’s entrance as mediator and his exit as
peacemaker. In pocketing the deal until Obama’s visit, Netanyahu’s
timing was perfect: He handed an American president a truly wonderful
souvenir of his all too brief stay in the Holy Land.
It’s true that Erdogan now seems to be backsliding, claiming that he
never accepted a deal without Israel agreeing to end the blockade,
though Israeli officials insist that he did. The Turkish prime minister is also now promising
to go to Gaza to “monitor” the situation to ensure that Israel fulfills
its obligation to lift the blockade. However, this will only make him
vulnerable on two fronts.
First, while Erdogan is reportedly one of the world leaders closest
to Obama, the reality is that Bibi comes off as the helpful partner in
this case—not Erdogan. Any more noise out of the Turkish prime minister
and he may find out what’s like to have chilly relations with an
American president, which, as Netanyahu can tell him, is not where you
want to be.
Second, and perhaps more important, Erdogan’s support of Hamas will
expose him to criticism from his domestic rivals. Why is the prime
minister of Turkey so eager to show his love for an Iranian client in
Gaza when his opposition to Iran’s ally in Syria threatens Turkey’s
security?
This victory seems Pyrrhic to me. Israel's relations with Turkey are unlikely to go back to where they were even in 2008 - let along in 2002 when Erdogan took power. Moreover, Erdogan has given a lot of signs this week that he may not abide by the deal that he made with Netanyahu, and I find it hard to believe that there will be any serious reprisals from the US if Erdogan fails to abide by the deal.
But perhaps these perceptions of what happened last week are held by more Israelis than are the views of Carl In Jerusalem. A Smith poll shows
a large drop in the number of Israelis who believe that President Hussein Obama is hostile to our country.
The percentage of Israelis who consider the Obama administration
more pro- Palestinian than pro-Israel fell by a whopping 20 percent since before
the visit, the poll, taken on Sunday, found.
But the number of Israelis
who consider the administration more pro-Israel than pro-Palestinian rose by
only 1 percentage point, despite what was billed as Obama’s “charm offensive” to
reach out to citizens of the Jewish state.
Obama’s statements in Hebrew
about how good it was to return to Israel and that Israelis are not alone
apparently failed to make a significant impression on them. Apparently, neither
did more substantive steps such as securing funding for Israel's missile defense
systems and facilitating rapprochement with Turkey. But the results indicate
that the negative feelings that came from Obama’s visit to Ramallah did resonate
with Israelis.
Palestinian disappointment with Obama’s pro-Israel message
and his not visiting former leader Yasser Arafat’s grave was widely reported in
the Hebrew press.
...
The new poll of 500 Israelis representing a
statistical sample of the adult population found that 27% consider the
administration more pro-Israel, 16% more pro-Palestinian, 39% neutral, and 18%
did not an express an opinion.
By contrast, in last week’s poll, 26% said
it was more pro-Israel, 36% more pro- Palestinian, 26% neutral, and 12% did not
an express an opinion.
The proportion saying the administration is more
pro-Israel in this week’s poll is the highest since May 2009, while the share
saying it is more pro-Palestinian is the lowest since that same poll. In a sign
that many Israelis’ minds have not been made up, the percentage who declined to
express an opinion is the highest it has been in any of the 10
surveys.
After the Obama visit, in which he called upon left-wing students
to push their government to make peace, the more dovish Israelis
defined
themselves, the more likely they were to deem the Obama administration
more pro-Israel. Among Labor voters, it was 51%, for Yesh Atid voters
29%, for Likud
Beytenu and Shas supporters 27%, and for those who supported Bayit
Yehudi
20%.
The proportion considering the administration more pro-Palestinian
was 40% among Shas voters, 20% for those who voted Bayit Yehudi, 19% Likud
Beytenu, 11% Yesh Atid and among Labor voters 6%.
Obama really stuck to the old adage, 'if you can't beat them with brains, baffle them with bull****. Israelis are totally baffled.
Labels: Abu Mazen, Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Palestinian state, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Salam Fayyad, Turkish obsession with Israel
Would Abu Bluff name a successor?
Jonathan Schanzer has what seems like a pretty modest goal for President Obama to pursue during his March meeting with '
moderate' '
Palestinian' President
Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen:
Get Abu Mazen to name a successor.
Alarmingly, there is nobody in that role now. Abbas, also known as
Abu Mazen, is 78 years old. He is a heavy smoker and a cancer survivor.
In 2010, he reportedly was admitted six times to a Jordanian hospital
for unspecified health reasons. It's unclear how much longer he'll be
fit for office.
Should the unthinkable happen, according to Palestinian Basic Law,
Article 37, "the Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council shall
temporarily assume the powers and duties of the Presidency of the
National Authority for a period not to exceed sixty (60) days, during
which free and direct elections to elect a new President shall take
place."
But here's the rub: The current speaker is Aziz Dweik, who ran on the Hamas-affiliated Change and Reform ticket. His history does not recommend him. In 1992, Dweik was expelled from Israel
for his involvement with Hamas. He was among those the Israelis rounded
up and arrested in 2006 after an Israeli soldier was captured in Gaza.
He was arrested again in 2012 for alleged "involvement in terrorist
activities."
Should Dweik succeed Abbas, it would be the end of any possible peace process.
Schanzer even has a candidate to take Abu Mazen's place:
Of course, Abbas has a prime minister. Salam Fayyad
has done an admirable job and is worthy of succeeding Abbas. But Abbas
has not identified him as the next in line for reasons that only he
knows.
The reasons that Abu Mazen has not identified a successor, and why he has not identified Fayyad in particular, are known to all in the region. First, Abu Mazen has one and only one goal: Staying alive. If he named a successor who was popular, that successor could decide to throw Abu Mazen out. After all, having been named, why should he wait? (Abu Mazen waited for Arafat's departure because Arafat was an icon who was far more popular than Abu Mazen). When a Prime Minister or President is thrown out of office in the Middle East in any country other than Israel, it doesn't happen because he lost an election. It happens because he lost his life.
And why not Fayyad? Because Fayyad, although a competent technocrat, has absolutely zero support among the 'Palestinian people.' None. He hasn't spent significant time in jail and hasn't got lots of Jewish blood on his hands - the two main qualifications for holding office in the 'Palestinian Authority.' He couldn't be elected dog catcher in the 'Palestinian Authority.' Yes, it's sad, because he's probably the only person who's qualified, and he's certainly the only one who's trusted by the West. But why let reality intrude on the 'Palestinian' dream of extirpating the Jewish state?
Besides, for Abu Mazen to do what Schanzer is suggesting would require statesmanship and a vision. If Abu Mazen has shown nothing else over the past ten years, he has shown that he has neither of those.
Labels: Abu Mazen, Palestinian elections, Salam Fayyad
Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Friday, Fenruary 15.
1) Was King Herod a Palestinian?
Earlier this week the New York Times reported about Anger That a Herod Show Uses West Bank Objects. This is an odd angle to report as the article tells us.
The Israel Museum on Tuesday opened its most ambitious archaeological
exhibition and the world’s first devoted to Herod, the lionized and
demonized Rome-appointed king of Judea, who reigned from 37 to 4 B.C.E.
and is among the most seminal and contentious figures in Jewish history.
But the exhibition, which the museum director described as a “massive
enterprise” that involved sifting through 30 tons of material from
Herodium and reconstructing 250 artifacts, has also brought its own bit
of controversy.
Instead of discussing the historical significance of the exhibit, the report focuses on the controversy.
The Palestinian Authority says the exhibition is a violation of
international law because much of its material was taken from near
Bethlehem and Jericho, both in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. An
Israeli group of archaeologists and activists complains that the museum,
however unwittingly, is helping the Jewish settlement movement advance
its contention that the West Bank should be part of Israel and not a
Palestinian state.
“What the Israel Museum is doing is like coming and saying, ‘Listen, the
heritage of the West Bank is part of our heritage first of all,’ ” said
Yonathan Mizrachi, an archaeologist who helped found the Israeli group,
Emek Shaveh, in 2009. “It’s part of the idea to create the narrative
that those sites, no matter what the political solution,” are “part of
the Israeli identity.”
James S. Snyder, the director of the museum, dismissed such criticism as
propaganda and political opportunism. The Oslo Accords signed by the
Israelis and Palestinians in the 1990s provide for Israeli involvement
in archaeology in the territories until the resolution of the overall
conflict, and Mr. Snyder said that at the end of the exhibition, the
museum plans to return the artifacts to the West Bank, to Israel’s civil
administration, which he said would arrange for their return to the
sites from which they were taken or to store the material until “the
site can be prepared for its care and/or display.” He noted that the
museum had spent a “huge” sum — he would not specify how much — to
restore and make available for public consumption artifacts that might
otherwise have been lost, like many of the antiquities in Iraq and
Egypt.
This is ridiculous. Before there were people who self-identified as
Palestinians there was a phenomenon called history. Just because the
Palestinian narrative isn't supported by history doesn't mean that the
history did not occur.
(It's disappointing that the article didn't point out that the
Palestinians often show no regard for archaeological sites as reported here.)
Unfortunately, instead of focusing on the history shown by the exhibit,
the New York Times instead focused on the hurt feelings of the
Palestinians.
2) Whither Fayyadism?
Roger Cohen laments the fate of Salam Fayyad in The Success that failed. This is the New York Times and it is columnist Roger Cohen, so this is no surprise:
He identified some of the issues: settlement expansion; Israeli
military incursions into Palestinian-controlled areas; the failure to
extend the Palestinian security presence in the West Bank; the “complex
and capricious” process of gaining access to the more than 60 percent of
the West Bank known as “Area C” and under direct Israeli military
control; the Israeli use of tax revenues as a spigot that can be turned
on and off to hurt the Palestinian Authority; the lack of access to 3G
technology and Israeli control of frequencies; the difficulty of
exporting to Israel. All of these factors together, Fayyad said, had
made governance “an exercise in impossibility.”
Then, of course, there is the internal Palestinian question, now
referred to as the “reconciliation” issue. The Palestinian national
movement is crippled by its split. Hamas rules in Gaza. President
Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah rule in the West Bank.
Everything that Fayyad claims, Cohen accepts without reservations.
Israeli military incursions? Those shouldn't be happening because the
Palestinian police force has been keeping the peace. But a few weeks ago
the IDF broke up a Hamas cell near Hebron.
Elsewhere Cohen mentions that IMF gave its approval to the Palestinian
statehood building program, but doesn't mention that just a few weeks
ago, the Palestinians were once again asking for Arab nations to make
good on their pledges. A well functioning society can generate its own
revenues.
Fayyad also complains that the Obama administration didn't get Israel to
stop settlement building. That's something it did do and it still did
not bring the Palestinians to the table for any meaningful negotiations.
Jonathan Tobin attacks the premise of the op-ed:
The most important thing to understand about Fayyad’s place in
Palestinian politics is that he has always been a man without a party.
In a political culture in which membership in one of the two main terror
groups — Fatah and Hamas — or one of the smaller splinter organizations
like Islamic Jihad has been keystone to identity and the ability to get
ahead, Fayyad is that rarest of Palestinian birds: a true independent.
In a society in which the ability to shed Israeli and Jewish blood has
been the only true indicator of street cred, Fayyad has always come up
short. Though Abbas and others recognized his ability as well his
ability to charm the Americans into keeping U.S. aid flowing to
Ramallah, he has never had anything that remotely resembled a political
constituency. Palestinians may long for good government and the rule of
law as much as any other people, but Fayyad’s platform of cooperation
with Israel and peace lacked support.
That Fayyad would blame the Israelis rather than his own people for his
failure is understandable since to do otherwise would be a death
sentence. But his complaints about Israeli settlements or security
measures in the West Bank lack credibility. The fact that Israelis have
continued to build in Jerusalem and the suburban settlement blocs that
everyone understands would remain within Israel in the event of a peace
deal renders the charge that they will prevent the creation of a
Palestinian state elsewhere absurd. As for Israeli incursions into the
West Bank, were Abbas’ security forces interested in foiling terror or
stamping out Hamas cells as they are obligated to do under their Oslo
commitments, they wouldn’t be necessary. If Israel has sought to exert
pressure on the PA it is because Abbas remains determined to avoid peace
talks and his governments remains a font of anti-Semitic incitement
that lays the foundation for endless conflict.
Fayyad can complain as much as he wants about Israel, but the simple
fact is that he has little or no political support. Cohen could have
looked into why that was so, but it's so much easier to blame Israel.
3) One last item about prisoner X
In the course of the reporting on Prisoner X there have been a number of details that now seem to be wrong. David Bernstein notes at the Volokh Conspiracy:
It seemed to me that van Esveld was jumping to a lot of conclusions
based on whatever information the reporter fed to him. As it turns out,
subsequent media reports have confirmed that (a) the Australian government was informed of Zygier’s arrest back in February 2010,
months before his suicide, and was informed of his death the day after
it happened; and (b) Zygier was represented by counsel through his
entire ordeal, and indeed saw one of his attorneys just a few days
before his suicide.
Bill van Esveld is a spokesman for HRW, who accepted every single damning bit of information about the case as fact.
Labels: Middle East Media Sampler, Mossad, New York Times, Palestinian people, Roger Cohen's obsession with Israel, Salam Fayyad, Soccer Dad
Being 'Palestinian' means living permanently on international welfare
I know I should not be amazed by this, but it's so blatant it's hard not to be amazed.
The New York Times publishes yet another editorial crying over the horrific state of the 'Palestinian' economy without once stopping to think why the 'Palestinian people' are still entirely dependent on international welfare nearly 20 years after the signing of the Oslo Accords, and have made precisely zero progress in developing an economy of their own. In fact, they were better off under the 'Israeli occupation,' but don't tell the
Times that.
There are many causes. After Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president,
won an upgrade for the status of Palestine as a nonmember observer state
at the United Nations General Assembly last fall,
Israel retaliated by withholding the $100 million in monthly tax
revenues it collects on behalf of the Palestinians. Congress, meanwhile,
has been withholding more than $450 million in American aid. Last year,
Mr. Fayyad said he hoped to improve the authority’s financial condition
by cutting spending and raising taxes on wealthier Palestinians. The
tax plan ran into strong protest and the West Bank’s modest economic
growth has slowed.
In the recent interview Mr. Fayyad put most of the blame for the
authority’s financial distress on Arab donors who are “not fulfilling
their pledge of support” made in Arab League resolutions to make up the
money Israel is withholding. This should come as little surprise. Arab
leaders have often promised political and economic support for the
Palestinians and failed to deliver. Arab foreign ministers are expected
to meet Sunday in Cairo to discuss Palestinian issues, including the
promised aid. They should affirm their commitment to assist the
Palestinian Authority and get the funds flowing.
Note that the Times is happy to blame the Arab states for not ponying up enough money, and Israel for existing. But it won't blame the 'Palestinian Authority's failure to make any effort at economic development for the fact that after 19 years, the 'Palestinian Authority' is still living hand to mouth.
Perhaps this is the place to retell a story I have told several times, but not in the past couple of years. A number of years ago (probably late '90's or early '00's), I attended a lecture under the auspices of the Columbia Alumni Club in Israel. The lecturer was
Natan Sharansky,
who was Minister of Industry and Trade from 1996-1999 under Binyamin
Netanyahu. Sharansky said that every time Israel attempted to discuss
economic relations with the 'Palestinians,' they would tune out. All
that interested them was how much land they were going to get under any
eventual arrangement.
That's not building a state from the ground up. Abu Mazen and Fayyad are failures. Too bad the Western media is scapegoating everyone else rather than placing the blame where it belongs.
Labels: Abu Mazen, anti-Israel media bias, New York Times, Palestinian economy, Salam Fayyad
