They’ve also lined their own pockets. Get the truth in The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process.
“The missing billions of the Palestinian Authority,” by Maurice Hirsch, Palestinian Media Watch, November 4, 2019:
Since its creation, the Palestinian Authority has received tens of billions of dollars of international aid. Just since 2011, the European Union, the United States, and other countries have provided the PA with hundreds of millions of dollars and euros of aid.
While the PA has constantly complained about its financial difficulties, scrutiny of the PA’s own financial records for the years 2011 – 2018, shows that the PA transferred from its coffers over 7 billion shekels to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), some of which was then given to terrorist organizations. In that same period, the PA also spent over 440 million shekels to fund its non-functioning institutions.
Funding to the PLO and internationally designated terrorist organizations
The PLO, which is also headed by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, is an umbrella organization for several Palestinian groups. The largest and most dominant member is Abbas’ Fatah party. Other members include groups designated as terror organizations by the US and the EU such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Palestinian Liberation Front. PLO members are entitled to and receive funding from the PLO.
While international donors have demanded that the PA show financial transparency, the PLO is not subject to any financial regulation or demands of transparency. Accordingly, it is impossible to know what happens with billions of dollars of donor money the PA has given and continues to give today to the PLO.
Only on sporadic occasions are the financial workings of the PLO exposed. In June 2018, a senior PFLP official, Maher Mazhar, complained that the PFLP was not getting its monthly allocations from the PLO.
Denying the claim of the PFLP, PLO Executive Committee member and Fatah Central Committee member Azzam Al-Ahmad confirmed that Abbas and the Palestinian National Fund – the financial branch of the PLO – are responsible for funding the PFLP, and stressed that the allocations had not been stopped:
“PLO Executive Committee member [and Fatah Central Committee member] Azzam Al-Ahmad denied that the allocation from the Palestinian National Fund to any Palestinian organization, including the Popular Front [for the Liberation of Palestine] (PFLP), has been stopped. In a telephone conversation with Al-Ahmad from Amman, he said: ‘There is no truth to the rumors that [PA] President Abbas or any other party has stopped the allocation to the PFLP.”
[Ma’an, (Independent Palestinian news agency), June 17, 2018]While Al-Ahmad denied the claims of the PFLP in 2018, Palestinian media reports show that when he chose to, Abbas did withhold PLO funding from the PFLP. In 2016, Abbas withheld the group’s funding, not because he considered the PFLP a terrorist organization, but rather because the PFLP criticized him:
“The Ma’an News agency was informed that [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas has terminated the budgeting of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) following the demand of some of the Front’s leaders for Mahmoud Abbas’ resignation.
Regarding the termination of the budgeting, PFLP leadership member Kayed Al-Ghoul stated yesterday morning, Monday [April 10, 2016], that President Abbas has stopped budgeting of the PFLP for February and March.”
[Ma’an, (Independent Palestinian news agency), April 11, 2016]Since the subject of the funding of the PFLP resurfaced in 2018, it is clear that Abbas did not suspend the PLO’s funding of the PFLP in 2016 for long, and resumed it at some point.
In this manner, the PA has systematically used US and EU money to fund organizations that the donors themselves have designated as terrorist organizations. While the US has stopped its direct aid to the PA, and thus stopped the PA misuse of the money to fund designated terrorist organizations, the EU continues to provide the PA with aid. And the PA continues to provide funds to the PLO. Clearly, while it is impossible to prove that one specific dollar/euro donated to the PA found its way directly into the accounts of the PFLP/PLF, it is clear that donations to the PA to cover its legitimate expenses, allows the PA to divert its own resources for these illegitimate purposes….
Jaladhi says
It is simple – what we call terror organizations, Muslims call these religious organizations that deserve all our aid. In Islam terror and religion are two sides of the same coin! What a waste of our taxpayer money!! Shut this pipeline off!!
elee says
+1 with applause
gravenimage says
Yes–Zakat in Islam, often mistranslated as “charity”, also includes funding violent JIhad.
mortimer says
The missing billions of Hamas and Fatah … that is the question. Once that question is answered by forensic accounting, there should remain no further motive for handing aid monies to those kleptocrats.
They have used a political movement to enrich themselves.
gravenimage says
I wish the “Palestinians” were *just\* enriching themselves, Mortimer–unfortunately, they are also funding Jihad terror with our money.
elee says
If you give money to a Muslim he pays zakat out of it. And where does zakat go? See K 9:58-60; the standard, ulema-sanctioned construction of this verse requires an eighth of it to go to people dedicated to violent enforcement of the commands of al Lah. Why not just buy them firearms to kill you and yours, and spare them having to deal with the arms merchant? Thats what you do when you contribute to sharia-compliant charities. IMHO and all, of course……
gravenimage says
Grimly true.
Spiro says
This is news !!!!!
When Arafat died his family had a big fight over who got
what part of the billions he stole from the donated money and salted away in Swiss banks
Angemon says
Corruption and terrorism sponsoring in the PA? I’m shocked, SHOCKED!!!
Maximilian Jehuda Ewert says
Situation in pubic opinion (e.g. in 2014 no news report in TV radio ir newspaper mentioned the existence of terror tunnels, far from the one used to kidnap and execute toddlers on camera), is the association with opressed people,refuting that is called islamophob.So in PFLP the word palestinian means ‘good’. Calling publicly Hamas as an terrororganisation or that after one vehicular jihad in Israel by ISIS they (Hamas) declared alliance to Da’esh, is also islamophob. If people hear sometging like etat islamique palestinian (islamuc state of palestine), itgets a romsntic flair.