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To: Arutz-7 List <heb_roots_chr@geocities.com>, Israel News List
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Subject: The PLO and Your Money
Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 15:30:13 -0800
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From: Howard Morgan
To: heb_roots_chr@geocities.com
Subject: The Plo and Your money

Thought you would like to read this. Makes you want to write to your
congressman, after all its your money.

<< GUEST OP-ED: INVESTING IN YASSER ARAFAT
(by Michael Kelly, WASHINGTON POST, Dec 2)

There was a wonderful moment in the annals of diplomacy this week. Yasser
Arafat, the president of the Palestinian Authority, had come to town to
attend an international conference convened by the White House to raise a
new pile of money to give to President Arafat. And the conference had gone
splendidly.

Everyone had behaved perfectly fine; no one had so much as mentioned the
inconvenient London Sunday Times story the day before, which said that the
Palestinian Authority had swiped $20 million in British aid intended to
build housing for the poor of Gaza, using he money instead to build luxury
flats for Arafat's military and bureaucratic elite. After a day of
pleasantries, representatives of 43 nations had pledged $3 billion in new
aid to the Palestinian Authority, including an extra $400 million from the
U.S. president. Arafat saw that it was good. "I am satisfied with the
reality of this conference," he pronounced.

The reality? The reality is this: Since July 1, 1994, the day that Yasser
Arafat arrived to take charge of Gaza, the international community has
given the Palestinian Authority about $2.5 billion in aid. In that time, to
the confoundment of confident predictions, life in Gaza became, for most
people, even more poor, nasty, brutish and short than it had been before
the arrival of President Arafat. In the past four years, wage rates in Gaza
have fallen 50 percent and unemployment has risen to highs of 50 percent;
currently, it hovers at around 30 percent.

The gross national product per Palestinian has declined by 35 percent. The
number of Gazans legally working in Israel (where the jobs are) has fallen
from a pre-Arafat figure of 116,000 to as low as 23,000. The percentage of
goods manufactured in Gaza and marketed in the West Bank (where the
consumers are) declined from about 50 percent to 2 percent by 1996. In the
first two years of Arafat's rule, one-third of Gazan businesses folded.
Foreign commercial investment in Gaza declined from $520 million in 1993 to
below $300 million in 1997. The number of Palestinians living in poverty
soared; one out of every four now lives below the poverty line.

In President Arafat's considered opinion, all of this is the fault of
Israel, for its habit of closing off the Gaza Strip from time to time,
disrupting the flow of commerce. "The Israel closure policy is the primary
and direct cause for the dangerous decline in the performance of the
Palestinian economy over the past five years," he declared Monday.

It is true that periodically stopping the flow of goods and workers between
Gaza and Israel has played an important role in the decline of Gaza's
health. But what President Arafat was too diplomatic to mention was that
Israel has a reason for its policy. The closures have been in response to
the very many -- 279 fatalities since Oslo - terrorist attacks on Israelis
by Palestinians living under Arafat's rule. Neither did President Arafat
see fit to note that, in the past two years, the government of Binyamin
Netanyahu has greatly reduced the number of closures. Yet during the past
two years, the economy of Gaza has improved only slightly.

Might there be some other reason for Gaza's decline? Well, tactlessly, yes.
The other reason, as the Sunday Times story suggests, is that President
Arafat has established in Gaza and the West Bank a nasty, thuggish little
kleptocracy run by and for the benefit of President Arafat and his
bureaucrats and gunsels and cronies, without benefit of law or semblance of
order.

The Palestinian Authority has yet to draft a criminal and civil code. What
passes for law is brute and capricious force, imposed by 41,000 members of
seven separate police forces -- police forces that may arrest without
warrant and detain without due process. The 41,000 are the muscle in an
obesity of a bureaucracy: the Palestinian Authority boasts no fewer than
80,451 employees, spread among 24 different ministries. Salaries for these
employees consume more than half of the entire Palestinian national budget,
which ran to $814 million in 1997.

Where does the rest of the money go? Almost all of it is stolen or dribbled
away. The Palestinian Authority's own auditors reported last year that
nearly 40 percent of the annual budget -- $323 million -- was wasted,
looted or misused. In President Arafat's regime, bribery is endemic,
services are nil, connections are everything, and might is the only right
there is.

This is the reality that inspires foreign investment to stay far, far away
from Gaza. But it isn't diplomatic to say that. Let's give the old fellow a
few billion more. Maybe he won't steal all of it.

+ 1998 The Washington Post Company
>>

++++++++++++++++++++++

From
International Christian Embassy Jerusalem

ICEJ NEWS SERVICE FROM JERUSALEM

"... My enemies speak against me; and those who lie in wait for my life take
counsel together, saying, 'God has forsaken him; pursue and take him, for
there is none to deliver him.' O God, do not be far from me; O my God, make
haste to help me. Let them be confounded and consumed who are adversaries
of my life; let them be covered with reproach and dishonor who seek my
hurt. But I will hope continually, and will praise You yet more and more."
(Psalm 71:10-14)

1. US SIDES WITH PA IN LATEST OSLO CRISIS
2. CONTINUING PALESTINIAN VIOLENCE REPORTED
3. NOW LEVY WANTS FINANCE MINISTRY - AND TO MAKE POLICY
4. STEP FORWARD FOR CRUCIAL 'GOLAN BILL'

US SIDES WITH PA IN LATEST OSLO CRISIS

Washington is siding with the Palestinian Authority during the latest
crisis in the Oslo process, rejecting Israel's demands that the PA meet
three conditions in return for more disputed territory.

State Department spokesman James Rubin called Israel's conditions "new" and
inappropriate, and said the Wye Memorandum signed in Washington in October
"should be implemented as signed".

PA chairman Yasser Arafat also described the Israeli demands as "a
violation of the accord" and appealed for US help. The VOICE OF PALESTINE
quoted him as saying: "The new condition declared by Israeli officials on
the implementation of the Wye River agreement is an attempt to shirk the
accurate and honest implementation of what was agreed upon".

The Israeli cabinet decided on Wednesday night that further implementation
of the Wye agreement would be conditional on the PA stopping incitement,
accepting that security prisoners with blood on their hands would not be
released, and publicly abandoning its intention unilaterally to declare a
Palestinian state next May.

The next stage of Wye - when five per cent of Judea-Samaria is to be
transferred from sole Israeli control to joint jurisdiction and Israel is
to release another 250 prisoners - is due to take place later this month,
shortly after President Bill Clinton visits the region. That visit is
unlikely to be affected by the current stand-off, say US officials.

The Israeli decision came after the cabinet viewed graphic television
footage of a Palestinian mob attacking two Israelis in a car near
Ram'Allah. PM Binyamin Netanyahu said the incident was "organised,
orchestrated, planned in advance, and fomented by the Palestinian Authority".

Other Israeli commentators have concurred. And security officials believe
that the violence was "directly linked to and influenced by inflammatory
statements with regard to the settlers, voiced by Abu-Ala, chairman of the
Palestinian Legislative Council, in Ram'Allah on 1 December", reported the
VOICE OF ISRAEL.

Netanyahu said no country could implement a process in which the other side
blatantly violated all its commitments and when its citizens were subjected
to murderous
violence.

Whether the three Israeli demands are "new" is debatable:
- According to the Wye agreement: "The two sides also agreed to take legal
measures against within their jurisdiction and to prevent incitement
against each other by any organisations, groups or individuals within their
jurisdiction." The agreement also requires the PA to issue a legal decree
against incitement, a step taken last month.
- Israeli negotiators insist a verbal understanding was reached at Wye that
Palestinian prisoners to be freed would include neither Hamas members nor
prisoners who had perpetrated violence against Israelis.
- The unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state constitutes a
unilateral step which changes the status of disputed territory, an action
prohibited by various signed agreements, including Wye which incorporates
and confirms "prior agreements".

THE JERUSALEM POST quotes "a senior US official" as saying he expected
Netanyahu would ultimately back down on the three demands. "He, and I'm
sure the cabinet, know they won't get a commitment from Arafat [to renounce
plans to call for statehood next year]. It's not an option and I think they
know that."

The official said further that Israel had "miscalculated" the emotional
appeal of the prisoner issue for Palestinians, who believed Israel had
"pulled a fast one" by freeing more common criminals than security
prisoners last month.

But Netanyahu last night reiterated his stance on the prisoner issue,
telling a Likud gathering "we will never release convicted terrorist
murderers ... The demand that we release murderers is not a demand that we
honour our Wye commitments, but it is a demand that we go directly against
what the Wye agreement specifies."

He said the PA "understood very clearly at Wye that murderers would remain
in prison... They are now demanding something which they very clearly know
was never promised them. We never promised to free murderers, we could
never have made such a promise and we never will make this promise. Every
sense of human justice cries out against letting these heinous butchers go
free."

* In continuing diplomacy related to Middle East peace efforts, US mediator
Dennis Ross will visit the region next week, and Israeli Foreign Minister
Ariel Sharon will fly to Washington at the weekend for talks with Vice
President Al Gore, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Defence Secretary
William Cohen, and National Security Adviser Sandy Berger.

*****

CONTINUING PALESTINIAN VIOLENCE REPORTED

Widely-disseminated footage of Wednesday's near-lynching near Ram'Allah,
which prompted the Israeli cabinet to suspend implementation of the Wye
agreement, shocked viewers in Israel and elsewhere. But this type of
violence is commonplace in Israel.

Even since Wednesday, similar incidents have been reported. Both Israel and
the Palestinians accuse each other of trying to heat up the situation in
the run-up to President Bill Clinton's planned visit to the region in nine
days' time.

Yesterday, an Israeli man sustained injuries described as
moderate-to-serious when he and several colleagues were assaulted by masked
Arabs on Jerusalem's Mount of Olives. ARUTZ 7 RADIO reports that an
ambulance dispatched to the scene was also stoned.

A pregnant Israeli woman was stoned by Arabs while driving in the town of
Lod near Ben Gurion airport. "It happens all the time here," she told
ARUTZ 7. And an Israeli driver was hospitalised for back injuries sustained
when his car was stoned at a junction north of Jerusalem.

In two other incidents in eastern Jerusalem, six policemen were hurt when
Arabs threw rocks at them and at Israeli drivers during apparently
orchestrated disturbances. Eighteen Palestinians were arrested.

In the mixed Abu Tor neighbourhood, Arabs set fire to tired and clashed
with police following the stabbing murder earlier of an Arab man on his way
to work. Police suspect the masked assailant may be an Israeli responsible
for the murder in May of an Arab in another Jerusalem suburb. The same man
has been linked to five other, non-fatal stabbing incidents.

The Jerusalem district police commander, Yair Yitzhak, has urged Arab
residents of the city to maintain calm and not to heed incitement of those
he said were trying to exploit the tragedy.

Meanwhile the soldier hurt in the Ram'Allah incident has been treated for
head injuries. He has been criticised in military circles for not
protecting himself by using his firearm, which was stolen after he fled the
scene under attack from the mob. PA police later returned it to the Israeli
army.

Film of the attack showed Arabs hurling large rocks at army jeeps and then
at the car carrying the soldier and a civilian driver. The driver emerged
and ran away, the soldier also tried to flee and was viciously attacked
while still in and near the car. Finally he managed to run away and the mob
set the vehicle alight.

*****

NOW LEVY WANTS FINANCE MINISTRY - AND TO MAKE POLICY

David Levy, the veteran politician who has held portfolios in Likud and
Labour governments and who left the Netanyahu government in pique earlier
this year, now wants to return to the cabinet as finance minister.

PM Binyamin Netanyahu had been negotiating with Levy's return - a move
aimed at bolstering the shaky coalition - but had offered him the National
Infrastructure portfolio.

Levy then stunned observers by calling a press conference to announce he
actually wanted the more prestigious finance ministry.

"Now that the government has taken a positive step in the diplomatic arena,
I would like to ensure that the economic policy, too, is improved," said
Levy, who considers himself the voice of Israel's needy.

The bid was not immediately successful, however, as subsequent talks with
Netanyahu have broken down over Levy's insistence that he not only become
finance minister, but also overhaul the proposed state budget soon to be
brought before the Knesset.

Netanyahu insists that he retains the last word on Treasury policy.

Though talks have deadlocked, the two have agreed to meet again for further
discussions.

Adding to Netanyahu's already considerable coalition woes is the fact that
the prospect of Levy as finance minister has unnerved other parties in the
government. They fear Levy might interfere with budgetary allocations
earmarked for various causes they promote.

*****

STEP FORWARD FOR CRUCIAL 'GOLAN BILL'

A law which complicates any attempt to change the status of the Golan
Heights - as well as other Israeli territory, such as eastern Jerusalem -
took a step closer to ratification this week.

By a vote of 8 to 5, and with one abstention, the Knesset Law Committee
gave its final approval on Wednesday morning to the proposed "Golan Heights
bill", which will go to the Knesset next week.

The bill requires a special majority of 61 Knesset members to approve any
change in the status of the Golan.

Knesset member Yehuda Harel (Third Way) expressed satisfaction with the
decision, and noted that, if passed into law, the bill would also require a
61-member majority to forfeit any sovereign Israeli land, including the
Negev and eastern Jerusalem.

Besides its obvious ramifications for future dealings with Syria, the law
could also have a major impact on "final status" negotiations with the
Palestinian Authority, which demands part or all of Jerusalem as the
capital of a future independent state.

********************************************************************