A state of corruption

Palestinians desire nationhood, but is this the kind of 
nation they want? 

by Kahled Abu Toameh and Larry Derfner
US News and World Report
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/020701/usnews/1corrupt.htm

Jericho, West Bank - It was, for a time, the glittering embodiment 
of all hope for Israeli-Palestinian cooperation. In those calmer 
days, the Oasis Casino attracted caravans of Israeli gamblers. 
Inside, Palestinian dealers and waiters dressed in chic black 
suits. Poker chips and gin fizzes changed hands all night long. 
The Oasis was supposed to give an economic boost to the Palestinian 
people, and it did - at least to some Palestinian people. 
Says a former Oasis midlevel security official: "The main purpose 
of the casino was to make senior Palestinian Authority officials 
rich." 

The casino now stands dark and empty, customers long gone owing 
to the intifada. The extinguished glow of prosperity is a bitter 
memory for the impoverished residents of the Akbat Jabber refugee 
camp, an eyesore smelling of sewage just 250 yards from the Oasis. 
"We heard it made a million dollars a day, and all of it went into 
the pockets of corrupt Palestinian officials," says Salah Haddad, 
75, an ex-construction worker, sitting outside his dried-mud home 
on one of Akbat Jabber's narrow streets of sand.

Since the 1993 Oslo peace accord established the Palestinian 
Authority's administrative rule over the 3.3 million Palestinians 
of the West Bank and Gaza, Yasser Arafat has run a system built on 
corruption and repression. His aides reap money from many sources 
in all corners of the dirt-poor territories–brazenly showing off 
their newfound wealth with grand new homes and fancy cars. 
Arafat's security forces - a polite name for armed militias - 
provide the muscle. "You cannot survive without giving these guys 
a lot of money at the end of each month," says Amjad al-Masri, 
whose family owns a large auto garage in Nablus. "That's the 
name of the game."

President Bush hopes to induce Palestinians to end their violence 
against Israel by offering a chance to realize their goal of a 
Palestinian state, perhaps by as early as year-end. But what kind
of state? Run under whose rules? The Bush plan faces at least 
two daunting hurdles: It is conditioned both on an end of 
Palestinian attacks against Israelis and on substantial political 
and economic reforms - which key U.S. officials consider unlikely, 
if not impossible, as long as Arafat remains in charge.

Palestinians have focused their political aspirations on achieving 
nationhood and aimed their anger at Israel. But months of violence 
and privation are stirring a growing anger toward the Palestinian 
Authority. A poll in mid-May found 91 percent of Palestinians 
calling for "fundamental reform." Palestinians say they are fed up 
with suffering for the sake of freedom from Israeli military rule, 
only to suffer repression and extortion under Palestinian police. 
Support for reform doesn't necessarily mean ending the conflict 
with Israel but rather is a cry for justice and decency from their 
own authorities. The owner of a West Bank chain of food stores 
says he has been paying "taxes" regularly to a PA security force, 
whose men threatened to jail his children and denounce him as 
an Israeli collaborator - effectively a death sentence - if he 
didn't pay up. "When I went to complain to more senior officials 
in the PA," the businessman says, "they also asked for money."

Bribes. 
Even charity is not beyond the reach of corrupt officials. 
When the mother of a 5-year-old deaf boy, Ayham Abdel Aziz, 
petitioned Arafat personally for $20,000 for the boy's emergency 
surgery, Arafat gave her a signed voucher and sent her to the 
PA's Finance Ministry in Ramallah. At the ministry, officials 
told her to sign for the $20,000 - then handed her $5,000, 
taking as "commission" the other $15,000. "The most senior PA 
officials are stealing the money that belongs to the people. 
Wherever you go you are asked to pay a commission or a bribe," 
says Umaimah Abu Shusheh, chairwoman of the Palestinian Union 
for the Handicapped. "Ayham's case is only one of thousands."

The full extent of the PA's hidden riches is unclear. Over the 
years, the United States, the European Union, and other aid 
donors have complained that hundreds of millions of dollars 
have disappeared from the PA treasury. Senior PA officials and 
their cronies benefit from contracts signed without oversight 
and demand bribes to facilitate business deals. In Western 
capitals, some degree of PA corruption had been regarded as a 
small price to pay for a period of relative calm. But it has, 
over time, had the corrosive effect of turning Palestinians 
toward an alternative seen as less corrupt: the radical Islamic 
group Hamas, which operates a network of schools, health clinics, 
and mosques - and dispatches suicide bombers against Israelis.

Arafat has no known material desires, though he supports his 
wife and daughter living in France and Switzerland. Instead, 
he uses money to corrupt those around him. "He locks in people's 
loyalty by giving them material advantages," says a Western 
diplomat. "And none of his beneficiaries will dare go against 
him because he'll expose them." 

The Palestinian Authority employs more than 100,000 people, 
roughly one sixth of the Palestinian workforce. Within his 
domain, Arafat acts with unchallenged authority. "Arafat doesn't 
allow the building of strong institutions," says Khalil Shikaki, 
head of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research 
in Ramallah. "Instead, he has people who are loyal to him, and 
the institutions are irrelevant."

Early this year, for instance, Arafat called a Palestinian lawyer 
to his Ramallah office around midnight to inquire why he had 
stopped counseling PA officials. "Because they stopped paying me," 
the lawyer explained. Arafat ordered an aide to call the 
PA finance minister at the time, Mohammed Nashashibi. The aide 
returned and told Arafat that Nashashibi was asleep. "Wake him 
up!" Arafat screamed. Moments later, Arafat took the phone and 
told the finance minister, "You have 20 minutes to get here." 
After Nashashibi arrived, Arafat told him to pay what the lawyer 
was owed, some tens of thousands of dollars. "You have two hours 
to bring it to him," Arafat ordered. Well before 2 a.m., the 
Palestinian finance minister returned to Arafat's office; 
the lawyer went home with a plastic bag filled with hundreds 
of $100 bills.

"Tyranny." 
Rare is the Palestinian prepared to challenge Arafat. Sattar 
Kassem is one. An outspoken West Bank political science professor 
educated at the University of Missouri, Kassem was shot in the 
legs and hand on his way home in 1995 after he told a Hamas 
newspaper that Arafat's rule amounted to "tyranny which grasps 
our people by the throat." He says he has been told that the 
gunman worked for the PA's feared West Bank intelligence agency. 
An unsigned leaflet that circulated in the West Bank said 
Arafat had ordered the shooting, he notes. Asked if he had 
thought to seek justice, he scoffs: "Of course I didn't. 
There's no rule of law here." 

There's also no free press, making it hard for Palestinians 
to air grievances. One of the PA's first moves after taking 
over was to arrest dozens of journalists and human-rights 
workers. When the Al-Nahar newspaper in the West Bank was 
shut down, for instance, many of its journalists were beaten 
by men from the West Bank security force headed by Jibril 
Rajoub. What's more, some Palestinian taxi drivers serve as 
informers for Arafat's enforcers; cabbies say they get at 
least 50 Israeli shekels ($10) from their PA handlers for 
each bit of useful, overheard information they relay.

Perhaps the most Orwellian expression in the Palestinian 
Authority is the term "justice system." When the then president 
of the Palestinian Supreme Court, Qusai al-Abadleh, publicly 
criticized Justice Minister Freih Abu Medein for interfering 
in court proceedings and failing to pay court employees' 
salaries, he was fired. A former Nablus judge calls the court 
system "a big joke," saying many judges are "subject to 
intimidation and threats from PA security commanders and 
senior officials in Arafat's office." 

A case in point: After Supreme Court judges ordered the release 
from prison of a Hamas activist in 1997, Palestinian Police 
Chief Ghazi Jabali shouted at them over the phone for 
"interfering in security matters," and then ignored their 
order. He later told U.S. News: "These stupid judges don't 
know anything. Who do they think they are to tell me what to 
do? I know better than all of them. In fact, I should be a 
professor of law at Harvard University." 

Among Palestinian chambers of justice, the most notorious are 
the "state security courts," which try collaborators and Hamas 
activists. Early last year, for instance, two policemen and 
a private attorney called an impromptu session of the state 
security court in a Bethlehem auditorium to try Mohammed 
Deifallah and another reputed car thief. The charge: 
collaborating with Israel in the assassination of a local 
Fatah guerrilla leader. Their claims to have falsely 
"confessed" under torture did little good. In two hours, 
the trial was over. Some 100 spectators in the hall cheered 
when the novice judges sentenced the men to be shot to death. 

The two sat in jail for months, pending Arafat's signed 
execution order. As it turned out, that wasn't needed. 
In March, as the Israeli Army blasted away in Bethlehem and 
other West Bank cities, PA jailers turned the two men over 
to members of Arafat's Fatah militia. They were taken out to 
Manger Square, shot to death, tied to a jeep, and dragged 
before the crowd to show what happens to collaborators - or 
maybe car thieves.