Thank you, Tom DeLay

by Caroline Glick
March 21, 2005 

Israelis and Palestinians alike owe a debt of gratitude to US House 
of Representatives Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Because of DeLay, 
last week Washington was forced, at least perfunctorily, to engage 
in a debate that in spite of the more than four-and-a-half-year-old 
Palestinian terror war, it had until now refused to countenance. 
It revolves around a single question: Does the Palestinian Authority 
need financial assistance? 

Until now, it has been taken on faith that of course the PA needs 
money. After all, the Palestinian economy has failed. Unemployment 
among Palestinians reaches "all-time highs" every month. 
But will this economic disaster be mitigated by the infusion 
of billions of dollars of aid into the PA's budget as "everyone who 
is anyone" seems to think? 

In a dispatch in last week's Jerusalem Post, Khaled Abu Toameh 
gave a glimpse of how the PA makes its budgetary decisions. 
The Palestinian Legislative Council just decided that at a time 
when some 80 percent of Gazans live beneath Third World poverty 
lines, its priority is buying Palestinian politicians new luxury cars. 

Each of the PA's 26 ministers is set to receive a $76,000 Audi, 
while each of the 86 "mere legislators" will suffice with cars 
costing the PA budget $45,000 apiece. All told, the PA will 
spend almost $6 million on vehicles for the Palestinians most 
able to buy their own luxury cars. And this allocation does not 
include what must necessarily follow: The politicians will approve 
a budget for chauffeurs and receive disbursements for gas and 
insurance for their PA-supplied vehicles. 

As well, no doubt, as in the past, senior PA officials will also 
receive these perks. Since on average each Palestinian ministry 
has four or five directors-general and another dozen deputy 
directors-general plus 10 to 20 department heads, it can be 
safely assumed that in the next few weeks the PLC, (if it hasn't 
already), will be approving the outlay of tens of millions of dollars 
for cars and drivers and gas for all of these PA VIPs. 

The cars are just one tiny example of the waste, graft and 
purloining of PA funds by its politicians, militia commanders and 
bureaucrats, which have rendered the Palestinians one of the 
poorest Arab societies in the world today. It should be emphasized 
that this impoverishment has occurred during a decade which saw 
the 2.3 million Palestinians receive more international donor aid 
per capita than has ever been transferred to any group by the 
international community in the history of foreign aid. 

When discussing the question of international assistance to the 
PA, it is necessary to relate to two other aspects of PA spending. 
First is the fact that the billions of dollars that have been stolen 
from the PA's budget over the years were taken by all the heads 
of the PA - from Arafat to Abbas to current Prime Minister Ahmed 
Qurei to Muhammad Dahlan and Jibril Rajoub. That is, it was not 
only Arafat and his economic adviser Muhammad Rashid who 
were stealing the billions. Commenting on this state of affairs in 
1996, Abbas himself told a senior UN official: "You simply have to 
accept the fact that we are all corrupt." 

Aside from the direct involvement of Abbas and his cronies in 
grand larceny for their personal enrichment is the fact that over 
the past 11 years, since the PA was formed as a repository of 
international aid dollars, millions of dollars in additional funds for 
the PA and relief institutions have been diverted from development 
programs to terrorism. Even today Fatah terrorists are paid 
salaries from the PA. Abbas now wants to extend the terrorist 
support program by putting Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists 
on the PA payroll as part of his much-vaunted "reform" program. 

Given the PA's endemic corruption - from petty theft to grand 
larceny - and the fact that much of the stolen monies have gone 
to financing terrorism, both the Palestinian people and the Israeli 
people owe a debt of gratitude to DeLay for his efforts over the 
past several weeks which prevented the transfer of $200 million 
in direct American government payments to the PA. 

DeLay bucked heads with the Bush administration, the Israeli 
Embassy, AIPAC and its new partner, Peace Now, and with 
Jewish members of Congress in order to make sure that none 
of the $200 million dollars that the Bush Administration promised 
to the Palestinians last month will be transferred to the PA budget. 
All these groups believed, as Labor Party Minister Matan Vilna'i 
told the Forward newspaper last week, that "Abbas should have 
some discretion over deciding which projects are funded. 
It is important that he is perceived as having control - at least of 
some of the funds - in order to strengthen his authority - to 
empower him." 

That is, all those who attack DeLay believe that "in the interests 
of peace" the US should support the continuation of the PA's 
kleptocratic, terror-supporting tyranny over Palestinian society. 

That the Israeli government has been pushing Congress to approve 
direct aid to the PA is made all the more ironic by the fact that 
the Foreign Ministry launched a strenuous protest of the EU's 
announcement last week that, in spite of mountains of documentary 
evidence Israel provided, Brussels could not conclusively determine 
if some of the billions of dollars it has transferred to the PA since 
1994 have been used to finance terrorism. 

It is reassuring to know that in this period during which Israeli 
policy has become near-schizophrenic and the Bush administration 
appears convinced - in spite of all evidence - that Abbas is a man 
who can be trusted, at least one powerful man in Washington 
is not buying into the current peace charade. 

Thank you for your courage and your wisdom, Tom DeLay. 
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caroline@jpost.com