Exposing Mahmoud Abbas and His Palestinian Authority

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                        

April 23, 2014: When Fatah and Hamas united-The sides, wrapping up two days of talks in Hamas-run Gaza, announced they  had begun discussions to form a unity government. An interim government could be finalized within the next five weeks, with elections possible by early 2015, Fatah spokesman Fayez Abu Eitta said.  They have since broken apart.   The unity caused Israel to suspend peace talks.

"In the midst of negotiations to resolve the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, the Shin Bet revealed an alleged plot by Hamas to depose Fatah rule in the West Bank. This would be achieved by deploying Hamas cells around the West Bank to incite a third intifada and overwhelm Palestinian Authority forces. More than 90 people were arrested. President Abbas said the plot was "a grave threat to the unity of the Palestinian people and its future."

We have had a lot of sympathetic Leftists in the USA who admire and bolster Mahmoud Abbas and his PA.  Living under his authority is something they don't have to do.  Ask a Palestinian and the record shows they actually prefer to live under Israeli rule.
                                                                                 

Mahmoud Abbas has been head of PA since November 11, 2004 when Arafat died.  He has overstepped his January 9, 2009 limit for the past 6 years.  

Abbas has never been democratic.  He got in power and has never left his position.  He's a KGB graduate, not a democratically educated person. A Frank Gaffney quote is " Sharia is “Communism with a God.” This seemingly paradoxical problem is real and has been exported by the Soviet Union as part of the communist world revolution. "The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Marxist–Leninist organization, was founded in 1967 His regime has been  said to be a "rare combination of endemic corruption, kleptomania, nepotism, hate-education, incitement, terrorism, non-compliance with internal and external agreements and egregious violations of civil liberties."  All this can be backed by examples. "Corruption of the Fatah leadership is believed to have contributed to a convincing win by Hamas in the January 2006 parliamentary election. Fatah leaders were accused of siphoning funds from ministry budgets, passing out patronage jobs, accepting favors and gifts from suppliers and contractors."   This has caused Muslim emigraton and is the cause of Christian towns becoming Muslim where the Christian Arabs have had to leave.  This has happened to Bethlehem, Beit Jala and Ramallah, their headquarters.                                                                            

Proclamation on November 13, 1974 in his first appearance at the UN:  Yassir Arafat b: August 24, 1929 Cairo, Egypt died November 11, 2004 Clamart, France, began organizing PLO-Fatah in 1959.  Jordan expulsed them in 1970 by King Hussein, Lebanon in 1982 by Israel, Saddam Hussein in 1991 Gulf War.  1988 brought a Palestinian State proclamation with Arafat as President.  The olive branch was never intended for Israel.

Fatah, which has become the Palestinian Authority, started with Yasir Arafat in 1993.  When he died Mahmoud Abbas took over.  They brought in "Palestinian" Arabs from the terrorist camps of Sudan, Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya and Tunisia who "imposed themselves ruthlessly on the indigenous Arabs of Judea and Samaria.  Yoram Ettinger, retired Ambassador is a consultant to the Israeli Cabinet,  was able to share such a fact fact  because he was told this by a prominent Palestinian who told him, "We shall never forgive Israel for imposing upon us the Tunisia-based PLO Sodom and Gomorrah!"  "Arafat and Fatah's center for operations was based in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, until 1993.  
                                                                            

Fatah

Who backs the PA?  It's been the teary-eyed Americans who are its largest single-state donor who average $500 million annually in economic and security assistance.  This is in addition to UNRWA who donated $250 million in 2014 alone.  This money has probably gone into terrorist activities but hasn't been used at all to stop or even reduce " the threat of incitement and hate education-driven Palestinian terrorism.  It hasn't caused Palestinians to want peaceful coexistence with Israel.  It has not advanced the cause of democracy and human rights in the the Palestinian Authority.  It hasn't changed them at all for the better.  It hasn't even been used to pay off their bills for electricity or water they have owed to Israel and had been in great arrears.
                                                                           

Bethlehem

The Oslo Accords were concluded in September 1993.  Bethlehem had a Christian mayor, Elias Freij.  It was a Christian town with Christian leaders.  Beit Jala was Christian, also.  Under the Oslo agreement, Prime Minister Rabin felt forced to include and transfer both of these towns to the Palestinian Authority's area.  This is because they had been included in the Jerusalem district during the Ottoman Empire days covering 400 years and remained as such during the British mandate of 30 years and then the Jordanian rule from 1948 to 1967.  "Oh Little Town of Bethlehem" went Muslim quickly.  The Christians were repressed by the PA.  Bethlehem is now only 15% Christian.  Beit Jala's mayor had been Farah al-Araj.  He told William Safire, journalist, that most of the Christian Arabs high-tailed it to Belize in Central America and have a larger community of Christians there than remain in Beit Jala.  In 2015 those in Belize enjoy political and financial prominence and those in Beit Jala are being repressed religiously and physically.under the PA. The mayor of Belize is a former American.

Belize mayor Darrell Bradley 

Abbas practices  nepotism and stashed accounts.  The PA takes bribes, has secret investments and hidden bank accounts.  Abbas's sons, Tarek and Yasir, get to profit very well from all of PA's projects. "The conspicuous wealth of Abbas's own sons, Yasser and Tarek, has been noted in Palestinian society since at least 2009, when Reuters first published a series of articles tying the sons to several business deals, including a few that had U.S. taxpayer support."  Since then, the sons have sued.  

Abbas has run a corrupt dictatorship and uses international funds to consolidate his own administration rather than develop the Palestinian economy.  Remember, when Arafat died, his widow was worth millions.  Abbas learned his role well from the master.  "In August 2002, the Israeli Military Intelligence Chief alleged that Arafat's personal wealth was in the range of US$1.3 billion."  in 2003, a team of American accountants—hired by Arafat's own finance ministry—began examining Arafat's finances; this team reached a different conclusion. The team claimed that part of the Palestinian leader's wealth was in a secret portfolio worth close to $1 billion, with investments in companies like a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Ramallah, a Tunisian cell phone company and venture capital funds in the US and the Cayman Islands. The head of the investigation stated that "although the money for the portfolio came from public funds like Palestinian taxes, virtually none of it was used for the Palestinian people; it was all controlled by Arafat. And none of these dealings were made public."

In East Jerusalem, the PA is highly mistrusted.  Most Palestinians would prefer to live under the present Israeli rule. " Bassam Eid, founder of Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group based in Jerusalem, said that the Palestinians do need strong democratic institutions and an end to human rights violations.  They never got  it from the PA.  America should make pre-conditions before they give more foreign aid to the PA in order to transform their own conduct.

I find it tragic that the USA would urge the statehood of such a robber who was born a terrorist group who hasn't really changed their behaviors.  Their goal has always been the destruction of Israel and they rule their own people as peons in the Middle Ages.  Did women find this James Cagney type Arafat sexy with his guns on his hips in the UN or what?  What's the inducement to back such unsavory behaviors?

Yoram Ettinger: Former Ambassador Ettinger – who did his graduate studies at UCLA and undergraduate at UTEP - served as Minister for Congressional Affairs at Israel's Embassy in Washington (with the rank of ambassador), as Israel's Consul General in Houston and as Director of Israel's Government Press Office. He is the editor of Straight From The Jerusalem Cloakroom and Boardroom, newsletters on issues of national security and overseas investments in Israel's high-tech.

Resource:  The Jewish Press, July 3, 2015, page 6, 23.  The Nature of Abbas and His Regime by Yoram Ettinger
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/23/world/meast/gaza-west-bank-palestinian-reconciliation/
http://belizecitycouncil.org/mayors-biography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasser_Arafat
http://www.wrmea.org/1994-november-december/plo-chairman-yasser-arafat-s-first-appearance-at-the-united-nations.html
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/23/world/meast/gaza-west-bank-palestinian-reconciliation/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Abbas
http://leninandsharia.com/docs/preobrazhensky.pdf
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/03/palestine-hamas-fatah-plo-accusations.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatah%E2%80%93Hamas_conflict
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shin_Bet
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/24/middle-east-israel-halts-peace-talks-palestinians