Last Thursday, January 26th, Hamas won 75 of the 132 seats in voting for the Palestinian Authority legislature. That Hamas victory over Fatah marks the end of ten years of Palestinian Authority rule.
And Fatah is pissed.
The Palestinian masses are finally realizing how abjectly corrupt the party of former PLO leader Yasser Arafat and current leader Mahmoud Abbas really was. Arafat was the biggest dipper and corruptor, with the EU having shoved $4 billion into the Palestinian Authority since 1983. Where did the money go? Not to the people; mostly to Arafat’s various accounts. It is, therefore, no surprise that Arafat’s surviving wife Suha is currently living in France (with mother and a serving staff) on a mere $100,000 per month.
But I digress.
This post is about money and what the United States is doing about the resulting elections placing Hamas ostensibly in charge. But mostly it’s about what we were doing and my dismay over past practices.
First: the European Union continues to fund the Palestinian Authority (see above). EU member states donated about $600 million to the Palestinians in 2005.
Second: after the Hamas win, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States wants other nations to cut off aid to a Hamas-led Palestinian government. She ruled out any U.S. financial assistance to a Hamas government.
Humanitarian help to the Palestinians, many of whom are poor and unemployed, is likely on a “case-by-case basis,” Rice said Sunday. She indicated that the administration would follow through on aid promised to the current, U.S.-backed Palestinian government led by President Mahmoud Abbas. “We’re going to review all of our assistance programs, but the bedrock principle here is we can’t have funding for an organization that holds those views just because it is in government,” Rice said.
Wait wait wait wait wait. Are WE funding the Palestinian Authority? HAVE we been funding the Palestinian Authority? THIS is the story behind the story!
The BBC News article indicated, “The US has also said it would stop its aid to the PA if Hamas failed to renounce violence or recognise Israel.”
I’m kidding, correct?
No. I am not. The United States has been funding the Palestinian Authority. In essence, that nice new carpeting in Suha’s Paris living room? Partially funded by you. By me. That nice Cartier watch? I think I purchased the bezel.
How outrageous is this? Israeli limbs blown off by PA-led terrorists?
Their explosives, IEDs, equipment: partially supplied by the American taxpayers.
I am completely disgusted.
______________
Who else are we funding?
Great post! I agree. There is some stuff we are doing I am preturbed by. Funding the people who blow up Israelis, and Israel is our Ally?
It was always a ‘given’ that the previous leader was not a terrorist, although he certainly seemed to be ‘connected’ in some way. So, yes that shocks me. HOWEVER, I would imagine that was being done way before Bush came into office. Maybe it is difficult to stop something like that right away, without a reason. Now that Hammas is in, maybe we will have that ‘reason’.
I never understood why we would continue supporting the Palestinians who danced in the street celebrating after 9/11.
Yes, it was done prior to Bush’s installment — though that doesn’t make it proper.
In the war on terror, this development certainly should have been on SOMEONE’s scope.
I suspect if we were to truly know who we funded and to what degree, we truly would be geometrically disgusted. However, our leaders, I’m guessing, are too afraid of being labeled isolationists or, on a much higher level, continue funding because today’s enemy may become tomorrow’s supporter with a new regime.
Perhaps mine is too simplistic a scenario — but having funded and continuing to fund the PA is wrong.
There’s a bunch more I would unfund. Any nation taking our foriegn aid then voting against us at the UN would be off the list before the next check was cut.
Fish: I do believe I’d do there. . .yes indeed!