Financial corruption and internal conflicts in Ramallah government

P F Tinmore

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Dec 6, 2009
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RAMALLAH,(PIC)-- Conflicts and differences are plaguing the unconstitutional Fayyad's government and Fatah authority in Ramallah over decision-making positions.

Mashour Abu Daka, Palestinian Authority's Minister of Communications and Information Technology, resigned after he had accused the PA Attorney General of being involved in illegal censorship of several Websites.

It is believed that Abu Daka’s resignation is related to his role in exposing the Palestinian Authority’s censorship of websites critical of Mahmoud Abbas. "Blocking websites is against the public interest" Daka said, adding that there is no Palestinian law that permits Web censorship and the attorney general knows it.

Multiple sources confirmed that Abed Rabu-Fayyad's team, is still pressing on Abbas to adopt the team's vision using western financial support, pointing out that there is a hidden conflict between both teams with an American, European and Zionist intervention.

Fayyad's government, which always claimed transparency, has passed through many bad times where many of its ministers had resigned and others tried for corruption. This is what happened with the ministers of agriculture and economy, and now the Foreign Minister, Reyadh al-Maliki is being investigated.

Financial corruption and internal conflicts in Ramallah government
 
In Gaza, Hamas Rule Has Not Turned Out As Many Expected :badgrin: :clap2:

GAZA CITY — The housing stipends, promised by Hamas social workers after much of Umm Mohammed’s neighborhood was demolished in an Israeli military assault three years ago, never came. The water barrels pledged by municipal authorities seemed to go only to Hamas cadres. Electricity is a rarity.

And as Israeli airstrikes targeting Palestinian militants pounded the Gaza Strip last month, the housewife said, the enclave’s Hamas rulers watched from “their chairs” — lingo here for cushy seats of power.

“They say they are the resistance against the enemy,” said Umm Mohammed, 26, bouncing a baby on her knee. “Where is the resistance?”

The militant Islamist movement surged to a surprise victory in Palestinian elections in 2006 with promises of clean governance and a reputation for terrorist tactics against Israel, which had withdrawn from Gaza the year before. But after five years of Hamas administration, many in this besieged strip say it has lived up to neither. Hamas is fast losing popularity, and recent surveys indicate that it would not win if elections were held in Gaza today

Ideology aside, the Hamas that won control of this Mediterranean strip, isolated by an economic siege and hobbled by 30 percent unemployment, no longer looks the same to many Gazans. It secured once-lawless streets, as promised. But hopes of Islam-guided fairness and an end to the graft that had tainted the tenure of the secular Fatah party have turned to widespread griping about Hamas corruption and patronage.

Hamas has hired more than 40,000 civil servants, and analysts say the top tiers are filled by loyalists. Members of the Hamas elite are widely thought to have enriched themselves through investment in the dusty labyrinth of smuggling tunnels beneath the border with Egypt and taxes on the imported goods. That money has been channeled into flashy cars and Hamas-owned businesses that only stalwarts get a stake in, critics say.

Street-level umbrage has risen in recent months alongside tax increases and a crippling power crisis that has caused 18-hour blackouts and gas station lines that snake around corners. It began after Egypt stopped providing subsidized fuel for vehicles and Gaza’s sole power plant through the tunnels. Analysts — and ordinary Gazans — say the crisis has been prolonged by Hamas’s refusal to import pricier fuel through an Israeli-controlled crossing.

Authoritarianism has come more in the form of quashed dissent and arrests of perceived political opponents, actions that even Hamas supporters concede have cost the group support.

“We became like a police state,” said Ahmed Yousef, a former adviser to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. “They became scared of any rally or demonstration.”

That leaves Abu Khaled, an unemployed former shopkeeper, to seethe in his 11th-floor apartment in Gaza City. Khaled, 55, said he voted for Hamas because it promised change and justice, which he figured meant there would be jobs.

But only those who “pray in a Hamas mosque” get work, he said, adding that the movement’s leaders look as though they have gotten comfortable with their mini-state and have forgotten about fighting for Palestinian independence.

“We used to take taxis, now we walk. We were eating, now we are not. We must admit, things changed — but for the worse,” Khaled said wryly, speaking through coils of cigarette smoke. “Hamas is controlling us. They are responsible for us.”
In Gaza, Hamas rule has not turned out as many expected - The Washington Post
 

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