Politics and Money in Palestine

Money Politics and Politics Money

One of the fundamental criteria for evaluating the success of a particular political system is the handling of public money by the executive and legislative authorities and their ability to stabilize a national economy that preserves the people's dignity and relative social welfare while considering social and economic gaps in the state and attempts to narrow and limit these gaps to maintain social peace, the main driver of every society's success.

In the Palestinian case, money has played a fundamental and important role since the beginning of the organized Palestinian struggle until today, but if I want to be modest in my assessment, its role has often been negative and harmful to the national interest.

Before Oslo, the financial policy of the PLO was ambiguous, obscure, and semi-secret for understandable reasons related to the PLO being a revolutionary liberation movement whose enemies lurked around every corner to trap and destroy it. However, this did not prevent the influential leadership in the organization from using public money as a whip against others from individuals and national movements either to buy loyalties to implement a project or to overthrow another project that was not favored by the top of the PLO hierarchy.

The influential leadership excelled in using money as a weapon against opponents of its political line, especially after starting the Madrid process which ended in the Oslo disaster in September 1993, offering the Intifada as a sacrifice at the Zionist-American altar and turning the Palestinian people, with the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, from a dignified people into a begging people whose dignity is trampled every morning and evening. The official Palestinian concern and favorite sport became running and begging to receive crumbs from donor countries and entities. Civil society organizations (NGOs) in occupied Palestine, which number in the thousands, became masters of begging to obtain support from donor countries, reaching a level we can rightfully and seriously call the 'NGO industry' in Palestine.

Returning to the core topic, we can summarize the evaluation of the financial and economic policy of the Palestinian Authority since its establishment in one sentence – it is a story of endless failures.

Failures, violations, waste, and embezzlement of public money characterize the Authority and some of its leaders. They no longer care to hide financial scandals, mismanagement of public funds, the reality of embezzlement, and the art of exploiting authority positions to achieve obscene wealth. The only competition among many senior officials in the Authority is to display their accumulated wealth during their years in ministerial or departmental leadership. Anyone claiming otherwise is either trying to hide the sun with a sieve or is blind or deliberately ignoring! Otherwise, how can we explain that more than 35% of the Palestinian national income is in the hands of senior officials and their families? How can we explain the obscene wealth of some families and their competition in flaunting their riches that came in the blink of an eye? I do not want now to enumerate what was embezzled or how many officials accumulated huge wealth over many years because several colleagues have written enough about this dark chapter in the history of the Palestinian people.

What also matters in this article is that the reader understands that donor countries' and various Arab and international entities' aid to Palestine, officially to the Authority as financial support, projects, or in-kind aid, and unofficially to civil society organizations and development projects, since the start of the Oslo process until now, amounts to about 120 billion dollars. An astronomical sum that, although distributed over the past twenty years, exceeds the amount allocated after World War II to rebuild Germany, known as the Marshall Plan.

Everyone has the right to ask: Where is the public money? And to ask the owners of obscene wealth: Where did you get this?

There are many examples indicating poor financial management, waste of public money for narrow political factional purposes, and the failure of the Authority's economic policy on all levels. Here, I only want to point out some areas to give you some figures to realize the magnitude of the national crisis the Palestinian people are living and the horror of public money waste and its use for personal and factional goals.

* A quick comparison between the 2007 budget and the 2014 budget shows that the latter increased by 54%. This despite the fact that during these seven years, marked by the Hamas-Fatah division in Palestine, official development projects in Gaza stopped. In 2007, the Palestinian budget was 2.3 billion dollars, rising to 4.216 billion dollars in 2014.

* Immediately after the Hamas military coup over the Fatah Authority in Gaza, the Ramallah Authority instructed its employees in the sector to stop working in all government institutions taken over by Hamas, guaranteeing them monthly salary payments. This happened. The number of employees who complied with the Ramallah Authority's decision ranged between 10,000 and 20,000 employees. To keep my assessment objective, I start from a number around 12,000 employees, which I consider realistic and representative of the situation in Gaza. Assuming an average monthly salary of 1,000 dollars per employee, spending on these employees over the past seven years reached one billion dollars. One billion dollars wasted for narrow factional purposes paid by the entire Palestinian people.

* The Palestinian Authority finances its failed policy through loans from banks and the private sector amounting now to about 1.7 billion dollars, in addition to external loans of one billion dollars. It has not even provided workers' credits and became indebted to the pension fund by about half a billion dollars. Overall, the Authority's debts exceed the annual budget – currently, the Authority's debts range around 4.8 billion dollars – and here we must sound the bankruptcy alarm. Given the current and future economic situation of Palestine, these debts will multiply and remain a burden on future generations.

* Since the Authority's establishment, employment in its institutions has often not followed the correct civilized principle: the right person in the right place. This principle was replaced by the opportunistic reactionary principle: the ruling party's son first and last! The distinction between the ruling party and the Authority became almost impossible, and it is no longer easy to differentiate whether work is partisan for the ruling party or official Authority work. Matters became so intertwined that the Authority, its existence, and its money became the sole guarantee of Fatah's cohesion! The ruling party and its members treat the Authority and public money as if they were their private property – unfortunately, Hamas learned from Fatah and applied the same mechanism. Since employment is mostly not based on professionalism but to satisfy party members, loyalists, and to buy loyalties, especially after divisions in Fatah following the Hamas coup in Gaza, we see that the employee sector in Authority bodies is huge and unrealistic relative to the tasks assigned to various agencies. In 2014, the Palestinian Authority's expenses on salaries and wages amounted to 2.18 billion dollars, equivalent to 47% of the 2014 budget. A quick comparison of salary and wage allocations between 2007 and 2014 shows a significant increase of 33%. In 2007, salary and wage spending was 1.37 billion dollars. We must not forget that during this period Gaza was outside Ramallah's Authority and no new employees were appointed there.

* Since the Authority's establishment in 1994, it became clear to everyone that the Palestinian security apparatus, in terms of number and institutions, does not correspond to what is required on the ground. Initially, it was a smokescreen under the pretext of resisting occupation and repelling its military and intelligence attacks, and other such revolutionary rhetoric swallowed by most resistance factions at first. But soon complaints began about the number of security agencies, which at times reached 16, and the behavior of their members. Some of these agencies in some Palestinian areas became the main rulers rather than the political Authority. Despite this danger and the general awareness that these agencies are mostly a burden on the people and the cause, their expenses increased every year. Their only shining feature was security coordination with the occupation. In 2014, the Palestinian Authority spent 1.78 billion dollars on security agencies, equivalent to 28% of the annual budget.

The Palestinian Authority's slogan in the past five years was building state institutions and structural and institutional preparation to confront the occupation by extending sovereignty on the ground. A quick look at the 2014 Authority budget shows the exact opposite. The amount allocated for development expenses was 350 million dollars, equivalent to 8.3% of the general budget. Compare this with spending on salaries and security agencies, and it quickly becomes clear that state-building and institution-building are in a completely different realm from what Ramallah officials boast about.

Silence about this deteriorating situation and acceptance of the insane waste of the people's capabilities by remaining silent is in itself participation in this failure. Here, I can only recall Aristotle's saying when asked:

Where does the tyrant's power come from?

He answered:

From the weakness of the oppressed