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Middle East
Debka - Abu Ala Tells Arafat: Enough Is Enough
2003-12-30
Debka alert EFL - salt to taste, but this one rings true
Last weekend, Ahmed Qureia aka Abu Ala became the second Palestinian prime minister to warn Yasser Arafat he was about to resign. He determined to throw in the sponge
towel?
Turban?
after discovering that the Palestinian Authority’s coffers were bare. There was nothing left to meet the January 1 payroll for 80,000 public workers and security personnel. In fact the PA has no operating funds at all. Arafat, according to DEBKAfile’s Palestinian sources, greeted the threat in stony silence.
comatose
If Abu Ala quits now, he will have lasted a month and-a-half, compared with the four months his processor survived on the job before being driven out. Abu Mazen now spends most of his time in Amman and rarely ventures into the West Bank.
He wears a false nose and moustache. He travels only at night, surrounded by a bodyguard of six, whose aged parents he has hidden in a cellar and whose testicles he keeps in a bottle...
Abu Ala accused Arafat of exploiting the attention focused on fruitless discussions about a truce for an underhand move to help himself to the PA’s funds and whisk its financial system out of the hands of the pro-American Palestinian finance minister, Salem Fayed. The evicted minister is left with nothing to do but twiddle his thumbs at home.
... keeping the windows closed and the shades drawn. Poor people in the neighborhood rent him their disposable children to start his car.
DEBKAfile’s sources note that Washington and Jerusalem would prefer to keep this development under their hats because, by removing Fayed, Arafat has put paid to the last remnant of the Palestinian reforms that were to have presaged the Middle East roadkill roadmap to peace. Those reforms, instituted by the Bush Administration, the Abu Mazen government and Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, were designed to block the flow of PA funds for terrorist use. This crucial step was solemnized at the tripartite Aqaba summit last June. President George W. Bush has been lavish in his praise of Fayed’s efforts to regulate Palestinian finances and make them transparent. With the approach of January 1, a number of Palestinian officials appealed urgently to Americans, Europeans and Saudis for urgent handouts to pay out wages. Nothing has been forthcoming. The prime minister’s planned trip to Riyadh to plea for help has not so far come off.
He's still going from relative to relative, trying to raise busfare...
The PA’s straitened finances were not Abu Ala’s only motive for threatening to resign – nor even Arafat’s control of Palestinian security forces and negotiating tactics, which made his job as prime minister no better than a sinecure.
Arafat’s stolen soooo much there’s no willingness to aid from the usual sources
Posted by:Frank G

#9  This from Israelycool is interesting

{link}

Just more evidence that as long as Arafart and/or his cronies are in power, nothing is going to change. NOTHING.
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama   2003-12-30 4:20:25 PM  

#8  Poor people in the neighborhood rent him their disposable children to start his car.

That's not funny, that's sick.
/envious
Posted by: Shipman   2003-12-30 2:55:08 PM  

#7  This from Israelycool is interesting

"AFatRat puppet and so-called PA Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia shows that he is in ideological harmony with his puppet master."
Posted by: Barry   2003-12-30 2:21:39 PM  

#6  an excerpt from the 60 Minutes piece that detailed arafat's wealth. This is why arafat booted him (they call Fayed "Fayyad"):

"Our whole point is to bring it out of control of any one person," [US accountant Jim] Prince says.

That's what happened with the portfolio money, which is now under the control of Salam Fayyad, a former World Bank official who Arafat was forced to appoint finance minister last year after crowds began protesting his corrupt regime.

According to Fayyad, "There is corruption out there. There is abuse. There is impropriety, and that's what had to be fixed."

Statements like that have earned Fayyad, a bookish technocrat who spent 20 years in the U.S., a reputation for courage - which was enhanced when he immediately posted the details of Arafat's secret portfolio on the Internet.

Fayyad's investigators are treading softly, well aware that their probe may become too embarrassing for Arafat.

Has he tried to stop them? "We run into obstacles in a number of places, particularly among the old PLO types," Prince says, adding one might draw their own conclusions as to whether his statement includes Arafat himself.
Posted by: PlanetDan   2003-12-30 12:48:47 PM  

#5  Hey, Suha needed a new (paris) winter wardrobe. It's not like it went for a bad cause or anything, right?

I hope we're cutting off every bit of aid to the paleo mutts after this.
Posted by: 4thInfVet   2003-12-30 11:18:56 AM  

#4  mhw, a recent accounting report stated that the EU can only account for 10% of the $120B it spent last year. Arafat is a small time crook compared to the EU MASTERS. If I were an EU member I would not be sending any more 'Dues' to the EU until they cleared up this mess. Ditto for the PA, let them get the money out of Arafats accounts.
Posted by: Cyber Sarge (VRWC CA Chapter)   2003-12-30 11:18:17 AM  

#3  Everyone here knows that I hold Sharon in contempt.

It's morons like Arafat that enable the Greater Israel crowd.

Let the whole PA collapse. This ought to be fun.

Some people just can't be saved from themselves.
Posted by: Hiryu   2003-12-30 11:17:58 AM  

#2  "Road map" = dead, dead, DEAD.

Advice for GWB: drop it altogether and concentrate on other more pressing (and more important) matters.
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama   2003-12-30 10:47:59 AM  

#1  I'm still waiting for an EU politician to wake up to the fact that billions of their tax money have basically gone down the Arafathole while, at least for the past few months, they could have been spending it to help Iraq.
Posted by: mhw   2003-12-30 10:43:42 AM  

00:00