Two paintings worth $66,000 were presented as a gift to a woman in Paris by the PA, which also paid millions of dollars to cover the personal expenses of senior Fatah officials and their families, according to documents released by Hamas on Tuesday. The documents, which were seized by Hamas at various PA institutions in the Gaza Strip in mid-June, were presented to the Palestinian public by top Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar during a press conference in Gaza City. The 30 documents that were released Tuesday are related to the period when Yasser Arafat was chairman of the PA, between 1994 and 2004.
Fatah officials in Ramallah reacted with fury to the revelations, accusing Hamas of seeking to mislead the Palestinians through lies and forgery. But Palestinian journalist who examined the documents said they all appeared to be authentic and that there was no reason to doubt their credibility.
| Hamas sez Fatah are a bunch of crooks. Fatah sez Hamas are a bunch of thieves. I say they're both right. |
| *I* sez they're both a bunch of greedy doody heads. |
| Sonny didn't feel like trapping on a boom vest, did he? |
Zahar also presented documents that showed that the Fatah-controlled PA security forces had been involved in commercial activities and in tax-collection, in violation of PA laws. He said some of the activities were carried out when current PA Prime Minister Salaam Fayad served as finance minister under Arafat.
| Because they're all crooks, you see. |
Meanwhile, Ihab al-Ghissin, a top official at the Hamas-run Interior Ministry in the Gaza Strip, announced that his movement was planning to establish a new intelligence service in the coming weeks. "The new force will be called the Internal Security Apparatus and it will replace the Preventive Security Force that has been dismantled in the Gaza Strip," he said. He said members of the former Fatah-controlled security forces in the Gaza Strip would be permitted to join the new service.