Saturday, December 09, 2006
[OBRL-News-Bulletin] Why Palestinian Gaza is Impoverished: Whatever happened to Arafat's billions?
PS. And in case you think people have wised-up to the Palestinian leaderships game of fraud and connivance, here's another item on how the UN is planning to throw good money after bad -- another half-billion for .... HAMAS!!
http://news.
November 11 marks two years since the death of PLO chief Yasir Arafat-but don't count on most Palestinians to mourn his memory.
"Our economy has been deteriorating ever since Arafat came on the scene in '94," says Ramallah-based Bir Zeit University professor Mudar Kassis. "People had been waiting for something to happen that would improve the daily life of the Palestinians. Instead, the suffering has mounted, and the highest GNP per capita in our history still dates back to 1991."
"There was never a complete public reckoning of corruption during the Arafat years," says Kassis, who teaches philosophy at Bir Zeit and heads the university's institute of law. "Now the Palestinians have lost so many assets ... that compared to the loss of life and land, it seems negligible." Kassis nonetheless calls for heeding the lessons of Palestine's first autonomous decade, lest history repeat itself. Which it already has: The flagrant corruption that marked the U.S.-led nation-building project in Iraq was underscored last year when a U.S.-appointed Iraqi defense minister and his procurement chief allegedly stole hundreds of millions in public funds.
Two years after Arafat's funeral, an international scavenger hunt continues for the revolutionary leader's far-flung riches. A motley assortment of investigators ranging from Israel's security establishment to the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which now rules in Ramallah, maintain an ongoing interest in every lost stash. "The only man who knows the whole story is dead," says a senior Israeli military intelligence official who agreed to answer questions on condition of anonymity. "But the deeper you go into it, the more it stinks."
Arafat's money trail leads far beyond the smelly sands of Gaza Beach, to a rainbow coalition of shady figures-Jewish, Christian, and Muslim-and as far west as New York's Greenwich Village, where the militant chieftain once secretly bought a stake in Bowlmor Lanes, a trendy bowling alley. You might say the closest the world ever came, in fact, to harmony and peace between all three monotheistic faiths was in the sleazy international campaign to siphon off Palestinian grant aid. It may be too early still to tell the full Where's Waldo-like tale of where the cash went. But several all-stars of Arafat's money laundering network have come to light-and the legacy of their greed still has grave repercussions across the Middle East.
Arafat's lifetime of grubbing for cash on behalf of the Palestinians dates back to his young adulthood in Cairo, where he was born shortly before the American stock market crash of 1929. Few had heard of the Palestinian cause back then, and there were no blue-and-white pushke boxes accepting pocket change for it. But longtime PLO stalwart Nabil Shaath remembers watching, as a 13-year-old, the young revolutionary hit up his father for a cash donation. Shaath told Atlantic Monthly correspondent David Samuels he immediately recognized the future president of Palestine. Arafat's sister Inam, moreover, recalls the cash-flush teen's leadership style during the same period: "He formed [the neighborhood kids] into groups and made them march and drill," she told Arafat's biographer. "He carried a stick to beat those who did not obey his commands. He also liked making camps in the garden of our house."
The same may not be said of his close aides and confidantes, many of whom enjoyed opulent lifestyles as a reward for their loyalty to Arafat. "He was a connoisseur of power," writes David Samuels, "who used the money that he stole to buy influence, to provoke or defuse conspiracies, to pay gunmen, and to collect hangers-on the way other men collect stamps or butterflies."
Over a year after Arafat's death-when the Islamist terror group Hamas swept the Palestinian Authority elections on an anti-corruption platform-some of these "butterflies" tried to fly the coop, with wads of cash tucked under their clothes. According to the pro-Palestinian London daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi, Hamas intercepted a former PA finance ministry chief, Ali al-Ramlawi, attempting to smuggle millions of dollars in greenbacks into Jordan. More than 30 other PLO seniors were subsequently caught fleeing town and jailed, according to Hamas sources. Their confiscated moneybags, says the senior Israeli intelligence official, proved an early boon to the nascent Hamas-controlled treasury.
"It wouldn't surprise me," says fellow Maronite Ziad Abdel Nour, who heads the U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon. "Pierre Rizk has zero principles whatsoever. He will cheat, lie, fuck, kill-whatever needs to be done."
"Where does this guy live?" I ask.
"Are you kidding? A guy like that doesn't live anywhere."
Suha, for her part, has relocated to Tunis, where she enjoys the protection of head of state Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. "She stays out of politics," says Muhammad Abdullah Amireh, a family friend and confidante based in Nablus, reached by phone. "Her whole life is focused on her daughter Zahwa," Amireh said, "who now attends a top preparatory school in Tunis with the elites of the country." She had sparked controversy in 2002 for asserting that if she had a son, there would be "no greater honor" than his martyrdom for the Palestinian cause. But the outspoken first lady has not returned to the Palestinian territories since her departure in 2000.
Amireh added that the Arafat widow periodically returns to Paris to see family and friends and go shopping. European press reports assert that she manifests a preference for haute couture designer Louis FĂ©raud and upscale shoemaker Christian Louboutin. Via Amireh, Mrs. Arafat declined an interview, citing her hectic schedule.
The Arafats' monied inner circle, which welcomed Lebanese Maronite Christian Pierre Rizk, also found room for some Israelis and Jews. Together with Arafat senior advisor Muhammad Rashid-by birth an Iraqi Kurd-the Palestinian leader tapped two ex-Israeli security officials to open doors for PLO money in elite Swiss banks, beginning around 1997. What has become known in the Hebrew press as the "Ginnosar Affair"-named after one of Arafat's Israeli business partners, ex-spook Yossi Ginnosar-sent shock waves through the Jewish state and Zionist diaspora. It wasn't just the enormity of the sums these erstwhile enemies were embezzling together while the peace process tanked-though $340 million is a lot of hummus-the alleged involvement of some senior members of the American Jewish peace camp in Arafat's corruption also cast a shadow on their efforts to help broker peace.
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If you find this material of value, please donate to OBRL:
http://www.orgonelab.org/donation
Or, purchase books on related subjects from our on-line bookstore:
http://www.naturalenergyworks.net
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml]