Despite receiving millions of dollars in aid every year from the U.S., the EU, the UN, and Arab nations, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has done very little to better the lives of its own population. Bassam Tawil, drawing on a recent, detailed report by a monitoring organization, explains the situation:

[T]he failure of the donors to demand accountability and transparency from the Palestinian Authority has deprived Palestinians of a significant part of the funds. It has also encouraged Palestinian leaders to continue pocketing millions of dollars, enriching their private and hidden bank accounts. . . . Under Yasir Arafat, the PA was plagued by widespread corruption and mismanagement. His successor, Mahmoud Abbas, has followed in this tradition and, despite his repeated promises, the Palestinian Authority remains as corrupt as ever. . . .

[T]he Palestinian Authority invested $17.5 million in building a “presidential palace” for Abbas. The palace is built on an area of 4,700 square meters. After facing criticism over the project, Abbas decided to convert the palace into a huge national library. . . . The idea of converting the palace into a national library is equally ridiculous. For the Palestinians, a new school or hospital is more urgently needed than a library. Besides, at this point, the Palestinians hardly need a library that looks like a royal palace. . . .

[The PA is also] paying the salaries and expenses of [hundreds of employees of] a non-existent airline called “Palestine Airlines.” . . . In 2017, the Palestinian Authority’s Anti-Corruption Commission received 430 complaints, but only 21 were referred to the prosecution’s office, the report noted. “This indicates that the commission, its staff, and [its] follow-up mechanisms are slow,” it added. “As for the nature of the cases, they ranged from embezzlement to abuse of power to fraud to breach of trust and bribery.” The largest proportion of those accused of corruption crimes were employees in the governmental public sector. . . .

The Western media completely ignore such reports. By doing so, Western journalists are betraying their own people by failing to inform them how their foreign-aid money is being embezzled and squandered by corrupt Palestinian leaders. The Palestinians, of course, are the primary victims in this story. They live in poverty as their leaders scrabble to misappropriate public funds. The lives of the Palestinians could have been much better had their leaders been held accountable for their actions.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.