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.
Read more on Gatestone: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12103/palestinian-authority-corruption