Jerusalem Post-13/08/2007

TBC, (Jerusalem Post)

"It emerged late last week that 3,500 Hamas "security-force" salaries had been paid by the Fatah-led Salaam Fayad government in Ramallah. At first this was passed off as computer error, corrected only after 1,000 of the beneficiaries had managed to withdraw the money from their bank accounts in Gaza. Now "investigations" are reported in progress. The latest version is that a higher-up in the PA Finance Ministry may have been bought off by Hamas and remitted the funds without authorization.

This episode has caused a considerable stir inside Fatah and rather less of one elsewhere, including in the Hebrew media. Yet the fact that money from ostensible moderates made its way to incontrovertible fanatics is telling.

Something is seriously wrong in Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority if, quite apart from continuing to pay the salaries of Hamas parliamentarians and, reportedly, planning to buy them all new $70,000 cars as well, it ends up underpinning the very militiamen who so violently expelled Fatah from Gaza in June.

Whatever excuse is finally officially adopted by Ramallah, this is no minor error. It can only deepen the doubts about how far the PA can be trusted, even under the financial stewardship of the ostensibly responsible Fayad, a man with a credible professional background in whom Israel and the international community have placed so much faith.

What makes this incident particularly galling is the fact that only a few weeks have passed since the Israeli government, following much heated public debate, reluctantly decided to transfer to Ramallah NIS 400 million of tax revenues that had been withheld out of the fear that such funds would reach Hamas and be used to bankroll its terrorist schemes. Fayad and PA Chairman Abbas were judged trustworthy and deserving of Israeli support; now some of these funds have ended up precisely where Israel was solemnly assured they would not."

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