Money worries
Now that Hamas has gotten control of the government of "Palestine", things will get interesting. The
1998 Charter of Hamas specifically states these things:
...Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. It needs all sincere efforts. It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps. The Movement is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished and Allah's victory is realised...
...The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:
"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him...
and it just gets better and better as you keep reading this filth.
Anyway, it seems that they may have some money problems.
From
The Globe and Mail:
Isolated by world criticism and strapped for cash, the Islamic militant group Hamas faces an uphill struggle to even begin cleaning up Palestinian government as it has promised to do.
Internally, the old Fatah rulers vanquished by Hamas in last week's parliamentary election are refusing to co-operate with the new guard, almost openly hoping for their failure.
International donors, who have annually made up a huge shortfall in the perpetually strapped Palestinian Authority, are balking at funding a Hamas regime.
Israel's acting prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said Sunday that Israel will stop the monthly transfer of tens of millions of dollars in taxes and customs money it collects for the Palestinians to a Palestinian Authority headed by Hamas.
And:
The most immediate crisis, even before Hamas has a chance to form a government, is payday. The Palestinian Authority coffers are empty.
The $54-million (U.S.) on average that Israel transfers monthly to the Palestinians could make the difference between paying salaries of security forces and civil servants or failing to meet the payroll. Mr. Olmert said that money would stop after Hamas forms a government.
Wretchard at
The Belmont Club has an excellent (as usual) presentation and commentary of just who contributes to the "Palestinian" people:
The root of all ...
The Council of Foreign Relations describes the Palestinian Authority's financial system this way:
Where does the PA government get its funding?From a combination of overseas assistance and tax collection, Abuznaid says. He estimates that taxes—from businesses in the territories, as well as a customs tax collected by Israel and then paid to the Palestinians—account for about 40 percent of the PA budget. Donations from abroad make up the rest. The PA has run into budget trouble lately, running a massive deficit and sparking the wrath of European donors by adding thousands of people to the security service instead of cutting costs. Experts say Fatah padded its payroll with young militants to win their votes ahead of the polls, and expect the PA will be unable to pay all their salaries after the elections. Since November 2005, the European Union has withheld $42 million in aid payments to the PA as punishment for missed fiscal targets.
Sixty percent of the PA's funds come from foreign donors. American Future, quoting the Times of London, has a breakdown of donor contributions to the Palestinian Authority.
The three key players are the Arab League at $197M, the USA at $368M and the EU at $338M. All the other figures are in the $43M to $17M range. Wretchard then offers this commentary:
Part of the problem may be rivalry over who will control the money. The fact that a large proportion of the Palestinian Authority's money comes from external sources can create what can be called the Simple Plan effect, after a book written in 1994 about a group of friends who stumble onto four million dollars and eventually wind up killing each other for its possession. Roger Stern of Johns Hopkins University writing at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has a more sophisticated version of the Simple Plan effect applied to regional politics. He argues that monopoly rents arising from the huge difference between the lifting cost of oil and the cartel price has created a vast inflow of money from the rest of the world which has destabilized the Middle East.
Wretchard then talks about the Congo -- an area wracked by rich resources and the fighting over them and has this to say about the Palestinian people:
But whereas the Congo is wracked by a war over its natural riches, the struggle for donor funds in Palestine is a perverse scavenger's brawl over the begging bowl of the Palestinian people. Perhaps never before has a government stood to gain more from the misery of its people (60% foreign aid) than their prosperity (40% taxes). It creates a perverse set of incentives and one wonders whether 'in such wars, the goal is not to diminish misery but to gain more of it to sell ...' Just wondering.
The next six months will be interesting...
Posted by DaveH at January 29, 2006 8:12 PM