Word: fatah
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...international funding, the bankrupt government can't pay some 160,000 civil servants. "If they don't get salaries, they don't buy anything," he observes. And while Hamas continues to observe a cease-fire, gunmen of the secular al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades - the military wing of the deposed Fatah party - vowed last week to continue cross-border attacks. A member of the equally militant Islamic Jihad, who called himself Abu Aziz, told Time his cadres will continue firing homemade Qassam rockets into Israel, even though the Israeli military responds to the few they shoot each day with hundreds...
Even if Hamas does not change, Hamas’ victory has already begun to transform the Fatah Party, a welcome development. Under Yasir Arafat and recently Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah Party presided over one of the most corrupt and incompetent organizations in the world. Arafat used the Palestinian Authority treasury as his personal cashbox to buy loyalty and to support a maze of security services. It is estimated that Arafat and his corrupt cronies pocketed almost half of the seven billion dollars in foreign aid contributed to the Palestinian Authority. Sadly, only ten percent of the Palestinian state budget ever...
...obligation not to retaliate immediately against the Palestinian people for their democratic choice. Cutting aid to NGOs and entrepreneurs in the West Bank and Gaza before the Hamas government takes any meaningful action would be a thinly-veiled attempt to retaliate against Palestinians for choosing Hamas over Fatah. Maher Awartani, a Palestinian-American youth participation specialist at a USAID-funded project in Ramallah, rightly notes that cutting such funding in response to the recent elections would demonstrate to Palestinians that the U.S. is “punishing us for...pure indigenous democratic practice...
Whatever the appropriate relationship between politics and aid, the U.S. should not use its aid to subvert democracy. A troubling precedent was set just before the legislative council election, when USAID expedited several programs (and suppressed its own publicity requirements) in order to allow Fatah to take credit for last-minute municipal improvements. To channel money to one side in a democratic election, and then to cut off funding when the other side wins—whether motivated by genuine disgust, or by the desire to precipitate the Hamas government’s collapse and reverse the election?...
...Strong partners are needed to forge a Middle East peace. But neither Abbas nor Olmert, acting Prime Minister and all but certain to continue in that role, fit the bill. As President of the Palestinian Authority, Abbas, a member of Fatah, has to contend with the radical Islamic government of Hamas, which won the Palestinian elections in January. And Olmert must rig up a coalition government with potentially troublesome partners to secure a majority in the Knesset. Until he does that, say advisers, he will not move into Sharon's office. But putting a coalition together is just a start...