Word: palestinians
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...govern the Gaza Strip and Jericho, Arafat established the Palestinian Authority, patched together from previously exiled bureaucrats in the P.L.O. and from the organization's ranks of underground activists in the occupied territories. Israel has been stingy about relinquishing real power to Arafat-strictly controlling who and what go in and out of the self-rule zones-but on its own terms, the Authority, with its 18 ministers, 22,000 civil servants and 18,500 security personnel, has performed far less well than had been hoped, as Authority officials themselves acknowledge. "How can we convince people...
...chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Arafat hoards power in the same way he did as leader of the P.L.O., and the bottleneck of decision making at the top has helped create pervasive disorganization within his government. "There is an unbelievable amount of inefficiency," says a department head. "The norm is against working well." Arafat has also retained his habit of appointing at least two people for every task, so that no one rises too high and he retains power as the arbiter of conflicts. The results are incoherent policy and internal bickering. The chairman is notorious for playing his Planning...
Governmental appointments have been based largely on political loyalty rather than credentials. Arafat's brother-in-law is one of the new members of the Palestinian Higher Education Council. Some health-care professionals are outraged that Fathi, the head of the Palestine Red Crescent and the chairman's younger brother (and spitting image, sans beard and kaffiyeh), has been assigned a role encroaching on the turf of Health Minister Riyad Za'noun...
...result of Arafat's administration, government services in many cases have deteriorated in the past year. A letter mailed within the tiny Gaza Strip now takes a week to arrive instead of two days. The phone system is a mess, because the Palestinian Authority has added twice as many lines as it was designed for. Building construction is so unregulated that Arafat's own Planning Ministry warns of a "forthcoming disaster''; the Authority manages to collect even less in taxes than the Israelis did, and the security forces especially have developed a reputation for petty corruption. A common complaint...
...Gaza Strip is perennially poor, and the economy's biggest problem right now is that last fall, as a result of a series of Palestinian terrorist attacks, the Israeli government placed restrictions on trade with the territories and the number of Palestinian laborers who can cross into Israel each day for work. Nevertheless, Arafat and the Authority can still be held responsible for economic mismanagement. The Authority has failed to attract significant new investments, aside from those in construction made mostly by Palestinians. Infrastructure projects sponsored by international donors are under way, but disagreements over Arafat's loose accounting practices...