Showing the egregious mismanagement in Palestinian territories, 83-year-old Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas announced he was slashing government salaries by 50%. While Abbas blames Israel for withholding $190 million a month in customs duties, Abbas rejected Israel’s conditions for continuing the payments. Abbas financial woes started when he rejected the United States Dec. 6, 2017, the day 73-year-old President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Instead of working with the White House to negotiate a fair peace deal with Israel, Abbas broke off diplomatic relations with the U.S., prompting the Trump administration to cut off hundreds-of-millions in Palestinian aid. If you listen to Abbas, or the media that backs him, you’d think he had no choice but to reject U.S. and Israel’s peace overtures. In reality, Abbas created his own financial mess.
Running the Palestinian Authority since the death of Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] founder Yasser Arafat Nov. 11, 2004, Abbas continued Arafat’s mission of destroying Israel. Arafat died without realizing his dream of a Palestinian state because his version of the state was conquering Israel. Abbas continues the same failed strategy, making unrealistic demands, blaming Israel or the U.S. for all his woes and continuing the armed struggle against Israel. Abbas authorized the current terror attacks that happen periodically against Israeli military and civilians. Abbas considers it his duty to end Israeli occupation not in the West Bank or Gaza Strip but in Israel proper, where the sticking point has been the return of Palestinians to Israel proper, once known as the British Mandate of Palestine. Foreign governments backing Abbas don’t acknowledge this fact.
When the late Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pulled out of the Gaza Strip Aug. 15, 2005, it didn’t take long for Gaza’s militant group Hamas to evict Abbas’s West Bank authority. Hamas seized the Gaza Strip June 14, 2007, in a blow to Abbas’s authority, leaving the Palestinian people divided between the West Bank and Gaza. Yet despite making overtures to reunite over the last 12 years, Abbas uses Hamas as a de facto terrorist force to achieve Arafat’s goal of destroying Israel. What’s most ironic is that if Arafat had not started the 1967 Six-Day-War, Egypt would still control the Gaza Strip, Jordan the West Bank and East Jerusalem and Syria the Golan Heights. Because of the war and Israel’s annexation of Gaza Strip, West Bank and Golan Heights, Palestinians would have no claim to once inch of what they call today “occupied territories,” something only claimed once Israel controlled the territories.
Palestinians made no claim of “occupied territories” when Egypt, Jordan and Syria controlled the Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem and Golan Heights. Only after Israel seized the territories after the Six-Day-War, did Palestinians talk about “occupied territories.” Now Abbas complains about his West Bank government running out of cash, when he could have made different decisions after Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Trump never said he would not negotiate East Jerusalem as part of a Mideast peace deal. Recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Trump tried to push Abbas to the peace table but, instead, got Abbas breaking off diplomatic relations. No one forced Abbas to reject the U.S. as an historic peace broker or use the lion’s share of Israeli customs duties to pay families of suicide bombers and terrorists to continue what he calls the war of liberation.
Whatever happened with Israel’s May 14, 1948 founding, Palestinians have not accepted the state of Israel. Palestinians have tried but failed to destroy Israel for the last 71 years, fighting to this day, one of the most prosperous and powerful Mideast states. Instead of sitting down at the peace table, Abbas chose to work with Hamas to continue the Intifada or uprising trying to win concessions from Israel with violence and terrorism. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the longest serving Israeli prime minister, refuses to cow to Palestinian violence, including recent anarchy on the Israeli-Gaza border where Israeli Defense Forces have stopped Gaza residents from breaching the border fence and invading Israel. Gaza’s Hamas rulers, led by Ismael Haniyeh, do not accept Israel’s right to exist, telling Gaza residents daily that they’ll one day conquer Israeli and reclaim their land.
With that kind of madness coming from Gaza’s Hamas or the West Bank’s PLO, it’s no wonder both governments mismanage funds and periodically go broke. When Hamas run out of cash, they usually start firing rockets into Israel, causing a war. Each time Hamas faces devastation in Gaza, they plead with oil rich Gulf State for cash, sometimes in the billions of dollars. Countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates [UAE] have become fed up with Palestinians, tired of the same self-defeating patterns. Firing his economic advisers doesn’t solve Abbas’s problem of mismanaging the West Bank budget, but, more importantly, the peace process that could very easily leave the West Bank financially solvent. Whatever Abbas’s excuses, blaming his problems on Israel or the U.S., he chooses to martyr himself and his people in the name of Palestine liberation.
