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Debka - Abu Ala Tells Arafat: Enough Is Enough
Debka alert EFL - salt to taste, but this one rings true
Last weekend, Ahmed Qureia aka Abu Ala became the second Palestinian prime minister to warn Yasser Arafat he was about to resign. He determined to throw in the sponge
towel?
after discovering that the Palestinian Authorityâs coffers were bare. There was nothing left to meet the January 1 payroll for 80,000 public workers and security personnel. In fact the PA has no operating funds at all. Arafat, according to DEBKAfileâs Palestinian sources, greeted the threat in stony silence.
comatose
If Abu Ala quits now, he will have lasted a month and-a-half, compared with the four months his processor survived on the job before being driven out. Abu Mazen now spends most of his time in Amman and rarely ventures into the West Bank.
| He wears a false nose and moustache. He travels only at night, surrounded by a bodyguard of six, whose aged parents he has hidden in a cellar and whose testicles he keeps in a bottle... |
Abu Ala accused Arafat of exploiting the attention focused on fruitless discussions about a truce for an underhand move to help himself to the PAâs funds and whisk its financial system out of the hands of the pro-American Palestinian finance minister, Salem Fayed. The evicted minister is left with nothing to do but twiddle his thumbs at home.
| ... keeping the windows closed and the shades drawn. Poor people in the neighborhood rent him their disposable children to start his car. |
DEBKAfileâs sources note that Washington and Jerusalem would prefer to keep this development under their hats because, by removing Fayed, Arafat has put paid to the last remnant of the Palestinian reforms that were to have presaged the Middle East roadkill roadmap to peace. Those reforms, instituted by the Bush Administration, the Abu Mazen government and Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, were designed to block the flow of PA funds for terrorist use. This crucial step was solemnized at the tripartite Aqaba summit last June. President George W. Bush has been lavish in his praise of Fayedâs efforts to regulate Palestinian finances and make them transparent. With the approach of January 1, a number of Palestinian officials appealed urgently to Americans, Europeans and Saudis for urgent handouts to pay out wages. Nothing has been forthcoming. The prime ministerâs planned trip to Riyadh to plea for help has not so far come off.
| He's still going from relative to relative, trying to raise busfare... |
The PAâs straitened finances were not Abu Alaâs only motive for threatening to resign â nor even Arafatâs control of Palestinian security forces and negotiating tactics, which made his job as prime minister no better than a sinecure.
Arafatâs stolen soooo much thereâs no willingness to aid from the usual sources
Posted by: Frank G 2003-12-30 |
