ARAFAT TAKES IN THE MONEY -- What
is this called? ****************************************************
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[MER - Did they hold the story
until April 2nd in order to avoid April Fool's Day? More than $100 million
dollars in a secret bank account set up by the Israelis and designed to
make it possible for Arafat and friends to flee a coup and set up a "government
in exile"?
Arafat has manipulated and squandered
huge sums in the past of course. Many around him are primarily known for
three things: incompetence, corruption, and loyalty to Arafat (definitely
not to the Palestinian cause)...in that order.
Now the news is leaking out that
in order to get Arafat's signatures at Oslo, and then in Cairo, and more
recently at the "checkpoint" that controls the Gaza Ghetto, Arafat has
been promised and given many things -- including huge sums of money. As
the gifted and courageous Palestinian writer Edward Said has pointed out,
the Israeli and the Americans have turned Arafat into a classic "collaborator".
Clearly the purpose of setting
up the "Arafat Emergency Fund" in Tel Aviv was to make it possible for
Arafat to get the money even after he had been overthrown by the Palestinians.
Further- more, of course, by having the funds in their own country the
Israelis could continue to expect, and indeed demand, that Arafat continue
to do their bidding even should he be forced into exile, this time by his
own people. Other secret funds may also have been set up in Cairo, Riyadh,
and Amman, but it is uncertain whether Arafat would be able to access these
funds should he be overthrown.
Consequently it is thought Arafat
insisted on this Tel Aviv account as one of the prices for his collaboration
with Israel and the U.S. -- the new "policy" that began shortly after the
Gulf War that destroyed Iraq.
The following excerpts from a
story in today's Ha'aretz newspaper -- the daily in Israel compared to
the New York Times in the USA]:
Israel Has Transferred 500 Million Shekels to Secret Arafat
Bank Account in Tel Aviv since 1994
Ronen Bergman & David Ratner
(HA'ARETZ: Tel Aviv - 2/2/97)
Israel has transferred at least
500 million shekels (about $150 million) in the last three years to a secret
Bank Leumi account in Tel Aviv controlled by Palestinian leader Yasser
Arafat.... Access to the account is limited to Arafat and his senior economic
advisor Muhmad Rashid...
According to an internal document of
the International Monetary Fund (IMF) obtained by Ha'aretz, the Bank Leumi
account "is not monitored or controlled by the Palestinian Treasury Office"...
At least some of the funds in the Tel
Aviv account have been used to circumvent proper reporting procedures,
to fund the extensive Palestinian security apparatus and to pay many unnecessary
Palestinian civil servants -- in short to pay for items which have not
received the approval of the contributing states.
A senior Israeli official said
some of the money served as a sort of "emergency fund" for Arafat. He said
that the Palestinian Authority has stored away a plan outlining how to
save Arafat and his family should there ever be a Palestinian coup that
ousts him. The hypothetical plan outlines ways for Arafat to set up a government
in exile...
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