Abbas is increasingly unpopular because the Palestinians have been finding out more about his finances. First, there is the matter of secret salary raises from Abbas and his henchman. At a time of great economic distress for the Palestinians, documents were recently leaked online by a group of anonymous whistleblowers known as “Against the Current,” showing that in 2017, PA President Mahmoud Abbas had quietly agreed to increase monthly salaries of ministers from $3,000 to $5,000, as well as boosting the prime minister’s monthly salary from $4,000 to $6,000. Those salaries were kept secret, but finally had to be suspended after the posting of the salary raises online caused an uproar this spring.The suspension of those raises has not diminished the fury felt at Abbas and his fellow self-dealing ministers. And we still don’t know what raise, if any, he gave himself as president, and whether he undid it after the popular uproar.
Even more enraging has been the release of information, by Arab sources, about the $400 million fortune Abbas and his sons Tareq and Yasser have accumulated. Most Palestinians endure difficult lives because of massive corruption and economic mismanagement, and they know exactly where that $400 million fortune came from.
After all this, would Abbas order his police to smash such a march for economic justice by fellow Palestinians, possibly led by some of the very businessmen who defied him and went to Bahrain? Those businessmen attended that meeting for two reasons. First, they sought opportunities for business expansion, including new markets in Israel and the West Bank. Second, they sought investments from wealthy foreign investors (including Gulf Arabs). They sought financial capital in order to invest in human capital — that is, in the “Palestinians” they employ, whose interests Mahmoud Abbas pretends to defend and so cruelly ignores.
Among the signs the marchers might wish to carry, pride of place should be given to this one: “$400 million for Mahmoud, Tarek, and Yasser Abbas, 0 for us!” The unemployed and impoverished on the West Bank and in Gaza can’t wait until Abbas decides enough progress has been made on the political plan to permit discussion of that $50 billion aid package; they need to receive some of those billions now, and not in some impossibly distant future. Another sign marchers might carry should be the simple question: “O Mahmoud, where did the $1.3 billion go?” This is a reference to a well-known charge made by another PA official, the former security minister Mohammed Dahlan, who has claimed that $1.3 billion dollars vanished from the Palestinian Investment Fund since it was turned over to Abbas’ control in 2005. The Palestinians are asking Abbas not for a Return on Investment, but a Return of Investment; they want those $1.3 billion dollars given back to the Palestinian Investment Fund, for the benefit of all the Palestinians.
If Abbas were to turn his police loose on the marchers, can he be sure they would obey his orders to attack their fellow Palestinians, with whom the poorly-paid police may readily identify? He knows — and the signs of the marchers will remind him — that there has been growing fury over his own family’s wealth, details of which he had managed to keep secret until recently, but can now be found online. What if the police did more than refuse to attack the marchers? What if the police even joined the marchers, swelling the crowds, adding their own discontent with the regime of Mahmoud Abbas?
Such protest marches are the only way to now remove Abbas. He should, but won’t be, voted out. Abbas was elected in 2005 to a four-year term as president of the PA; that term ran out in 2009; he has cancelled all elections since, and ten years later, Abbas is still president, with no end in sight. If the police were to publicly turn against Abbas, and join the marchers, his goose would be cooked. The Great March of Return in Gaza has been petering out, the incendiary kites causing some damage to Israeli farmland, but with little else to show for all that effort. In the West Bank, it’s time for a Great March of Return Of Investment, one that Mahmoud Abbas won’t be able to stop, and that could bring him, at long last, down.