European Commission Will Give $435 Million to Palestinian Authority

The European Commission has announced still another injection of aid to the corrupt and antisemitic Palestinian Authority — a cool $435 million this time, but don’t worry, it has some “conditions” attached. More on that grant, and the farcical conditions imposed by the EU on the PA, can be found here: “EU Pledges $435 Million to Ailing Palestinian Authority — With Conditions for Reform,” by Jacob Frankel, Algemeiner, July 19, 2024:

The European Commission announced on Friday that it would provide 400 million euros ($435 million) in “short-term emergency financial support” to the ailing Palestinian Authority (PA) on the conditions that it address corruption, reduce unnecessary expenditures, and fix its educational curriculum, which has been widely condemned for promoting antisemitism and hatred of Israel.

The money will be disbursed in the form of grants and loans in three payments between July and September, the commission said in a statement, to address a Palestinian economic crisis which, some European officials fear, could lead to the collapse of the PA.

If that money is to be disbursed in three tranches, in July (which is almost over), August, and September, that is far too soon for the PA to rewrite, publish, and distribute its “new and improved” schoolbooks free from the odious antisemitic passages that for years the PA has promised donors it would remove, but somehow never does get around to it. The $435 million in aid will be pocketed, and those schoolbooks will remain as currently written, the PA will say, because “we haven’t time to prepare the new books…but we will by the end of this school year.” And the EU will accept this excuse, yet again. And how much would you be willing to bet that the PA will, as the EU demurely puts it, “fix its educational curriculum”? Since it has never done so in the past, despite the pleas and threats of donor countries, why should it believe the E.U. really means to enforce its threats now?

A “Letter of Intent” between the commission — the primary executive arm of the European Union (EU) — and the PA outlines the specifics of the funding and the agreed upon conditions needed to be met by the latter to secure the cash injection.

The conditions are aimed at “modernizing institutions, strengthening the rule of law, and reforming the social security system,” among other major reforms, according to the document.

The Letter of Intent mentions specific guidelines for the PA to adopt. To fight corruption, the EU is requiring the PA to enforce a mandatory retirement age for civil servants and to reduce government expenditures by 5 percent, among other measures….

Will the EU demand, as part of “fighting corruption” in the PA, that Mahmoud Abbas and his two sons Tarek and Yasser disgorge the $400 million in aid money they have stolen over the years? Many ordinary Palestinians would applaud that measure — they are sick of Abbas’ corruption, and 80% of those ruled by the Palestinian Authority want Abbas to resign. But disgorging some or all of the aid money he has stolen? There is, of course, no chance that Mahmoud Abbas would agree. The entire PA political echelon is corrupt. His inner circle of loyalists stay loyal, because they, too, are allowed a cut of the foreign aid, though, of course, nothing like the colossal sums that the Abbas family has been helping itself to for nearly twenty years.

As for mandatory retirement ages for all those aging Abbas loyalists in the government who are paid fat salaries, far beyond what they could receive in the private sector, how many people do you think will be forced to retire? These upper-level civil service jobs are what buys the loyalty of the cadre who surround Mahmoud Abbas. He’s not about to force his loyalists to retire. If he did so, he’d simply have to allow younger men, no less corrupt than those who would have retired, to make their fortunes, to take the place of those now required to retire. And should the PA, to satisfy the new EU demand, in fact put a required retirement age in place, at what age would that be reasonable? Assuming a retirement age of 70, or 75, or even 80, is implemented, on what grounds would one man, President Mahmoud Abbas, who is 88 years old, and has not run in a presidential election since 2005, when he was elected to a four-year term, and is now in the nineteenth year of that four-year presidency, be exempt from that mandatory retirement? Is he alone to be above the law? Why didn’t the EU spell out a demand that “everyone in the PA should be subject to the same retirement age,” and then provide a reasonable age limit itself?

The EU could have demanded that the Abbas family return the several hundred million dollars it had stolen. The EU could also have said it would withhold the $435 million aid package until such time as the PA held elections for a new government. 80% of the people in the PA territories want Abbas to resign. He and his sons will keep the $400 million he has stolen. Corruption will continue as the glue that holds the political echelon loyal to Abbas. No elections will be held until Abbas himself retires or, more likely, dies. “Pay-For-Slay” will continue, as the bedrock commitment to the “martyrs” who murder Israelis. And Ursula von der Leyen of the EU will eventually express her “extreme disappointment” at the failure of the PA to meet the conditions imposed on it and her hope that it will finally do so.

Fat chance, Ursula.