Without the Slightest Irony, State Department Takes Palestinian Authority to Task for Lack of Fiscal Transparency

The US State Department has in its wisdom determined that the Palestinian Authority, which now receives about $600 million a year from unsuspecting American taxpayers, has failed to meet the “minimum requirements of fiscal transparency.” You are not surprised, because you know that the Palestinian Authority is riddled with corruption, and the greatest crook of them all in the PA is President Mahmoud Abbas himself, who has managed to accumulate, along with his sons Tarek and Yasser, a family fortune of $400 million. And below Abbas, there are his loyal retinue of crooks whose loyalty is bought by allowing them to also take a cut, allowed to help themselves to lesser, but still substantial sums, from the aid supplied by foreign donors. Ten million embezzled here, five million swindled there, it all begins to add up.

The relevant part of the State Department’s Fiscal Transparency Report for 2024, a more-in-sorrow tsk-tsking of the Palestinian Authority, instead of the hard slap and the cutoff in aid it deserves, can be found here: “Palestinian Authority fails to meet minimum fiscal transparency – US State Dept,” Jerusalem Post, September 19, 2024:

The Palestinian Authority did not meet the minimum requirements of fiscal transparency and made n significant progress, the US State Department revealed in its 2024 Fiscal Transparency Report on Thursday.”

Of the 139 governments studied, 68 did not meet the minimum fiscal transparency requirements. Israel met the requirements….

A little question I’d like to direct to the State Department: in making its budget public, did the PA include the hundreds of millions of dollars that it spends on its “Pay-For-Slay” program, that provides imprisoned terrorists, and the families of terrorists who died — as “martyrs” — while carrying out their terror attacks? Mahmoud Abbas is proud of that program, that both rewards past and incentivizes future acts of terrorism. He has said he will support that program no matter what pressure is applied, even if he is down to his “last penny.” So he’s undoubtedly listed it in the PA’s publicly-available budget. But the State Department report makes no mention of this, or why it thinks that practice must end.

According to the Taylor Force Act, the US Government should withhold all aid from the PA if it continues to support its “Pay-For-Slay” program. But the Biden-Harris administration has been flouting the law by continuing to send hundreds of millions of dollars to the PA.

However, the State Department said the PA did provide a mostly full picture of revenues and expenditures.

How does the State Department know if the PA provided a “mostly full picture of revenues and expenditures” if it recognizes that the PA provided incomplete information? This makes no sense. A lot of faith is being placed in the PA, a faith that, given the enormous sums Abbas, his sons, and his loyalists in Ramallah have stolen, is entirely misplaced.

They asked the PA to take the following steps to improve fiscal transparency: Making its executive budget proposal, complete enacted budget, and end-of-year report publicly available within a reasonable period; Publishing information on debt obligations; Providing in budget documents a substantially complete picture of detailed revenues and expenditures for all PA ministries and institutions; Ensuring the supreme audit institution meets international standards of independence….

Those aren’t minor matters, a little oversight in bookkeeping. The missing information that the State Department wants the PA to make public is essential to understanding just where the money — hundreds of millions of dollars of mostly American taxpayers’ money — is being spent by the PA.

The PA. “did not meet minimum requirements” of financial transparency this year, just as it didn’t the year before, or in any of the years before that. Yet the Americans continue to shell out vast sums, to the PA, despite knowing that Abbas, his sons, and his supporters help themselves to a significant portion of it. Here’s an idea: why doesn’t the State Department lay down the law for the PA? First, Mahmoud Abbas must provide a complete, transparent, and public accounting both of the aid money received from its donors, and of the PA’s expenditures, including the salaries paid to the fifty highest-paid PA employees, before any more money is funneled to his group. Second, Mahmoud Abbas must end entirely his “Pay-For-Slay” program. If either the first, or the second, requirement is not satisfactorily met, then Abbas will have to look elsewhere for support.