There is not one reason for Mr. Salam Fayyad to remain prime minister — or even finance minister

There is not one reason that makes us cling to Mr Salam Fayyad as prime minister, nor even as minister of finance … rather there are dozens of reasons and justifications that require the complete rejection of this proposition. The political will of the Palestinian people and its political forces, which rejected all external pressures not to reconcile and decided to be the owner of its own decision and to carry out the people's will for reconciliation … that will must broaden to include liberation and deliverance from financial blackmail as well. It is highly dangerous for us to halt the reconciliation process under the pressure of a financial blackmail that exists only in the mind of some who want to employ the Palestinian people and its future for the sake of their own future. The artificial and fabricated financial crisis has raised doubt among many of the sons of the Palestinian people about the usefulness of reconciliation, which has caused a dangerous manipulation of people's feelings and a threat to the stability of society … Here I find no difference between these manufacturers of crises and the Yemeni, Syrian or Libyan president, who employ the capacities of their states, including the army and bullets, against their citizens in order to remain in the chair.
The dozens of articles, international reports and paid-for media campaigns that for four years have been trying to brainwash us by saying that Mr Salam Fayyad is the sole condition for the continuation of international funding are mere ridiculous claims lacking rigour, seriousness and the minimum of familiarity. Here I set out some reasons and pieces of evidence, by way of example and not limitation:-
• International support for the Palestinian Authority came about by an international decision to support the peace agreement between the PLO and Israel, and this was decided at the first donors' conference for the Palestinian Authority held in Washington in October 1993. International support for the Palestinian Authority is therefore linked to the Palestinian political system and to the Palestinian Authority that was born from the womb of the Oslo agreement. The first donors' conference affirmed that international support for the newborn Authority aims to enable it to perform its role, namely strengthening peace in the region. International support for the Authority therefore continued even during the time of the late President Yasser Arafat, despite the donor countries' objections to his policies and positions, which never accorded with the requirements of the international community. Certainly international support will stop if the Palestinian political system deviates from its function, which is the province of the Authority's programme and not of individuals regardless of their qualifications; this applies fully to Mr Salam Fayyad, who had no political role and none was required of him or of his government.
• The mere linking of the continuation of the international community's support with Mr Salam Fayyad remaining prime minister or minister of finance is a linkage no less dangerous than the pressures exerted on the Authority and the Palestinian people not to link Israel's continuation of settlement with the Palestinian Authority's continuation of the failed peace negotiations. The international community makes linkage a condition in the first case and non-linkage a condition in the second … a glaring example of double standards. And if President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian people have rejected the illegitimate linkage between the continuation of settlement and the continuation of the peace negotiations, then it is all the more fitting for us to reject the illegitimate linkage between Salam Fayyad remaining and the continuation of funding. These are two questions relating to sovereignty, the independence of the Palestinian decision and national dignity.
• The successive statements by Mr Salam Fayyad on every occasion, whether at the opening of a water pipe or a street or a school or even at the opening of a seminar on reproductive awareness, that the Authority will be free of its dependence on the donor countries by the year 2013, that is, in less than two years only, and by another reckoning in less than twenty months. The question is how the current situation can be explained in light of these statements, and which of them are we to believe?? The glaring contradiction between those statements and the current reality falls within the category of political deception, for which official law and popular accountability must hold him to account …
• The tax transfers due to us from the Israeli government, which were transferred a few days ago, are the result of the clearance process between our purchases from them and their purchases from us; 300 million shekels were transferred, equivalent to 88 million dollars, as the Haaretz newspaper mentioned in yesterday's issue. Meanwhile the National Authority's monthly bill amounts to about 600 million shekels, equivalent to 170 million dollars, covering the salaries of 114,000 civil employees and 63,000 military employees and operating expenses. That is, the clearance transfers cover only 50% of the Authority's total monthly bill; in other words, half the employees' salaries could have been paid without waiting for the transfers from Israel. More important than that, the transfers consist of the tax the Palestinians pay on their purchases from Israel — in other words, we the people pay to ourselves. And the more our purchases from Israel increase, the greater the value of the tax transfers transferred from Israel to us. And were the Palestinian people to decide, hypothetically and for one month, to stop buying from Israel entirely, the National Authority would then have to pay tax transfers to Israel, God forbid.
• Mr Salam Fayyad's policy, from the first moment he was brought into the political system as minister of finance at the end of 2002, always relied on the deliberate and unjustified inflation of the general budget in a way that led to increased dependence on the donor countries. The late President Abu Ammar managed to maintain a general budget worth only one billion dollars a year over eight years (1994–2002) with a rate of dependence on donors not exceeding 15%, and he had to start from zero. Meanwhile Mr Salam Fayyad worked to inflate the budget greatly so that it reached 2 billion two hundred million dollars a year in three years (2002–2005) with a rate of dependence on donors reaching 65%, without starting from zero, for he took over a productive, flourishing economy whose growth rate for the year 2000 was about 8%. The budget of Mr Salam Fayyad's government for the current year has reached more than three billion dollars, of course without any development projects in the Gaza Strip
• What has been happening in the West Bank since the division in June 2007 in the way of an enormous pumping in of international support was aimed essentially at deepening the division and making the loss of those benefiting from it great enough to drive them to take positions against reconciliation. It is a bribe from the international community to some so that they stand against national unity. You may imagine what the Palestinian situation would be like if the international community had not hastened to feed the division by pumping in those enormous sums. The comparison between the abject failure of the peace conference at Annapolis in September 2007 and the unexpected success of the donors' conference on 17 December in Paris of the same year is enough to demonstrate the international community's intentions towards us. What is happening in the West Bank, especially in the city of Ramallah, in the way of economic activity is a strengthening of an unproductive rentier economy. It is no more than an illusory and superficial prosperity that has nothing whatever to do with sustainable human development, and I have described it in my articles as “the cappuccino economy”, for it is like the froth of a cappuccino drink that looks beautiful and puffed up but quickly disappears.
• At the Sharm el-Sheikh conference held on the second of March 2009 after the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip and with the aim of rebuilding what the war had destroyed, in which 90 states and institutions took part, no one from the Gaza Strip attended. The reason given at the time was “lack of space”. It is ironic that the conference halls accommodated representatives from 90 states and were too narrow for a few individuals from the Gaza Strip, who are the parties concerned. Worse still, the plan Mr Salam Fayyad presented to the conference amounted to 2.5 billion dollars, of which 40% was allocated to the Gaza Strip and the remainder to supporting the Authority's general budget and spending on projects that are trumpeted for publicity. One people's misfortunes are another people's gains …
• The Palestinian attorney general and also the head of the commission for countering illicit gain have affirmed that many of the ministers of Mr Salam Fayyad's government are surrounded by strong suspicions of corruption and that they are waiting for immunity to be lifted from them so as to begin their investigations with them. The question is why this has not been done??
• Mr Salam Fayyad's recent statements to the Maan news agency (an agency whose boundless love for him I envy) about the existence of debts on the Authority amounting to 2 billion dollars, adding that the next prime minister must think about how to repay them … Here many questions pose themselves …. Why did you not say that beforehand!! And why did you allow this debt to swell!! Where was that debt spent!! And why do you ask the next prime minister to bear its burden!! Is that not a veiled threat meaning either me …. or ruin!! … And what guarantees can you give us that your continuation in the premiership will not bring this debt to four billion dollars, for example!! And if states keep reserves of foreign currency in the central bank as security against those debts, please tell us … what do we have to pledge against these debts other than our political decision and our freedom?
• The petty expenses of Mr Salam Fayyad's government represent a large proportion that in no way accords with the Authority's financial situation and entirely contradicts the repeated talk, which has given our heads a headache, about transparency and austerity. Mr Salam Fayyad's government contracts dozens of local and international consultants with fantastical remunerations reaching ten thousand dollars a month per consultant. I can almost swear that these remunerations did not wait for Israel's transfer of the tax allocations in order to be paid. It is worth mentioning here that these contracts do not fall within the budget and are not advertised in the newspapers, which violates the principle of equal opportunity, and they are among the means used to win loyalty and praise. As is the case with some media websites, and this is what Bassam Zakarneh, head of the union of public-service employees, affirmed in the news item published by the Maan agency on Tuesday 17 May, where he spoke about “paying salaries on contracts to some of four thousand dollars more or less, and buying 23 cars for the Ministry of Finance in these circumstances, and disbursing sums exceeding 250 million shekels during this week without urgent justification, of which about 120 million to the ministries as petty expenses and paying the salaries of contract employees and other matters we do not know about — to the point that one of the banks disbursed 40 million shekels from the Ministry of Finance's account in a single day during last week”.
• Mr Salam Fayyad always turns towards the West … in his view the sun rises in the West … he is constantly visiting the countries of the West and rarely visits Arab or Islamic countries even though they are the natural incubator for us as a people and a cause. And if the West sees in Mr Salam Fayyad an unprecedentedly brilliant personality, I suggest that he be chosen as head of government in Belgium or France or even in the United States of America, which has no post of prime minister. I suggest that America invent this post, as it imposed him on us in 2002, and appoint him its prime minister, especially since he holds its citizenship — and by the way, that is reason enough for him not to hold such a post with us, for Egyptian law, for example, forbids those holding other citizenships from holding any sovereign post.
*Omar Shaban, economic expert and head of Pal-Think for Strategic Studies in Gaza
www.palthink.org omar@palthink.org