In the spring of 2006, a few months after Hamas were granted a mandate from the inhabitants of Gaza, Western donors halted direct funding to the Palestinian government. The consensus portrayed within the media at large is that Palestinian Authority staff and other officials received no salaries. This is true.
However,more money than ever before was distributed to the Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas. It just passed through different bank accounts, through other conduits.Of the US$1.2 billion given to the PA, US$700 million went directly through the office of Abbas and the rest through various international aid agencies and other quangos. This money did not benefit the Palestinians, their living conditions worsened and the prospect of an emerging viable independent state, economic development and a just peace with the Israeli's grows ever more remote.
Mahmud Abbas was born in Safad, northern Palestine in 1935. In 1948 he left for Syria as a refugee and gained a BA in law from Damascus and a Ph.D from the Oriental School in Moscow on the connection between the Zionist movement and the German National Socialists. He was a civil servant in Qatar in the 1960's and began to organise Palestinian activist groups and was a founding member of al-Fatah. He has been a member of the Palestine National Council since 1968 and is a member of the PLO executive committee. He collaborated with various Jewish and pacifist movements in the 1970's and worked with Matiyahu Peled that resulted in "the principles of peace" based on a two state solution in January 1977. He has headed the PLO department for national and international relations since 1980 and was elected chairman of the portfolio on the Occupied Territories in 1988. He headed the Palestinian team at the secret Oslo talks and signed the Declaration of Principles on Palestinian Self-Rule that launched the Palestinian-Israeli peace process on September 13th 1993. He has headed the PLO negotiating team since 1994 and signed the interim agreement in September 1995. In October 1995 he jointly with Yossi Beilin, drafted the Framework for the Conclusion of a Final Status Agreement Between Israel and the PLO. With Uri Savir he headed the Israeli-Palestinian National Authority final status talks in May 1996. In March 2003 he became de-facto Prime Minister and became alienated from ordinary Palestinians Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the al-Aqsa Martyrs brigade. In September 2003 he was replaced by Ahmed Qurei and is not considered to be a charismatic leader but widely believed to be one of the most corrupt individuals in the PNA. Soon after the PNA was established in Gaza construction began on a luxurious US1.5 million villa funded by unknown sources. He is widely mistrusted by Palestinians for his collobaration with senior Israeli figures for various peace plans that surrender fundamental Palestinian rights that maintain the Occupation in all but name.
He is the most divisive figure in Middle -East politics which is why the 20th al-Fatah conference is in disarray today the 7th August 2009.
