From Ian:
JCPA: The Businesses of Mahmoud Abbas and His Sons
PreOccupiedTerritory: Obama Surprised $3.8B In Israel Aid Need Not Be Delivered In Cash (satire)
JCPA: The Businesses of Mahmoud Abbas and His Sons
The succession battle in the Palestinian Authority has become very elemental since Mahmoud Abbas rejected the request of four Arab states – Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates – to mend fences with his bitter rival Muhammad Dahlan. Some of those states want to see Dahlan as the next PA chairman.
- Abu Abbas is not prepared to countenance Muhammad Dahlan as his successor.
- The PA chairman’s two sons, Tareq and Yasser, own an economic empire in the territories worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and they rely on their connection with their father.
- Mahmoud Abbas’ main endeavor is to find a fitting successor who will ensure both the continued existence of his sons’ businesses and their wellbeing.
Although some in Fatah view Abbas’ rejection of the Arab request as an act of “political suicide,” Abbas does not show signs of stress. At the urging of Egypt and Jordan, which fear Hamas, he called off the elections in the territories and consented to a return to Fatah by some of Dahlan’s people. As far as Abbas is concerned, he has complied with most of Egypt and Jordan’s requests. Yet, still, he is not prepared to countenance Muhammad Dahlan.
PA Prime Minister Riyad al-Maliki claims that relations with Arab states are in perfectly good order.
This week, Ahmed Qurei (Abu Ala), a member of the PLO Executive Committee, revealed the way in which Abbas became PA chairman. It perhaps sheds light on how the next PA chairman, in the absence of elections in the territories, will be appointed.
PreOccupiedTerritory: Obama Surprised $3.8B In Israel Aid Need Not Be Delivered In Cash (satire)
White House officials told reporters today that President Obama was taken aback at discovering that the ten-year, thirty-eight-billion-dollar military assistance package to Israel does not have to be supplied in pallets of cash borne by airplane.
The assistance agreement, which will be formally signed today between American and Israeli officials, allocates an average of $3.8B annually between the fiscal years 2019 and 2028 to Israeli military needs. The White House officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said Obama had been laboring under the assumption that transfers of funds to other countries had to be conducted surreptitiously and in hard cash, as that was the model to which he had become accustomed in his administration’s dealings with Iran. Congressional representatives disabused the president of that notion today, and informed him that wire transfers will be used.
In fact, said the officials, the story fed to the media about a delay in the completion of the assistance agreement – that South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham would withhold his support for the package unless the amount was raised – was simply to buy time to explain to the president the mechanisms of foreign aid that do not rely on loading pallets of cash reserves on a plane and flying them directly to the recipients.
“It was understandable the president thought that’s what we do, considering how everything has been handled with Iran,” explained one aide. “With his sympathy for those who consider Israel a rogue regime, it should hardly be surprising that our chief executive assumed the same measures would be necessary to effect the aid transfer as were necessary to deliver billions of dollars to Iran as ransom for captive US sailors and to sweeten the nuclear deal.”


























