The semi-official Fatah newspaper Palestine Press reports that Palestinian Arab leaders are blaming the US for the fact that Arab nations are not fulfilling their monetary pledges to the PA.
According to this bizarre logic, the US was so upset at the Arab support for the UN vote to upgrade the status of "Palestine" to a non-member state that it has been punishing Arab nations for their vote. This in turn is forcing the Arab nations to renege on their promises to send hundreds of millions of dollars to the PA.
They quote Deputy Secretary-General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Abdel Rahim Mallouh, a member of the Executive Committee of the PLO, as saying that there is American pressure exerted on the Arab countries to create a "siege" of the Palestinian Authority and to choke the Palestinian people financially.
Ahmad Assaf, spokesman for Fatah, says that Arab leaders were supposed to visit Ramallah to pledge their financial support to the PA but changed their minds, and he has heard that this was because of pressure from the United States. He says that Arab nations have not sent any money over for two months.
Secretary General of the Palestine Liberation Front and member of the Executive Committee of the PLO, Dr. Wasel Abu Yousef, claims that the US and Israel are imposing an economic blockade on the "Palestinian state," and prevented the Arab countries and donor countries from supporting the Palestinians financially, saying that these countries bowed to U.S. pressure. And that the US supports Israel building homes in the West Bank.
None of them have quite explained why Arab nations have been reneging on their pledges to the PA for years before the UN vote. Now that they can find a way to blame the US, they can pretend that their Arab brethren give a damn about their cause, despite all evidence to the contrary.
The funny thing is that even their Arab friends are not willing to tell them, straight out, that the decisions of Palestinian Arab leaders themselves is what has led to the disillusionment by their Arab brethren. They could have accepted peace plans in the past but instead started a terror war against Israel which paved the way for Hamas' ascendancy among their people.
The Arab leaders see things quite clearly, and they do not want to throw more money into a leadership that has zero ability to lead.
