Palestinian government giving ministers and extra $24K a year as "petty cash"

Safa reports:

Official documents obtained by the Palestinian Press Agency (Safa) revealed that the ministers of the current government have been receiving “petty cash” monthly, in the amount of $2,000, since late 2019.

This is despite the financial crisis that the PA is going through, and despite President Mahmoud Abbas' decision on August 18, 2019 to stop disbursing any additional funds to government ministers, after widespread controversy that followed [a raise of $2000 monthly that was approved)]during the first months of Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh's government.

The documents indicate that the government has created a mechanism to circumvent the Law on Remunerations and Salaries for Legislative Council Members, Government Members and Governors, which set the salary of the Prime Minister at $4,000 and the Minister’s at $3,000, by disbursing $2,000 to each minister in the form of “petty cash.”

Effectively, the PA government found a way to double minister salaries while pretending that they froze them. 

They also added a "cost of living" increase of 70% for retired ministers. 

This is the everyday corruption in the Palestinian Authority. And chances are this story will not be published at all in official Palestinian media.

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For some reason, Gaza's many NGOs don't care about Hamas prisons

Palestine Press Agency (Fatah-leaning) has an article about the inhumane conditions in Hamas prisons and detention centers in Gaza.

According to the article, Hamas prison cells meant for 20 people routinely have as many as 80.

In the summer, temperatures can go past 40 degrees C (104F) with no ventilation.

Prisoners with deadly contagious diseases are herded next to others. There are no doctors available, ever.

Prisons are also filled with bugs because of how filthy they are.

And, of course, some prisoners are tortured and killed. The Independent Commission for Human Rights documented 21 cases of Hamas prisoners who died last year, most of them executed. They also received 996 complaints about torture in 2014.

Too bad Gaza doesn't have any internationally funded "pro-Palestinian"  NGOs around who are interested in documenting these issues and publicizing them. It would be nice if Amnesty, HRW and Oxfam showed interest in the issue of prison conditions in Gaza. (HRW did once issue a report on Hamas torture, in 2012.)

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The Darwin Award, Hebron-edition (updated)

Here is how Palestine Press Agency reports the shooting of a 17-year old in Hebron yesterday:

When a child is born no one knows what will happen to him from the hassles and difficulties of life, but the most beautiful thing is the feeling that Allah has prepared for martyrs who believed in their covenant with God.

This is what happened with the young Muhammad Ziad Awad Salamiyah, 17, of the city of Hebron, when an Israeli soldier with no concept of humanity and whose vocabulary is filled with hatred shot the martyr Salamiyah near the Ibrahimi Mosque on Wednesday to receive the martyr certificate while smiling as he was at birth.

The martyr, according to the statements of those close to him, was going to buy sweets to celebrate his birthday, carrying with him a lighter pistol, but Israeli hatred did not differentiate between reality and illusion and their goal is to kill by any means and with any justification.

The Palestinian president strongly condemned the crime and accused Israel of trying to drag the region into a spiral of violence by killing innocent and defenseless of our people.

Salamiyah in fact pulled out the fake pistol and threatened the soldiers with it.

Here is a photo of the pistol:

The only question is - was Salamiyah a complete idiot for pulling this out in front of soldiers who have been subject to daily attacks , or was he actively looking for martydom as a birthday present?

While the death is tragic, the gene pool is a little better today.

(h/t CHA for photo and Alya Express News for the idea)

UPDATE: No, it wasn't stupidity - it was terror:

The officer, a 20-year-old from Tel Aviv, recounted the events in interviews with Israeli media late Tuesday night, saying that she and two border police soldiers under her command were manning a checkpoint near the Cave of the Patriarchs when the young Palestinian approached them.

“Following the standard procedure, the soldier who was with me asked him for an ID,” she said. “The Palestinian handed him his documents and I entered the room to run a background check.”

While inside, she continued, she looked out and saw that the Palestinian had charged the soldier and drawn what appeared to be a pistol.

“With one hand,” she related, “he grabbed the soldier’s neck and pressed against him, and with the other he put the pistol to the soldier’s temple. In that situation, the soldier couldn’t break free or react.”

The female officer, who was only a few meters away, cocked her weapon.

“I was looking for an angle from which to fire without hurting the soldier,” she said, and it was only after she ascertained that his life was in danger that she pulled the trigger.

“After the first shot, he continued to hold the pistol to the soldier’s temple, so I fired two more bullets,” she said, at which point the Palestinian fell to the ground, and she quickly kicked the gun away.

“It was my first time in a combat situation,” she said, explaining that she had reacted “exactly like I was taught.”

With a gun being held to the soldier’s head, there was no way she could fire a warning shot, the officer said. “My subordinate’s life was in immediate danger,” and it was important to fire without hitting him, she said.

She rebutted the notion of her being a hero, saying: “Any soldier in my position would have done the same.”

(h/t 1Biodegradable1)

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Sometimes, no one cares when Palestinian Arab homes are demolished

30 homes were destroyed in the territories yesterday - and there is no outcry.

The reason, of course, is that the homes were in Gaza City and it is Hamas doing the destruction.

Palestine Press Agency (seemingly now only on Facebook as a result of hackers) reports that Hamas bulldozers destroyed 30 homes and displaced dozens of families last night, because they built them on government land, sending the families into the cold without notice.

It will be interesting to see if Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch issue any reports about this.

Even more so, I look forward to seeing the condemnations from all those supposedly "pro-Palestinian" organizations who issue mountains of press releases on behalf of their beloved oppressed pets when they perceive any injustice against them.

Any injustice, that is, as long as they can blame Jews.

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Abbas again tells Lebanese Palestinians to go to hell

Palestine Press Agency reports that Mahmoud Abbas, on a visit to Lebanon, reiterated that he insists Palestinian Arabs in Lebanon should remain stateless forever, or at least until Israel is destroyed:

The presence of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon is temporary and subject to Lebanese law, and access to civil rights to live with dignity in Lebanon does not at all mean resettlement. We categorically reject the principle of resettlement.

Here, Abbas is repeating what he said in 2008:

We would not accept any settlements that would lead to a demographic change in Lebanon. This is totally unacceptable ... We won't accept a settlement that obliges Lebanon to naturalize even one Palestinian.

And again:

We assure our Lebanese brothers that the resettlement of refugees in their country is rejected. We will not accept it.

In 2009, he vehemently came out against the idea of Lebanon issuing passports to their Palestinian Arab "guests."

In 2005, however, Abbas had no problem with offering citizenship for Palestinian Arabs in Lebanon - and he was castigated for that by the self-appointed terrorist leaders in Lebanon.

The Lebanese Palestinians have consistently chosen to become citizens when they had a chance.

As I have previously written on this topic:

Generations have grown up in Lebanon, raised families, and died, but their supposed "leader" is more interested in them keeping their stateless status rather than giving them the simple choice of allowing them to be more integrated into the land of their birth.

Mahmoud Abbas, that supposedly moderate leader of the PA, the PLO and Fatah, who claims to represent millions of people of Palestinian Arab descent, has once again told his people to go screw themselves rather than give them the option of happiness as full citizens of other Arab lands. He arrogantly claims to know what is best for his people, and is dead-set against giving them the option of making their own decisions.

Because he knows that the majority them would not choose to put their families through the hell that they have gone through thanks to the decisions of Arab leaders over the past six decades.

Palestinian Arabs who choose to become citizens of Arab countries will, by and large, never choose to move to an eventual "Palestine." They will identify only peripherally as "Palestinian." They will lose their value as pawns to corrupt, arrogant "leaders" who pretend to know what is best for them, and whose power derives from their very misery.

Moreover, if Arab countries would give PalArabs full citizenship, a significant number of Palestinian Arabs in the territories - hundreds of thousands, if not over a million - would happily move to Saudi Arabia or Kuwait or Dubai. (Ironically, they would also have a positive influence on most of their host Arab countries, as they tend to be better educated and harder working, and Gulf countries import many workers from Indonesia and Africa, causing many problems that could be avoided if Palestinian Arab workers replaced them.)

The operative word here is "choice." Palestinian Arabs are not given the power to choose where to live, and Arab nations specifically deny them the ability to become citizens that they give all other Arabs.

Yet there are no "pro-Palestinian" organizations tha lobby on behalf of real Palestinian Arabs. They all repeat the lie that they can best help them by fighting Israel, militarily or politically. It is a myth, and one that is easily disproven - it has not helped them one bit in 63 years. "Human rights" organizations may mention some of these problems in isolation but they do not push for the simplest, fairest and cheapest solution to the problem of millions of stateless people.

Abbas, the one person who pretends to represent his people the best, tells his suffering would-be constituents that their six-decade old problem is "temporary."

This is a travesty of human rights.

The way to tell if someone is truly pro-Palestinian Arab or is simply using the Palestinian Arabs as pawns to help destroy Israel is to ask him one simple question:

Do you support giving all Palestinian Arabs the choice to become full citizens of any Arab country that they desire, according to the existing naturalization rules that they have for other Arabs?

This is the question that needs to be asked of every Arab leader, every Palestinian Arab leader, every NGO, every human rights organization. It should be hammered in during every interview. They must be forced to answer the question clearly and forcefully.

Unless they can answer that question in the affirmative, the inescapable conclusion is that most people who pretend to be "pro-Palestinian" are nothing more than liars and hypocrites who support discrimination against the very people they claim they want to help.

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Report: 14 "Naksa" mourners in Syria killed - by Palestinian terrorists! (UPDATED x3)

From Ma'an:

Fourteen Palestinian refugees were reported killed and another 43 injured on Monday, a report from the Palestinian government's WAFA news said.

The victims were part of a massive group in Al-Yarmok, an unofficial Palestinian refugee camp in the Syrian capital of Damascus, mourning the death of between 10-23 Palestinians by Israeli fire on the Golan Heights ceasefire line the day before.

Angered over the failure of camp leaders to organize demonstrations marking the Naksa, the anniversary of Israel's occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and Golan Heights, an estimated 100,000 mourners were said to have attacked the headquarters of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command.

Militants with the PFLP-GC reportedly opened fire on the group, who were taken to a local camp hospital for treatment. The report cited hospital staff saying 14 were pronounced dead.

During the clash, mourners reportedly set fire into the PFLP-GC headquarters, and condemned the group for its use of weapons against the crowd.

Palestine Press Agency adds that the PFLP-GC is a close partner with the Syrian leadership. Which would explain why a recognized terrorist group runs the Yarmouk camp.

Sources said that the demonstrators chanted against [PFLP-GC leader] Ahmad Jibril, Khaled Mashaal and other political leaders based in Damascus, accusing them of being agents of the Syrian regime.

This group was not "pro-Palestinian" enough to have some ceremonies to mark the 1967 war - like the Lebanese camps that had their solemn burning of tires at the entrances - so they attacked their terrorist leaders.

The terrorists did what one would expect them to do - shoot and kill their fellow Palestinian Arabs. (Note also that Syria has no problem allowing terror groups in these camps to be armed.)

The camp residents, naturally, then burn down the headquarters of their leaders.

And the upshot is - there are now 14 more martyrs of the "Naksa." And the Syrians have reason to be suspicious of their Palestinian Arab "guests," which could have some interesting repercussions, as the Palestinian Arabs in Syria have mostly been on the sidelines during the rioting against the regime.

Yes, I know you need a scorecard to keep all the factions straight. One thing is clear, though - everyone hates Israel, as this video of anti-government protesters in Homs stomping on Israeli - and Iranian! - flags shows:



UPDATE: YNet reports that a visit by Hamas' Khaled Meshal started the riots! YNet doesn't mention how many fatalities, though.
(h/t Challah Hu Akbar)

UPDATE 2: Palestine Press Agency updated the story. Apparently the funeral attendees resented that the PFLP-GC head Jibril and Hamas leader Meshal attended the funeral.

They accused both terror leaders of sending Palestinian Arabs to the border to get killed - to serve the agenda of Syria to distract from their own bloody war against their people.

UPDATE 3: Graphic video of one of the protesters getting shot in the head by the PFLP-GC. Viewer discretion advised.


Amazing how there is no video of Naksa protesters getting supposedly fatally shot by the IDF, isn't it?
(h/t Yael)

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