On Jan. 30, 10 senior Fatah members submitted their resignation for what
they said was the refusal of the movement to implement resolutions by the
Revolutionary Council, Middle East Newsline reported. They said the resolutions, passed in August 2009,
called for transparency in Fatah's budget.
"We have six legitimate demands that we issued to the Fatah Central
Committee including implementation of the resolutions of the Sixth
Conference, in addition to revising the region's seven committees and
correcting financial affairs," Revolutionary Council member Khazem Thuqan
said. "We have submitted our resignations to Central Committee member
Mahmoud Al Aloul as all parties failed in dialogue."
Shabaneh, appointed by Abbas in 2006, attributed most of the corruption
to the ruling Fatah movement. Forced out in 2009 after exposing high-level
corruption, Shabaneh said Fatah stole $3.2 million in U.S. funds to help the
party in 2006 elections, won by the opposition Hamas movement.
"In his pre-election platform, President Abbas promised to end financial
corruption and implement major reforms, but he hasn't done much since then,"
Shabaneh told the Jerusalem Post on Jan. 28.
The anti-corruption investigation by the General Intelligence Service
was said to have uncovered scores of PA officials who became rich off the
government coffers. Shabaneh said senior Fatah operatives who arrived in the
West Bank in 1993 with little more than pocket money soon became
millionaires.
"Some of the most senior Palestinian officials didn't have even $3,000
in their pocket when they arrived," Shabaneh said. "Yet we discovered that
some of them had tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars in their bank
accounts."
Neither Abbas nor Prime Minister Salam Fayad, a former World Bank
official, has halted corruption within the PA, Shabaneh said. The former
anti-corruption chief cited Abbas' aides, most of them leftovers from the
late Yasser Arafat, and responsible for much of the high-level embezzlement.
The PA has launched an investigation of one of Shabaneh's accusations.
The investigation focused on an Abbas aide shown nude in a 2008 video and
trying to trade his influence for sex with an unidentified woman. The aide,
Rafik Husseini, chief of Abbas's office, has remained in his post.
PA corruption, which included fictitious land deals and sexual scandals,
has become the leading complaint among Palestinian constituents in the West
Bank, Shabaneh said. He said Hamas, in control of the Gaza Strip since 2007,
has exploited rising discontent and was poised to overthrow the Fatah-led
regime in Ramallah.
"Had it not been for the presence of the Israeli authorities in the West
Bank, Hamas would have done what they did in the Gaza Strip," Shabaneh, now
a GIS commander responsible for the Jerusalem area, said. "It's hard to find
people in the West Bank who support the Palestinian Authority. People are
fed up with the financial corruption and mismanagement of the Palestinian
Authority. As long as the same corrupt guys are running the show we
shouldn't expect real changes."