Palestinian Elections: News, Analysis, and Discussion

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/009155...

Top 16. Jan 10, 2005 6:10 AM

» Lawhawk - Meet the new boss - same as the old boss

-- posted by Lawhawk

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/...

Top 17. Jan 10, 2005 6:56 AM

» Lawhawk - The way of Abu Mazen...

"The way of Abu Mazen is the way of Abu Amr!" she says--or rather, screams--into the microphone, referring to Mr. Abbas and the late Yasser Arafat, respectively. "To Jerusalem we march in the millions!"
This goes on for another half hour, during which people in the audience approach foreign journalists to share their stories and opinions. One woman, who won't give her name, says she has three sons in Israeli prisons. Will she vote for Abu Mazen? "Yes, if he gets my boys out." Nadya, 29, from El Bireh, wants Abu Mazen to follow in Arafat's footsteps. "Any time someone needed medical treatment, Abu Amr paid for it from his own pocket, without going through any ministries." Samia, 40, a mother of seven from Nablus, says she hopes "all the money won't be spent on weapons any more."

Never mind that Abbas had his hand in the till, but he never got tarred with the same brush as the other kleptocrats at the Palestinian Authority.

One can hope that Abbas is different than Arafat and the other thugs at the PA, but I doubt it. Abbas has to do more than pay lip service to making peace with Israel, and factions within the PA are opposed to a state of Israel even existing, so he's got as little room to deal as Arafat ever did.

-- posted by Lawhawk

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?p...

Top 18. Jan 12, 2005 7:26 AM

» Lawhawk - Abbas to reshuffle cabinet - 6 ministers to be replaced

Sources close to Abbas told The Jerusalem Post that at least six ministers serving in the current cabinet would lose their jobs.
Shaath, who has been in the cabinet since the establishment of the PA more than a decade ago, will be replaced with Nasser al-Kidwa, the Palestinian envoy to the United Nations and a nephew of Yasser Arafat, the sources revealed.
The second most significant change will be in the Interior Ministry, where Hakam Balawi is expected to be replaced with Maj. General Nasser Youssef, who is closely associated with Abbas.
Both Shaath and Balawi were regarded as Arafat's men in the cabinet and were among his strongest allies. Arafat had twice refused to appoint Youssef as Interior Minister in charge of the Palestinian security forces - the first time when Abbas was prime minister and later when Qurei was entrusted with forming a new cabinet.
Former Information Minister Nabil Amr is expected to return to his post as part of the new cabinet reshuffle. A longtime critic of Arafat, Amr served as Information Minister in Abbas's cabinet in 2003. Last July he was shot and seriously wounded in his Ramallah home after criticizing Arafat's performance during a television interview.
Another Arafat critic tipped to join the new cabinet is Rakif al-Natsheh, a former minister who briefly served as Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council before he was ousted by Arafat. Natsheh, a member of a large clan from Hebron, had repeatedly angered Arafat by demanding drastic measures against senior officials implicated in financial corruption.
PA officials said Abbas is also planning major reforms in the Palestinian security establishment, including reducing the number of security forces from 12 to three.
In addition, the PA's National Security Council, which consists of commanders of all the security forces and several ministers and former Arafat advisors, will be headed by the prime minister instead of the PA chairman.

The talk of security forces is actually quite funny. Those security forces are nothing more than terrorist factions of the PLO, including the al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade, which was responsible for dozens of terrorist attacks over the past couple of years.

Consolidating the security forces is a good idea to reign these factions in. Will it be enough? I'm not convinced.

-- posted by Lawhawk

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editor...

Top 19. Jan 13, 2005 6:22 AM

» Lawhawk - Will Abbas Reciprocate?

-- posted by Lawhawk

Top 20. Jan 15, 2005 3:29 PM

» Lawhawk - Umm.. about those elections... were they really legit?

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=st... - apparently not as legit as the media first reported.

-- posted by Lawhawk

Top 21. Jan 15, 2005 3:35 PM

» Lawhawk - Palestinian population isn't as high as leaders claimed

http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/200... - the PA overstated the count of Palestinians living in Gaza and West Bank by more than 1.4 million.

That's not an insignificant number.

It seems the only ones who knew that the population figures were bogus were the Palestinian leaders themselves. It was from analyzing numbers released by various Palestinian agencies, in fact, that the researchers discovered that the published count of 3.8 million was severely inflated.
The biggest chunk of the 1.4 million-person gap comes from two "revisions" made by the PA, first in 1997, and then in 2002. This was the cornerstone of efforts to show strength in numbers, since even the PA largely concurred with Israel's count of just over 2 million Palestinians in 1996. Israel had run all hospitals and schools and had issued ID cards to all adults, so that figure had solid foundations.
When the PA conducted its first-ever census in 1997, it counted a lot more 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds than Israel had birth records for (prior to stopping official counts in 1994 to prepare for handover of civilian authority). To account for the sudden discovery of more children than had been recorded born in years prior, the PA jacked up the birth rates for 1990-1993 and used similarly high statistics for 1994-1996. The PA "revision" for West Bank births, for example, was almost 50 percent higher than Israel's numbers for 1990-1993.
With a higher birth rate for the seven years starting in 1990, the PA then projected lofty birth rates for the years after 1997. But a funny thing happened from 1998 onward: The birth rates returned to the modest levels typical of modern societies.
Each year, the PA Ministry of Health releases birth statistics for Gaza and the West Bank. And each time the numbers fell substantially short of what the PA projected in 1997. To fix this "problem," the PA in 2002 "revised" birth records going back to 1997. And guess what? The "revised" numbers nearly matched the 1997 projections.

Palestinians lying about stuff that matters? Naw, that's impossible. [heavy sarcasm]

-- posted by Lawhawk

Top 22. Jan 16, 2005 9:19 AM

» Lawhawk - Abbas affiliated death squads killing collaborators

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?p... - members of the AAMB have killed two Palestinians suspected of being collaborators with Israel.

Yeah, that's a big help to the 'peace process.' Killing off those who are actually working to identify and eliminate terrorists are targeted by the terrorists themselves. And Abbas turns a blind eye to this.

-- posted by Lawhawk