Op-ed in PA daily responds to Israeli criticism of international aid for terrorists: The world owes the Palestinians money for enabling Israel’s establishment, majority of aid money goes to PA salaries
Headline: “Hotovely and the baseless questions”
Op-ed by Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul, columnist for official PA daily
“Israeli Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tzipi Hotovely published an article last week in the American Wall Street Journal, titled ‘Where Does All That Aid for Palestinians Go .’ [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s deputy wondered where the aid funds have gone that have been given to the Palestinians over the past 22 years, and which have amounted to 21 billion US dollars in the form of development aid from 1993 to 2013, according to the World Bank. As part of the despicable incitement against the Palestinian leadership, she wrote: ‘The Palestinian leadership has had the opportunity to use these funds for economic and social development. However, it prefers to use the funds on its terrorist infrastructure exactly as is happening in Gaza with the building of attack tunnels, armament, missiles and terror.’ (sic., the correct text of all the excerpts from Hotovely’s article appearing in this op-ed can be accessed here). She continued: ‘The PA’s annual budget for supporting Palestinian ‘terrorists’ has reached $75 million US dollars, which is 16% of the foreign donations the PA receive annually.’ Likewise, she added: ‘The situation in the West Bank is most disturbing, because aside from supporting terror and the ‘hate’ speech, the PA refuses to remove hundreds of thousands [of Palestinians] from refugee rosters, deliberately keeping them in a state of dependence and underdevelopment for no purpose other than to direct their animosity toward Israel.’
Hotovely’s article misleads world public opinion, turns the facts upside down, incites, and blackens the image of the Palestinian leadership and Palestinian fighters, while describing them as ‘terrorists,’ although they, unlike the Israelis, are nothing of the kind. If we consider each point [of the article] that appears in the American magazine separately, we will notice the following things: First, the Israeli extremist [Hotovely] ignores or pretends not to know that the funds of the donor countries are the minimum that the international community owes the Palestinians, and Europe in particular, which contributed to the establishment of the State of Israel on the ruins of the Nakba (i.e., 'the catastrophe,' Palestinian term for the establishment of the State of Israel) of the Palestinian people in 1948. Secondly, she ignored the fact that the majority of the total funds received by the PA over 20 years were used for salaries of the PA’s civil and military employees. Thirdly, the Palestinian fighters, whether Martyrs or prisoners in the Israeli occupation state’s prisons, are freedom fighters, and the PA and PLO carry the responsibility for them. They are not terrorists, but pioneers of the struggle for national liberation, and the international law guarantees their right to use all means of struggle in order to liberate the Palestinian homeland from the murderous germ of the Israeli occupation.”
Op-ed by Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul, columnist for official PA daily
“Israeli Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tzipi Hotovely published an article last week in the American Wall Street Journal, titled ‘Where Does All That Aid for Palestinians Go .’ [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s deputy wondered where the aid funds have gone that have been given to the Palestinians over the past 22 years, and which have amounted to 21 billion US dollars in the form of development aid from 1993 to 2013, according to the World Bank. As part of the despicable incitement against the Palestinian leadership, she wrote: ‘The Palestinian leadership has had the opportunity to use these funds for economic and social development. However, it prefers to use the funds on its terrorist infrastructure exactly as is happening in Gaza with the building of attack tunnels, armament, missiles and terror.’ (sic., the correct text of all the excerpts from Hotovely’s article appearing in this op-ed can be accessed here). She continued: ‘The PA’s annual budget for supporting Palestinian ‘terrorists’ has reached $75 million US dollars, which is 16% of the foreign donations the PA receive annually.’ Likewise, she added: ‘The situation in the West Bank is most disturbing, because aside from supporting terror and the ‘hate’ speech, the PA refuses to remove hundreds of thousands [of Palestinians] from refugee rosters, deliberately keeping them in a state of dependence and underdevelopment for no purpose other than to direct their animosity toward Israel.’
Hotovely’s article misleads world public opinion, turns the facts upside down, incites, and blackens the image of the Palestinian leadership and Palestinian fighters, while describing them as ‘terrorists,’ although they, unlike the Israelis, are nothing of the kind. If we consider each point [of the article] that appears in the American magazine separately, we will notice the following things: First, the Israeli extremist [Hotovely] ignores or pretends not to know that the funds of the donor countries are the minimum that the international community owes the Palestinians, and Europe in particular, which contributed to the establishment of the State of Israel on the ruins of the Nakba (i.e., 'the catastrophe,' Palestinian term for the establishment of the State of Israel) of the Palestinian people in 1948. Secondly, she ignored the fact that the majority of the total funds received by the PA over 20 years were used for salaries of the PA’s civil and military employees. Thirdly, the Palestinian fighters, whether Martyrs or prisoners in the Israeli occupation state’s prisons, are freedom fighters, and the PA and PLO carry the responsibility for them. They are not terrorists, but pioneers of the struggle for national liberation, and the international law guarantees their right to use all means of struggle in order to liberate the Palestinian homeland from the murderous germ of the Israeli occupation.”