Hamas rally to collect donations for beleaguered government

Last update - 17:37 12/05/2006


Hamas rally to collect donations for beleaguered government

By The Associated Press

Several thousand Hamas supporters gathered Friday to collect money and jewelry for the cash-strapped Palestinian government on Friday, criticizing the Western economic pressure on the Islamic militant group.

About 5,000 joined the demonstration, most of them wearing green Hamas hats and clothing. People announced over megaphones how much participants were donating. Some said they were donating their entire paychecks.

"These donations are our way of telling the world that we can live without them, and our children are paying what the Europeans should be paying," said Bassam al-Shaqaa, a former mayor of Nablus.

snip

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/715357.html


"...our way of telling the world that we can live without them..." and "...what the Europeans should be paying..."

hmmmm

Israel always asks for more.
More Blackhawk helicoptors to shoot at unarmed protesters.
More Caterpillar bulldozers to destroy homes. And human rights protesters.
More M-16's to shoot down british journalists. (Rest in Peace, James Miller)

http://www.forbes.com/business/2006/03/08/hamas-arafat-investments-cz_nv_0309hamas.html

Snip"
Arafat set up a slew of off-balance-sheet investments during his rule. But before Arafat died in 2004, a reform-minded finance minister, Salam Fayyad, managed to grab some of those holdings and consolidate them into the Palestine Investment Fund. The fund even published Ernst & Young-audited financials, which showed it held $1 billion of assets at the end of 2004, including big stakes in the Cairo-based cell phone high-flier Orascom Telecom and PALTEL, a Palestinian telecommunications company. Arafat made the investments by diverting $900 million from Authority bank accounts, according to a 2003 International Monetary Fund report.
The investment fund is now believed to hold $1.4 billion in assets, which would be very helpful to a new Hamas government."

snip

Is this fund still intact or not? I have also read recently there's nothing there. If not, where did a billion four go in one year especially since the West was still giving donations to the tune of about a billion until just a few months ago.

edit spelling

There's been a lot of we don't need your money/ we demand your money kind of talk going on. Meanwhile, I keep wondering where it goes (went?)

'Perfect Storm' Awaits Olmert in Washington

<snip>

"Prime Minister Olmert will arrive in Washington this month amid what the American Jewish leaders fear could be a perfect storm triggered by Israel's hopes for billions in American aid to defray the cost of withdrawal from the West Bank."

<snip>

"Nonetheless, since last fall Israeli officials and some pro-Israel lobbyists in Washington have quietly worked together on a supplemental aid request to defray the $1 to $2 billion Israel spent on dismantling settlements from Gaza and relocating its citizens who had lived there. Rough estimates from the Olmert camp suggest the cost of the prime minister's consolidation plan for the West Bank would be ten times that of Gaza.

"It was $1 or $2 billion originally. But after Katrina, nothing came of it. What that means from a financial point of view to the United States, I don't know," an Israeli official said yesterday who asked to remain anonymous."Now we are talking about 10 billion as a possible number. Some of this would take the form of loan guarantees."

http://www.nysun.com/article/32644