It is no secret that Arab countries have long mistreated their Palestinian brothers and sisters, governing them with inhumane laws and imposing severe restrictions on their public freedoms and basic rights. Building a wall around a Palestinian community to prevent terrorists from entering or leaving, however, has raised the bar on such infringements.

This is precisely what is happening in Lebanon these days. The construction of a security wall around Ain al-Hilweh, the largest Palestinian refugee camp (with a population of nearly 120,000), has drawn sharp criticism from Palestinians and revived memories of the abuse they regularly receive at the hands of their Arab brethren.

The Lebanese authorities say the Palestinians have left them no choice but to build the controversial concrete wall. The Palestinians, they say, refuse to cooperate against terrorists who have established bases within their camps. Yet that problem raises the question: “What has Lebanon done in the past half-century or so to help the Palestinians who fled to that country?” The answer: “Nothing.”

In fact, among all Arab countries, Lebanon has been arguably the worst in its treatment of the Palestinians. Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are denied access to adequate housing and certain categories of employment. According to Amnesty International: “Over half of Palestinian refugees live in decaying and chronically overcrowded camps and discriminatory practices are permitted under personal status laws and nationality laws.”

These anti-Palestinian practices are regularly ignored by the international community, including the mainstream media and human rights organizations, whose obsession with Israel blinds them to Arab injustice. While, every now and then, an organization does publish a report on the misery endured by Palestinians in Arab countries, these bodies rarely follow up on their work, thus creating the impression that they are doing so only for the sake of protocol.

As such, the plight of the Palestinians in many Arab countries continues to be a taboo, as far as the international community is concerned. Typically, Western journalists and human rights activists do not even bother to report or document cases of Arab mistreatment of Arabs. This abandonment of professional standards is why apartheid laws targeting Palestinians in several Arab countries are still unknown to the international community. Even when Western journalists and human rights advocates do hear about these violations, they prefer to look the other way. A story without an anti-Israel angle is not a story, as far as they are concerned.

So what is going on in Lebanon, and why are so many Palestinians furious with the Lebanese authorities?

Until a few years ago, the population of Ain al-Hilweh camp was 70,000. But the influx of refugees fleeing the civil war in Syria, since 2011, has increased the camp population to nearly 120,000. It turns out that many of these new “refugees” are actually terrorists fleeing from Syria and Iraq.

A street celebration in Lebanon’s Ain al-Hilweh camp, July 2015. (Image source: Geneva Call/Flickr)

Ain al-Hilweh, like most of the camps in Lebanon, has always been a major headache for the Lebanon. It seems, however, that the Lebanese government has had enough.

For years, the Lebanese authorities, for whom the camp is “off-limits,” have been trying, unsuccessfully, to clean the camp of its hundreds of terrorists.

Lebanese security forces steer clear of the refugee camps in an attempt to avoid friction with the Palestinians living there. This evasion has allowed the camps to become hotbeds for various jihadi groups and terrorists who pose a threat not only to the national security of Lebanon, but to Palestinians themselves and neighboring Arab countries such as Jordan, Egypt and Syria (not to mention Israel).

Alarmed by this heightened threat, the Lebanese authorities recently began building a concrete wall around Ain al-Hilweh, sparking a wave of denunciations from Palestinians. The Palestinians claim that the new wall, which will be completed in 15 months, will turn the camp into a big open-air prison. They refer to it as the “Wall of Shame.” Their main argument is that it is disgraceful that any Arab country would build a wall surrounding a refugee camp at a time when Palestinians are asking the world to condemn Israel for building a security fence to prevent terror attacks against Israelis from the West Bank.

Camp residents claim that the Lebanese authorities have misled them concerning the construction of the wall. According to the residents, the authorities led them to believe that it was to be a small fence on the outskirts of parts of the camp and not a massive concrete wall surrounding the camp.

The Lebanese security authorities have chosen to call the new barrier the “Wall of Protection” — stressing that it is mainly intended to prevent terror attacks against Lebanon and stop the camps from becoming bases for terrorists and criminals. The authorities say that if anyone is to blame for the construction of the wall, it is the Palestinians themselves, who have refused to cooperate with the Lebanese government against the terrorists. “The goal is to prevent terrorists from infiltrating the camp,” explained a Lebanese security official. “The equation facing the Palestinian factions is clear: Hand over the terrorists and there will be no wall. The Palestinians have proven that they are unable to take security matters into their own hands in this camp.”

The Lebanese authorities also say that they decided to build the wall after discovering several smuggling tunnels in the vicinity of Ain al-Hilweh. These tunnels, they say, are being used to smuggle weapons and terrorists into and out of the camp.

Representatives of Ain al-Hilweh and other Palestinians have been holding marathon meetings with Lebanese government officials in the past few weeks to persuade them to halt the construction of the wall. The Palestinians in Ain al-Hilweh are now threatening that if the Lebanese government does not cancel the project, they will seek the intervention of other Arab, and also Western, countries, as well as the United Nations.

Notably, the Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership in the West Bank has not joined in the efforts to persuade the Lebanese government to drop the idea of building a wall around the camp. This avoidance probably springs from the PA leadership and its president, Mahmoud Abbas, being well aware that Ain al-Hilweh and other refugee camps in Lebanon have fallen into the hands of their enemies, namely Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Islamic State and Al-Qaeda.

The “Wall of Shame” appears particularly to bother Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal. Last week, he telephoned a number of Lebanese officials, including Prime Minister Tammam Salam and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, to warn about the consequences of the construction of the wall. Mashaal, who is based in Qatar and enjoys a luxurious life most Palestinians can barely dream of, urged the Lebanese government to halt construction if the wall and said that the wall jeopardized the lives of Palestinian refugees and would have “negative repercussions.”

Hamas’s spokesman in Lebanon, Ra’fat Murra, dismissed Lebanon’s security concerns for building the wall. He warned that the wall would turn the camp into an isolated enclave and exacerbate tensions between Palestinians and Lebanese. Murra, however, expressed readiness to cooperate with the Lebanese authorities in apprehending and handing over wanted terrorists who had found shelter inside Ain al-Hilweh.

Protests against the wall reached their peak when hundreds of Palestinians (and some Lebanese) took to the streets of the nearby city Sidon, in southern Lebanon, calling on the government to stop construction immediately. The protesters warned that the wall would further increase tensions between Palestinians and Lebanese, and further reduce the quality of life for the camp residents.

Lebanon may be justified in building a security wall around the Palestinian refugee camp. Without a doubt, Ain al-Hilweh and other camps have become hubs for terror groups and criminals, and Lebanon has every right to combat terrorism. Yet, Lebanon needs to come up with ways to assimilate, rather than alienate, the Palestinians. Furthermore, this is a problem that extends beyond Lebanon’s borders. The same applies to the camps in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syria and Jordan.

The continued mistreatment of Palestinians at the hands of Lebanon and other Arab countries is totally unjustified. The new wall, complete with watchtowers, that is being erected around Ain al-Hilweh may stop some terrorists from infiltrating the camp, but it will not solve the real problem — namely the failure to absorb the refugees and grant them citizenship. In point of fact, Palestinians living in Arab countries are denied citizenship (with the exception of Jordan) and a host of basic rights.

Now is the time for the international community to apply pressure to the Arab countries to start helping their Palestinian brothers by improving their living conditions and incorporating them into these countries. Holding Palestinians in refugee camps for more than six decades is deadly counterproductive. The camps become sanctuaries for terrorists who pose a threat to the national security and stability in these Arab countries. There is no reason why a Palestinian living in Lebanon or Egypt or Kuwait should be banned from purchasing his or her own home.

Moreover, Arab states’ lies concerning the return of refugees to former homes inside of Israel, so long a staple fed to the refugees, have far outlived their usefulness. The refugee problem will end on the day their leaders stop lying to them and confront them with the truth, basically that there will be no “right of return” and that the time has come for them to move on with their lives.

If the lies do not end, the day will come when these countries will be forced to place all the refugees behind walls and fences — a move not likely to enhance stability in these countries. Ain al-Hilweh should serve as a wake-up call to all those Arabs who continue to subject Palestinians to apartheid laws and practices.

Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist, is based in Jerusalem.

Crime is not supposed to pay in any country, but for Palestinians in the West Bank, crime helps you become a public officer.

In this small piece of land, headed by Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority (PA), every killer of a Jewish Israeli citizen is called “martyr.” This word “martyr” means that each time a Palestinian stabs a Jew, he accomplishes an act of pious virtue. And because the killer is a good Palestinian Muslim, his family becomes eligible for regular payments from the Palestinian Authority’s “martyr’s fund.” This fund is used financially to compensate Palestinian prisoners and the families of “martyrs.”

After a 17-year-old Palestinian, Mohammed Tarayra, stabbed to death a sleeping 13-year-old Israeli girl, Hallel Yaffa Ariel, in her bed in the town of Kiryat Arba, the terrorist’s house was decorated with Fatah and PLO flags. No doubt the family will be soon on the list of payments from the Palestinian “martyr’s fund.”

According to an analysis by Bloomberg’s Eli Lake:

“The origins of these payments goes back a long way. Before the Palestinian Authority was established in the 1990s through the Oslo peace process, the Palestine Liberation Organization paid the families of ‘martyrs’ and prisoners detained by Israel. That practice became standardized during the Second Intifadah of 2000 to 2005. The Israelis even found documents in the late Yasser Arafat’s compound that showed payments to families of suicide bombers.”

The money the Palestinian killers make is not small change. Evelyn Gordon reported in Commentary:

“The PA has for years paid above-market salaries to the perpetrators of anti-Israel terror attacks. The salaries range from 2,400 to 12,000 shekels a month ($600 USD to $3,000 USD) and are paid for the duration of the perpetrator’s jail sentence in Israel (people killed while committing attacks get other benefits). The lower figure is roughly equivalent to the average – not minimum – wage for people who actually hold jobs in the West Bank, and about 40 percent higher than the average wage in Gaza; figures at the higher end of the range are the kind of salaries most Palestinians can’t even dream of. In short, the PA has made terror far more lucrative than productive work.”

Yigal Carmon, president and founder of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), submitted testimony to the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs on July 6, 2016. He gave interesting details.

First: the payments are highly structured by law.

“This financial support for prisoners is anchored in a series of laws and government decrees, chiefly Laws No. 14 and No. 19 of 2004, and Law No. 1 of 2013…” According to these laws, the PA must provide prisoners with a monthly allowance during their incarceration, and salaries or jobs upon their release. They are also entitled to exemptions from payments for education, health care, and professional training. Their years of imprisonment are calculated as years of seniority of service in PA institutions. It should be noted that whoever was imprisoned for five years or more is entitled to a job in a PA institution. Thus, the PA gives priority in job placement to people who were involved in terrorist activity.”

Technically, the PA transfers the funds through two PLO organizations:

• The National Palestinian Fund, which transfers moneys for the prisoners and released prisoners (further to be disbursed by the Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs).
• The Institute for Care for the Families of Martyrs, which transfers moneys for the families of martyrs.

What are the amounts?

Prisoners and families: “[T]he PA invests significant sums in underwriting the expenses of the prisoners and their families – $137.8 million according to the PA’s 2016 budget (about 7% of which is for officials’ salaries and operating expenses).

Families of “martyrs”: The PLO’s Institute for Care for the Families of Martyrs… allocated just under $173 million for families of martyrs and the wounded within the homeland and outside it. The Institute’s operating expenses comes [sic] to about $1.5 million. … The budget also states that the Institute provides allowances “without discrimination” — in other words, also from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and so on.

In 2016, not less than $300 million (between 7 and 10% of the budget) are going to be allocated to prisoners and families and to “martyrs’ families.”

The United States and the European Union, which finance the Palestinian institutions year after year, deliberately close their eyes to the “martyr’s fund” to which they contribute.

PA Minister of Prisoners’ Affairs Issa Karake, speaking at a rally in November 2013, defends the use of EU aid money to pay “salaries” to imprisoned terrorists, saying “The Europeans want their money that comes to us to remain clean — not to go to families of those they claim to be terrorists. [They] need to renounce this occupation mentality.” (Image source: Palestinian Media Watch)

But things might begin to change. Warning signs are in the air.

1) The recent Report of the Middle East Quartet (European Union, United States, Russia and the UN) does not talk money but “incitement to terror” — which is exactly the same thing.

“Continuing violence, terrorist attacks against civilians, and incitement to violence are greatly exacerbating mistrust and are fundamentally incompatible with a peaceful resolution.”

The Quartet added:

“Palestinians who commit terrorist attacks are often glorified publicly as “heroic martyrs.” Many widely circulated images depict individuals committing terrorist acts with slogans encouraging violence.”

This Quartet report is not a pro-Israel banner: It criticized harshly settlement policy, even in Jerusalem, and accuses the Israelis of denying the Palestinian economy any possibility for development. The one, however, who was really angry after the Quartet report was not Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Quartet report apparently infuriated Mahmoud Abbas because, for the first time in many years, the settlement policy of the Israeli government was not pointed to as the main and unique obstacle to peace.

As Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat claimed, the Quartet allegedly sought “to equalize the responsibilities between a people under occupation and a foreign military occupier.” To “equalize responsibilities” is for the Palestinians exactly the problem. They do not want to make any gesture, move or even a smile for peace. In a Middle East torn by a multiethnic war between Arabs against non-Arabs, Muslims against non-Muslims and Shiites against Sunnis, who could imagine that these Sunni Arab Palestinian people can claim suddenly and publicly: “Hey, Israel my friend, we are ready to make peace with you Jews and recognize Israel as a Jewish state.” Unthinkable (from an Islamic point view, of course).

2) International pressure is on the move. On May 4, 2016, for example, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reported that “In a meeting with [PA President] Mahmoud Abbas, Norway’s Foreign Minister Børge Brende stressed that the current support program for prisoners should be abolished.”

On May 22, 2016, PMW also reported from the official PA daily, Al Hayat al Jadidah:

“Director of PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs: Israel and a number of Western countries [are] trying to revoke the prisoners’ financial rights on the pretext that they engaged in ‘terror’….”

3) The Israeli government that, for a long time, was not paying attention to the issue, has changed its stand on the “martyr’s fund” problem. According to Bloomberg, “On Friday, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, announced that he would begin withholding part of the tax revenue that Israel sends to the Palestinian Authority — equal to the amount paid to ‘martyrs.'”

4) Frank Lowenstein, the U.S. special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, told Bloomberg that “the U.S. has recently started withholding funding” for the same reason. “We have robustly complied with legislation passed in 2014 that requires us to deduct from development assistance to the Palestinian Authority for Palestinian payments to individuals imprisoned for acts of terrorism,” he said.

5) U.S. Senator Dan Coats (R.Indiana) told the Jerusalem Post on June 29, that “the Senate is acting to shut a loophole that allows Palestinian leadership to use US aid dollars to provide monthly stipends to people convicted by Israel of murder or terrorism.” The State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill should be voted on next year.

The amount of development assistance that has been already withheld is classified.

Currently, the difficulty is for American and Israeli officials to press European governments to adopt an equivalent position on this delicate issue. It will not be easy. At the end of June 2016, the European Parliament gave a standing ovation to Mahmoud Abbas in Brussels — the same Mahmoud Abbas who began his speech in Brussels by saying:

“We are against incitement. But, just a week ago, a week, a group of rabbis in Israel announced, in a clear announcement, demanding their government, to poison, to poison, the water of the Palestinians… Is this not incitement? Is this not clear incitement, to the mass murder of the Palestinian people?”

All the MEPs in Brussels jumped on their feet to acclaim and applaud this pure anti-Semitic lie. The day after, Abbas was forced to retract it; he admitted there was no factual basis for such a statement.

Britain could help to break the European adoration of the “good Palestinian” who “wants peace” — by subsidizing terror attacks — contrary to the “bad Israeli” who is said to “steal land,” by defending it when it is attacked.

In June, an independent report commissioned by the Department for International Development (DFID, a British governmental body dedicated to fight poverty) concluded that by enabling the PA to pay salaries to terrorists, British aid to the PA had made anti-Israel terror “more likely.” DFID dismissed the report, but the uproar in Parliament was huge.

It is not impossible to convince the EU — even France which has been conducting hostile diplomatic actions against Israel just to seduce the powerful French community of Muslim voters — to stop incentivizing terror attacks. As U.S. Senator Coats said, “Some things are simply too immoral to be tolerated.”

So the question is: can the PA stop paying the “martyrs” and make peace with Israel? The answer is NO.

The linkage between paying “martyrs” and making peace is central. Palestinian society is totally built and organized on the basis of “resistance.” It is a society where jobs, fame and money go to people who are in, or who have spent years in, Israeli jails. There, legitimacy goes to people who are considered “martyrs.” The failure of reforms introduced by former PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and his inevitable dismissal were due to his lack of “expertise” in terror matters. Gatestone’s Khaled Abu Toameh wrote last year:

The reason most Palestinians did not vote for Fayyad is because he had not played any role in the ‘revolution’ against Israel. In this culture, it is more important if one graduates from an Israeli prison than from the University of Texas in Austin. Fayyad did not participate in any armed attack on Jews and never supported the armed struggle against Israel. Nor did he send his son to throw stones or firebombs at Israelis. That is the real reason why people like Fayyad lack popular support.

Bloomberg’s Eli Lake wrote the same thing differently:

“One problem is that the payments to terrorists’ families are exceedingly popular these days” writes Bloomberg. “Ziad Asali, the president and founder of the American Task Force on Palestine, told me that in recent years the media and politicians have elevated these payments to something “sacred in Palestinian politics.” Asali said the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, and others are too weak to stop it. “This is where we find ourselves now. The vast majority understand there has to be an end to violence; it’s not serving the Palestinians in any way,” Asali said. “But I think nobody really has the stature and clout to confront these issues publicly.”

But foreign donors have to understand something important: they have to cut foreign money for “martyrs,” but this does not in itself bring peace. It would just replace a certain type of violence with another type of violence: open revolts against Abbas, who would be considered a traitor; violence against the corrupt Palestinian Authority system; new Palestinian terrorism financed by hostile countries like Iran and perhaps some others.

Even if a minority of Palestinians think that the terror reward money is a dead end, the shortage of this same money opens the door to another dead end.

In this 21st century, with no “good guy,” no model to follow in the Middle East, Muslims need the war on Israel.

We have not finished with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Yves Mamou, based in France, worked for two decades as a journalist for Le Monde.

On his last visit to Cairo, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas reportedly told Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi that he does not intend to run in any future election.

Palestinian officials who accompanied Abbas to Cairo quoted him as saying that he does not want to be a “president for life” and that he is eager to see new presidential elections take place in the Palestinian territories as soon as possible.

“My age and health don’t allow me to remain in power,” the 81-year-old Abbas explained. “My term in office expired several years ago and I’m still in power only because of the Hamas, which staged a coup and is controlling the Gaza Strip and refusing to allow new elections.”

Abbas’s remarks came amid increased talk about a “battle for succession” that has been raging for weeks among the top brass of the Palestinian Authority leadership in the West Bank.

For now, it seems that there is no shortage of Palestinians who consider themselves “natural” and “worthy” successors to Abbas, who recently celebrated the 11th year of his four-year-term in office.

Abbas’s refusal to appoint a vice president, choose a possible successor, or share power, as well as his insistence on managing the PA as a one-man show, has left the door wide open for speculation as to what will happen the day he is gone.

Some Palestinians expect a smooth transition of power, while many fear that the “battle for succession” will lead to anarchy and violence.

Palestinian journalist Munir Abu Rizek recently sounded an alarm bell when he disclosed that some senior Palestinian officials and their supporters in the West Bank have been purchasing weapons in preparation for the post-Abbas era. He predicted that the anarchy that could erupt in the West Bank would be similar to what happened in the Gaza Strip before Hamas expelled the Palestinian Authority nearly a decade ago. Abu Rizek did not rule out the possibility that Palestinian cities in the West Bank would be turned into cantons ruled by rival Fatah officials and warlords.

However, the question is not which Palestinian official will succeed Abbas, so much as who will elect the next president and how? Besides, does it really matter who will be the next president?

Clearly, Abbas’s successor will not be elected through the ballot box. There are no free and democratic elections in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Hamas and the PA, however, disagree why this is so.

Hamas is convinced that the Palestinian Authority will never allow elections in the West Bank because of the likelihood that Hamas would win, as it did in the 2006 parliamentary elections.

The PA, for its part, argues that Hamas will never allow a free election in the Gaza Strip because it does not tolerate any competition.

In any event, since Hamas and the Palestinian Authority crack down on each other’s supporters in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, no free elections will emerge. So it is clear that an election to choose a successor for Abbas is off the table, at least for the foreseeable future. That is, of course, unless the PA leadership decides to hold separate elections for the West Bank — an option that seems to be highly unlikely. Holding a separate vote in the West Bank would result in Palestinians accusing the PA of “solidifying” the split between the Gaza Strip and West Bank, thus destroying the effort to establish a unified Palestinian state in these two areas.

Therefore, it is up to the ruling Fatah’s Central Committee to elect a new president. This body, established in 1963, is the most senior decision-making body of the PLO and consists of twenty-one Fatah officials, all known to be Abbas loyalists. But in recent years, the make-up of the Committee has changed a bit.

One of its members, Othman Abu Gharbiyeh, died a few weeks ago during open-heart surgery in an Indian hospital. Another member, Marwan Barghouti, is currently serving a prison term of five-life sentences for his role in terror attacks against Israelis during the Second Intifada. A third member, Mohamed Dahlan, was expelled from Fatah five years ago after falling out with Abbas and his sons.

Yet the Fatah leadership will not hand over the presidency to anyone who is not from its ranks, not even an independent and widely-respected figure such as former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

So the decision as to who will replace Abbas will be in the hands of 18 senior Fatah officials — all members of the faction’s Central Committee. The last time this committee held internal elections was in July 2009, when Abbas was elected as chairman.

More than half of the Committee members have announced their lack of interest in succeeding Abbas. But that may change the day after Abbas’s departure. Indeed, Abbas’s presence seems to discourage any such ambition. The PA president has expelled any Fatah official suspected of setting his eyes on the presidency. Mohamed Dahlan is the best example of how Abbas is quick to get rid of any official who may pose a threat to his throne. Since his expulsion from Fatah, Dahlan has been forced to relocate to the United Arab Emirates, after Abbas accused him of corruption and murder.

Six of the Committee members are over the age of 70, while most are in their 60s. Only two of them are in their 50s: Marwan Barghouti and Hussein Sheikh. But those two are not considered serious successors, although some public opinion polls have shown that many Palestinians would vote for Barghouti.

Today, Palestinians point to at least three candidates whose chances of succeeding Abbas are strong: Saeb Erekat, Mohammed Shtayyeh and Majed Faraj.

Erekat and Shtayyeh are members of the Fatah Central Committee, while Faraj, who is also a senior Fatah official, heads the Palestinian Authority’s General Intelligence Force in the West Bank.

Last year, Abbas promoted Erekat to the position of PLO Secretary-General, a move that was interpreted by many Palestinians as a sign that Abbas sees him as his successor. But Faraj is also very close to Abbas, who relies on him blindly when it comes to protecting the PA regime against Hamas and other political rivals.

Regarding Barghouti, Fatah officials said this week that it would make no sense to have a president who is in prison and thus not able to perform his duties.

Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, who previously headed An-Najah University in Nablus, regards himself as a potential successor. One of his aides said that there is “no reason why such a widely-respected man should not become the next president.” Hamdallah, however, holds no official position in Fatah and has no power base there.

In this regard, Hamdallah is not different from his predecessor, Salam Fayyad. The two men do not have enough “credentials” among Palestinians, because they did not serve time in Israeli prisons and were never active members of the Palestinian “resistance.”

Because of the power struggle between members of the Fatah Central Committee, there is a chance that they could elect a veteran Fatah figure who is not a Committee member. Faraj is one of the “outsiders,” but there is no shortage of such people.

Another scenario that could take place, in wake of the internal squabbling and sharp differences within Fatah, sees its leaders forming a “collective leadership” to manage the affairs of the Palestinians. Tawfik Tirawi, a Fatah Central Committee member and a former head of the PA’s General Intelligence Force in the West Bank, lately hinted at this option when he said that, “President Abbas will be the last president of the Palestinians.”

Finally, a last question needs to be addressed: Does it really matter who replaces Abbas? In other words, will the next leader be able to deviate from the policies and strategy that have already been drawn by Abbas and his Fatah leadership? More importantly, will the next president be able to accept any peace deal with Israel that has already been rejected by Abbas and Yasser Arafat?

After Arafat died, Arafatism lived on. The same applies to Mahmoud Abbas. No real changes, if ever, should be expected in the Palestinian attitude towards the conflict with Israel after his departure.

After Yasser Arafat died, Arafatism lived on. The same applies to Mahmoud Abbas. No real changes, if ever, should be expected in the Palestinian attitude towards the conflict with Israel after his departure. Pictured above: Yasser Arafat (L) and Mahmoud Abbas (R) in a Fatah propaganda poster.

Once again, the Palestinians will be the big losers. No one is going to ask their opinion about the next president and they will not be given the opportunity to cast their ballots in a presidential election.

Fatah’s Central Committee in the West Bank brings to mind the Politburo of a Communist Party, which made decisions on behalf of the people, though not with their best interests in mind. In the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians will continue to be ruled by Hamas, an Islamist movement that has brought nothing but destruction and disaster to Palestinians.

So, in the end, the question of Abbas’s successor is rather unimportant. The Palestinians will continue to be ruled by dictatorships that do not give a damn about their people.

Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist is based in Jerusalem.

Sex is a taboo topic in the conservative Palestinian society. So it came as a nasty surprise to many when the rampant sexual harassment in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip was recently brought to public attention.

A damning report, entitled “Gaza: Sexual Harassment and Bribery Chase Job-Seekers,” was published in the Beirut-based, Hezbollah-affiliated newspaper Al-Akhbar. Amjad Yaghi, the young Palestinian journalist who wrote the exposé, showed extraordinary courage in doing so.

Hamas, needless to say, was not amused.

Yaghi wrote that

“[some] public personalities in the Gaza Strip are no longer abiding by the professional standards of their moral work after being overcome by their sexual instincts and professional duties. They are exploiting their status, especially their decision-making regarding employment, appointments and providing services and funds to projects in light of the absence of working opportunities for women.”

According to Yaghi, the report was published in a Lebanese newspaper because the Palestinian media forbids stories that might enrage the public and “harm” Palestinian traditions and morals.

Yaghi sets out clearly the Catch-22:

“The victims do not have the freedom to talk about their experiences and that is why most of the women who are subjected to sexual harassment remain silent. … They are afraid that they could be deprived of new employment or that their reputation would be affected.”

The report found at least 36 Palestinian women working in various fields who had fallen victim to sexual harassment and exploitation. Reflecting Yaghi’s description of their dilemma, 25 of the victims refused to provide full details about their experiences, and the remaining 11 agreed to talk openly about the problem only on condition of anonymity.

Sexual crimes of various sorts were reported. Twenty of the women reported experiencing sexual harassment at their workplaces, while ten others said they were asked to provide “sexual bribes.” Six of the women told Yaghi that they had been sexually assaulted at work.

A 27-year-old female journalist told the Yaghi that a Palestinian official working for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) invited her to his office for a job interview:

“When she came to his office, the official tried to approach and touch her, but she walked away and left the office… The following day, the official was more honest with her; he offered her the job in return for having sexual intercourse with him. She was shocked and stopped talking to him.”

The woman believes that the senior status of the official who sexually harassed her will protect him from being held accountable for his behavior. She also alluded to a larger and deeper problem in the Arab and Islamic world: “Our society doubts the integrity of a woman who talks about honor.” As a third obstacle to prosecution, she noted that under Palestinian law, UNRWA officials enjoy immunity from being prosecuted.

Immunity from prosecution for sexual crimes, however, apparently does not apply to the top echelons of internationally funded organizations. For example, the director of an international aid organization in the Gaza Strip, who purportedly offered a 28-year-old job applicant a highly-paid position in return for sex.

Lawyers in the Gaza Strip would seem to have enough to do without sexually harassing their employees. But a 23-year-old female legal trainee told the investigative journalist that her boss, a 45-year-old male attorney, made sexual advances to her and to three of her female colleagues. Another male lawyer offered a female colleague 50 shekels ($12) if she allowed him to touch her body.

According to the report, 13 female journalists in the Gaza Strip have also faced sexual harassment and assault in recent years.

Yaghi found that the Palestinian Basic Law does not tackle the issue of sexual harassment in Palestinian society. While the law does refer to corruption in the workplace, sexual harassment is not detailed as a form of corruption.

Much has been written recently about the widespread increase in child abuse in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, where children are exposed to constant brainwashing by armed groups. Last week, a new video surfaced of how the radical Islamist groups in the Gaza Strip incite Palestinian children. The video features children dressed as Islamic Jihad militiamen, play-acting the detonation of a bomb near an Israeli tank. The audience, the parents of these child actors, can be heard cheering and applauding.

In a society where children are indoctrinated to murder Jews, it comes as no surprise that women are victims of different kinds of exploitation as well.

Yaghi keeps the identities of the male offenders out of the public eye. Yet these are clearly senior officials working in the private and public sectors. Just as clearly, the sexual harassment victim of the UNRWA official was right: the Hamas connections of these criminals will no doubt keep them out of jail and in positions of power.

Where are the women’s rights organizations now? And where are the European and American overseers of the international human rights organizations in the Gaza Strip? Could it be that these worthy watchdogs only awaken from their slumber when they smell fresh Israeli meat? Meanwhile, how many women will be sexually assaulted and harassed while these watchdogs sleep?

When it comes to sexual harassment, where are the European and American overseers of the international human rights organizations in the Gaza Strip? Under Palestinian law, UNRWA officials enjoy immunity from being prosecuted, and the Hamas connections of officials that engage in sexual harassment will no doubt keep them out of jail and in positions of power. Pictured at right: Pierre Krähenbühl, Commissioner-General of UNRWA, meets with Federica Mogherini, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs.

Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem.