Fayyad: Master or Tool?

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

Dr. Salam Fayyad, prime minister of the Palestinian Authority based in Ramallah, has no track record of struggle against the Israeli occupation to stand on; he was never at any point involved in a national movement, neither in Palestine nor in Jordan nor anywhere else in the Arab homeland, and he never belonged to a party or was a member of any Arab political party. Yet according to information that has reached me, it is possible that he is close to the Freemasons or the Masonic lodges in Jordan. If the information I have about his relationship with the Masonic movement is correct, then his political and economic orientations will not remain hidden, and must necessarily align with the goals of the Masonic movement, which, according to the disappeared head of the Alexandria lodge, culminate in the construction of the Temple of Solomon as a symbol of love and peace in this world.

I am not certain of his membership in the Masonic movement, but I am aware that his social environment in Jordan is colored by the Masonic movement, and that his environment in Palestine is also colored, even if only partially, by Freemasonry. Furthermore, his work at the World Bank casts a strong shadow over this matter, since positions at that bank are not open to just any qualified person; competence there is expected to be reinforced by political stances or orientations, foremost among them acceptance of United States policies and working to implement them at the global level, and acceptance of Israel along with a readiness to work with it at the regional level. Perhaps his repeated attendance at the annual Herzliya Conference, which Israel holds to assess its present and future conditions, gives us a strong indication of his political orientations, or of his readiness to carry out policies that suit Israeli and American requirements.

For the record, I note that Freemasonry is far more dangerous to the world than Zionism; it extends into most of the world’s countries, and its membership includes people of every religion and nationality, even though it is restricted to men only. Its members, however, are people of influence and standing in their societies, the majority of them decision-makers, and they do not become members except after scrutiny and entanglement, so that in the end they will not stray from the policy that has been mapped out or required of them. A number of Arab and Palestinian leaders are members of this movement, and no one should be surprised that many Arab regimes fail to take decisions or positions that might cause harm to Israel.

Mounted from above

One normally mounts from below to above — mounting a beast of burden, or a car, or a train, and so on. Salam Fayyad mounted the Palestinian people from above; he did not work among the people first in order to build his own credibility, or to gather supporters and backers around himself. Suddenly, he became the Palestinian Minister of Finance under Arafat, by American decision. The Americans continually voiced their admiration for him, and praised him time and again — President Bush foremost among them — and insisted he remain Minister of Finance. The Americans never praise anyone in our Arab region because he is free or a fighter for a cause; historically, they have praised only those who work to implement their policies, and who are prepared to accept a solution with Israel according to the American vision — which is, to a large degree, the Israeli vision.

Dr. Salam Fayyad landed upon the Palestinian people from above, and became an official with the power to implement decisions overnight. Palestine is full of capable people who have always engaged with their own people and lived through hardship, suffering, and pain, and who possess a deep sense of what is happening in Palestine and around it — but the man in question decided to leap over, and to burn through, every stage one must earn, in order to install himself as he saw fit to serve his own policies, and thereafter began taking Machiavellian steps to manufacture popularity that would qualify him to continue and to rise further. Of course, Arafat’s own policy bears the larger share of responsibility for this Palestinian drama, since it was he who handed the Americans control over the Palestinians’ necks through their daily bread, and it was he who led the program of corruption in the country, which drove people to prefer a hostile ruler over an ignorant friend.

I wrote, years ago, from the moment Dr. Salam took over the Ministry of Finance, saying that the Minister of Finance would one day become president of the Palestinian Authority. Here he now is, prime minister, and the way remains open before him to become president of the Authority.

It is important to say that Dr. Salam Fayyad lacks neither intelligence nor breadth of vision, and that he is, economically speaking, capable of performing an important mission and serving the nation, if he were the one making the decisions. But the problem is that he suffers from a weakness in political knowledge and in the region’s history, particularly after the Zionist invasion, and in my assessment, high office tempted him, and so he went ahead and accepted what should not be accepted.

Playing the corruption card

The root cause lay in Arafat’s policies, from the moment he took the throne of the Palestine Liberation Organization — policies marked by personalization of power, authoritarianism, and covering up failures with empty claims. He pursued a financial and administrative policy in the West Bank and Gaza, after the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, that was deeply corrupt, and that negatively affected people’s morale, their ethics, and their social cohesion, turning the Palestinian people into a farce before themselves and before others. For this reason, America and the Western states generally had no difficulty championing the idea of good governance and sound financial management by intervening to install this person or that. The Western states worked, through the Road Map, to establish a Palestinian premiership, and insisted that Mr. Mahmoud Abbas be prime minister, and insisted that Fayyad be Minister of Finance. They repeatedly told the Palestinians that the money would not be sent unless Fayyad was Minister of Finance.

The Western states are not genuinely concerned with cleaning corruption out of the West Bank and Gaza; rather, they are concerned with implementing their policies with as little scandal as possible, and through people who enjoy a degree of credibility. Corruption certainly serves the Western states’ policies in the region, but it becomes tiresome once it turns into media fodder, and into a cause of declining popularity for those implementing the policies and carrying out the agreements with Israel. In truth, the agreements with Israel cannot be implemented by upright, decent people; those implementing them must possess some degree of corruption in order to be willing to coordinate security matters with Israel, and to arrest and torture Palestinians for resisting Israel.

The corruption the Western states want is the kind that serves their policies in the region with the least possible noise. Corruption, of course, still exists to this day, but Fayyad does not carry a sack of money and hand it out however he pleases and according to his personal whim; rather, he carries a financial policy that achieves the goal without recklessness.

Money in people’s mouths

The Palestinian people, under the leadership of the PLO, were subjected to a policy of degradation, begging, and the trading of national work for money. The Palestinian people grew accustomed to seeing financial gifts handed out by the leadership, and came to see that national work could yield profit, and that there was no objection to it turning into a trade. I have written repeatedly about this issue, for more than thirty years now, and I have said that the leadership of the Organization works to destroy national work, and to turn the Palestinian people into beggars, so that their national rights fade away.

This is exactly what the Americans, and Westerners generally, understood, and they did not hide their intentions of pursuing financial and economic policies in the West Bank and Gaza that would overwhelm the national and political rights of the Palestinian people. The Americans found themselves helpers among intellectuals and academics who carried the banner of the economic solution as a substitute for national rights, and here they now sit atop the thrones of numerous centers and governmental organizations that declare their goal to be serving the Palestinian people and rescuing them from their economic and financial predicaments.

The Americans exploited the results of the PLO’s policy, and worked from the very first moment to construct an aura of greatness around Dr. Salam, describing him as the consummate professional, distinct from the corrupt figures of the Palestinian Authority. Fayyad took over the budget, and one of his first decisions was to raise the salaries of tens of thousands of employees, a move that was met with approval and praise from employees and non-employees alike. Arafat used to pay money to a small circle of people, especially those who begged him for it in writing or in person; Fayyad, by contrast, did not wait for anyone to beg — he simply raised the salaries, and this amounted to a revolution in the moral treatment of people. This reinforced the idea of professionalism and expertise, and made it easier for people to accept figures dropped upon them from above.

Here, corrupt upbringing met money, and the fixed national rights of the people became absent from the discussion, or became a matter of comparison between getting some money now, and getting nothing at all. Do we sacrifice the money and fail to secure our national rights, or do we take the money and leave the rest to God? The answer is clear to many people: take the money. Nor were the factions favoring reconciliation with Israel any different from ordinary people in this regard, since they had not differed on this point even before the establishment of the Palestinian Authority. The factions have long sold political positions to the leadership of the Organization in exchange for financial allocations.

The ultimate goal sought

The ultimate goal that Israel and America are working to achieve is turning the Palestinian people into mere individuals searching for their daily bread. If they succeed in this, the national rights of the Palestinian people will dissolve, because there will no longer be a people demanding them. It is necessary to kill collective thinking among people in the West Bank and Gaza especially, and to reinforce individual thinking, so that each person searches for solutions to his own problems alone, in isolation from others. This, too, is the goal of corruption, or rather, corruption has been used for decades to reach this very goal.

Corruption, aligned with individual thinking cut off from society, leads to the dissolving of taboos, brings the moral level down at an accelerating pace, and leads to social disintegration. The two states have worked, through their Palestinian and Arab clients, to demolish the moral edifice of Palestinian society — an edifice direct occupation itself was never able to demolish — and to tear people apart, so that wedding guests no longer care about their neighbors who are burying their martyr. And when a people’s moral and social fabric is struck, it needs tremendous efforts and long years to get back on its feet. And if this is to happen, Palestinians of high culture and academic qualification must be recruited for the task. In truth, Palestinians of this kind are competing eagerly to carry out this very task, and they are of great help to a premiership working according to the Western will, and to a Ministry of Finance following Western-directed policies.

To achieve moral collapse and social disintegration, tools are needed, used with skill. I mention some of them:

…[serving] political interests at the expense of the homeland;

Focusing on consumer culture so that people’s concerns shrink down to their pockets and their stomachs, and so that the person turns into a mere animal skilled in the arts of consumption;

Reviving a culture of laziness at the expense of activity and production — achieved by employing as many people as possible in unnecessary government jobs, and by encouraging imports at the expense of local production;

Stripping trust from among people through the security services, which work to monitor, intimidate, and terrorize people;

Subjugating people through repression, so that no one thinks of challenging the existing order or working to change it;

Negating self-reliance by fostering dependence on others in searching for solutions to Palestinians’ concerns and problems, and always directing complaints toward what is called the American sponsor and the United Nations;

Encouraging a culture of baseness at the expense of chivalry, dignity, and pride. A person is quick to beat his chest, claiming responsibility, and no one is quicker to flee than he is.

The role of Salam Fayyad

From the very first moment, we made clear to Dr. Salam Fayyad that money would find its way to us only through him, and that whoever wanted to eat must not rebel against the existing political arrangement. Mr. Mahmoud Abbas reinforced this when he said that bread is more important than democracy — that is, bread is more important than freedom. Through the Oslo Accord and the Paris Economic Protocol, the people of the West tied us to our daily bread, and turned us into slaves to it. This may be the first time in history that a leadership has placed its own people’s daily bread in the hands of its enemy, a fact that confirms my theory about the Palestinian leadership, which I first spoke of in 1979. Dr. Salam inherited this legacy, and worked to reinforce it, and gradually growing numbers of the Palestinian people are turning into mere slaves of the loaf of bread. Here I highlight the following points:

Dr. Salam Fayyad functions essentially as a cashier, and alongside that he carries out marginal activities. The important thing he does is receive funds and distribute them according to several criteria, salaries being one of them;

He tries to get rid of the Palestinian organizations as much as possible. Naturally, the security services, under Dayton’s leadership, take on the task of pursuing Hamas and Islamic Jihad, while the leftist factions have no real influence, being close to the Palestinian Authority, with no capacity for rebellion or change; Fatah remains the intractable obstacle. Here the problem takes the following shape: how many Fatah members can Salam Fayyad draw to his side, so that they stand outside the movement without provoking it? America and Israel are concerned with the absence of Palestinian organizations, even ones that accept negotiations, because this contradicts the idea of dissolving the Palestinian people, but they are also concerned with Fatah’s supporting Dr. Salam, so that his government — whose members do not belong to the movement — does not collapse. Fatah is concerned with supporting Fayyad, because the overwhelming majority of its members receive salaries from him (or from the Western states), and Fayyad is concerned with securing the movement’s support so it does not collapse, while also being concerned with undermining it, so that he can emerge on the scene as the hero of Palestine and the savior of the Palestinian people. It is a difficult equation, but he has achieved some success in it so far.

Working to improve his image through more money, and by easing people’s consumer life. In this regard I note the Machiavellian methods he follows:

Trying to stir up the Palestinian people and grab their attention through distracting spectacles, such as the largest tray of kunafa, or the largest loaf of musakhan (a Palestinian dish);

Engaging with people by inaugurating small projects here and there — indeed, he continually tours the West Bank, cutting ribbons at openings and delivering speeches about a bright future and the coming Palestinian state;

Joining people in their own private tasks, such as picking olives and plowing the land, and so forth;

Interacting with people at various occasions, displaying humility and a sense of commitment to people’s concerns;

Staying away from the corruption and scandals of the Palestinian Authority;

Trying to stay away from factional conflicts as much as possible.

Here I note that these activities of his have begun to backfire on him, because he intensified them until they began to appear contrived in the eyes of many people. This is what we call in political science an “overkill” approach — meaning that tedious repetition kills its own purpose, even if that purpose was noble.

The ultimate goal is to win people’s affection, since this qualifies him to wage a successful campaign for the presidency of the Authority, or to take up the post as a substitute for Mr. Abbas, one way or another. In truth, it would be better for America and Israel if Fayyad were to take up this presidency, because he does not engage in the disgraceful acts — setting aside the question of national loyalty — that many members of the Authority engage in. America views Arafat’s legacy of personnel as people whose moral qualifications are far too low to be relied upon; they served only as a transitional bridge toward demolishing Palestinian unity and taming it, and their continued presence has become a burden on the negotiating process. That is, America and Israel want to achieve their goal through a better face than the one on which the Palestinian Authority has stood since 1994.

Who governs the West Bank

Dr. Salam Fayyad is not the decision-maker, and neither is Mr. Mahmoud Abbas, and in truth neither of them has enough real work to fill their free time. Fayyad spends his time attempting to construct the image of a hero, while Abbas has all but faded from memory despite his frequent travels.

The West Bank is governed by a triumvirate: the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the American Consul in Jerusalem, and Dayton, the security coordinator between Palestinians and Israelis. This triumvirate is the true decision-maker; it directs the security administration of the West Bank, it recruits Palestinians to spy on their own people and on Arabs and Muslims, and it estimates costs, expenditures, and financial needs. Of course, this triumvirate does not appear on the surface, but remains behind the scenes, giving many people the impression that the decision is Palestinian. No — the decision is not Palestinian, and whoever eats from another’s bounty should not imagine that his decision is his own. We are merely the Palestinian face of the American masters who coordinate with Israel. For this reason, the crime lies in Palestinians providing cover for American crimes and policies that serve the Israelis. And so, whoever wants a state must remember:

Al-Farazdaq claimed he would kill Murabba’ — so rejoice, Murabba’, in a long life of safety.

This triumvirate received a powerful blow when Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip, and they felt their project had been thrown to the wind. For this reason they followed the steps below, which in many cases appeared to be Palestinian in origin:

Working to impose a total siege on Gaza, in order to bring down the new situation that had developed, with the United States and Israel recruiting the countries of the world toward this goal;

Supporting Israel in its war on Gaza in 2008/2009, to accomplish what the siege had failed to accomplish;

Issuing orders to the security services to remove the phenomenon of thuggish gangs from the streets of villages and towns in the West Bank, because it had badly damaged the Authority’s image and had paved the way for Hamas’s electoral victory and its success in expelling the Palestinian security services from the Gaza Strip;

Intensifying the pursuit of Hamas members and torturing them severely, to the point of death;

Distracting people with more consumer temptations, and manufacturing a culture of comfort at the expense of national responsibility;

Recruiting more agents and spies, aiming to achieve further penetration of Arab and Palestinian ranks, and further splits within the Palestinian interior. Alongside this, establishing more security centers, more oversight of the work of the security services, and training Palestinians to become a strong arm in pursuing so-called terrorism and terrorists;

Making sure to raise the salaries of members of the security services, and offering further inducements to the leaderships of these services;

Ensuring the dullness of the Palestinian educational curriculum, monitoring the course of university education, and making sure it stays far from national values and the goals of liberation;

Spending according to the degree of obedience — the more Palestinians obey, the more money they receive;

Building new infrastructure for the Palestinians so as to achieve separation between them and the settler community, which is developing rapidly in the West Bank along with its own infrastructure;

Stretching out the negotiations and offering promises, with the aim of gaining the time needed to achieve the ultimate goal — turning people into mere individuals searching for their daily bread.

Insisting on further normalization with Israel, especially on the part of non-governmental organizations eager to obtain further support.

The Palestinian Authority, and the government headed by Salam Fayyad, are not far removed from this matter, and cannot continue without cooperating in these things. Whoever accepts appointment by someone outside his own people cannot continue to act by free will, and whoever’s hand is the lower hand must accept remaining in the pit.

Arranging the budget

There are those who say that Dr. Salam Fayyad is not corrupt like others, comparing him to Arafat’s and Abbas’s men. Their claim is true in form, in that Fayyad does not distribute money in the Arafat-style manner, and does not submit much to the influential, handing out to them whatever money they wish. There is corruption of the Arafat kind that still persists, and there are still acts of corruption and financial mismanagement taking place — but not for the purpose of buying loyalties for personal ends; rather, for the purpose of strengthening the trend away from factionalism and giving priority to American approaches over others.

The dangerous thing that people do not see is the way the Authority’s budget is arranged, in a manner that serves to increase people’s dependence on salaries, and thus on the money of the donor states and grant money that sometimes comes from America and Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, and in a manner that boosts services at the expense of production and raises the level of financial deficit facing the Palestinian people. For example, the largest share of the budget is allocated to the security services, which for the most part serve no real benefit, while the Ministry of Agriculture receives only a meager budget. We do not have figures for recent years, but the security services previously took about 45% of the budget, while agriculture received 0.8%. The Ministry of Agriculture is the homeland, while the security services coordinate security matters with Israel.

What is the salary of a schoolteacher who has been in service for about thirty years? And what is the salary of a brigadier general in the security services, who may or may not have struggled for the cause, and who has a history of dealings with the Israelis? The brigadier’s salary is double the teacher’s. The teacher must wage a battle of strikes if he wants his salary raised, while the security-service employee needs nothing but America’s approval. This is something people do not see, but it is an accursed corruption that has existed since Arafat’s era and continues, in an even worse form, to this day.

The triumvirate mentioned above is the one that decides how the budget is arranged; Dr. Fayyad may or may not take part, but in the end, it is he who carries it out.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “فياض: سيد أم أداة” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.