Palestine's Embassies: Corruption and Security Laxity

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

Ever since the UN General Assembly recognized the Palestine Liberation Organization as an observer member in 1974, the Organization has been active in establishing representative offices in the states that permit it, and these offices have reached nearly a hundred across various parts of the world.

None of these representative offices rose to the rank of embassy until 1979, when Iran expelled the Zionist ambassador from Tehran and converted the Zionist embassy into a Palestinian one. The movement to open embassies picked up after the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, which saw itself as having become an entity recognized by many states, and so embassies multiplied, and representative offices along with them. The number of Palestinian embassies or diplomatic missions spread across the world now stands at about 94 missions, according to the statistics available to me, distributed as follows:

25 missions in Africa, 25 in Asia, 32 in Europe, 5 in North America, 6 in South America, and one in Oceania. This is beyond the delegations and representative offices representing the Palestinian Authority in some states that do not recognize the State of Palestine, or recognize it only partially, and there are delegations and representative offices at a number of international organizations.

The expenses of the Palestinian missions and representative offices are estimated at about $200 million a year, and we still await an official announcement of the budget allocated for external representation.

A Poor Reputation

Many Palestinian writers have taken up the subject of Palestinian embassies abroad, trying to gauge the level of these embassies’ performance and their treatment of Palestinians who come to them for services. Adli Sadeq, for instance, wrote some time ago about the performance of these embassies, directing a number of criticisms at them, and Raouf Abu Abed wrote about what he called “corruption with shameless eyes” in these embassies.

Mahmoud Erekat also wrote an article in Al-Mustaqbal titled “Parasites in the Palestinian Embassies,” explaining some aspects of corruption and negligence. Another wrote an article titled “Our Embassies: Corruption with Claws and Fangs,” and Hisham Saqallah wrote, in Tawabiq, “The People Want the Ambassadors Changed.” Others have written on the same matter, such as Sami al-Akhras, Mahmoud Jouda, and Rashid Shahsen.

Dr. Fahmi Shrab wrote a number of articles, among them “Some of Palestine’s Embassies Are a Badge of Shame,” in which he spoke of the corruption of Palestine’s embassies abroad, and of ambassadors’ negligence and their harm to the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian people. I have read a number of responses to these articles and found in them no scholarly rebuttal countering argument with argument — only a flood of curses, insults, and accusations of betraying the homeland and the people. Dr. Shrab presented facts, while those cursing him presented nothing to refute them.

I have listened to many Palestinians who studied in various countries where Palestinian diplomatic missions are present, and noticed a near-consensus among Palestinian students in denouncing the ambassadors and the embassies — only one person spoke well of these embassies. Through the articles I have read and the statements I have heard, I found that the Palestinian embassies are marked by the following:

1. The embassies are generally corrupt, run in a haphazard manner relying on favoritism, nepotism, and discrimination among Palestinians. There is mismanagement and arrogance on the part of staff that inflicts a great deal of harm on members of the Palestinian communities.

2. The Palestinian embassies — according to those who have spoken about them — are dens for the corrupt, the failed, and those fanatically loyal to a particular faction, who use the embassy to achieve personal ends, mostly of an indulgent nature.

3. Embassy staff mostly engage in trade, exploiting their positions and their representative status to advance their commercial interests, which deepen over time with local merchants.

4. The ambassador is often occupied with leisure and pleasures, rarely preoccupied with the Palestinian cause. Some ambassadors do not even bother attending lectures and seminars about the Palestinian cause.

5. Staff generally display poor conduct and very low ethical standards, harming Palestinians and the Palestinian cause, and some staff engage in smuggling, harming the host country’s economy.

6. Embassy staff rarely show concern for Palestinians who come to them for services, treating them with a kind of roughness and coarseness.

7. Staff’s general capacity to build sound public relations with the local population is weak, negatively affecting others’ understanding of the Palestinian cause.

8. Generally speaking, there is widespread grievance over the performance of the Palestinian embassies, which, according to the statements I have repeatedly heard, project a negative image of the Palestinian people.

The Palestinian Authority’s foreign minister, Riyad al-Maliki, denies the statements criticizing the ambassadors and the embassies, saying there is no corruption in the embassies. Here I would add a comment from some members of the Zionist Knesset who once visited Moscow and were invited by the Palestinian ambassador to dinner. They said they sat in the restaurant, watching in astonishment the types and quantities of food the restaurant staff kept placing on the table.

They also said there were only three people at the dinner table, while the food laid out was enough for more than twenty people, and of the most delicious kinds. One of them objected to the situation, saying this food was costly and enough for a large number of people, and that the Palestinian people should not have to bear such costs. The ambassador replied, saying this food came from the “steadfastness funds” — “so eat and enjoy, so that you may stand steadfast with the steadfast.”

The Dialectic of Oslo’s Ethics

The Palestinian leaderships, in the Oslo Accord, crossed every Palestinian red line, trampling on Palestinian charters, resolutions, and slogans, on the blood of the martyrs, and on everything sacred to the Palestinian people.

Among the greatest of their sins was that the Palestinian leaderships bound themselves to Israeli security through security coordination, exposing the Palestinian people’s own security to danger. They likewise placed the Palestinian people’s daily bread in the hands of the enemies, under the Paris Economic Protocol, making it a slave to the enemies’ charity, unable to escape the pressure of daily livelihood.

Leaderships of this kind have produced enormous corruption on the Palestinian scene, leading to widespread ruin across various levels, moral and social levels foremost among them.

Crossing Palestinian red lines and descending into national abominations indicates that Palestinian patriots and people of elevated morals cannot possibly deal with the Oslo Accord. Implementing and defending the Oslo Accord requires an un-patriotic morality and practices that rise to the level of corruption.

The United States and (Israel) understood from the very beginning that the success of the Oslo Accord was tied to the nature of the people carrying out its implementation, and so corruption and decadence spread without their objection, even though America always speaks of transparency and integrity.

Crossing national red lines is a trait of corrupt, morally degenerate people, and for this reason it is extremely difficult to find a Palestinian institution not eaten away by corruption, through favoritism, nepotism, and the use of position for private ends, and so on.

Palestinian embassies cannot differ from the rest of Palestinian institutions — they are the offspring of the system, and inevitably reflect the ethics of the Oslo system. Had they reflected national ethics and national commitment, their staff would be subject to swift and immediate replacement.

It is noticeable that some ambassadors remain in their positions for many long years, and sometimes refuse to leave their posts even after replacements have been appointed. An ambassador may be appointed to replace another, and disputes then break out between the new and the old, forcing some in the Authority to search for a compromise between the two — the old one considers the embassy his own kingdom, unwilling to vacate a position representing his private interests, moral and material alike, while the new one is perhaps eager to serve the homeland, or to entrench his own newly acquired private interests.

Embassy Security

The Palestinian people generally, and its various factions and institutions, are not fortified on security matters — there has been Palestinian security laxity for more than forty years, and it is easy for various intelligence services around the world to penetrate Palestinian positions. The Zionist entity penetrates Palestinian society on security matters, penetrating the Palestinian factions, parties, and various institutions.

The Zionist entity has planted agents in every nook and corner, to the point that it has been proven that the Palestinian people is an open palm before Zionist intelligence, and it is difficult to keep secrets. If there are any secrets at all, they are secrets kept from the people, not from the Zionist entity. The establishment of the Palestinian Authority, and the security services it formed, has helped further Zionist security penetration of the Palestinian ranks, because of the security coordination and administrative coordination taking place between the Authority and the Zionists.

Palestinian contact with the Zionists has increased, and the level of Palestinian normalization has risen, providing growing opportunities for the Zionist security services to recruit more Palestinian agents.

Palestinian resistance has taken note of this dangerous matter, and some factions, such as Islamic Jihad and Hamas, have begun scrutinizing their own affiliated members, conducting security screening, and setting near-strict security standards to eliminate infiltration and reinforce the security dimension within Palestinian resistance.

These factions have not reached the ultimate level of fortification, but their security performance has improved over time, and the two organizations have become more aware of the methods used to recruit agents and their working methods, and have consequently become better able to monitor and identify security vulnerabilities.

It is noticeable that weak security fortification is also reflected in the Palestinian Authority’s own security headquarters, which do not enjoy precise security fortification, and are easy to penetrate and seize control of by Zionist forces. Their fortification may deter some individuals wishing to penetrate the security buildings, but these buildings are not built to mislead the Zionists, and it is quite likely the designs and blueprints of these buildings are already available to the Zionists.

The Palestinian embassies are no exception, and suffer from weak security fortification, vulnerable to penetration by intelligence agents, soldiers, and individuals, and vulnerable to electronic penetration. The embassies lack the means to counter electronic broadcasting or interception, and it is quite likely the embassies’ telephones are compromised, along with the various electronic and electrical devices used inside them.

The greatest evidence of this weakness, if not complicity, is the penetration of the Palestinian embassy in Bulgaria and the assassination of the martyr Omar al-Nayef. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was clear in accusing some Palestinian embassy staff of conspiring with the Bulgarians, and perhaps with the Zionists, to eliminate al-Nayef. The Front issued a statement on this matter.

Accordingly, the question remains: how much concern does whoever coordinates security matters with the Zionists actually have for the security of Palestinians, whether inside or outside Palestine? And if the head of diplomatic representation has consented, for himself, to cross every Palestinian national and security red line, would he not also consent, for himself, to crossing national and security red lines within the Palestinian embassies?

The matter requires no great intelligence — it merely requires connecting the dialectical relationships to one another, and, in the end, the harvest is of the same kind as the seed.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “سفارات فلسطين.. فساد وتسيب أمني” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.