Stand for Israel

Fahmi Shabaneh, who we told you about last month when the Palestinian Authority issued an arrest for him after he exposed major corruption among Abbas’ close aides, isn’t going away.

Now, the 48-year-old former PA official is setting up a website to help expose corruption among the West Bank’s ruling class — mostly members of Fatah, the terrorist political party set up by Yasser Arafat that’s still in power. In a society where dissenters are routinely jailed or worse, Shabaneh’s moves are pretty bold.

According Associated Press, his critics charge that he:

wants to settle scores and is waging a smear campaign at Israel’s bidding to weaken Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has seen a slight drop in his popularity since the claims began. Even anti-corruption activists point out he has offered little evidence for some of his claims.

Nonetheless, he’s tapping into the real resentment felt by ordinary Palestinians who have seen Fatah’s fatcats grow wealthy from thievery and nepotism. Hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid came into the PA, but no one is quite sure where it went. (It does bear noting that, unlike Gaza, the West Bank’s standard of living has been climbing recently.)

In the meantime, the Jerusalem Post’s brave Khaled Abu Toameh reports that an overwhelming majority of Palestinians believes that reports about financial corruption and sex scandals within the Palestinian Authority are accurate and that the corruption charges weaken the legitimacy of Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad’s government, according to a poll published this week by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.

If only there was a Shabaneh to figure out what Hamas is doing with the millions in foreign aid they’ve gotten.