Spectator's Journal/PLO, Inc
Pipes, Daniel
SPECTATOR'S JOURNAL PLO, INC. by Daniel Pipes W hen Kuwait disappeared into the Iraqi maw last August 2, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) found itself bereft of its second largest...
...Hamas, the fundamentalist Muslim group that has emerged as the PLO's only serious rival, hopes to tap the PLO's funds...
...Instead, he hides behind front names and pleads poverty...
...Most important, they appear to exclude expenditures by Fatah and other constituent groups of the PLO...
...LIMIT: one (1) boat per address, no exceptions...
...PLO income appears to be about half of what it was before August 2. PLO employees, armed and not, have already experienced pay cuts and more reductions lie ahead...
...legal and illegal commercial activities...
...CALL TOLL FREE 1-800-637-3823 Ask operator for BOAT TEST #A374 Before midnight 7 days a week...
...Thus, when the PLO evacuated Beirut in 1982, James Adams explains, its leaders "feared the Israeli seizure of their assets more than they did a military defeat...
...As Atallah Atallah, a renegade PLO intelligence chief, explains, Arafat uses "Mafia techniques [designed] not to leave atrace...
...the Near East Report has the highest figure of all, $2 billion...
...Then, after forcing the competition to go out of business, it raised prices...
...But the current situation, described by Foreign Report as a "financial catastrophe," is likely to translate into a severe decline in the popularity of Yasir Arafat and the authority of the PLO...
...to mention just one, the bank's chairman, Abd al Majid GIANT HEAVY DUTY INFLATABLE BOATS 2 MAN $38 3 MAN $50 4 MAN $65 Before Midnight February 28 As part of an advertising test Dunlap Boat Mfg...
...Not to be overlooked is the opulence that money makes possible...
...As one Jordanian official put it, "They have to keep Arafat because if he goes, no one will know where the money is...
...even today, James Adams comments, it remains "a major economic influence in the country—or what's left of it...
...Assuming an annual return of about 7 percent, the income from PLO assets amounts to some $150-200 million a year...
...Adams reckoned the figure at $5 billion...
...A few months later, the PLO participated in what the Guinness Book of World Records calls the largest bank heist of all time...
...James Adams, author of The Financing of Terror (1986), reckons it was $1.25 billion...
...When traveling in poor countries, Arafat dispenses money freely...
...Not without reason...
...It permits diplomacy on a grand scale...
...Money permits him to influence states by moving around liquid assets...
...While drug trafficking was by far the steadiest and most lucrative racket during the Lebanon years, other activities brought the most spectacular results...
...The expulsion from Beirut in 1982 ended this fmancial golden era...
...The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Egypt followed suit...
...Add $7 handling & crating for each boat ordered, Dunlap Boat Mfg...
...There is no other monetary requirement...
...The alienation of so many contributors has serious consequences...
...Any letter postmarked after February 28 will be returned...
...On the legal side, the PLO got involved in some interesting ventures, like the Modern Mechanical Establishment, an iron-and-steel company south of Sidon that paid no taxes, used coercive sales methods, and engaged in predatory pricing...
...Money makes it possible to provision social, welfare, economic, cultural, and educational services which win Palestinian allegiance to the PLO...
...But that grants the PLO too much...
...Arab states agreed to take up the slack for both offensive reasons (to gain influence) and defensive ones (to avoid retribution...
...Der Spiegel said $6 billion...
...robbing the Beirutbranch of the British Bank of the Middle East brought the PLO one-third of the loot, between $16 and $33 million...
...features second, minute, hour, date and month...
...Some of this money is held in gold and real estate, but much of it is highly liquid...
...In November, Arafat estimated the financial loss to his organization to be $10 billion...
...To make matters worse, Yasir Arafat's enthusiastic endorsement of Saddam Hussein's aggression caused the Saudi government, his largest donor, to cut off financial support...
...But the most important bank by far is the Arab Bank, with some 350 branches around the world, $1 billion in capital base and $13 billion in deposits...
...In the early 1980s, when assets were greater and expenditures fewer, the PIA virtually lived off of interest and dividends—but no longer...
...Also, while annual Soviet-bloc aid once amounted to the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars in cash, arms, training, and intelligence, Eastern Europe's liberation and the ravages of perestroika have dried up this source...
...Money gives Yasir Arafat control over some 20,000 gunmen in both conventional and irregular forces...
...It does not appear in the books...
...But Lebanon's economy has fallen apart since 1982, so revenues from there are a fraction of what they were earlier...
...Abu Musa, a onetime ally of Arafat, indirectly confirmed this point in 1983: "Saudi Arabia gives him tens, hundreds of millions, to corrupt—not to develop —the revolution...
...Or for fastest service from any part of the country call FREE before midnight seven days a week...
...For this reason, its financial predicament offers not just the likelihood of less violence in the Middle East but also a rare opportunity for alternative Palestinian voices to make themselves heard...
...The PLO did publish a budget in 1987, pegging it at $197 million...
...Each Boat Lot No...
...Money is [Arafat's] only weapon at present," Abu Musa declared in 1983...
...Presumably assets in Kuwaiti banks are now history...
...Lebanon's anarchy offered unbounded opportunities for illegal activities: drug trafficking, protection rackets, robberies, hijackings, and the training of foreign terrorists...
...If the budget is $500 million a year, the PLO is experiencing a shortfall of some $300-350 million...
...28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1991...
...The December 1975 capture of OPEC oil ministers reportedly netted the PLO $20 million...
...Others go beyond mere numbers and enter the realm of hyperbole...
...Arafat also has the means to do the odd favor...
...Friendship" projects have included factories and farms in places like Syria, Guinea, the Maldives, and Poland...
...Heavy dependence on large amounts of money has taken its toll...
...Gone are the days when Arafat had the leeway to act independently of his state sponsors...
...the PLO has two more "embassies" than Israel and Arafat sometimes visits three or four capitals in his own plane on a single day...
...Lights up at night, and is accurate to the 10th of a second each year...
...The PIA has since re-established its operations in Lebanon...
...Wadi Haddad, the PLO explosive expert killed in 1978, is said by his comrades-in-arms to have left his sister a bequest of $140 million...
...200 million was once transferred into Tunisia as a reward...
...Forbes and the Wall Street Journal estimate the 1986 budget at $154 and $156 million, respectively...
...Half a year after the intifada erupted, the PLO offered $50 million to its leadership—a clear attempt to bring an unruly upstart under company control...
...An Arab banker in the know puts it at $6.5 billion as of 1990...
...It is actually today's representative of that radical Palestinian tradition that, as Abba Eban put it, has never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity...
...The PLO has many connections to the Arab Bank...
...From 1970 to 1982, when the PLO ran a state within a state in Lebanon, its revenues derived mostly from a wide array of legal and illegal commercial activities...
...Have credit card ready...
...by Daniel Pipes W hen Kuwait disappeared into the Iraqi maw last August 2, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) found itself bereft of its second largest source of funds...
...Though the PLO is an organization that can be counted on to rebound from adversity, this blow will severely crimp its activities and its ambition to remain the dominant Palestinian organization...
...The PLO has steadily received at least $100 million per year from the Arab states since 1973, but the annual amount has edged toward $300 million...
...of a recent biography of Arafat, opt for $300-400 million...
...Two years later the figure had reached $274 million...
...Janet and John Wallach, authors Daniel Pipes is director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia 7ivo of his books The Rushdie Affair and Greater Syria, were published last spring...
...Palestinians living in Arab countries are supposed to pay 3 to 7.5 percent of their salaries as a tax to the PLO...
...Looking at the 1989 budget, Neil C. Livingstone and David Halevy, authors of Inside the PLO, estimate $675 million...
...According to PLO records made public in 1988, the Saudi authorities donated $855 million over the previous decade...
...While it is unclear when and where these funds were actually collected and transmitted, it appears that Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE were the only states to do so regularly...
...Fearing liens and other legal problems, the PLO breathes not a word about its assets...
...PLO spending has been a matter of dispute for some time...
...Several institutions hold PLO funds, including the Gulf Bank, the Central Bank of Algeria, and the National Bank of Kuwait...
...and they have stopped providing this service since August 2. T he PLO's operations and political 1 prominence depend heavily on money, so the sudden disappearance of half the organization's budget is causing many problems...
...Some $700 million was moved out of Jordan in 1986 to protest King Hussein's policies...
...that exodus did cost them some $400 million...
...The Fatah Fund, the Chairman's Secret Fund, and other clandestine operations match the visible income...
...It's a corporation...
...Not all the money came from government coffers...
...It is much more than the official contributions...
...This test has been commissioned by the International Boat Exchange...
...Notwithstanding the talk of Arafat's abstemious ways, he and other higher-ups live like pashas—elegant villas in Tunisia, first-class travel, and all other perquisites of power...
...Walid Jumblat, the Druze militia leader, has declared that Arafat "has enough money to buy half of Lebanon, not to say all of it...
...Should you wish to return your boat you may do so for a refund or exchange...
...In 1985, he is said to have won the release of three Soviet hostages held in Beirut by paying $15 million to fundamentalist Muslims...
...The Economist came in at around $9 billion for 1986...
...If your order is received within the next ten days you will receive FREE a rugged water sport (waterproof) digital wristwatch specifically designed for water, diving, etc...
...motor, 4 separate air chambers for extra safety in 4-man, self-locking safety valves (includes a combined hand/foot inflator/deflator bellows style pump), has hull identification numbers per the United States Coast Guard Boating Standard, and is recommended for marine, ocean and fresh water recreation, camping, fishing or a family fun boat...
...In February 1986, for example, a payment of $150,000 to the pro-Jordanian Jerusalem newspaper Al-Quds rapidly turned around that paper's editorial stance...
...Owned in part by the PLO, the Arab Bank handles the organization's working ac-counts...
...To a degree, these techniques work: estimates of PIA holdings differ by several orders of magnitude...
...A374 Dunlap Boat Mfg., 517 W. Garfield Ave., Glendale, CA 91204...
...Key investment decisions used to be made in Luxembourg, but have been moved to the bank's Zurich branch...
...Each boat will be accompanied with a LIFETIME guarantee that it must perform 100% or it will be replaced free...
...Some may find this development unfortunate because it obstructs resolution of Palestinian-Israeli issues...
...and contributions from governments...
...Wealth has become so central to the PLO's presence and influence, it sometimes looms larger than military considerations...
...In fact, the total contribution was muchmore, for the Saudis funneled massive amounts to Arafat personally...
...Nearly all of this income came from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and other states that have just now cut the PIA off...
...While this highly centralized control leads to resentments and inefficiencies, it also makes Arafat indispensable...
...My estimate, based on the reports of spending patterns and income, is that PLO expenditures reach $500 million a year—about the same as the budget of an American city the size of Cincinnati...
...Money reduces the chances that a rival Palestinian organization will challenge Arafat's leadership...
...Money sways public opinion by allowing the PIA to subsidize the media...
...no one can predict its demise with confidence...
...Send appropriate sum together with your name and address to: Test Dept...
...The Economist put it at $250 million...
...as a Jordanian official once put it, "The PLO isn't a revolution...
...October, an Egyptian magazine, and the Swiss newspaper Tages Anzeiger (1988) count $14 billion...
...V very attempt until now to count out the PLO has proven wrong...
...I estimate that PLO investments total about $2-3 billion...
...Forbes estimated the assets (excluding armaments) in 1986 at a mere $1 billion...
...Far from serving as a force for peace, the PLO has bludgeoned and suppressed more moderate elements willing to coexist with Israel...
...Historically, money for this impressive budget has derived primarily from three sources: dividends and interest on investments...
...The Egyptian editor Anis Mansur holds that Palestinian leaders are "the richest people in Egypt...
...Deprived of these sources, the PLO has in recent years become heavily dependent on handouts from Arab presidents, kings, and emirs—a demeaning return to pre-1970 circumstances...
...Have credit card ready THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1991 27 Shoman, once directed PLO finances...
...Investments have been made around the world, especially in the West...
...Mustafa 'Pallas, the Syrian defense minister, calls Arafat "one of the world's ten richest men...
...pays all shipping (Continential USA...
...will send any of the above size boats to any reader of this publication who reads and responds to this test before midnight, February 28...
...Funds are on occasion lent to allies in need, such as $12 million to the Nicaraguan government in 1981 and $100 million to Iraq in 1986...
...However, like Soviet military budgets, these figures hide more than they reveal...
...Z-26 PVC), is constructed of tough high density vinyl tabric (resistant to abrasions, subfreezing temperatures, sunlight, salt & oil), and has electronically welded embossed seams, nylon safety line grommeted all around, heavy duty oar locks, equipped with attachments for an optional motor mount to handle up to a 21/2 h.p...
...To maintain close control over PLO finances, Arafat personally makes deposits and signs large checks...
Vol. 24 • February 1991 • No. 2
