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Reporter's Notebook: West Bank
By Issa Sharabati
"One can accept that the government sometimes blackmails or harasses its citizens. But it is almost surreal to discover that citizens have started blackmailing their formal institutions," said Abdel Naser, 48, a taxi driver in the city of Ramallah. He spoke while watching 40 gunmen congregate who identified themselves as members of the Al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades—the military wing of the Fatah party.
On April 14, 2006, the Alaqsa Martyrs gathered on a busy street in Ramallah and stormed into the Ministry of Transportation. The gunmen were headed by Muin Aljubii, who demanded to speak to new transportation minister Ziad Althatha, a member of the Hamas party. Althatha had been appointed only a week earlier, following Hamas' sweep of the Palestinian elections.
"We came to protest the failure of the ministry to pay the salaries of families of the... wounded and martyrs of the intifada (uprising)," Aljubii announced to the bewildered bureaucrats. Althatha wasn't even there; he was based in Gaza. Officials in the building didn't understand why the gunmen choose transportation of all possible ministries as the target of their demands.
Aljubii went on to explain that the previous minister, a Fatah leader, made them a promise before the elections. The Ministry of Transportation would allocate special plates for taxis to Fatah activists as compensation for their role in the Palestinian intifada. Simultaneous attacks were occurring at branches of the ministry in the West Bank cities of Nablus and Tul Karm.
A taxi plate is a treasure in Palestine. Sixty percent of Palestinians earn fewer than two dollars per day, but a taxi plate, which licenses its owner to work as a driver, can bring in an annual salary of 30,500 shekels (US$7,000). Though Aljubii spoke for the martyrs and the wounded, in fact he represents the biggest business in Palestine these days: armed political gangs.
The gunmen are mostly Fatah activists already on the Palestinian Authority (PA) payroll, sometimes with ordinary criminals thrown in. They blackmail the PA on a daily basis. The pretexts vary, but always contain patriotism and national slogans.
"This is a transportation ministry. We are not a charity association, and we don't allocate anything for the families of the poor," said Althatha, who was shocked by the incident. "These requests are nothing but a blackmail attempts that we will not give in to." A day after the incident, another gang stormed the Ministry of Health in Gaza to demand medical treatment for a cancer patient, killing an official.
Other groups kidnap foreign journalists or aid workers all over the West Bank and Gaza. Their ransom demand? Jobs with the PA, which is under pressure from foreign governments to put a stop to the chaos and anarchy.
Althatha may seek good governance, but shortly after his appointment he discovered that he didn't have any practical authority due to the economic blockade on the PA following the Hamas electoral victory.
As a Hamas official, Althatha has an interest in slandering the old Fatah regime. Nevertheless, documents and statements from the officials in his office show that the ministry he inherited has no less than 40 "general directors" on salary. Some of them are never seen in the office, yet earn 8,722 shekels (US$2,000) a month.
Similarly, new religious affairs minister and Hamas member Sheikh Naef Rajub discovered that a week before he started the job, the previous minister appointed 19 new "general directors," some without any professional skills or experience.
One of these "general directors" had earlier been accused of corruption, arrested by security services and suspended from duty. After the Hamas victory, however, he was reappointed to the same ministry and position. Hamas, now struggling to survive the political clash with Fatah, doesn't dare fire anyone aligned with Fatah, corrupt or otherwise. Furious, Rajub said to me just before he was arrested: "I could only transfer (the director) to a marginal position—seventy meters from his original office."
The issue of taxi plates may sound likes an aside to larger battles, but it is a striking example of the corruption in all the PA ministries. Documents show that former transportation minister Saad a-did Hurma issued an order in March 2005 to stop distributing plates because of the huge number of taxis already operating in the West Bank.
Two months later, Hurma established a professional committee comprised of five ministry officials and two security forces officers (which would benefit from the distribution of new plates) to reevaluate the situation. The committee determined that the number of taxis already operating was 22 percent higher than needed, concluding that no taxi plates should be distributed until 2011.
In June 2005, the committee offered this warning: "It is crucial that the ministry of transportation will not consider any humanitarian needs as to the requests for taxi plates because the ministry is not a ministry for social affairs or assistance for the poor. Further allocations will result in economic and personal catastrophe for the existing drivers and to the economy in general."
The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics offered not to distribute more than 122 plates a year under any circumstances until 2007. Other aides to the minister warned him against issuing more plates.
Yet as late as October 2005, Hurma began distributing plates in large numbers, authorizing 433 new ones by the end of 2005. On March 3rd, 2006, a few days before the declaration of the new Hamas government and arrival of the new minister, Althatha handed out 542 new plates in one day!
The gunmen who came to the Ministry of Transportation this April did so only because they had done it for years. For the last 11 years, Fatah was the PA and the PA was Fatah. Fatah activists were appointed to public sector positions according to their organizational status.
They were also guests in all ministries and governmental departments, with economic privilege to match their status. Taxi plates are only one example: They could get nearly anything they wanted. The arrival of the new Hamas government, specifically the new minister of transportation, was a shock. Hamas was suddenly a threat after long years of Fatah domination.
The Al-Aqsa martyrs were terrified of loosing those privileges, so this time they showed up with their guns.
"We have more taxis than people here," said Althatha. "The professionals in the ministry are saying that no new plates should be distributed until the year 2010, [yet] I found out that the ministry gave 500 plates to different groups. Sometimes they would be given to associates of officials, sometimes to members of the security forces and sometimes to gangs like the one who stormed the office in Ramallah."
"Right now, everything is frozen," said Althatha. "I hope that it will improve in the future."
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