Earlier this week I questioned if the potential of increased economic wealth for the Palestinians is a priority for their own leadership during the peace process, which has made a solid start.

The issue is not the scope and vast potential of the Palestinian economy. As one person remarked – only half in jest – that it is possible to predict how Hamas and Fatah will go to arms; not over the role of religion but over who will control the revenues from energy reserves off the Gaza coast.

“Where is the money” has always been a sensitive issue amongst the Palestinian elite. This issue of financial responsibility and transparency is barely discussed openly, if not censored. However with a large dose of ironical timing, Mohammed Dahlan, the former head of the Palestinian internal security services in Gaza, has just accused the Palestinian Authority of being a corrupt institution under Abbas’s thumb. And using an Israeli legal team, he is seeking to take his own President to an international tribunal.

Now Dahlan is no saint. Google long enough and you can discover how he rose to fame by controlling youth gangs in Gaza. Along the way, he secured for himself the rich cream off monopolies and perpetuated via the ‘tunnel economy’. Hamas ousted him from Gaza, and he left the West Bank two years ago in political disgrace, but wealthy.

What must be disappointing for the average Palestinian is that Dahlan is not alone in achieving financial security while his people endure 30% unemployment. Mrs Suha Arafat, wife of former Palestinian President, has probably visited every 6 Star hotel in Europe over the past few years, a lifestyle supported by some extra generous handouts. And as Al-Monitor reported:

The annual report for 2013 issued by the Coalition for Accountability and Integrity (AMAN) showed that corruption is still rampant inside public Palestinian institutions…….Examples were given of public-fund squandering in Palestinian municipalities of the West Bank, where the total accumulated debt of municipalities and water-works agencies owed to the PA amounted to 1 billion Israeli shekels [$280 million] in the period between 1996 until 2012. Official vehicles were still being misappropriated by employees while suspicions grew concerning the running of Palestinian Airlines and the building of a mausoleum for the late President Yasser Arafat in Ramallah.

For the patient reader, detailed reports of misappropriation, lack of transparency and low accountability from 1993 to 2010 can be found at the website of the Funding for Peace Coalition.

What is so disturbing? The world is looking to create a stable peace treaty. Unfortunately, the same Palestinian hierarchy that has a self-vested interest in perpetuating the poverty that has been ramped up since 1993 (when Arafat returned to Gaza) are the very people surrounding President Abbas…… and condemned for corruption by senior Palestinians themselves.