Examination of Witnesses (Questions 111-119)
11 NOVEMBER 2003
DR SHIMON
T SAMUELS AND
MS ILKA
SCHRODER
Q111 Chairman: Dr Samuels, I understand
you would like to make some introductory remarks. You are very
welcome to do that, provided they are no more than three or four
minutes.
Dr Samuels: Thank you, Mr Chairman.
First, I would like to express my sympathy and compliments to
the previous two speakers. We feel their pain but their representation
remains, I believe, in harmony until it becomes politicised. Our
concern here is with the political and with the economic, and
the Simon Wiesenthal Centre has supported Ms Ilka Schroder's
campaign in the European Parliament for transparency. If you will
recall, Mr Chairman, I wrote to you just before the first of these
sessions to say that we were so hopeful that, despite the fact
that campaigns for transparency were blocked in the European Parliament,
this initiative would review all of the issues that were behind
the scenes in terms of misappropriation charges of EU funding—the
British taxpayers' contribution to that EU funding—and moneys
that may have been creamed off for terrorism, for incitement for
hate and for personal enrichment. When we saw your agenda and
the agenda items we were very dismayed—checkpoints, walls
of separation, settlement, etc. Indeed, the first session that
we attended, and this one, made us wonder whether you were really
interested in the question of irregularities.
Q112 Chairman: Dr Samuels, we were
interested in what you had to say, otherwise you would not be
sitting there giving evidence. If all you are going to do is berate
the Committee for the evidence we have taken or the evidence we
have not taken, it does not seem to be a very good way to start
winning friends on this Committee.
Dr Samuels: I would like to redress
the balance of this agenda, with the 8% of the time of these sessions,
by pointing out that we believe—and we have documents to
prove—that moneys provided by the United Kingdom through
the EU were misappropriated by the Palestinian Authority. We are
not suggesting that the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian
people do not deserve to be covered by all types of programmes,
not necessarily through the PA or through UNRWA, (some of the
direct award programmes are indeed excellent) but we are saying
there has to be some kind of accountability. That accountability
requires change. The issues that I would like to raise or have
raised in the session are the projects funded by the EU, such
as Palestine Television, which is broadcasting hate, which is
broadcasting anti-Semitism and that is blown back through satellite
and through the internet to Western Europe where it is increasingly
exacerbating the relationships between the Muslim and the Jewish
community (particularly in France where I work); music videos
for teenagers, for example, replete with hate, showing the Jews
as cold-blooded murderers; EU-funded school texts and school teachers
who promote hate and the denial of Israel and denial of the Holocaust;
EU-funded websites—and I can point to them in some of the
documents that I would like to make as a submission to this Committee[2]I
think Ms Ilka Schroder, as an MEP, is better endowed than
me to tell you about that campaign.
Q113 Chairman: I have some questions
and then if, at the end, you feel that there is any point that
my questions have not covered we will deal with them. During our
recent visit we met a member of Knesset who stressed the importance
of a future Palestinian state within the occupied territories
being a stable and prosperous neighbour for Israel. I just wondered
whether that was a view that you shared, and how do you see development
assistance working to ensure that a future Palestine is a good
neighbour rather than a failing state?
Dr Samuels: First, in the sessions
you have had, I think all of the speakers—whether they were
from the European Commission or governmental or NGOs—all
agreed that the need is truly great. I think it was the DFID representative
who said that an unprecedented provision of $315 per capita of
the Palestinian population had not stopped poverty tripling. The
question is, is there not a contradiction there? Our concern is:
where is the money going which is being creamed off? In answer
to your question I believe that if the humanitarian aid were funnelled
and monitored (and possibly it would be the role of this Committee
to demand that the EU sets up monitoring agencies or instruments
against the misuse of these funds and these projects) then I believe
that certainly this would help to ensure a stable Palestinian
economy. In the mean time, the incitement that we see on, as I
have mentioned, television and, I have mentioned, the schools—projects
which are funded by the EU—do not help in settling the relationship
to have an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel; the
opposite, because any intergovernmental peace agreement has to
be underpinned by popular will. There does not seem to be a popular
will at this point, and I think that the last three years of the
incitement that we have seen has poisoned the well of Palestinian
thinking.
Q114 Chairman: During our visit we
heard from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs that they had
been impressed with the reforms in the Palestinian Authority's
Ministry of Finance. Indeed, I think everyone we met seemed to
be pretty impressed by the new Palestinian Authority Minister
of Finance. Certainly he took us through what he is trying to
do to ensure accountability and transparency. Are your concerns
on-going concerns, or are they primarily historic concerns about
what has happened before? I would just like to get some perspective
on that. Do you feel that the PA is seeking to address the issue
of accountability and transparency? What is your view?
Dr Samuels: I think you have to
follow the paper trail. The compartmentalisation and double reporting
that we have documented shows that the minister to which you are
referring certainly has attempted and, with some success, managed
to create some type of accounting system, but in a very narrow
area. That is why Israel has now paid and is paying the back taxes
that were due to the Palestinian Authority because the monitoring
of those taxes is very different from, for example, that moneys
that are coming from the EU. The 10 million euros per month which
is coming through the EU is, in fact, creamed off at various levels.
We have documents which show that only 60% of the figure mentioned
for salaries are paid; 40% is creamed off. The 60% that is paid
is paid at an advantageous exchange rate; as the salaries are
paid in shekels they are exchanged at 3.7 to the dollar whereas
the true figure is 4.45. That provides a 20% edge for the PA.
The question is, where is that 20% going? In addition, 1.5% of
the salaries paid, in many cases, is taken off for Fatah membership.
In fact, only two nights ago, the BBC—which is certainly
not uncritical of Israel—showed in The Correspondent
programme on BBC2 the relationship between Fatah and the Al-Aqsa
Martyrs Brigade, which is on the EU's list of terrorist organisations
for its claims of suicide bombing. If you follow the paper trail
I think it is certainly an on-going issue, it is not historical,
and it is extremely disconcerting.
Q115 Chairman: I do not want to put
words into your mouth, but is what you are saying that the Minister
of Finance in the Palestinian Authority is only controlling part
of the budget that is going to the PA or that he is dealing with
different income streams in a different way?
Dr Samuels: I think it comes to
the same thing. He is dealing with different income streams of
those that have been allotted to him. There was a poll—it
may not have been a scientific one—and some 70% of the West
Bank at one point over a year ago claimed that the PA was corrupt.
This gentleman was brought in—
Q116 Chairman: What I am trying to
understand from all your evidence is this: is what you are saying
that the Palestinian Minister of Finance is being accountable
and transparent with some sums of money it receives—?
Dr Samuels: Yes.
Q117 Chairman: —but just not
the money it gets from the European Union?
Dr Samuels: Not just "not
just the money from the European Union" but some of the moneys—certainly
any Israeli back taxes and some of the moneys, for example, through
USAID, which is not going directly to the PA but is going to earmarked
projects—that go through his control. Therefore, he is able
to provide transparency. The problem is the other funds, the lion's
share of the funds. I think it would be the mandate of this Committee
to ask the question and to press the European Union, the European
Parliament, to make that necessary investigation.
Q118 Mr Battle: Could I ask, perhaps
from a different angle? Maybe I would be tempted to question the
money from this point of view: in any other situation where there
is an occupation, for whatever reason, the occupying power pays
the cost of that occupation, perhaps, in terms of health care,
education, services and infrastructure. Would you support total
withdrawal of aid and Israel to pay the bill for occupation?
Dr Samuels: At one point, possibly,
before the violence and the Intifada, while there were negotiations
towards settlement (which were rejected by the Palestinian side)
that might have been a reality. Today, as every step is beset
by conflict I do not think that is a reality. Nobody is suggesting
that the structures that are there should be dissolved. I am not
suggesting that the Palestinian population do not require it,
though they are possibly the most subsidised per capita of any
population in the third world; what I am suggesting is that the
moneys which ostensibly are sent to the Palestinian population
arrive to their target, which is the needy people, and not $100,000
a month to the First Lady, Suha Arafat and her daughter in Paris,
or $50,000, as we have been shown in the BBC programme, to line
the coffers of Mr Arafat. Something is wrong where there is a
system based upon crime and corruption.
Q119 Chairman: Given that part of
the complaint appears to be EU development money, what have colleagues
been doing in the European Parliament to question Poul Nielson
and Chris Patten about this?
Ms Schroder: The question
starts a bit earlier because as we probably all know it is the
duty of Israel to provide the Palestinian Authority with some
custom duties that it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.
Israel stopped to do that late 2000 after the Intifada began and
gave reasons for this breaking of an international agreement.
Israel said it was afraid that this money would be used for anti-Semitic
terror activities. What happened was the EU was already at the
time the provider of a lot of money that went to the PA and did
not check whether its own money would be used properly but jumped
into the financial gap and provided exactly the money that Israel
stopped to pay to the Palestinians. To put it very clearly, Israel
was afraid of being attacked from the Palestinian side, stopped
to pay the money that it was obliged to pay to the PA and then
the EU jumped into this gap. From June 2000 onwards until the
beginning of 2003 it paid 10 million euro monthly. In 2002 the
IDF presented a vast amount of material that it found in the territories.
Please do not tell me it is a one-sided statement. It might be
or it might not be—we need to check the figures because
there seems to be only one institution that seems to have the
interests of checking what happens to the PA money. But the argument
is not refuted by simply quoting the source. I do not know if
you have seen some statements, it sounds like some of you have
not, but it provided exactly the proof that they have been created
off-budget, that can be used for any action because you do not
need to legitimise it—for example, with the current exchange
rate, with an exaggerated amount of employees that supposedly
were paid—and you even had documents in here that proved
that PA officials that were paid by the PA to do a normal administrative
job were part of terrorist organisations, and those are not singular
cases. It happens often. So if we talk about suffering and victims
here it is very sad to say that the bullets which shot many of
those people are financed by the EU.
2 Not printed. Copy placed in the Library. Back
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