Living Large
Abu Mazen’s (Mahmood Abbas) new palace
Life is so, so hard in the ‘occupied territories.’
From here (comments are mostly in Hebrew). According to the person who posted it, it’s Abu Mazen’s ‘guest palace.’
By the way, there are many luxurious homes in Judea and Samaria. Back in the old days, before the existence of the ‘Palestinian Authority’ necessitated bypass roads in order to prevent Jews from being murdered, we used to play a game when we road through the ‘Palestinian’
*** How did he get here?
Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas resigned on Saturday as head of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) Executive Committee in a bid to force new elections for the top body, says Wassel Abu Yousef. Yousef also goes on to report that more than half of the 18-member committee have also stepped down, according to Israel National News. However, the 80-year-old Abbas still retains his post as Palestinian president. “The resignation of the president of the executive committee Mahmoud Abbas and more than half of its members have created a legal vacuum, and therefore the Palestine National Council (PNC) has been asked to meet in one month to elect a new executive committee,” Yousef said in a statement.
Yousef, a senior PLO committee member, added that the resignations will not take effect until the PNC meets. The PNC is the 740-member Palestinian Parliament. Members live in the Palestinian territories and have not met in 20-years.
Abbas took up the position of the Ramallah-based government in 2005, a year after he became the PLO’s chief. On several occasions, he has threatened to resign or dissolve the Palestinian Authority.
The PLO’s chief negotiator and well-known political figure Saeb Erekat will probably replace Abbas, according to Al Arabiya News, reporting on previous rumors of the Abbas resignation. Saeb Erekat is a close aide to Abbas and had replaced Abed Rabbo as secretary after Rabbo was ousted by Abbas for becoming an increasingly vocal critic of the leader. Abbas has faced questions about his legitimacy to rule within the Palestinian territories, where he was elected to what was originally meant to be a four-year term in 2005, according to The New York Times. New presidential and legislative elections for the Palestinian Authority have been prevented by an internal rift between Abbas’s Fatah party and the rival Islamic group, Hamas, which won the last legislative elections in 2006 and seized control of Gaza the next year. Read more here.
Other facts on Abbas:
- During the 1948 Palestinian war, his family fled to Syria
- Abbas studied at the University of Damascus and later went to Moscow and studied at Patrice Lumumba University (KGB)
- He has a son named after Yasser Arafat
- He was a member of the Fatah, which funded the attack of the 1972 Munich Massacre
- The U.S. Congress knew about his corruption and skimming off big money
Like Father, Like Son
the other home
Son of Mahmoud Abbas caught up in corruption scandal
The son of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has been tied to a corruption scandal involving leaked documents that appear to show attempts by Palestinian officials to misuse public funds.
An invoice published by a protest group on the Internet apparently shows that Yasser Mahmoud Reda Abbas made a payment of $50,000 as part of his acquisition of apartments in a luxury complex in the West Bank city of Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian government.