Look at how the Palestinians use their money....

I had blogged about the salaries but the cars are something new...

It emerged late last week that 3,500 Hamas "security-force" salaries had been paid by the Fatah-led Salaam Fayad government in Ramallah. At first this was passed off as computer error, corrected only after 1,000 of the beneficiaries had managed to withdraw the money from their bank accounts in Gaza. Now "investigations" are reported in progress. The latest version is that a higher-up in the PA Finance Ministry may have been bought off by Hamas and remitted the funds without authorization.

This episode has caused a considerable stir inside Fatah and rather less of one elsewhere, including in the Hebrew media. Yet the fact that money from ostensible moderates made its way to incontrovertible fanatics is telling.

Something is seriously wrong in Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority if, quite apart from continuing to pay the salaries of Hamas parliamentarians and, reportedly, planning to buy them all new $70,000 cars as well, it ends up underpinning the very militiamen who so violently expelled Fatah from Gaza in June.