American security demands that the government waive Congressional restrictions against direct financial aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA), United States President George W. Bush wrote the State Department Monday. However, Arab sources report that the PA is receiving aid from Iran.

 

The president ordered the direct aid the same day that the Middle East Newsline reported that Iran is assisting Fatah, whose leader Mahmoud Abbas heads the PA.

 

"We have seen how Iranian support has helped Hamas everywhere in the Arab and Islamic world. Fatah wants the same thing," Arab sources told the news service, quoted by Israeli-American journalist David Bedein in the Philadelphia Bulletin.

We have seen how Iranian support has helped Hamas everywhere in the Arab and Islamic world. Fatah wants the same thing.

 

Iran has been underwriting the cost for more than 150 Fatah "fighters," and Arab sources said that several PA military commanders asked PA Chairman Abbas for closer cooperation with Iran.

 

In a message to the State Department, President Bush declared, "I hereby certify that it is important to the national security interests of the United States to waive" the restrictions.

 

The move will allow up to $75 million to be pumped directly to the cash-strapped PA, which has become increasingly dependent on international help to the point that it has been labeled a welfare state by some European leaders. Congress added the waiver clause in its stipulation that most aid be directed through non-PA organizations to prevent the money from going into PA leaders' pockets or to terrorists. 

 

Direct American financing to the PA is supposed to be contingent upon the PA showing that it has ceased incitement against Israel and has disarmed terrorists.

 

The government has tried to showcase the deployment of American-trained and armed PA policemen in Jenin and Shechem as proof that the Fatah-led PA is controlling terrorism. However, they do not work in the middle of the night, when Israel Defense Forces stage nightly counterterrorist arrest operations to arrest terrorists.

 

American military officers at a base in Jordan also have begun preparing an additional 150 PA security forces, and they will be deployed in Hevron, where Hamas is popular.

 

Most military officers have said that the PA would collapse and fall into the hands of Hamas if it were not for the presence of the IDF in Judea and Samaria.

 

The American government has not commented on recent PA television programs and school textbooks that continue to show the entire land of Israel, including all of Jerusalem and the Tel Aviv area, as Arab land.