The US has praised the Palestinian Authority for cutting funding to Hamas, but did not refer to the way in which it funds Hamas indirectly.
David Cohen, the US Assistant Treasury Secretary for Terrorist Financing, gave high grades to the PA for its activities to cut funding to Hamas. Speaking last week at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Cohen said the PA had made “significant moves” and “important steps” in this direction. Specifically, he said that PA had been “quite courageous” in increasing supervision of its banking system and the recipients of charitable contributions.
Cohen noted that the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) last week designated of the Islamic National Bank of Gaza as a terrorist entity. This move, which freezes bank assets held under US jurisdiction and prohibits Americans from engaging in any transactions with the bank, was done “with the full knowledge and support” of the PA under Mahmoud Abbas. Hamas's Al-Aqsa Television was similarly designated.
The PA is “no more interested in having an unregulated financial institution operating in Gaza than we are,” Cohen said.
How much have these measures cost Hamas? Cohen said he didn’t know exactly, but they have certainly “made a difference in terms of restricting the flow of financial support to Hamas.”
Washington deceived
Analysts noted that the PA appears to have succeeded in deceiving Washington in this regard or that Washington is ignoring things that might mar the positive picture it presented:
For one thing, PA prime minister Salam Fayyad recently decided to transfer money for salaries for some 10,000 Fatah employees who reside in Gaza and have become Hamas members. Some of them serve in the Hamas security organizations, which are widely understood to be in the process of traning as a Hamas army. Cohen did not mention the transfer.
In addition, the US overlooked the fact that the PA is does not have a law banning terrorism funding. The reason for this is that Fatah, the PA’s ruling party, itself engages in terrorism from time to time, although on a lesser scale than Hamas.
Arutz Sheva Analyst Shimon Cohen sums up the situation: “By praising the PA’s activities against money-laundering, but overlooking its lack of activities against terrorism-funding, the US appears to be saying as long as it harms Hamas, it jibes with the American demands [against terrorism] – even if it PA's motivaton is different from that of the US.”