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Article: Stamping down on corruption: bolstered by the victory of Hamas at the polls, Palestinians are getting serious about stamping out the corruption that has been allowed to run rampant in their official departments for years, imperiling all attempts to establish a modern state.
- Article from:
- The Middle East
- Article date:
- June 1, 2006
- Author:
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EVEN IN THOSE parts of the Middle East where the culture of corruption has become part of the established social and political fabric, Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority (PA) was a model of venality.
In a land that dates from antiquity, the scale of corruption the former Palestinian leader allowed after the Oslo accords, indeed encouraged as a means of maintaining himself in power, was arguably one of the biggest obstacles in the Palestinian people's struggle to reinvent themselves as shareholders in a modern state.
In the end, Arafat, reliant as he was on foreign aid, had to address the problem of official corruption that was bleeding dry the ...