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In Wake of Corruption Treaty, Experts Warn of PA Campaign to Politicize Vital Int’l Institutions

by Omri Ceren |

Palestinian outlet Ma’an reported Monday that the United Nations had officially accepted the Palestinians as members of the U.N. Convention against Corruption, one of scores of international institutions that the Palestinian Authority (PA) has committed to joining and – of those treaties and bodies – one of many that analysts have noted the PA is already in violation of.

The convention obligates signatories [PDF] to codify criminal offenses related to graft, direct resources into enforcing those laws, and cooperate with international partners in detecting and uprooting corruption.

The news – which came a week after the revelation that EU officials have begun to direct “an unprecedented degree of scrutiny” at the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a result of an audit concluding that that the PA had misspent billions of Euros in aid – triggered eye rolls from analysts and scholars:

The government of PA President Mahmoud Abbas has been blasted by analysts as riddled with corruption, and critics have cited everything from [PDF] mismanagement at the highest levels to anecdotes in which Palestinian officials were caught with bags containing millions of dollars and cars filled with thousands of cell phones.

The seemingly straightforward untenability of meeting the treaty’s obligations has raised concerns that the Palestinians are engaged in what has been labeled a scorched-earth campaign, where they seek not to participate fully in international institutions but rather to politicize them into weapons of legal warfare against the Jewish state.

Doing so in the context of UNESCO – after the Palestinians joined, the body immediately moved in an anti-Israel direction – left the UN organization financially crippled and subject to censure.

[Photo: PBS Newshour / YouTube]

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