UN-Truth

Basem (Correction from comment below: Bassim) Khoury won a lot of admiration and respect when he reportedly resigned, at the beginning of October, in protest of the (later reversed) Palestinian decision to withdraw support from a resolution they (the Palestinians) had been drafting in the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in support of the Goldstone report on last winter’s Gaza war. At that time, the Palestinian leadership agreed to another resolution, which was adopted, postponing consideration of the Goldstone report until March 2010.

Then, Bassim Khoury (a successful businessman who heads a Ramallah-based pharmaceutical company, and a good-looking nice guy who regularly brings flowers to his wife) refused to confirm these reports when contacted by various media.

A Facebook group was established in his honor, and probably still exists. (Full disclosure: I joined, at first — then resigned after some consideration about his interview with Le Monde, and the lack of clarity about his activities …)

Then, the next thing you know, he’s in Geneva — with what mandate? sent by whom? — to look into what had happened at the UN Human Rights Council, and to see what could be done. He has unpleasant little encounters with the media (Al-Jazeera, and Le Monde, if memory serves) in which he accuses journalists of misunderstanding, or misrepresenting various things. Khoury (who happens to be a Palestinian Christian) tells Le Monde that the donors are (indirectly) supporting Hamas in Gaza (!)

What is going on?

We reported then that an official in the Palestinian Ministry of Information said, in response to our question, that yes, Bassim Khoury had sent an SMS to Palestinian Prime Minister saying he preferred to resign after the initial Goldstone Fiasco.

(UPDATE: See comment from Bassim Khoury below on this …) However, he was then persuaded (or persuaded himself) that because Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had established a Palestinian investigative committee, he could withdraw his resignation. When he was in Europe (Geneva and Paris, see above), he was contacted by the Deputy Minister for Information, asking for clarification, and [according to the an official in the Palestinian Ministry of Information] he faxed a letter (to my knowledge, this has not been published) confirming that he had withdrawn his resignation.

But this, of course, does not improve the public impression of the Palestinian Authority, or the Palestinian leadership — especially since Khoury refused to explain his actions to the media, but only attacked and criticized the media for misunderstanding this or that.

Back in Ramallah, about a week ago, an SMS announced that Prime Minister Fayyad had accepted Khoury’s resignation.

Today, the Palestinian media is reporting that Hasan Abu Libdeh has been reported PA Minister of the Economy, to replace Khoury.

Abu Libdeh was the chief organizer of the Palestine Investment Conference in Bethlehem 2008. At the time, he reacted badly to a question from this journalist at the opening press conference about who funded the Investment Conference — was it only the donors (a grant had been taken from pledges given by donors at a Paris meeting in December 2007 that was called to support the Annapolis process)? Or was funding coming, separately, from Palestinian or PA sources? He answered that some of the money was from the donors, while the rest came from the PA. But, he was resolutely hostile after that.

In Bethlehem this past August, Abu Libdeh was present (discreetely, at the sidelines) at the fascinating and extremely important Fatah Sixth General Conference — and he was seen alone, in his shirt-sleeves, working on his laptop in the lobby of the beautiful Jacir Palace International Hotel (the five-star place where Tony Blair once stayed, and which was the headquarters of the most important delegations during the Palestine Investment Conference, as it was then again during the Fatah Conference) … Abu Libdeh is apparently a member of Fateh, and he was also apparently working as chef de cabinet for Prime Minister Salam Fayyad (who is not Fatah, and who was only present at the Fatah conference in Bethlehem at the opening session, though some Fatah delegates complained that there was too much Fayyad influence anyway, that one of the big posters in the main meeting hall showed a saying they recognized as Fayyads’s [saying something about looking to the future, and there were rumors that President Abbas intended to declare both Fayyad, an independent, and Yasser Abed Rabbo, an independent now but formerly DFLP spokesperson in Beirut who is now the Secretary of the PLO Executive Committee, long-time secret members of Fatah...]

ADDITIONAL NOTE: Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has apparently assumed himself the portfolio of Minister for Jerusalem Affairs, in the wake of the reported but still somewhat mysterious resignation from the post of Hatem Abdel Qader [Eid], following a brief term in office, and reportedly because of the lack of PA support (budgetary, as well as political) for Palestinian residents of Jerusalem who were evicted or who are facing eviction from their homes. Abdel Qader served (apparently happily) for over a year as Fayyad’s advisor on Jerusalem affairs, before he was sworn in as Minister this past spring by President Abbas.

UPDATE: In a recent press conference organized for members of the Foreign Press Association in Ramallah, Fayyad said that his government was not just a technical one, but is also a factional one, in the sense that it includes members of the various Palestinian political parties (though of course, not Hamas) …

Filed under: Donors, Gaza, Humanitarian Aid, Journalism and Journalists, Palestine & Palestinians