Another Brick In The Wall

The residents of 20 Palestinian villages are preparing to file suit over Israel's construction of the 720-km security barrier going up along the edge of the West Bank as part of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's "separation plan." But their target is not Israel. The suit charges that officials in Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority (P.A.) have profited by importing cement using dubious import licenses and selling it to Israeli contractors building the wall.

Try to imagine officials in the Kennedy Administration selling cement to East Berlin construction firms back in 1961 and you'll get an idea of why ordinary Palestinians are so furious about the allegations. Hassan Khreisheh, deputy speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, tells Time he handed a report on the cement deals to Arafat's attorney general and has recommended prosecutions.

According to a copy of the report obtained by Time, well-connected companies won import licenses for 420,000 tons of Egyptian cement from last September to February, but only 33,000 tons found its way to the Palestinian market. The rest, the report charges, went to an Israeli company in Haifa. The report doesn't say how much of around $6 million in profits went to P.A. officials and their connections, but it does accuse several companies of profiting from the deal.

Abdel Sattar Qassem, a Nablus academic who also plans to file a lawsuit this week against the politicians involved in the cement deal, says, if true, "The scandal shows that all the Palestinian official statements against the wall are lies." The Higher Islamic Council, the senior Palestinian religious body, issued a fatwa last month against anyone who contributes to the barrier's construction. "Building the racist wall is a sin," the Council decreed. Those involved "are not entitled to burial in a Muslim cemetery."