They’ve also lined their own pockets. Get the truth in The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process.

“The missing billions of the Palestinian Authority,” by Maurice Hirsch, Palestinian Media Watch, November 4, 2019:

Since its creation, the Palestinian Authority has received tens of billions of dollars of international aid. Just since 2011, the European Union, the United States, and other countries have provided the PA with hundreds of millions of dollars and euros of aid.

While the PA has constantly complained about its financial difficulties, scrutiny of the PA’s own financial records for the years 2011 – 2018, shows that the PA transferred from its coffers over 7 billion shekels to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), some of which was then given to terrorist organizations. In that same period, the PA also spent over 440 million shekels to fund its non-functioning institutions.

Funding to the PLO and internationally designated terrorist organizations

The PLO, which is also headed by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, is an umbrella organization for several Palestinian groups. The largest and most dominant member is Abbas’ Fatah party. Other members include groups designated as terror organizations by the US and the EU such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Palestinian Liberation Front. PLO members are entitled to and receive funding from the PLO.

While international donors have demanded that the PA show financial transparency, the PLO is not subject to any financial regulation or demands of transparency. Accordingly, it is impossible to know what happens with billions of dollars of donor money the PA has given and continues to give today to the PLO.

Only on sporadic occasions are the financial workings of the PLO exposed. In June 2018, a senior PFLP official, Maher Mazhar, complained that the PFLP was not getting its monthly allocations from the PLO.

Denying the claim of the PFLP, PLO Executive Committee member and Fatah Central Committee member Azzam Al-Ahmad confirmed that Abbas and the Palestinian National Fund – the financial branch of the PLO – are responsible for funding the PFLP, and stressed that the allocations had not been stopped:

“PLO Executive Committee member [and Fatah Central Committee member] Azzam Al-Ahmad denied that the allocation from the Palestinian National Fund to any Palestinian organization, including the Popular Front [for the Liberation of Palestine] (PFLP), has been stopped. In a telephone conversation with Al-Ahmad from Amman, he said: ‘There is no truth to the rumors that [PA] President Abbas or any other party has stopped the allocation to the PFLP.” [Ma’an, (Independent Palestinian news agency), June 17, 2018]

While Al-Ahmad denied the claims of the PFLP in 2018, Palestinian media reports show that when he chose to, Abbas did withhold PLO funding from the PFLP. In 2016, Abbas withheld the group’s funding, not because he considered the PFLP a terrorist organization, but rather because the PFLP criticized him:

“The Ma’an News agency was informed that [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas has terminated the budgeting of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) following the demand of some of the Front’s leaders for Mahmoud Abbas’ resignation. Regarding the termination of the budgeting, PFLP leadership member Kayed Al-Ghoul stated yesterday morning, Monday [April 10, 2016], that President Abbas has stopped budgeting of the PFLP for February and March.” [Ma’an, (Independent Palestinian news agency), April 11, 2016]

Since the subject of the funding of the PFLP resurfaced in 2018, it is clear that Abbas did not suspend the PLO’s funding of the PFLP in 2016 for long, and resumed it at some point.

In this manner, the PA has systematically used US and EU money to fund organizations that the donors themselves have designated as terrorist organizations. While the US has stopped its direct aid to the PA, and thus stopped the PA misuse of the money to fund designated terrorist organizations, the EU continues to provide the PA with aid. And the PA continues to provide funds to the PLO. Clearly, while it is impossible to prove that one specific dollar/euro donated to the PA found its way directly into the accounts of the PFLP/PLF, it is clear that donations to the PA to cover its legitimate expenses, allows the PA to divert its own resources for these illegitimate purposes….