Let's begin with defining what the Palestinian National Authority (PA)
is.
Palestinian National Authority
The PA is a governing body established by Israel and the Palestinian
Liberation Organization (PLO) in the mid-90s as a consequence of the
Oslo agreements. The point was to allow the Palestinians living under
occupation limited self-governance. Previously, the occupied
Palestinian territories (OPT) had been governed by an Israeli military
government called the the Israeli Civil
Administration. The
idea was that the PA would assume more and more governing
responsibilities, morph into a proto-state administration, and that
the occupation eventually would come to an end. That never happened
and the PA is today essentially the same institution that it was in
1994.
Following the ouster of Fatah from the Gaza strip in 2006, the PA de
facto only exercises control over the area A and B "islands" in the
West Bank. Although it continues to pay the
salaries
of public servants that work in Gaza.
About
two-thirds
of the PA's income comes from Palestinian tax revenue and one third
from donor countries. Israel collects the taxes on behalf of the PA
and transfers it to the organization. During conflicts Israel has
sometimes withheld the funds to punish the PA. PA. Hence any
embezzlement of tax funds before they reach the PA is on Israel. This
is a major difference between how the PA and Hamas operates - the
latter collects its own taxes.
Some of the largest donors to the PA are the EU countries. They fund
the PA through a system called PEGASE. Member countries pool their
donations and then the PA requests funding through PEGASE. The PA uses
the funds for payroll, welfare, and various projects. Payroll means
that the EU subsidizes salaries, welfare is for needy Palestinian
families (like social security in the US), and projects are for things
like building schools and hospitals. More on PEGASE below.
Palestinian Anti-Corruption Commission
The Palestinian governmental body that investigates corruption is the
Palestinian Anti-Corruption Commission (PACC),
founded in 2005 as the Anti-Graft Commission. It publishes annual
reports, some of which you can find here:
They are in Arabic so I can't read them. The PACC also publishes
thematic reports in English:
It has also begun publishing monthly reports, summarizing complaints
received that month. For example, from the PACCs report for December,
2020:
The report stated that the Commissioner of PACC Prof. Ahmad al-Barak
referred during December 12 files to the corruption crimes
prosecution (after the corruption suspicious is proven against the
complainants or reported), while the Commission received in the same
month 87 complaints and reports, and 80 complaints and reports were
finalized.
The crime of misuse of office had the biggest share of the total
number of the received complaints and reports during the previous
month. The complaints and reports were divided in accordance with
the crime as the following: 68 against misuse of office, 7 against
favoritism and nepotism, 4 against compromising the public funds, 2
against complacency in carrying out public office, 1 against breach
of trust, 1 against embezzlement, 1 against bribery, 1 against false
documents.
PACC MEDIA MONTHLY REPORT ON THE COMMISSION'S ACTIVITIES AND EVENTS DECEMBER 2020
(I suspect that the text is Google-translated because some of the
grammar seems off to me.)
The report even describes how the PACC received the complaints:
The Commission received 20 complaints and reports through personal
delivery, 46 were received through the smartphones application, 5
through the official correspondences from public institutions,
charities, municipalities or any other body, 1 through email, 5
through fax, 7 through electronic detection, 3 through Facebook.
I'm not sure what "personal delivery" means. Does it refer to this
web form on the PACCs site or
face-to-face meetings?
Simple extrapolation suggests that if the PACC handled 87 complaints
in December then the annual number of complaints should be about 1
000.
I have not seen any evaluation of the PACC so I cannot tell whether it
is effective or not.
AMAN: Coalition for Integrity
AMAN: Coalition for Integrity is the Palestinian chapter of
Transparency International - an association of non-governmental
organizations fighting corruption. You can find some of their annual
reports here (along with summaries in video format):
You asked about checks against corruption so I will cite some checks
highlighted by the reports that are relevant to the PA. The reports
also discuss corruption in the Palestinian private sector which is
beyond the scope of your question:
Promoting integrity in public facilities
The issuance of the Decree-Law No. 32 of 2020 regarding the
participation of public officials on the boards of directors of
institutions. This decision is considered a step that will
contribute to the promotion of integrity and is in line with the
requirements of good governance practices. ...
Implementation of the General Procurement Law
Increase in the use of the unified public purchase portal website
(shiraa.gov.ps) including publishing of purchases’ processes. In
this regard, the number of public institutions with an account on
the portal reached approximately 136 bodies who use this portal to
announce their bids.
The State of Integrity and Combating Corruption in Palestine in
2020
Procurement is one area often fraught with corruption and
kickbacks. The use of a public purchasing portal apparently could
reduce corruption.
The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) refers corruption files for the second consecutive year
The high number of corruption files referred from the ACC to the
public prosecutor’s office for the second consecutive year is due to
two main factors: the increased citizens’ expectations of a more
effective policy than before, and the Commission’s openness to the
public symbolized by its policies that aim to encourage reporting
through all means including on-line reporting. This was reflected in
the number of complaints and reports received in a single year since
the establishment of the ACC in 2005, which amounted to 1,115
complaints.
AMAN thus describes the high number of complaints received by the PACC
as something positive.
Second: Challenges hindering anti-corruption
Poor integrity of governance due to the ineffective role of public
institutions in decision-making; centralized policy making (i.e.,
decisions are concentrated in the hands of few individuals); weak
rule of law; decline of public confidence in the role and integrity
of the judiciary, all of which affected the integrity in governance. ...
Appointments and promotions in the public sector continued to take
place despite the President’s decision to stop it as part of the
rationalization and austerity plan on public expenditures. In this
regard, appointments to senior and special posts continued without
respecting the principle of equal opportunities, or announcements
for job vacancies.
The unemployment rate in the OPT is about 25% and the PA is the
largest employer.
Studies
The above sections explain what some of the anti-corruption checks in
the PA are. Here are some studies on the topic of their effectiveness:
The Palestinian Authority (PA) is one of the best-known cases in
which corruption impedes economic and political development, thus
troubling the state-building process. ... The model was subsequently
used for comparing the PA’s predicted and observed levels of
corruption for the years 1998-2008. In all years other than 2004,
the PA showed higher levels of corruption than predicted by the
model. Divergence was relatively low with an average of 0.65 units
of standard deviation below the regression line. Particularities of
the Palestinian case, which are exogenous to the model, were sought
for explaining the PA’s higher than predicted level of
corruption. Suggested explanations include the conflict with Israel,
lack of territorial integrity, the Fatah-Hamas rivalry, weakness of
the legislative branch, lack of sovereignty, and the rapid social
changes undergone by Palestinian society.
The Occupation Corrupts? Quantitative Analysis of Corruption in the Palestinian Authority
The above quote is from a 2010 Master's thesis. I don't know how much
stock one should put in its conclusions.
The European Court of Auditors audits PEGASE annually or
biannually. Some of their audits I've found using Google:
According to these audits, the amount of corruption in the PEGASE
system is low:
The EEAS and the Commission welcome today's report from the Court of
Auditors on the EU Direct Financial Support to the Palestinian
Authority (PA) through the PEGASE Mechanism. They welcome in
particular the Court's conclusion that the Commission and EEAS have
succeeded in implementing this support in spite of difficult
circumstances and that there is no evidence of corruption or
mismanagement.
EU Direct Financial Support to the Palestinian Authority (December 11, 2013)
For details on PEGASE, see my answer to the question What is the operational chain (in details?) of transferring donations to the Palestinians?. For a literature review from 2012 on corruption in Palestine, see Literature review of corruption and anti-corruption in Palestine .
Unfortunately, I cannot find much information on the effectiveness
of the PA's anti-corruption work. The question is not whether there is
corruption in the PA or not, clearly there is - like there is in every
public government. The question is whether the level of corruption is
higher or lower than it "should" be. But, given the uniqueness of the
PA's situation, what "should" it be? Furthermore, the effectiveness of
the anti-corruption work ought to be measured by whether the
corruption is decreasing or increasing. If it is decreasing, then it
is effective, otherwise it isn't. Thus, one should measure the amount
of corruption in the PA over time.
Here is data I compiled myself from Transparency International's
Global Corruption Barometer. It asks respondents if they have
paid a bribe in the last year. The Barometer began surveying Palestine
in 2010. Percentage of respondents answering yes for Palestine and
other countries in the Middle East and North Africa region are:
| Country |
2010 |
2013 |
2016 |
2019 |
| Algeria |
n/a |
41 |
14 |
n/a |
| Egypt |
n/a |
36 |
50 |
n/a |
| Israel |
4 |
12 |
n/a |
n/a |
| Jordan |
n/a |
37 |
4 |
4 |
| Lebanon |
34 |
n/a |
28 |
41 |
| Morocco |
35 |
49 |
48 |
31 |
| Palestine |
53 |
12 |
13 |
17 |
| Tunisia |
n/a |
18 |
9 |
18 |
| Yemen |
66 |
74 |
77 |
n/a |
As seen, the numbers are all over the place for some countries. I
suspect this is due to methodological errors; perhaps the question was
phrased differently in different editions of the Barometer, perhaps
the interviewer didn't speak Arabic that well, perhaps the survey
moved from phone interviews to web forms, etc.
