Arafat’s New Finance Minister States his Conditions and Rajoub's not a Clerk to be Fired by Letter.
According to Ehud Ya’ari, Israel’s top media expert* on Arab affairs, the new Palestinian Finance Minister, Salla Fayed, demands full control over the Palestinian Authority’s budget. Ya’ari was speaking on Israeli T.V. last night, channel 2 news. I didn’t see it so we’ll have to take Bish’s word for it. Ya’ari says Fayed intends to give Arafat “pocket money” (this is Bish’s term, I don’t know how Ya’ari described it) to run the Presidential Bureau. If Arafat doesn’t agree to this, Fayed will resign.

Ya'ari also said that the appointment of former Jenin governor Zuhair Manasreh as head of the Preventative Security in the West Bank instead of Jibril Rajoub was not a serious appointment. According to Haaretz, Rajoub and his men say they won't give up the Preventive Security apparatus. Haaretz explains that, "In recent months, there have been sharp differences of opinion between the two, with Rajoub furious that the PA allowed the military wings of Hamas and Fatah to operate independently of the PA. He vehemently objected to terror attacks, which he refers to as "military actions," inside the Green Line and demanded that all Palestinian military actions be limited to inside the territories, if at all."

They all seem to be smelling blood.

*Hebrew link.