(IsraelNN.com) The US and Israel-backed Fatah Palestinian Authority used the money it received to pay an entire year’s salary to 3,500 members of Hamas’s terrorist forces.

Fatah claimed the payment – amounting to $16 million – was wired “accidentally.” The claim was believed and reported at face-value by the Associated Press (“Abbas' gov't inadvertently pays salaries to outlawed Hamas militia”) and other international news agencies. Not passing the money to Hamas was the only stipulation set by Israel in transferring the money to the PA.

Hamas officials in Gaza confirmed that they had received the payment, telling the PA-run Ma'an News Agency that 3,500 Hamas “operational forces” had received salaries covering the year from June 2006 to June 2007.

Salam Fayyad, formerly PA Finance Minister, was appointed by Fatah chief and PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas as prime minister following Hamas’s takeover of Gaza, due to the US and Israel’s reliance on him to refrain from mismanaging and funneling money the way Yasser Arafat’s regime was notorious for doing. The latest funneling of millions to Hamas casts substantial doubt on Fayyad's trustworthiness in this regard.

Fatah officials claim a “computer error” was responsible and that the Bank of Palestine was ordered to withdraw the deposited funds. Most Hamas members had already withdrawn the money, however.

Hamas officials told Arabic newspapers that they see the move as a “goodwill gesture” of the kind Israel displays toward Fatah intermittently. The same day, Fatah’s Abbas told Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that he would be willing to engage Hamas in negotiations if they stood down from their Gaza takeover.

Hamas Executive Forces militia spokesman Sabir Khalifa told the PA-run Ma'an news agency that "this is an official recognition from Abbas and Fayyad that the [Hamas] force is legitimate and legal."

Hamas and Fatah are holding “secret talks” to revive a unity government. The popular Dry Bones political cartoon Thursday showed Prime Minister Ehud Olmert predicting that there would be no Fatah and Hamas unity “Because Israel has not finished delivering all the new weapons to the West Bank ‘moderates’ yet.”

11. Majority of people who voted in PA elections voted for Hamas. Thus, it is fair to say that most voters actively supported an FTO.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/26/AR2006012600372.html

12. Article tying Fatah, that is, the PA, to Fatah's armed wing, the Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade. Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade is an FTO.
http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Security/11910.htm

13. Article about how the government in Israel armed Fatah, that is, armed the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which is an FTO.
http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Politics/11758.htm

14. OneVoice, an organization promoting a "People's Summit" on Oct. 18, '07.
"OneVoice does not hold its own agenda or views for how any peace agreement will look – we are simply codifying the views of the masses. The vast majority of Israelis and Palestinians, according to all major polls, agree that a Two-State solution is the only way to end this conflict and therefore we support this stance." That is to say, OneVoice supports a Two-State solution.
http://www.onemillionvoices.org/ ("People's Summit website)
or
http://www.onevoicemovement.org/wps/portal (One Voice website)

14. Fatah is a terrorist organization, according to this article.
http://www.nysun.com/article/60989

Fatah Militant: U.S. Training Was Key to Intifada's Success
By AARON KLEIN
Special to the Sun
August 21, 2007 posted 12:36 pm EDT

RAMALLAH -- American-run programs that train Fatah militias were instrumental in the "success" of the Palestinian intifada that began in 2000, a senior Fatah militant told The New York Sun.

"I do not think that the operations of the Palestinian resistance would have been so successful and would have killed more than one thousand Israelis since 2000 and defeated the Israelis in Gaza without these [American] trainings," a senior officer of President Abbas's Force 17 Presidential Guard unit, Abu Yousuf, said.

America has longstanding training programs at a base in the West Bank city of Jericho for members of Force 17, which serves as de facto police units in the West Bank, and for another major Fatah security force, the Preventative Security Services.

This weekend diplomatic security officials announced that the State Department will begin training Force 17 again this year in an effort to bolster Mr. Abbas against Hamas, which took over the Gaza Strip in June when the terror group easily defeated American-backed Fatah forces in the territory.

Under an agreement signed this month by Secretary of State Rice and Palestinian Arab Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, Force 17 officers are slated to take course work and conduct VIP protection exercises under the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security.
The new training program aims to help the Palestinian Authority "deliver security for the Palestinian people and fight terrorism, build confidence between the parties, and ultimately help to meet the security needs of Palestinians and Israelis alike," a State Department press release said.

The training program, which includes courses in the use of weapons, paid with $86.5 million in funding granted to the Palestinian Authority by Congress in April.

Many members of Force 17 and the Preventative Security Services also openly serve in Fatah's declared "military wing," Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which took credit along with the Islamic Jihad terror group for every suicide bombing in Israel between 2005 and 2006. The Brigades is responsible for more terrorism from the West Bank than any other Palestinian Arab organization.

Abu Yousuf, the Force 17 officer, received American training in Jericho in 1999 as a member of the Preventative Security Services. He is a chief of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in Ramallah, where he is accused of participating in anti- Israel terrorism, including recent shootings, attacks against Israeli forces operating in the city, and a shooting attack in northern Samaria in December 2000 that killed the leader of the ultranationalist Kahane Chai organization, Benyamin Kahane.

After the Kahane murder, Mr. Yousuf was extended refuge by Yasser Arafat to live in the late Palestine Liberation Organization leader's Ramallah compound, widely known as the Muqata. Mr. Yousuf still lives in the compound.

Prime Minister Olmert last month granted Mr. Yousuf amnesty along with 178 other Brigades leaders reportedly in a gesture to Mr. Abbas.

Speaking during an interview for the upcoming book "Schmoozing with Terrorists," Mr. Yousuf said his American trainings were instrumental in attacks on Israelis. "All the methods and techniques that we studied in these trainings, we applied them against the Israelis," he said.

"We sniped at Israeli settlers and soldiers. We broke into settlements and Israeli army bases and posts. We collected information on the movements of soldiers and settlers. We collected information about the best timing to infiltrate our bombers inside Israel. We used weapons and we produced explosives, and of course the trainings we received from the Americans and the Europeans were a great help to the resistance."

Mr. Yousuf said the training included both intelligence and military tactics.

"In the intelligence part, we learned collection of information regarding suspected persons, how to follow suspected guys, how to infiltrate organizations and penetrate cells of groups that we were working on and how to prevent attacks and to steal in places," he said.

"On the military level, we received trainings on the use of weapons, all kind of weapons and explosives. We received sniping trainings, work of special units especially as part as what they call the fight against terror. We learned how to put siege, how to break into places where our enemies closed themselves in, how to oppress protest movements, demonstrations, and other activities of opposition."

Mr. Yousuf seemed to anticipate criticism for speaking publicly about the training. He's not "talking about U.S. training in order to irritate the Americans or the Israelis and not in order to create provocations," he said. "I'm just telling you the truth."

15. The Foreign Terrorist Organization's Law which Secy. Rice, Mahmoud Abbas, and Ehud Olmert are violating.
http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/fs/37191.htm