News Flash: Hamas Is The Epitome Of Fiscal Responsibility

I mean, that have to be--considering the reason they give for rejecting Fayyad as Prime Minister.

Apparently Fayyad, who is widely respected in the West for rejuvenating the West Bank, is considered by Hamas to be fiscally incompetent:

[I]nfluential Hamas officials in the Gaza Strip balked Sunday at Fatah’s nomination of Fayyad, whose policies are seen by the Islamist group as aligned with U.S. interests in the region.

“Salam Fayyad is unacceptable, because he has drowned the Palestinian people in billions of dollars of debt and made its economy and political decision-making dependent on foreign donors,” Salah Bardawil, a member of the political bureau of Hamas, said by telephone from Gaza.

It's really a pity, you know, that Fayyad cannot follow the shining example of Hamas, which is economically independent--except for the funding it gets from Iran.

I'm sure that the money to the Hamas-Fatah unity government that Congress is threatening to cut won't affect things at all.

Then again, maybe Hamas is just giving payback to Abbas for what he did in 2009:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's government sacked a West Bank town's Hamas mayor on Saturday charging financial mismanagement, a move seen as complicating efforts to end a factional feud.

...Qawasmeh charged the town's debt had more than quadrupled since Qawas was elected in 2005, from 17 million shekels to a current 75 million shekels ($4.5 million to $20 million).

As far as Fayyad goes--in order to make the West Bank really solvent, maybe he should follow the Hamas model and consider building tunnels?

Technorati Tag: Fayyad and Fatah and Hamas.