text: He may be brought to heel by, of all things, honest financial accounting.
  Take the money out of his hands, reform a corrupt financial system and you could reduce the violence. That's the thinking of U.S. and European officials who insisted on the appointment of a new finance minister for the PA. Salam Fayyad , 50, is the chain-smoking Palestinian technocrat armed with little more than a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Texas who got the finance job last June. Israel has responded by resuming the transfer of $30 million or more per month in tax revenues to the PA, disbursements that were frozen in December 2000 following an outbreak of terrorist bombings. Israel may even release the $500 million-plus that piled up during the freeze.
  It amounts to a direct attack on Arafat's elaborate patronage system, which ensures the loyalty of the Palestinians' fractious factions. "He is always ready to pull money out of his pocket to buy people," says Said Aburish , an Arafat biographer. An Israeli intelligence report pegs Arafat's personal holdings at $1.3 billion (a claim dubbed "ridiculous" by the Arafat camp), but Israeli officials say Arafat uses his largesse mainly to buy friendships.
  "Until the last six months PA money was a power instrument for Arafat," says Eran Lerman , a retired colonel in Israel's military intelligence. "Calling what Fayyad is doing a threat to Arafat is an understatement." Fayyad, for his part, dismisses any such notion. Arafat, he says, "is the person who appointed me, and I am confident in a few months we will have one of the most accountable systems around."
  In late December Fayyad took another step toward that goal. He submitted the first publicly disclosed PA budget, a $1.3 billion plan approved by the Palestinian Legislative Council. Auditing of the spending is being supervised by Ernst & Young, hired by the United Nations, and Deloitte & Touche, hired by the U.S. His latest move: the February delivery of the first meaningful annual report, conducted by Standard & Poor's, on the finances of ten PA-owned businesses once controlled by Arafat. Fayyad has lumped these and other interests together in the Palestine Investment Fund, of which he now is chairman, though the fund is managed by Arafat's trusted financial adviser, Mohammed Rachid .
  Still, says Azmi Shuaibi , a Palestinian Legislative Council member: "We are afraid if something happens to Arafat, we will not know where all the money is."