The report acknowledges that Israel has significantly helped the Palestinian economy by agreeing to transfer again funds which have been withheld since the beginning of the Intifada. It also acknowledges that the economic relationship with Israel was "extremely productive" for the Palestinians, and that they enjoyed prosperity in the years that preceded the Intifada : so they were never "oppressed" or "strangled" by Israel, and had no reason to despair from the Peace Process and resort to terrorism, as some would have it. The report clearly states that the motivator for the introduction of fiscal and political reforms was near bankruptcy caused by budgetary mismanagement. What this implies is that if the international community had linked their aid to reforms and a cessation of violence from the outset, positive processes may have started much earlier. The popular press very quickly picked up the $900m of tax money that Arafat skimmed into secret accounts. They also picked up that 'most' of this money had been invested in Palestinian public assets. What they didn't note was that this probably makes Arafat the owner of most of the Palestinian public economy, and more importantly that they have no idea where the rest of the money went. When pressed very hard at the press conference, the IMF admitted that this money might have been 'misused'. Ask any one of the thousands of families whose loved ones have been killed or wounded in the current Arafat War to find out what this euphemism might politely disguise. The popular press overlooked that this was just one source of 'leakage' - the only one which had been thoroughly researched and quantified. The report spells out specific weaknesses in the controls over other budgets (including accounts into which international aid money was fed). The weaknesses identified with the report correspond almost exactly with the documentation of methods of funding terrorism discovered by the IDF and categorically denied by the European Union. No doubt the really keen could learn a lot more from a thorough reading - but the above gives some indications of how to relate to the reports that do appear in the papers.