GAZA CITY: Already weighed down by insecurity, violence and grinding poverty, Palestinians have recently shown in dramatic fashion that they can no longer turn a blind eye to yet another hazard of everyday life: rampant corruption.

"We don't blame the Palestinian Authority in its entirety, just the corrupt who are getting rich at our expense. Ninety per cent of officials are on the make and they have to be punished and thrown out of office," a stall holder in Gaza's central market said.

Anyone wanting a job as a civil servant in one of the public departments has to be ready to line the palm of the local boss.

"You need to come up with 800 shekels (180 dollars) for a position in a ministry that is paid 1,200 shekels (265 dollars). It's daylight robbery," he said.

A wave of kidnappings in the Gaza Strip on Friday led to a long-awaited overhaul of the security services, whose leaders are among those accused of corrupt dealing.

Armed militants loyal to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat have vowed to pursue their war against corruption as strenuously as their campaign of violence against the Israelis.

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Arafat's Fatah movement, led protests over the weekend after Arafat appointed his cousin Musa as the new overall head of general security, denouncing him as the epitome of corruption.

Another market trader, Imad Zayed, railed against "these brigands who fill their pockets while we can hardly scrape a living."

Zayed earns a meagre 500 shekels selling children's clothes at the market. Just four months ago he was making about 4,000 shekels working as a day labourer in Israel. That came to an end after restrictions on movement were imposed in the wake of the assassination of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in March.-AFP