The Palestinians aren't broke

1) Arms Smuggling:

Israeli intelligence has detected more than 20 tons of explosives being smuggled into Gaza this year, along with sophisticated antitank and antiaircraft missiles. Most of this weaponry goes to Hamas, the ruling terrorist organization cum party, but significant quantities also go to terrorist groups associated with Fatah, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's party. The purchase price for this materiel, including the cost of smuggling it into the Gaza, could have been used to cover the unpaid salaries of thousands of PA employees - but Hamas and Fatah would both rather buy arms than feed their people

Two possibilities: PLO/Hamas is paying for it, or someone else is. In the first case, you would presumably not argue that this is a good proof for the title of this article. However, you would like to posit that someone else, like Iran, is paying for the weapons, and therefore, this is not a good reason to conclude that PLO/Hamas have lots of money.

See the sentence that I made bold above. Even if Iran was the one paying for these weapons, if PLO/Fatah really cared about the welfare of their people more than they cared about trying to attack Israel, then they could have requested that this money be used in other ways. Or if that was not possible, they could have taken the delivered goods, and turned them around into cash.

In the end of the day, the PLO and Fatah are the ones who are in control of the weapons. They create the demand for the weapons by their willingness to use them. The weapons that they buy or receive are assets owned by their government, and they choose to use these assets for destructive purposes.

(This does not even include the millions of dollars that are brought in by government ministers in their suitcases, that may or may not be declared)

2) Increased Payroll

in June, while the Hamas government was already pleading inability to pay existing PA employees, it decided to increase the PA's payroll by hiring an additional 5,400 employees, mainly security personnel - read gunmen - affiliated with Hamas. In other words, it had the money to hire 5,400 Hamas-affiliated gunmen: It was only when it came to teachers and doctors that its pockets were empty.

I think that point here is that these 5400 new gunmen would not have joined up unless they were actually being paid. It was no secret that Hamas was not meeting its payroll - thus the new guys would never have started without getting some cold hard cash (once again going towards trying to get Israel rather than trying to help their own citizens).

3) EU Grant

But the fact remains that the EU, the PA's major donor, has increased rather than decreased its contributions - which means that if this money were being used for its intended purpose, a humanitarian crisis would seem unlikely.

Hamas did not have a say. The PA did. And that is all that mattered. The point made here is that if $814 million was really spent excusively on humanitarian causes, then their wouldn't be so much of a humanitarian crisis. If spent on the people, it would come to about $600 per person. While not so much by US standards, keep in mind that this is equal to the GDP per person in 2003. It can go a long way if used properly. Or it can keep the kassams firing for a few more months. (Source for population and GDP figures)

In short, I disagree with your easy dismissal of the points raised in this article. Although nothing is conclusive (as I said, we really need to have an audit here), I believe that they are valid points, and if nothing else, call into question the real financial status and priorities of Hamas/PLO (for those who had questions before, that is).