“Dahlan is a convicted criminal,” said a PA official recently, “and as such he won’t be allowed to participate in the elections. If he enters Ramallah, he will be immediately arrested and thrown into prison.”
Long viewed by Abbas as
a major adversary and rival, a series of personal disputes led the PA president
to revoke Dahlan’s parliamentary immunity, opening the way to his being tried in
absentia by a Palestinian court for embezzlement. Found guilty in December 2016, he was sentenced
to three years in jail and expelled from the Fatah party. Abbas then openly accused him of being
involved in the murder of former PA president Yasser Arafat. Dahlan denied all the charges.
Dahlan’s past is replete
with rumours of political manoeuverings and conspiratorial plots (the Turkish
government has a warrant out for his arrest, on a charge of plotting the
anti-Erdogan coup of 2016). Now he seems
to have devised a characteristically convoluted strategy to achieve his
political ambitions.
Thirty-six parties have
submitted lists for the upcoming parliamentary and legislative elections. Hamas
is running as one united list, but Fatah has split into three. Its main list is led by Abbas, another is led
jointly by Marwan Barghouti (currently serving five life sentences in Israeli
prison) and Nasser al-Qudwa (who has been expelled from Fatah); and a third
list is led by Dahlan. Neither Barghouti
nor Dahlan are themselves running for parliament.
The Palestinian Central
Elections Commission (CEC) had the task of either approving or banning the
lists. The rules governing its decisions are obscure, not to say arbitrary. It was, therefore, far from certain that
Dahlan’s party would be permitted to participate at all in the elections. In the event the CEC has allowed them to do so.
It was back in 2011 that Dahlan was driven out of the West Bank after a row with Abbas. He took up residence in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and is an adviser to the crown prince, Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan. It is widely speculated that he played a key role in bringing the UAE-Israel normalization deal to fruition. Palestinian officials are quoted as saying they have no doubt about it.
Dahlan opened his
campaign on March 17 with an interview on Al-Arabiya TV.
“Abbas made three
promises,” he said. “To reform and strengthen Fatah, to reform the Palestinian
Authority, which he said at the time was corrupt… and to make an honorable
peace [with Israel]. He did none of them.”
Dahlan maintained that
Hamas and Fatah were conspiring to allow the 85-year-old Abbas to run unopposed
in the forthcoming presidential election, “…as if he were 40 years old and his
future was ahead of him.”
Without elaborating as
to whether he would run himself, Dahlan declared enigmatically: “Abbas will not be the only presidential
candidate in the elections.”
Although Dahlan’s participation in the
forthcoming Palestinian Legislative Council election virtually turned on the
toss of a coin, Jerusalem Post political commentator Khaled Abu Toameh
believes he is hoping that his supporters will win enough seats to allow them
to be part of a future government coalition. Once Dahlan loyalists are in the
parliament and government, Abu Toameh believes, the plan will be for them to negotiate
their leader’s participation in the presidential election, scheduled for July
31.
If this is indeed
Dahlan’s strategy, its outcome is highly unpredictable. He might, in fact, be playing a longer, more subtle game. Assuming the reported Hamas-Fatah deal holds,
and Abbas is indeed returned as PA president for a further four years, by 2025 - if
he survives - Abbas will be pushing 90. By
then Dahlan, at 63, would have had time and opportunity to consolidate and strengthen
his support among the Palestinian population – a process he has already begun
by arranging delivery of tens of thousands of the Russian Sputnik V Covid
vaccine to Gaza, courtesy of his UAE patron.
He is also promising a
swift solution of the endemic problem of inadequate electricity supplies in the
Gaza strip.
“One of my business
associates could resolve it easily,” said Dahlan in his TV interview. “This isn’t such a big deal. We’re not talking about some enormous grant.
It is the political divides and personal rifts that have – and I’m sorry to put
it like this – turned the Palestinian people into beggars.”
A more covert move at
strengthening his influence within the Palestinian political scene has been the
deal Dahlan is reported to have struck with Hamas. Under its terms Dahlan apparently agreed to
pay blood money to the families of dozens of Palestinians killed by his men in
the past three decades, in return for which his supporters would be permitted
to return to the Gaza Strip. And indeed
in the past few weeks scores of Dahlan loyalists began returning under assurances
from Hamas that they would not be arrested or killed.
In the long term the real significance of these Palestinian elections may be that Mohammed Dahlan, after years of exile in the UAE, is making a formal return to the political scene.
Published in the Jerusalem Post, 12 April 2021:https://www.jpost.com/opinion/dahlan-plays-the-long-game-opinion-664951
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