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Sacking “Dangerous Dahlan” – a blow to Israel and a step towards Palestinian reconciliation

Rod Cox argues that Palestinian National Authority (PNA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s decision to suspended Mohammed Dahlan from a key body of the ruling Fatah faction pending an investigation into allegations that he was plotting a coup deprives Israel of a principal tool and removes a stumbling block to reconciliation with Hamas.

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Key Israel ally

Mahmoud Abbas, has sacked Mohammed Dahlan, formerly head of the Presidential Guard in Gaza, and regarded by everyone I've ever met as the hand of Israel in Palestine. Although there is certainly no proof of this, very many Palestinians point the finger at Dahlan when they talk of the mysterious death of Yasser Arafat, now almost universally regarded as murder by poison by Israel.

When Hamas won the January 2006 election in Palestine, but were not allowed to take power, they eventually formed a power-sharing government with Abbas's Fatah and some deals for practical implementation of the unitary government were put in place. One of these deals was that “security” in Gaza would be put under the control of the PNA in a unified force, rather than the collection of private militias that had existed since Arafat's time.

These militia, you may recall, were responsible for kidnappings, including the abduction of BBC journalist Alan Johnston. A quick search of the BBC’s website for "Johnston and Gaza" brings up

• July 2004 – “This weekend a string of high profile kidnappings and fighting…”
• April 2003 – “Dahlan says he will disarm other militias by force if necessary”, and so on.

Johnson was captured on 12 March 2007 by the Dogmush clan, another fearsome tribe that had been allowed to run wild while Dahlan was head of security in Gaza under Arafat and then Abbas.

The reasoning behind the kidnap, at a time when Hamas looked certain to beat Dahlan, seems to have been an excuse to bring in international – i.e. Israeli – forces against Hamas, who had been fighting Dahlan as part of their mission to unify security, agreed as part of the coalition settlement.

Dahlan was supposed to slot into the Hamas parliamentary chain of command, but that was never going to happen after Israel, which preferred Gaza split, unstable, corrupt and divided, gave him a boatload of arms, and in the end the fighting became very bloody, but Hamas “won”.

Dahlan fled to the West Bank, where he was found a job in Tony Blair's reorganizations, but that spelt the end of any Hamas input there, as a wave of arrests of Hamas activists by Abbas, and Hamas MPs by Israel, took place

Palestinian reconciliation

So, the removal of “Dangerous Dahlan” is bravery by Abbas beyond what I would have considered possible. Does that make Abbas weak or strong? The BBC says that he is under pressure, which he is, but I see this as poke in the eye for Israel, and a statement of independence on the part of Abbas.

In Israeli eyes, Abbas has been behaving strangely lately: he has refused to obey Israel slavishly, he insists on the settlement ban, and by removing Dahlan he may actually be clearing the way for a dialogue with Hamas. Thus, as with Arafat, Israel would want to get rid of him, so the coup charge against Dahlan looks realistic. And therefore getting rid of Dahlan is very brave, and a smack in the teeth for Netanyahu, isn't it? Well, I've always been a glass-half-full man, because otherwise I would have to cut my wrists. The situation is so depressing, so let us look at the picture in the round.

Abbas had not folded in his demand for a settlement moratorium – he has a plan B (declare an independent state of Palestine) to go forward diplomatically in the face of Israeli intransigence which is meeting with some success, and he has just got rid of the one man that Hamas would want him to, opening the way for genuine dialogue. He is now in a position where he can be a little bit generous to Hamas, even if Israel will portray that as weakness. A united front will be important to get a first ever Security Council resolution against Israel's brutality, and then the Gaza boats will be on the seas again in May, again with a powerful Turkish presence, making it hard for Israel to sustain the Gaza blockade and depriving its claim to peace of any credibility.

Obama doesn't have to do anything, he just has to sit on his hands, and let it all happen. I think Abbas thinks he can actually achieve something, and I hope he's right.

Source: Redress Information & Analysis (http://www.redress.cc). Material published on Redress may be republished with full attribution to Redress Information & Analysis (http://www.redress.cc)