Dahlan´s assassination
promise to Israel:
Overcoming the conspiracy against
Palestine
By Ali Abunimah
The Electronic Intifada, 18 July 2007
Mohammed Dahlan's 13 July 2003 letter to
then Israeli defense minister Shaul Mofaz.
"Be certain that Yasser Arafat's final days are numbered, but
allow us to finish him off our way, not yours. And be sure as well
that ... the promises I made in front of President Bush, I will give
my life to keep." Those words were written by the Fatah warlord
Mohammed Dahlan, whose US- and Israeli-backed forces were routed by
Hamas in the Gaza Strip last month, in a 13 July 2003 letter to then
Israeli defense minister Shaul Mofaz and published on Hamas' website
on 4 July this year.
Dahlan, who despite his failure to hold Gaza, remains a senior
advisor to Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas, outlines his
conspiracy to overthrow Arafat, destroy Palestinian institutions and
replace them with a quisling leadership subservient to Israel. Dahlan
writes of his fear that Arafat would convene the Palestinian
legislative council and ask it to withdraw confidence from then prime
minister Mahmoud Abbas, who had been appointed earlier in 2003 at
Bush's insistence in order to curb Arafat's influence. Dahlan wrote
that "complete coordination and cooperation by all" was needed to
prevent this, as well as "subjecting [Arafat] to pressure so
that he cannot carry out this step." Dahlan reveals that "we have
already begun attempts to polarize the views of many legislative
council members by intimidation and temptation so that they will be
on our side and not his [Arafat's]."
Dahlan closes his letter to Mofaz saying, "it remains only for me
to convey my gratitude to you and the prime minister [Ariel
Sharon] for your continued confidence in us, and to you all
respect."
This letter is a small but vivid piece of evidence to add to the
existing mountain, of the conspiracy in which the Abbas leadership is
involved. In the month since Abbas' appointment of a Vichy-style
"emergency government" headed by Salam Fayad, historic Fatah leaders,
such as Farouq Qaddumi and Hani al-Hassan have signalled their
opposition to Abbas' actions, specifically rejecting his order that
Palestinian resistance fighters disarm while Israeli occupation
continues unchallenged.
This underscores that the split among Palestinians today is not
between Hamas and Fatah, nor between "extremist" or "moderate," or
"Islamist" or "secular," but between the minority who have cast their
lot in with the enemy as collaborators on the one hand, and those who
uphold the right and duty to resist on the other.
Israeli leaders, at least, are crystal clear about what they
expect from their Palestinian servants. Ephraim Sneh, until recently
deputy defense minister, expresses the consensus view of the Israeli
establishment:
"The most urgent and important mission for Israel at this time is
preventing a Hamas takeover of the West Bank. It is possible to do
this by weakening Hamas through visible diplomatic progress; helping
the effective and successful functioning of Palestinian Prime
Minister Salam Fayad's government; and the creation of conditions for
the total failure of the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip" ("How to
stop Hamas," Haaretz, 17 July 2007).
Sneh makes clear that "in order to emerge victorious, military
campaigns and arrests are not enough -- it is imperative to bring
about [Hamas'] political-public defeat via another
Palestinian element." This element is Fatah. Sneh lists a number of
measures designed to achieve this, including employing more
Palestinians as low-wage laborers in the Israeli economy, releasing
Fatah prisoners and giving back Palestinian tax money stolen by
Israel -- but says absolutely nothing about stopping the construction
of Jewish-only Israeli colonies, ending military occupation and
abrogating racist laws and practices. With characteristic vagueness
he only asserts that "it is necessary to embark on a discussion with
the Palestinian president about the principles of the permanent
status agreement." Fourteen years after Oslo, this is not likely to
convince too many skeptics.
Since the Oslo accords were signed, Israel has done all it can to
undermine the prospects of Palestinian statehood, consistently
hobbling the Palestinian Authority. What lies behind Israel's
determination to prop up Abbas' quisling leadership? Why not just let
it all collapse and declare victory?
Israeli leaders know that shoring up support for an ethnic "Jewish
state" depends on concealing the reality that Jews are no longer the
majority population in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- the
territory controlled by the Israeli state. Israel needs the fig leaf
of a Palestinian sovereign to take millions of Palestinians off its
books, the way apartheid South Africa attempted to deploy the cover
of "independent Black homelands" -- Bantustans -- to prolong white
rule and give it a veneer of legitimacy. If the Palestinian Authority
collapses, Fatah which has no popular base, will collapse with
it.
As for Hamas, it stands at a crossroads. It can survive the
collapse of the Palestinian Authority, but what will it become? It
grew from a segment of Palestinian society -- poor, religiously
mobilized masses, yet it draws much broader support for its
resistance against Israel from Palestinians orphaned by their
turncoat leaders and hungry for a principled alternative. Hamas has
the choice to articulate an agenda that can live up to the
aspirations of Palestinian society in all its diversity, or it can
leap into the traps that are being set for it.
Hamas leaders have made exemplary statements in favor of
pluralism, genuine democracy, and the rule of law, and were rightly
proud of the release of BBC journalist Alan Johnston. But they must
be judged by their actions, and there are discouraging signs. The
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights has reported several cases of
abuse, kidnapping and torture by members of Hamas' Executive Force,
and the death of a prisoner held by Hamas' military wing. It is true
that these incidents do not occur in a vacuum -- Israel and its Fatah
allies continue to engage in far more widespread murder, torture and
kidnapping directed at Hamas members, and Hamas is engaged in a
struggle for survival. But Hamas earned legitimacy by promising to
end the ugly practices of Israeli-backed Fatah militias. It must
fulfill that promise or see its hard-earned support disappear. At the
same time it must begin to articulate a vision for the future that
takes into account the reality of 11 million Israeli Jews and
Palestinians living in a small country. We know what Hamas is
against, but no one is clear what it is for.
Hamas is edging towards accepting a two-state solution just as the
reality is beginning to dawn even on stalwarts of the Oslo peace
process industry that the two-state solution, needed to save Israel
as an enclave of Jewish privilege, is slipping out of reach. As a
two-state solution "is becoming less likely," observes Aaron David
Miller, a 25-year veteran of the State Department and senior Clinton
Administration official at the 2000 Camp David summit, "there is more
talk among Palestinians of a one-state solution -- which of course is
not a solution at all, and which would mean the end of Israel as a
Jewish state." ("Is peace out of reach?," The Los Angeles Times, 15
July 2007).
Haaretz columnist Danny Rubinstein predicts that "sooner or later
Hamas will fail in its war against Israel. But that [doesn't]
mean that there will then be a return to the days of Oslo and the
two-state vision." Rather, he fears, "there will be increasingly
strong demands by Palestinian Arabs, who constitute almost half the
inhabitants of this land, who will say: Under the present conditions
we cannot establish a state of our own, and what remains for us is to
demand civil rights in the country that is our homeland. They will
adopt the slogans of the struggle of the Arabs who are Israeli
citizens, who demand equality and the definition of Israel as a state
of all its citizens." ("Nothing to sell the Palestinians," 16 July
2007). Thus we can see that Abbas is now Israel's last best hope in
the struggle against democracy. Such a pathetic coalition cannot
stand in the way of liberation.
