Anatomy of a
traitor
Who is Mohammad Dahlan?By Arjan El Fassed
The Electronic Intifada, 20 December 2006
Some have called Mohammad Dahlan the Palestinian Ahmad Chalabi,
because he reportedly negotiated with the US and Israel about taking
control of Gaza after the August 2005 disengagement plan. In April
2002 testifying before the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense
Committee, Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said he had offered
control of the Gaza Strip to Dahlan. In exchange, Dahlan, who had
control of the most significant military force on the Gaza Strip,
would be obligated to ensure complete quiet along the
border.[1] He is believed to have drawn up an early agreement
at a January 1994 meeting in Rome with senior Israeli military and
Shin Bet officials to contain Hamas, and was actively involved in
subsequent negotiations with the Israelis.[2]
Today, Dahlan has become the face of one side of Fatah as violence
increased between Hamas and Fatah. In the past week he has made his
way back into Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas' inner
circle. Last week, Hamas accused Dahlan of planning an attempted
assassination of prime minister Ismail Haniya of the Hamas movement.
Haniya was returning from a Middle East tour which raised badly
needed funds for Palestinians under occupation, and obtained a
promise from the Syrian government to release all Palestinians in its
jails, when chaos ensued. The situation at the Egypt-Gaza border
crossing was tense as it had not been open long enough for the
thousands of people waiting on both sides to pass. The Israelis
closed the border when Haniya first tried to enter as he was bringing
in funds, prohibited under the US-led economic and political blockade
imposed after Hamas won the parliamentary elections in
January.
Dahlan began a tour of Palestinian towns this week to rally
support for Fatah, but it was not a spectacular success. On December
17, while Dahlan toured Jenin refugee camp, gunmen fired in the air
over his convoy, shouting at him until he made a hasty exit. He
blamed Hamas for sparking the killing of three children in Gaza City
and said that Hamas "does not have any political program, leaving the
Palestinian people in the predicament they have lived through since
this government took responsibility."
Meanwhile the United States has accelerated its arms transfers to
Fatah, via Israel. Dahlan is now in command of the armed campaign
against Hamas from presidential headquarters in Ramallah.
Dahlan was a founding member of Shabiba, the youth association of
Fatah. In 1994, Dahlan headed the notorious Preventive Security
Forces in Gaza. He is known to have good connections with the
Egyptian leadership and the US administration, through his
connections with the CIA. Dahlan built up a force of at least 20,000
men and received help from CIA officials to train them. Jibril
Rajoub, another Fatah strongman, is Dahlan's sworn rival. Dahlan and
Rajoub were both jailed by Israel during the first Intifada. Under
Oslo they became heads of the Preventive Security Services in Gaza
and the West Bank respectively. At that time they were both viewed as
pragmatists, representative of a new generation of Palestinians who
could live with Israel.
Both Dahlan and Rajoub were implicated in financial scandals and
human rights violations. Dahlan worked together with Israeli
authorities to crack down on opposition groups, most notably Hamas,
arresting thousands of members. Dahlan was in command when his
Preventive Security Forces arbitrary arrest hundreds of Palestinians.
The first violent clashes between his forces and demonstrators
erupted on November 18, 1994.The toll of at least fifteen dead and
hundreds wounded raised troubling questions about his
troops.
Throughout the years, Dahlan's forces were involved in acts of
violence and intimidation against critics, journalists and members of
opposition groups, primarily from Hamas, imprisoning them without
formal charges for weeks or months at a time. A number of prisoners
died under suspicious circumstances during or after interrogation by
Dahlan's forces.[3]
In 1996, Dahlan's troops were involved in mass arbitrary arrests
of opponents of Fatah. In the aftermath of the February-March suicide
bombings in Israel, an estimated 2,000 people were rounded up, often
arbitrarily. Most of those detained were never charged with a
criminal offense or put on trial. Torture and ill-treatment by his
forces occurred regularly during interrogation and led to a number of
deaths.
|
Dahlan frequently meets high profile
members of the
Israeli military establishment, including former Defense
Minister and former Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz.
|
In 2000, Dahlan participated in the Camp David negotiations and
Israeli leaders saw him as someone they could do business with. As
head of one of the main Palestinian security organisations, Mr Dahlan
also negotiated with Israeli officials to try to arrange a ceasefire
several times after the most recent Intifada erupted in September
2000. With the beginning of the second intifada, Dahlan claimed that
he was unable to stop the activities of such militant groups as
Hamas.
In 2001 he angered the late Palestinian president Yasir Arafat by
expressing his dissatisfaction over the lack of a coherent policy
during the current uprising. Dahlan resigned in June 2002 over
disagreements with Arafat to reform the Palestinian Authority. He
attempted to gather support for an electoral challenge to Arafat, but
stopped, when the Bush administration demanded a change in PA
leadership in July of the same year. Before his resignation from the
PA in June 2002, Dahlan was a frequent member on negotiating teams
for security issues.
In March and April 2002, Dahlan was one of the "Gang of Five" who
lead the PA during the siege of Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah.
Although Arafat retained power and named Dahlan as National Security
Advisor in July 2002, Dahlan resigned three months later complaining
of lack of authority and organization in the Palestinian Authority.
Against Arafat's wishes, Mahmoud Abbas, then serving as prime
minister, appointed Dahlan as Interior Minister, but when Abbas
resigned, Dahlan was left outside the newly formed cabinet.
After being left out of the new Palestinian Authority cabinet,
Dahlan began gathering support from low-level Fatah officials and
former Preventive Security Service officers in response to a
perceived lack of democratic reforms among Fatah leaders.
In 2004, Dahlan was the driving force behind week-long unrests in
Gaza following the appointment of Yasser Arafat's nephew Mousa
Arafat, widely accused of corruption, as head of Gaza police forces.
Some thought this appointmnt was a deliberate step to weaken Dahlan's
position before the disengagement process in the Gaza Strip and
sparked massive protests.
Dahlan returned to the political forefront and security arena this
week. He appeared in a meeting with US Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice in Jericho, and meetings with the European Union's Javier Solana
and the German Foreign Affairs Minister. It seems that for whatever
reason, world leaders think Dahlan is the right person for them to
deal with.
Footnotes
[1] Ha'aretz,
Gideon Alon (30 Apr 2002)
[2] Middle
East International, 520.
[3] Annual reports of Palestinian
Independent Commission for Citizens' Rights (PICCR); various
reports from Addameer,
PCHR and LAW;
Palestinian
Self-Rule Areas: Human Rights under the Palestinian Authority,
Human Rights Watch (September 1997); Annual reports Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch (1994,
1995,
1996).
