Former Fatah leader in Gaza, Mohammed Dahlan, has lived in exile in the United Arab Emirates for ten years, where he became a successful businessman. Born in the coastal Palestinian enclave, Dahlan is a powerful financial force in Gaza and an influential figure in the wider region: if Hamas fell, could it return to power?
Former Gaza strongman Mohammed Dahlan spent more than a decade in exile in the United Arab Emirates, but rather than fading from attention, he gained a new kind of power as a man of business and advisor to the president. Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan.
Despite his long absence from the Palestinian Territories, Dahlan is still seen as a potential leader in Gaza – if he ever does. Hamas were removed from power.
“Mohammed Dahlan is from Gaza and is one of the heroes of the first Intifada (the Palestinian uprising aimed at ending the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank between 1987 and 1993),” FRANCE 24 said. correspondent in Israel, Stéphane Amar.
“He has the support of Israel and support from the United States – but the question is whether he will be able to impose his power. Multiple options are on the table if Israel succeeds in ousting Hamas from the world. Gaza strip.”
“Dahlan is compatible with Israel,” added Frédéric Encel, professor at Sciences Po in Paris and specialist in United States geopolitics. Middle East. “He was one of the first (Palestinian leaders) to accept the two-state solution and stop calls for violence. »
Dahlan helped negotiate the 1993 Oslo Accords – an aborted peace deal between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization – and participated in talks with Israel while serving in security positions .
But his relationship with Israel did not please all Palestinians, Encel said, and the former leader never achieved the popularity of leading figures such as Marwan Barghouti – nicknamed “the Mandela of Palestine”.
Barghouti (former leader of Tanzim, the paramilitary faction of Fatah founded by Yasser Arafat in 1995) has been imprisoned in Israel for more than 20 years, serving multiple life sentences after being convicted of orchestrating suicide bombings in Israel.
Learn moreCan Marwan Barghouti, the “Palestinian Mandela”, bring peace to Gaza?
Allies and enemies
Dahlan also spent much of the 1980s in Israeli prisons, where he was arrested 11 times for his leadership role in the Palestinian political party, Fatah. During his incarceration in Israel, he learned to speak Hebrew fluently, according to The Economist, published a meeting with the former leader in October.
Although Dahlan does not have the public profile of Barghouti, he has other tactical assets, including his contacts on all sides of the conflict.
Born in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, he grew up alongside many of Hamas’s current leaders before becoming a fierce opponent of the Palestinian Islamist movement. As head of Gaza’s preventive security forces (1994-2002), he was accused of torturing Hamas members.
It has an equally complex relationship with Fatah. Dahlan was the Palestinian Authority’s security adviser when it lost control of the Gaza Strip to Hamas in 2007. A former figurehead of the movement, he faced opposition within of the party, particularly within the inner circle of the president of the Palestinian Authority. Mahmoud Abbas.
Abbas ordered Dahlan’s exile in 2011 after he leveled various accusations against the Gazan politician, including embezzlement and conspiracy. an internal coup against Abbas, which Dahlan denied.
Dahlan was convicted in absentia of corruption by a Palestinian court in 2016.
Learn moreCan the Palestinian Authority rule a post-Hamas Gaza Strip?
An influential network
In exile in the United Arab Emirates, Dahlan reinvented himself as a successful businessman, building an impressive international network of friends in high places. He returned to the role of protégé of the ruler of Abu Dhabi, whom he has known since 1993, and who presented Dahlan in public. like his “brother”.
During his stay in the United Arab Emirates, Dahlan also established relations with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi over a common enemy: the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group of which Hamas is an extension and Palestinian branch.
“The Emirates made Dahlan their subcontractor in the fight against the Muslim Brotherhood,” an anonymous source told a Palestinian journalist. The world in 2017. “Of all the second-generation Palestinian leaders, (Dahlan) is the one with the most contacts in high places in the region. He built a vast network.
The French newspaper revealed in its article that the Palestinian politician became the holder of a Serbian passport gifted by Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic for Dahlan’s “good services” after the United Arab Emirates landed lucrative contracts in this Balkan countries.
Le Monde suggests that Dahlan may also have played a role in the possible delivery of Emirati weapons acquired in the Balkans for military strongman Khalifa Haftar, whose forces dominate eastern Libya.
50 million dollars per year for Gaza
Through the patronage he received in the United Arab Emirates, Dahlan has also developed a business portfolio that allows him to distribute significant aid to Gaza.
In his interview with The Economist, he claimed to have sent around $50 million a year from the United Arab Emirates to Gaza and to have set up a support network for refugee camps in the West Bank.
Dahlan’s good relations with Egypt have enabled significant crossings at the Rafah border, such as in 2015 when Egyptian authorities allowed his wife Jalila to enter Gaza with suitcases full of money for a UAE-funded mass wedding for couples in financial need.
In recent years, Dahlan has used UAE funds to distribute food, student loans and unemployment aid to Gaza, as well as to deliver thousands of Covid vaccines in 2021 – more … than the Palestinian Authority itself.
New Palestinian leadership
Even though he lives abroad, Dahlan remains a powerful figure in Gaza. The UAE is also influential and will have an important role to play when the time comes to rebuild Gaza, Encel said.
“If Hamas is defeated, it is not Qatar – which has close ties with the Islamist group – which will rebuild Gaza. Abu Dhabi holds one of the keys, and if Hamas is destroyed, it will have a say in choosing the successor,” Encel said.
Despite referring to the past Whether he might run for Palestinian leadership, Dahlan denied wanting the role when The Economist asked him in October.
Instead, he advised “a two-year transition period with a technocrat-led administration in Gaza and the West Bank” to reunify Palestine, followed by parliamentary elections open to all parties, including Hamas.
“Hamas will not disappear,” he said, adding that even after the war, governance in Gaza would require working with the militant group.
A newly elected government could be supported by Arab states such as Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, but will also need to be supported by the wider international community, including Israel, did he declare.
Dahlan remains optimistic that such a solution is possible, saying last month’s fighting has reignited discussions around the Palestinian cause, ending a period of “zero hope.”
However, his vision of the Palestinian territories comes into direct conflict with that put forward by Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared on November 6 to the American channel ABC that Israel planned to maintain responsibility for security in Gaza “for an indefinite period“.
“We have seen what happens when we don’t have it,” Netanyahu said. “When we fail to take this responsibility for security, we find ourselves faced with an eruption of terror from Hamas on a scale we could not have imagined.”
This article is an adaptation of original in French.
