10 January 2011 By Khaled Amayreh A Fatah security panel
has been questioning former Fatah strongman Mohamed
Dahlan in connection with allegations that he had been
plotting to overthrow Palestinian Authority (PA)
President Mahmoud Abbas. Dahlan denied
any wrongdoing, blaming the "rumours" on "political
enemies and envious detractors".
Fatah
didn't issue a formal statement on the outcome of the
two-hour questioning session, but unofficial sources
in Ramallah spoke of a "growing estrangement" between
Dahlan and "the presidency institution and those who
call the shots [within Fatah]." According to some Fatah
sources, Dahlan, a member in Fatah's Executive
Committee, has already been stripped of many of his
privileges and denied access to classified
information. It has also been rumoured that he has
been asked to leave the West Bank and make no contacts
with PA security agencies. Moreover, some of
Dahlan's close aides and confidants in the West Bank
have been arrested lately, with money and caches of
mostly light weapons rumoured seized. The interrogation
session with Dahlan left many questions unanswered. It
may have even increased the sense of "bad chemistry"
between the "Dahlan camp" and the Fatah leadership.
Dahlan himself has voiced deep grievances, telling
reporters in Ramallah a few hours after the
questioning session that, "I feel hounded and
persecuted." "I will be patient with Fatah as I have
been patient with Hamas. The problem is that many
people would prefer to believe rumours, not the
truth." Fatah-PA interrogators
reportedly confronted Dahlan with a secretly recorded
conversation in the northern West Bank in which he
told supporters, "I made Abbas. I enabled him to reach
the status and stature he has now. I enabled him to
travel all over the world to promote and expedite his
sons' business." Dahlan argued his
remarks were merely a slip of the tongue and that he
didn't harbour any vindictiveness or ill will towards
Abbas and his family. He also claimed that "certain
detractors" were poisoning his relations with Abbas by
resorting to rumours, innuendoes and lies. About two months ago, it
was reported that Dahlan was part of a group that
intended to have Abbas replaced by
Nasser Al-Qidwa, a nephew of the late
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. For
the time being, Dahlan is being questioned with
regards to alleged attempts to destabilise the
authority of Abbas, whose term in office has long
expired. Dahlan may be feeling
that he is a scapegoat for Fatah blunders, especially
during the period in which he was most prominent, and
that was defined by rampant corruption, haphazard
governance, and autocratic decision-making. In
1994-2000, Dahlan was Gaza's strongman as head of the
Preventive Security Forces. With a large number of
cronies and hangers-on, Dahlan presided over a regime
of routine political abuse, security repression and
financial corruption. In May 1997, during the
height of Dahlan's lordship in Gaza, David Hirst wrote
an article in The Guardian, entitled "Shameless
in Gaza". He quoted one of Gaza's merchant princes, a
former Fatah fighter himself, as saying: "We live in
amazing, shameful times, but you should know that
every revolution has its fighters, thinkers and
profiteers. Our fighters have been killed, our
thinkers assassinated, and all we have left are the
profiteers. These don't think even primarily of the
cause, they don't think about it at all. They know
that they are just transients here, as they were in
Tunis, and, as with any regime whose end is near, they
think only of profiting from it while they can." Dahlan was not solely
responsible for the wanton flaws of the Arafat era,
but there is no denying his power and influence at
this time. Dahlan denies any wrongdoing. He complains,
"They are claiming I have embezzled tens of millions
or hundreds of millions of dollars. Where are they?"
But in the words of a neighbour, Dahlan, who was
hardly able to buy a pack of cigarettes prior to the
Oslo
Accords, has become rich. The question
imposes itself: How? Some of Dahlan's
loyalists and supporters -- and they are many,
especially in the
Gaza
Strip, his natural power base -- insist
that the onus of proof lies with his accusers who
should provide irrefutable evidence to back
allegations of corruption. However, this is unlikely
to be possible, given the murky atmosphere in which
the PA, a non-state entity with little oversight,
operates. For the time being, Dahlan is asking why he
is being singled out. Aside from allegations
of plotting to overthrow Abbas, Dahlan probably should
be investigated for his role in events that led to the
rift with Hamas and the brief but bloody strife in
Gaza in the summer of 2007. Dahlan is widely believed
to have connived and colluded with the Americans and
Israelis to destabilise Hamas, planning a coup attempt
against its elected government in Gaza. Hamas
responded by pre-empting the attempt and taking over
Gaza by force. Khalid Amayreh is a journalist living
in Palestine. He obtained his MA in journalism from
the University of Southern Illinois in 1983. Since the
1990s, Mr. Amayreh has been working and writing for
several news outlets among which is Aljazeera.net, Al-Ahram
Weekly, Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), and
Middle East International. This articles and several
writings of Mr. Amayreh available at The Palestinian
Information Center via
https://english.palinfo.com
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