PA presidency: Can Dahlan beat Abbas?

It would be a mistake to believe that this is anything less than a life or death battle for both men. People are already calling it the “mother of all battles.” You either take it all or lose everything. The winner will become president. He will be met as a head of state in every country he visits. Huge sums of money will be in his hands and he will be remembered as the president of the Palestinian people.

The loser will have nothing. He will be prosecuted for corruption, arrested, thrown in jail, and have all his money confiscated like what previously happened with Dahlan.

The man with bold Palestinian features, as Dahlan is described by his admirers, is younger and tougher than his rival and is already making allies abroad. Dahlan is famous for two things. First, he was one of the founders of Sokour Fatah in Gaza before 1981. Second, he, along with his colleague Jibril al-Rajjoub, were head of the notorious Palestinian Preventive Security Services, which was formed after the Oslo agreement in the 1990s.

Dahlan’s cruelty against his opponents and his oppressive control of the Gaza Strip established five main issues. He is deeply loved by Fatah partisans, who always dreamt of a strong man like him. Gaza under his rule was called “Dahlanistan” in both domestic and foreign media. He was the one who stood up in the Palestinian Legislative Council to attack Hamas and its leadership. Later, he appeared in a video in the street shouting, “they want to shoot me, let them shoot. I am here in the street standing in their way and unafraid.”

The second issue is that the US, and even Israel are convinced that he could be a shield against the expansion of Islamist movements, such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and takfiri groups. Third, he has an outstanding image, compared to other Fatah leaders, because he was the only one to stand up to Yasser Arafat and lived to tell about it. Since 2001 he began to publicly criticize Arafat’s policies. He openly rejected the appointment of Arafat’s nephew, Moussa Arafat, as head of the police in Gaza in 2002 and even joined demonstrations protesting his appointment.

The fourth issue is Dahlan’s finances. The Mintar Crossing scandal revealed that he funneled 40 percent of the crossing’s revenue ($290 thousand per month) into his personal accounts. This was done on a daily basis from 1997 and continued until his resignation from his position as head of security in Gaza. He has enough money to achieve his political goals and finance his supporters without having to beg for money from foreign countries.

Fifth, Dahlan has great relationships with everyone who can get him into power. He opposed them all, Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, Hamas, Hosni Mubarak’s regime in Egypt, and even Israel. But he always managed to survive and remain unscathed. His links with Israel are deep and go back to his days in Gaza, and include ties with Amnon Shahak from the Israeli army and Yaakov Perry from the Mossad. He has met all US secretaries of state of his time and his relationship with German Chancellor Angela Merkel is exemplary. He is also efficient on the Arab level, and has a good relationship with Egyptian strongman Abdul-Fattah al-Sisi. Recently, his old nemesis Hamas asked for his help in mending the party’s troubled relationship with Egypt. Other Arab countries, despite the cold appearances in public, give him a warm reception every time he visits, like Qatar and the UAE where he has business ties.

“Look at my face. It is not Middle Eastern. My face is Palestine,” Dahlan once told a European journalist, when she asked him about his Middle Eastern features.

Many underestimated Abbas’ ability to compete and he had never been considered a candidate to succeed Arafat. However, his pragmatism and his incredible rise to power makes him the man to beat in Fatah today and in the future. He defeated big figures like Ahmed Qurei, whom he defeated in the Fatah Central Committee elections in 2009. He expelled Intisar al-Wazir, Abu Jihad al-Wazir’s widow, from the council that same year. This is in addition to directly (or indirectly) getting rid of Farouk al-Qaddoumi, Arafat’s most prominent heir.

Abbas’ power stems from several sources. Perhaps the most notable is his knowledge of the regional political terrain. He has decades of experience in addition to dealing with most of the global game players, big and small. This plays into Abbas’ favor. It is said that he met former US President George W. Bush while George Bush Sr. was visited and got to know him.

The president does not want to return to Safad, where he was born, except as a visitor, according to recent statements. He does not want the Zionist entity to bear the burden of returnees. “Armed struggle destroyed enough. It has to stop,” he told London-based newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat. But he knows such statements are what’s keeping him as the head of the PNA and will continue to do so because his opponent is not proficient in that field yet.

Even if Dahlan knows how to play the spy game and sees what’s under the table, Abbas remains the master of a direct show of force. Quickly and decisively, he disposed of all his opponents within Fatah. The 2009 central committee elections gave him control over the movement and he got rid of his opponents and enemies. He brought in 14 new faces to the committee and only kept four from the old guard.

Another point in Abbas’ favor is that he was able to use Dahlan personally, even to spearhead his struggle with Arafat in 2003. He exploited the situation with all his power, but denied being behind it. On the contrary, the burden was laid on Dahlan and he avoided angering Arafat directly. Although Arafat did not like him, he kept saying he was “the best of the bad choices,” as quoted by Der Spiegel at the time, although he never confirmed or denied making this statement.

The two men are competing, which seems to be healthy. It may seem that the Europeans believe this to be normal democratic competition. However, nothing is normal in Palestine. There is no real power for the two men to actually compete over. The land is controlled by the Zionist army. The number of security forces is smaller than the police’s and they do not possess any actual weapons. Half of the PNA’s territories, namely the Gaza Strip, is controlled by Hamas, which rules unilaterally. What are they competing for then? There are three answers: money, influence, and personal glory. As for Palestine, it only has God.