Key Israel ally
•July 2004 – “This weekend a string of high profile kidnappings and fighting…”
•April 2003 – “Dahlan says he will disarm other militias by force if necessary”, and so on.
Johnson was captured on 12 March 2007 by the Dogmush clan, another fearsome tribe that had been allowed to run wild while Dahlan was head of security in Gaza under Arafat and then Abbas.
The reasoning behind the kidnap, at a time when Hamas looked certain to beat Dahlan, seems to have been an excuse to bring in international – i.e. Israeli – forces against Hamas, who had been fighting Dahlan as part of their mission to unify security, agreed as part of the coalition settlement.
Dahlan was supposed to slot into the Hamas parliamentary chain of command, but that was never going to happen after Israel, which preferred Gaza split, unstable, corrupt and divided, gave him a boatload of arms, and in the end the fighting became very bloody, but Hamas “won”.
Dahlan fled to the West Bank, where he was found a job in Tony Blair's reorganizations, but that spelt the end of any Hamas input there, as a wave of arrests of Hamas activists by Abbas, and Hamas MPs by Israel, took place
Palestinian reconciliation
So, the removal of “Dangerous Dahlan” is bravery by Abbas beyond what I would have considered possible. Does that make Abbas weak or strong? The BBC says that he is under pressure, which he is, but I see this as poke in the eye for Israel, and a statement of independence on the part of Abbas.
In Israeli eyes, Abbas has been behaving strangely lately: he has refused to obey Israel slavishly, he insists on the settlement ban, and by removing Dahlan he may actually be clearing the way for a dialogue with Hamas. Thus, as with Arafat, Israel would want to get rid of him, so the coup charge against Dahlan looks realistic. And therefore getting rid of Dahlan is very brave, and a smack in the teeth for Netanyahu, isn't it? Well, I've always been a glass-half-full man, because otherwise I would have to cut my wrists. The situation is so depressing, so let us look at the picture in the round.
Abbas had not folded in his demand for a settlement moratorium – he has a plan B (declare an independent state of Palestine) to go forward diplomatically in the face of Israeli intransigence which is meeting with some success, and he has just got rid of the one man that Hamas would want him to, opening the way for genuine dialogue. He is now in a position where he can be a little bit generous to Hamas, even if Israel will portray that as weakness. A united front will be important to get a first ever Security Council resolution against Israel's brutality, and then the Gaza boats will be on the seas again in May, again with a powerful Turkish presence, making it hard for Israel to sustain the Gaza blockade and depriving its claim to peace of any credibility.
Obama doesn't have to do anything, he just has to sit on his hands, and let it all happen. I think Abbas thinks he can actually achieve something, and I hope he's right.
River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian
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