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One Step Away from Chaos
Isabel Kershner
The radical transformation of Muhammad Dahlan reflects a wider process as Arafat�s Palestinian Authority unravels into potential anarchy
DAYS AFTER THE SIGNING of the October 1998 Wye River Memorandum, a Ha-mas suicide bomber blew up an Israeli army jeep escorting a schoolbus from Kfar Darom, a Jewish settlement in the southern Gaza Strip. One soldier was killed. Col. Muhammad Dahlan, the ambitious and influential head of the Palestinian Authority�s Preventive Security apparatus in Gaza who�d helped negotiate the Wye accord, quickly arrived on the scene and declared that he�d now been given a �good excuse to go after them.� Within hours, his men had rounded up some 200 Gazans suspected of involvement in the Hamas underground.
Two years later, on November 20, another bomb targeted a schoolbus just outside Kfar Darom leaving two adults dead and several young children maimed for life. Only this time, it seems, Dahlan�s own men were behind the attack. Israeli security sources have accused Dahlan�s deputy, Rashid Abu Shabbak, of preparing the bomb. Dahlan�s Preventive Security headquarters were targeted in a retaliatory raid, while the Likud�s Ariel Sharon and others have openly called for Dahlan�s assassination.
It wasn�t so long ago that Dahlan seemed to have the world at his feet. The smart, politically savvy intelligence chief with perfectly coiffed hair and impeccable street credibility had gained the ear of Yasser Arafat, the confidence of Israel and the trust of the United States.
His rise through the ranks was almost meteoric. Dahlan first made a name for himself locally in the early 1980s, as a student. He became one of the founders of the Shabiba, the Fatah youth movement that went on to play a catalyzing role in the first Intifada. After a few stints in Israeli jails, he was deported in 1986 and found his way to PLO headquarters in Tunis. He returned to Gaza with Arafat in 1994, bearing the rank of colonel.
In recent years, as one of Arafat�s inner circle, Dahlan had managed to persuade the PA chief to forgo the Hamas terrorism card in favor of a relationship with Washington. And as that relationship developed, it was Dahlan to whom Washington increasingly turned. Seen as a reliable peace partner, the colonel and his internal security network became a main recipient of CIA funds, training and equipment for the fight against Hamas.
The investment had seemed to be paying off. Terrorism was down. And during the difficult, and ultimately unsuccessful Camp David talks in July aimed at reaching a historic Israeli-Palestinian final status agreement, Dahlan was said to be one of the more pragmatic, accommodating voices on the Palestinian side who�d made a permanent deal seem within reach.
Yet with the outbreak of the new Palestinian intifada, members of Dahlan�s security apparatus in Gaza are said to have played an increasingly active role in carrying out deadly shootings and laying roadside bombs, leaving those who�d invested the most in Dahlan and his outfit smarting.
�These people were meant to be enforcing the agreements with Israel,� one U.S. source fumed. �Shooting at Israeli soldiers wasn�t part of any agreement I ever saw.�
Now Dahlan, whom the Americans hold responsible for the actions of his inferiors, stands in serious danger of getting himself put onto the State Department terrorism list, according to the senior Washington source. And Shlomo Dror, spokesman for the IDF coordinator of activities in the territories, says that if Dahlan continues acting like he is today, an Israeli warrant for his arrest may soon be coming his way.
But the �turning� of Dahlan may signify something far more fundamental and dangerous than a case of one good cop gone bad. Beyond becoming a persona non grata, Dahlan rather personifies a process of internal revolution, the prospect of which horrifies some Palestinian analysts.
�I�d call what we�re seeing now a return to the pre-Oslo legitimacy of the Palestinian political system,� says Khalil Shikaki, a political scientist and director of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research. The mid-1990s saw the creation of a new political set-up, the Palestinian Authority, as the outcome of the peace process, Shikaki explains. With it, the Palestinians were committed to certain principles like the rule of law and elections. The emerging system, which drew its legitimacy from the Oslo Accords, included an elected 88-member Palestinian Legislative Council and institutions such as ministries and security services.
But two other power bases, or �sources of legitimacy� as Shikaki terms them, remained as rivals to the Oslo system: the PLO outside, and the Fatah movement inside the territories whose revolutionary approach to fighting the Israeli occupation had been nurtured by the first intifada.
The erosion of the popular legitimacy of the Oslo system has been steadily underway over the last few years, argues Shikaki. It comes in part as a result of the perceived corruption of PA officials, which surveys showed had lately reached a peak; of the ongoing violations of human rights; of general inefficiency; and also because of the lack of progress in the peace process as it was being felt on the ground.
�It was clear by the beginning of 2000 that the institutions of the PA were no longer supreme,� says Shikaki. �The PLC had almost totally disappeared.�
Arafat has tried to replace that forum with the PLO�s veteran Central Council. The grassroots Fatah movement, meanwhile, had already begun taking up the reins back in late 1998. Fatah first began championing the cause of Palestinian prisoners still languishing in Israeli jails � with all the criticism of the PA that implied. The Al-Nakba riots of May 1999 were orchestrated by Fatah. And when the PA arrested some 30 Bir Zeit University students following the stone-throwing demonstration against Jacques Chirac on campus last February, Shikaki notes, the detainees were released after Fatah presented the authorities with an ultimatum.
With the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada two months ago, the erosion of the PA moved into its final phase. �If the confrontation continues, very little will be left,� states Shikaki. �All the agreements with Israel will be gone, along with the institutions of the PA. And for us, that means anarchy.�
Like Arafat, who heads the PLO, the PA and the Fatah organization alike, Dahlan and his Preventive Security branch are a prime example of the overlapping roles and loyalties that have allowed for such a rapid implosion. Particularly in Gaza, many of those recruited into the service came from the local ranks of Fatah militants who�d distinguished themselves during the original intifada.
Dahlan himself has been wearing his �Fatah hat� increasingly over the past two years. He has sided, for example, with the activists pressuring Arafat on the prisoner issue. The turning point can be traced back to 1998, when, Shikaki says, Benjamin Netanyahu reneged on implementing the Wye accord.
�Now,� says Shikaki, �Dahlan has gone from being the head of a security agency meant to implement agreements with Israel to a Fatah head, fighting what that peace process evolved into.�
As the PA security services either revert to their old sources of legitimacy or begin to disintegrate, Shikaki foresees infighting and the potential for chaos. �All hell could break loose,� he warns.
ANOTHER PROMINENT PALEStinian thinker, Mahdi Abdul Hadi, talks of the �Lebanonization� of Palestinian society. �There is a crisis of leadership on both sides, Israeli and Palestinian,� notes the director of PASSIA, an East Jerusalem think tank. �The culture of fear, uncertainty and mistrust is back.�
During the first intifada, Abdul Hadi notes, each of the Palestinian factions operated on an equal footing, and all were loyal to Tunis. �Today,� he says, �Tunis is here, and loyalty no longer comes first. Interests and needs come first. Anyone can take an initiative, and others will follow. People are reacting on the spur of the moment; there�s no single address, no system.�
Israel�s separation of the Palestinian towns of the West Bank, he argues, has created a �new, unknown, faceless generation of leaders, and nobody knows where they are going.� Each West Bank city and town has its own field commanders � �tens of Marwan Barghoutis,� Abdul Hadi says, referring to the fiery Fatah leader in Ramallah whom the media has credited with almost single-handedly leading the latest uprising.
Yesterday�s �VIPs,� the increasingly wealthy class of Palestinians who�d mostly come from Tunis and who�d personally gained the most from the burgeoning relations with Israel, will likely be the first victims of the new order, analysts note. And the PA�s monopoly over any future negotiations, embodied by these same VIPs, is likely to be over as well.
Abdul Hadi calls for a new conglomeration of forces that would see the Palestinians, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon coming together to broker a comprehensive deal with Israel.
Shikaki, for his part, sees the quick establishment of a Palestinian state as imperative to stop the slide into chaos. �The institution of statehood would create a new Palestinian system with a single source of legitimacy,� he says. �It�s the only way to prevent anarchy descending upon us.�
But whereas Shikaki believed during the first weeks of the new uprising that it might still be possible to return to the negotiating table and salvage a final-status deal, he now considers both the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships too weakened by the events of the past two months to get back to talks. Shikaki, who has been involved in academic �second track� talks with Israel throughout the peace process, sees unilateral steps by both sides, preferably coordinated by a neutral third party, as the last possible way to proceed.
Israel is still hoping against hope that all is not lost. �The fact that we haven�t brought in 60,000 Thai workers to replace the Palestinians who can�t get to work in Israel is a sign that we believe all is not over yet,� says Shlomo Dror. �We still see a possibility of calming the situation, getting back to the negotiating table and rehabilitating the economic ties between us.�
Even Dahlan is �not completely finished yet� in Israel�s eyes, says Dror, though �he�s definitely on the way.� Indeed, in late November, Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter met with Dahlan in Cairo.
But Israel may be finished in Dahlan�s eyes. Oslo brought Dahlan fame, wealth and influence. Israeli sources say that like other Palestinian security agency heads, he�d come to supplement his meager PA budget and income with a �taxation� system on goods moving between Gaza and Israel. And although he�d been increasingly identifying himself with his Fatah roots over the past two years, he wasn�t about to give up on the personal benefits of his PA position too easily.
�Camp David was Dahlan�s last chance to protect all that,� says Shikaki, �and even to make his position grander still. But once that process failed, he understood it was a matter of survival. He was willing to make the sacrifice. He probably learned that lesson from his boss, Arafat. If there�s going to be a revolution, lead it.�
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Palestinian Affairs
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