I've been preparing some updates to my biography of Muhammad Dahlan, former head of the PA Preventive Security Services (PSS) in the Gaza Strip and currently the Fatah MP for Khan Younis, and I am coming away with a strong impression that he is currently engaged in whatever the Palestinian equivalent is of forming an exploratory committee to examine the prospects for a Presidential run.
Shortly after I first uploaded his bio in July 2004, I had some bandwidth issues from a site direct linking to all the images. I went over to read who it was that was so enamoured with the pictures, and it turned out to be a site about Palestinian politics run from Gaza by serving members of the PSS. And they didn't seem to regard Dahlan as their "former" leader at all. The site was essentially a Dahlan personality cult, two-thirds of it devoted to extolling Dahlan's virtues, and the remaining one-third consisting of a series of death threats against anyone who might conceivably stand in his way (and this group was comprised mostly of senior colleagues in Fatah, up to and including Arafat himself).
As far as I can tell, the site was taken down a few months later, perhaps around the time of the death of Arafat. I guess it's poor form to be seen to be agitating for the assassination of the father of your nation when your nation is in the process of burying him.
This time around, I've been looking for updated information on Dahlan, and I'm struck by how far the cult of personality material has progressed. Instead of the violent vitriol of an amateurish-looking PSS hitlist, Dahlan is now being marketed on his own dedicated website: www.dahlan.ps - a technically smooth site that shows Dahlan the statesman pictured with a variety of world leaders, Dahlan the people's choice mobbed by enthusiastic followers etc, and lacks only a catchy phrase along the lines of "Dahlan '08 - For A Stronger America!", to make it into a proper Presidential candidate site.
And if you look at the rallies held in the last couple of weeks by a newly-resurgent Fatah movement, you can't help but notice that in some ways they seem to be as much about asserting Dahlan's primacy vis-a-vis his party colleagues as they are about asserting Fatah's primacy vis-a-vis Hamas. Perhaps in the Gaza Strip you can explain away the focus on the person of Dahlan at Fatah's recent rally, on the grounds that Gaza is after all his home turf:
Palestinian Fatah supporters attend a rally marking the 42nd anniversary of the founding of the group in Gaza City Sunday, Jan. 7, 2007. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)
Palestinian Fatah supporters carry member of Parliament and Fatah leader Mohammed Dahlan, center, during a Fatah rally in Gaza City Sunday Jan. 7, 2007. Tens of thousands of Fatah supporters packed Gaza's main soccer stadium Sunday in a massive show of strength to boost the movement in its increasingly violent struggle against the Islamic militant group Hamas.(AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)
But that doesn't explain the prominence of his image in Fatah's West Bank rallies the following week, and it definitely doesn't explain this:
Palestinians hold a banner showing Palestinian leader President Mahmud Abbas(L), late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat(C) and Fatah MP Mohammed Dahlan during a rally marking the 42nd anniversary of the Fatah movement in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Abbas assured tens of thousands of supporters that he was determined to prevent further factional clashes with rival Hamas after weeks of internecine bloodshed. (AFP/Pedro Ugarte)
Fancy that. Fatah supporters in Ramallah in the West Bank (where Dahlan's popularity is negligible) happen to show up at a party rally with posters celebrating Fatah's past President of the PA, Fatah's present President of the PA... and Muhammad Dahlan. I wonder who thought to distribute those. It's not exactly a spontaneous gesture is it?
I'm sure there are plenty of leading Fatah members who see themselves as potential future presidents, and of course Muhammad Dahlan has as much right to campaign for the position as anyone else. But you have to say that, realistically, Muhammad Dahlan is not the likeliest candidate from the Fatah leadership to make the leap to President.
In the run-up to last year's PLC elections, Birzeit University's Development Studies Programme surveyed the comparative popularity of leading Palestinian politicians within their own parties and among supporters of rival parties. Only three Fatah leaders had support in double figures when Fatah members were asked to choose their preferred party leader - Marwan Barghouthi, Muhammad Dahlan and Saeb Erekat - and Barghouthi was a clear leader with 55% of the vote. And outside the confines of Fatah, Dahlan's crossover appeal was negligible. While Barghouthi enjoyed the unique distinction of being the only leading politician from any party to enjoy a positive approval rating among the members of all Palestinian parties, Dahlan did not appeal to supporters of any party other than his own, and was detested among members of Fatah's main competition, Hamas. Even in Fatah his appeal barely crossed over to the West Bank, with about 90% of his support coming from his native Gaza Strip. So if Dahlan has Presidential plans, his chances of realising them through the electoral process don't look very good.
So if Dahlan's not likely to get voted PA President as long as there's breath in Marwan Barghouthi's body, what are we to make of his grooming himself for office and positioning himself for national leadership? Well, he might not have a lot of votes, but there are some things that Dahlan does have. For example, he has a belief that to be successful in Palestinian politics you have to be willing to use force. He has extremely fervent armed supporters in the Gaza PSS whom he has used to foment disorder in Gaza as a reminder first to Arafat and now to Hamas that without his cooperation Gaza is ungovernable. From the beginning of this month, he also has command of all the PA's security services, reportedly at the request of the U.S. and Israeli administrations, whose confidence he enjoys. And ever since returning to the Occupied Territories at the signing of the Oslo Accords, he has shown evidence of financial resources going well beyond his legitimate means. Taking all those things into consideration, you can't help wondering if Dahlan thinks that there are some things you need more than votes in PA politics, and that perhaps the campaign he is running ends with the presidency, but doesn't necessarily pass through the formality of holding an election.
Related Links:
Dahlan vows to decimate Hamas by Khaled Amayreh; al-Ahram Weekly, 8 June 2006.
Abbas appoints Dahlan general commander of PA security apparatuses; Palestine Information Centre, 6 January 2006.
Birzeit University Development Studies Programme, Poll No.22; October 2005.
