On July 9, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced that parliamentary elections would be held on November 28 in the West Bank, east Jerusalem, and Gaza.
If they indeed take place, they will be the first in 20 years.
The last, in 2006, was won by Hamas. They were followed by a violent power struggle with Fatah, culminating in Hamas gaining control of Gaza in 2007.
Ever since, the continuing popularity of Hamas with the Palestinian people has inhibited Abbas, fearful of losing power, from holding elections.
Perhaps it is the Trump peace plan for Gaza, currently being implemented by the Board of Peace and committed to disempowering Hamas, that has encouraged Abbas to try to regain some democratic credibility by approving new elections.
In any event, the announcement has brought Mohammad Dahlan once again to the forefront of the Palestinian political arena.
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Dahlan was born in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in the Gaza Strip in 1961. He joined Fatah’s youth movement as a teenager and was repeatedly imprisoned by Israel.
Following the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, Abbas appointed him head of the Palestinian Preventive Security Service force in Gaza. He became so powerful that the Gaza Strip was nicknamed “Dahlanistan.”
Their relationship subsequently collapsed amid growing fears within Abbas’s camp that Dahlan was being primed by the US to succeed him.
Dahlan was expelled from Fatah in 2011 amid allegations of corruption and involvement in a plot to assassinate Yasser Arafat, allegations he denied.
He went into exile in the United Arab Emirates, where he became an adviser to Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, now UAE president.
By removing Dahlan from Palestinian politics, Abbas unintentionally converted him into a regional political operator who was no longer dependent on the PA.
Over the subsequent decade, Dahlan accumulated regional connections and became an important political operator for Abu Dhabi. He also developed relationships in Egypt and elsewhere and maintained connections with Israeli security figures.
While living in exile in the UAE, Dahlan founded a party called Democratic Reformist Current inside Gaza.
The DRC worked hard to secure a joint alliance with both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and on October 1 an electoral coalition was announced. Palestinian sources say the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine could also join.
Dahlan is attempting a political reentry via Gaza. He is not seeking to govern it personally. He seems to be trying to turn his UAE-backed Fatah dissident network into a bridge between Hamas, other Fatah breakaways, Egypt, the UAE, and the US-led Gaza peace process.
He has proposed what amounts to a political formula for overcoming the Palestinian split. Rather than a contest for control of the PA, he advocates a “national partnership.”
Fatah’s Mohammad Dahlan eyes taking control of the West Bank via Gaza
This would incorporate elections to determine political representation and office, alongside a new constitution or “national social contract” emphasizing popular legitimacy and the peaceful transfer of power.
His proposals are deliberately broad in scope. They give Hamas some say in Palestinian national decision-making; they offer a future Palestinian leadership a language of unity; and they give the UAE, Egypt, and the US a Palestinian figure with Gaza roots who can speak to all the parties involved, including Israel and external sponsors.
His electoral allies have not yet endorsed Dahlan’s plan, but they have not disavowed it either. His involvement places him at the center of the Palestinian political game. He has brought himself closer than ever to a return to Palestinian political leadership.
Moreover, Dahlan seems to have taken on a mediating role – a position he could not have aspired to 10 years ago. He now appears to have channels of communication with Hamas and other Palestinian factions, as well as with the UAE, Egypt, Washington, and parts of the Israeli security establishment.
He will be aware that the Palestinian parliamentary elections could possibly bring to an end the transitional administrative arrangements in Gaza being overseen by the Board of Peace.
The Gaza peace plan, endorsed by the UN Security Council, envisages Gaza moving through a temporary, internationally backed arrangement.
The Board of Peace was established to oversee that transition, while the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza was created as a Palestinian, technocratic, and explicitly apolitical body to administer Gaza’s civil affairs. It is intended to operate until the PA has completed its reform program.
The ultimate objective is therefore not an international administration of Gaza, but the reconstitution of Palestinian government, with Gaza eventually reunited politically with the West Bank.
Nobody has yet formally declared that the November elections are the mechanism by which the Board of Peace will hand Gaza to its eventual government.
But Dahlan’s recent contacts with Hamas and his involvement in discussions over Gaza’s reconstruction appear to fit remarkably well into this political problem.
One possible scenario could see Palestinians participate in national elections and a substantially reformed Palestinian government emerge. Gaza and the West Bank could be brought back under one Palestinian political authority.
In short, the election could become the mechanism through which the old Palestinian political order is replaced, without the Board of Peace itself choosing its successor.
An American- or Arab-appointed Palestinian government taking power in Gaza would be vulnerable to the accusation that it was simply an externally imposed administration. An elected Palestinian legislature producing a new government would have a much stronger claim to legitimacy.
If Dahlan succeeds in bringing Hamas, his DRC, Fatah dissidents, and other Palestinian currents into a workable political arrangement, he would inevitably become central to Gaza’s political future.
The wider issue is whether Dahlan can help construct a bridge between Hamas’s exit from government, international reconstruction, Palestinian elections, and a reformed Palestinian Authority.
If that bridge can be built, the Board of Peace would cease to be merely an international administration imposed upon a devastated territory. It could become temporary scaffolding for building a new Palestinian political system.
Far from simply rebuilding Gaza, Dahlan could therefore play a central role in providing the Gaza Strip with a truly viable and hopeful future.
The writer, a former senior civil servant, is the Middle East correspondent for Eurasia Review. Follow him at: www.a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com