Loading ...Exiled Palestinian leader calls Abbas reign ‘a failure’
By Hazem Balousha and William Booth
The Washington Post
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — The President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas will turn 81 in a couple of months. His critics say he is clinging to power. His supporters see an indispensable man. Abbas tells foreign visitors he is weary.
The Palestinian leader’s elected term in office was scheduled to end seven years ago. Yet on Abbas goes, presiding over a stalemate with the Jewish state; fighting with the Islamist movement Hamas; and trying to manage a status quo that American diplomats call unsustainable and Palestinians call apartheid: the 48-year Israeli military occupation.
Quietly, but cognizant of the political life span of any one leader, Palestinian politicians are jockeying for the top job.
One of a handful of names on a short list to succeed Abbas is Mohammed Dahlan, the 53-year-old former chief of security in Gaza and protege of Yasser Arafat, who lives in exile in the United Arab Emirates.
Viewed as an arch rival to Abbas, Dahlan was kicked out of the Fatah political party, which Abbas leads, in 2011, accused of corruption and defamation, charges he denies. From his perch in the oil-rich gulf, Dahlan plots his comeback.
Dahlan has friends in high places, who can write big checks to charities that support Palestinian causes, that Dahlan helped administer. His detractors say he lacks broad support on the street back home. But he may have enough clout to emerge as a power broker.
Dahlan is close to the Emirates Crown Prince Sheik Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan in Abu Dhabi, who has dispersed $50 million in aid to families needing temporary shelter in the Gaza Strip, where Hamas fought a devastating 50-day war with Israel in 2014.
Dahlan is also friends with Egypt’s ruler, the former top general and now President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, whose regime has kept Gaza’s border with Egypt closed for most of the past year. Both men share a deep dislike of Hamas and its founding organization, the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas has branded Dahlan a spy or an Israeli pawn since he was part of past peace negotiations.
Dahlan recently sat down with The Washington Post at his villa in the high-end neighborhood of Abu Dhabi. He wore designer jeans and a white T-shirt that showed off his gym body. His aides came and went; most have been with Dahlan since his days in Gaza, where he was born.
Dahlan sees the Israel-Palestinian conflict through a lens of personalities, and he blamed Abbas, President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the impasse.
Source: www.washingtonpost.com