Muhammad Dahlan, Fatah loyalist and former confidant of Yasser Arafat, is not one for grand narratives. He brings things down to eye level:
Mr. Dahlan described a meeting on Wednesday with the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, known as Abu Mazen, of Fatah, and the prime minister, Ismail Haniya, of Hamas. “Abu Mazen asked him, ‘What’s your program? How will you get out of this crisis? What can you tell us?’ And Hamas always says, ‘God will help us.’ Fine. We all believe in God, but politics requires an answer.”
As for Hamas’s attacks on him—well, he’s impervious:
“They say you’re corrupt, or a collaborator or an unbeliever, depending on your luck that day,” he said.
As for longstanding accusations that he used his previous positions to benefit from Palestinian Authority monopolies on oil sales and cement, as well as from building contracts, exit permits and importing goods through the Karni crossing between Israel and Gaza, Mr. Dahlan scoffed.
“Hamas now has all the corruption files,” he said. “I choose silence. If I wear a nice necktie, they say I’m corrupt, and if I take it off, they say it’s false modesty.”
The rest of the Times article from which this is drawn is interesting, too. Solid reporting. Including this tidbit about the “prisoners’ document” written and pushed through by Marwan Barghouti, who’s sitting in jail in Israel (and rumored to be, in addition to a hated terrorist and provocateur [he helped fan the flames of the second intifada in 2000] an Israeli trump card—Middle Eastern politics are…well…byzantine).
“Marwan did a great job in the jail on the document,” Mr. Dahlan said of Mr. Barghouti, getting a senior Hamas prisoner to sign what “is the first document in our lives” that all Palestinian factions managed to negotiate. “I told Abu Mazen, ‘Don’t even read the document, just accept it.’ And Abu Mazen used the document in a good way,” he said, presenting Hamas with a political conundrum. [emphasis added]
The changes in the political landscape in Israel and Palestine in the last 18 months are staggering: Arafat died. Sharon faced reality, pulled out of Gaza, turned on Likud, formed Kadima, and exited the stage with a massive stroke. Hamas, against all expectations, won power. Abbas, also against all expectations, has held on to some power. In Israel, Ehud Olmert hasn’t garnered any world criticism (that made any impression). Hamas and Fatah are trying to find a way to resolve their differences without more bloodshed, and Hamas has said it will try to stop Palestinians from firing rockets into Israel from Gaza.
Things looked to have changed. Let us hope that the rhetoric outside the Middle East takes account of the changes on the ground there.
