Breaking
... for openness and credibility....
- MENU
... for openness and credibility....
A controversial former security official and Abu Dhabi-based political operator, Mohammed Dahlan, has lurked for several years in the shadows of Palestinian politics. Now, he could emerge as a monkey wrench in an attempt to pave the way for US president Donald J. Trump’s much maligned ‘deal of the century’ to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
President Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestine Authority, and Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip, have condemned the proposed, yet to be published deal and boycotted a conference in Bahrain in June organized by Jared Kushner, Trump’s negotiator and son-in-law, that focussed on economic aspects of the proposal.
The Palestinian boycott followed Abbas’ earlier rejection of the United States as a mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after the Trump administration recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, cut off funding and closed down the Palestinian representation in Washington. Trump has since recognized the occupied Syrian Golan Heights as part of Israel.
Kushner unveiled at the conference, attended by government officials and businessmen from the Gulf, the United States, Europe and Asia, a US$50 billion investment plan, US$28 billion of which would be earmarked for the creation of Palestinian jobs and reduction of poverty.
The Trump administration has said it would release political details of the peace plan only after the September 17 Israeli election so that it does not become an issue in what appears to be a tight electoral race between prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud and former military chief Benny Gantz’s Blue and White.
Saudi and United Arab Emirates crown princes, Mohammed bin Salman and Mohammed bin Zayed, have quietly sought to support the US peace effort that in Kushner’s words will deviate from the 2002 Arab peace plan by not calling for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Dahlan, who is believed to be close to the UAE’s Prince Mohammed as well as former Israeli defence minister Avigdor Lieberman, has played an important role in that effort, particularly with regard to UAE efforts to clip Hamas’ wings.
Dahlan went into exile in the UAE in 2007 after Hamas defeated his US-backed efforts to thwart the group’s control in Gaza. US President George W. Bush described Dahlan at the time as “our boy.” Dahlan has since been indicted by Abbas’ Palestine Authority on corruption charges. In his latest move, Dahlan is reported to be considering establishment of a long muted political party, a move that would enjoy UAE and Egyptian support but could divide his following in Gaza.
Some of Dahlan’s supporters in the Democratic Reform Current that remains part of Abbas’ Al Fatah movement, argued in the past that a party would further fragment the Palestinian political landscape. The revived talk of a party appears to be fuelled by Israel’s facilitation of hundreds of millions of US dollars in Qatari support for Gaza’s health and education services as well as reconstruction.
Qatar, with its close ties to various Islamist movements, has long supported Hamas, while Prince Mohammed’s visceral opposition to any expression of political Islam has pitted the UAE against the movement.
The two states’ diametrically opposed views of political Islam lie at the core of the rift in the Gulf with the UAE alongside Saudi Arabia leading a more than two-year-old diplomatic and economic boycott of Qatar. The revived talk follows a failed 2017 effort to negotiate Dahlan’s return to Gaza in talks between Hamas, representatives of Egyptian intelligence, and the Palestinian politician.
The deal would have involved Hamas sharing power with Dahlan in exchange for a loosening of the Israeli-Egyptian economic stranglehold on the impoverished Gaza Strip at a time that Abbas was refusing to pay salaries of Gazan civil servants and Israel was reducing electricity supplies in a bid to force Hamas’ hand.
The talk of Dahlan making a political move comes against the backdrop of a broader, sustained UAE-Saudi effort to facilitate the US peace plan, despite the two states’ official insistence that East Jerusalem should be the capital of an independent Palestinian state, and counter manoeuvring in Palestine by Qatar and its, ally Turkey.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE sought to weaken Turkish efforts to exploit opposition to. Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem to bolster its claim to leadership of the Muslim world and weaken Jordan’s role as the custodian of the Haram esh-Sharif in the city that is home to the Al Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third most holy site.
Speaking earlier this year to an Arab media outlet believed to be close to Qatar, Kamal Khatib, an Israeli Palestinian Islamist leader, asserted that Dahlan, working through local businessmen, had unsuccessfully tried to acquire real estate adjacent to the holy site, known to Jews as the Temple Mount where Judaism’s two ancient temples once stood.
With approximately half of its population of Palestinian descent, Jordan has walked a tight rope balancing its reluctance to endorse the Trump administration’s approach to Israeli-Palestinian peace-making with its complex ties to the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
Unlike Jordan, the UAE and Saudi Arabia are not shackled by Palestinian demographics but need to tread carefully in supporting an initiative that is widely believed to be designed to deprive Palestinians of independent statehood because of domestic public sentiment and fears that it would backfire and strengthen Hamas.
A formal re-entry into Palestinian politics by Dahlan could help resolve the UAE and Saudi dilemma that is accentuated by concern that too much pressure on Abbas to reverse his rejection of US mediation could boost Hamas with its ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Said one Gulf official: “We are trying to strike a delicate balance. The key in doing so is to strengthen moderates, not extremists,” the official’s code word for Hamas and other Islamists.
Note: This article was originally published in the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer and has been reproduced under arrangement. Web link
As part of its editorial policy, the MEI@ND standardizes spelling and date formats to make the text uniformly accessible and stylistically consistent. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views/positions of the MEI@ND. Editor, MEI@ND: P R Kumaraswamy
James M. Dorsey is a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies as Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, co-director of the Institute of Fan Culture of the University of Würzburg, and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer. Email: jmdorsey@questfze.com
The final run-up to the 2022 World Cup and the tournament's management is make-it-or-break-it ti.....
Former Qatari emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the father of the Gulf state's current ruler, Tam.....
The Biden administration is mulling whether to grant Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sovereig.....
Qatar's 2022 World Cup promises to benefit not only itself but also to provide an unintended eco.....
A potential revival of the Iran nuclear accord is likely to test the sustainability of Middle Easter.....
With the fate hanging in the balance of the 2015 international agreement that curbed Iran’s nu.....
At first glance, there is little that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an Islamist and nation.....
Europe is likely to shoulder the brunt of the fallout of a rapidly escalating crisis over Ukraine. M.....
An Israeli NGO gives the United Arab Emirates high marks for mandating schoolbooks that teach tolera.....
How sustainable is Middle Eastern détente? That is the $64,000 question. The answer is probab.....
Qatar has begun to cleanse its schoolbooks of supremacist, racist or derogatory references as well a.....
Long banned, Christmas has finally, at least tacitly, arrived in Saudi Arabia; just don’t use .....
Increasingly, compliance with US sanctions against Iran could emerge as a litmus test of the United .....
Footballers with diametrically opposed views on homosexuality and alcohol consumption have sparked h.....
Saudi Islamic affairs minister Abdullatif bin Abdulaziz al-Sheikh has ordered imams in the kingdom t.....
The United States has signalled in advance of next week’s Summit for Democracy that it is unli.....
A cursory look at Saudi Arabia and Iran suggests that emphasizing human rights in US foreign policy .....
When seven-time Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton wore a helmet this weekend featuring the c.....
It has been a good week for United Arab Emirates Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed. Headline-grabbing,.....
Just in case there were any doubts, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu demonstrated with his .....
Sudan is the exception to the rule in the United Arab Emirates’ counterrevolutionary playbook......
Former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki AlFaisal Al Saud must have gotten his tenses mixed up w.....
An Indonesian promise to work with the United Arab Emirates to promote ‘moderate’ Islam .....
As Middle Eastern states attempt to manage their political and security differences, Muslim-majority.....
The future of US engagement in the Middle East hangs in the balance. Two decades of forever war in A.....
It may not have been planned or coordinated but efforts by Middle Eastern states to dial down tensio.....
Gulf States are in a pickle. They fear that the emerging parameters of a reconfigured US commitment .....
Two separate developments involving improved relations between Sunni and Shiite Muslims and women&rs.....
On their way from Tel Aviv airport to Jerusalem in 1977 then Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Yigael Ya.....
Saudi and Emirati efforts to define ‘moderate’ Islam as socially more liberal while bein.....
Turkish state-run television appears to have not gotten the message: Turkey and the United Arab Emir.....
The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan perpetuates a paradigm of failed governance in the Muslim world .....
Israel’s first post-Netanyahu government is seeking to rebuild fractured relations with the Je.....
Taliban advances in Afghanistan shift the Central Asian playing field on which China, India and the .....
Boasting an almost 1,000-kilometre border with Iran and a history of troubled relations between the .....
This month’s indictment of a billionaire, one-time advisor and close associate of former US Pr.....
A recent analysis of Middle Eastern states’ interventionist policies suggests that misguided b.....
The United States and Iran seem to be hardening their positions in advance of a resumption of negoti.....
A recent unprecedented alliance between Muslims and Evangelicals takes on added significance in a wo.....
China may have no short-term interest in contributing to guaranteeing security in parts of a swath o.....
The rise of hard-line President-elect Ebrahim Raisi has prompted some analysts to counterintuitively.....
US President Joe Biden may have little appetite for Israeli-Palestinian peace making but seems deter.....
Recent announcements by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of plans to turn the kingdom into a transpo.....
Saudi Arabia has stepped up efforts to outflank the United Arab Emirates and Qatar as the Gulf&rsquo.....
Eager to enhance its negotiating leverage with the United States and Europe, Iran is projecting immi.....
Former Crown Prince Hamzah bin Hussein has papered over a rare public dispute in the ruling Jordania.....
Former Crown Prince Hamzah bin Hussein has papered over a rare public dispute in the ruling Jordania.....
In a sign of the times, Turkish schoolbooks have replaced Saudi texts as the bull’s eye of cri.....
Saudi Sheikh Salman al-Awdah, a popular but controversial religious scholar who has been mostly in s.....
Recent clashes in the Iranian province of Sistan and Balochistan highlight Iran’s vulnerabilit.....
Two decades of snail pace revisions of Saudi schoolbooks aimed at removing supremacist references to.....
A little acknowledged provision of the 2015 international agreement that curbed Iran’s nuclear.....
Religion scholar Esra Ozyurek has a knack for identifying trends that ring warning bells about where.....
A projected sharp reduction in trade between the United States and China in the next two years coupl.....
Public debates about China’s Middle East policy are as much internal Chinese discussions as th.....
Saudi Arabia has taken multiple steps to polish its tarnished image in advance of this weekend&rsquo.....
An Emirati offer to invest in Israel’s most controversial soccer club could serve as a figurat.....
A close read of the agreement between the United Arab Emirates and Israel suggests that the Jewish s.....
A rift between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia throws into sharp relief deepening fissures in the Muslim w.....
Rare polling of public opinion in Saudi Arabia suggests that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman may be.....
China is contemplating greater political engagement in the Middle East in what would constitute a br.....
Europe is progressively being sucked into the Middle East and North Africa’s myriad conflicts......
China looms large as a potentially key player alongside Russia and Iran in President Bashas al-Assad.....
Civilizationalist leaders, who seek religious legitimacy, cater to a religious support base or initi.....
A decision by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and non-OPEC producers like R.....
The Coronavirus pandemic points a finger not only at the colossal global collapse of responsible pub.....
Syria’s announcement of its first COVID-19 case highlights the public health threat posed by w.....
The fight in this week’s Democratic primaries may have been about who confronts Donald J. Trum.....
A podcast version of this story is available on Sound cloud, ITunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Tune In, Spe.....
Saudi Arabia may have been getting more than it bargained for when authorities in Khujand, Tajikista.....
At the core of US president Donald J. Trump’s maximum pressure campaign against Iran lies the .....
The Iranian port city of Bandar-e-Mahshahr has emerged as the scene of some of the worst violence in.....
Saudi efforts to negotiate an end to the Yemen war in a bid to open a dialogue with Iran could call .....
China is manoeuvring to avoid being sucked into the Middle East’s numerous disputes amid mount.....
Fears of a potential military conflict with Iran may have opened the door to a Saudi-Iranian dialogu.....
By the law of unintended consequences, US President Donald J. Trump’s mix of uncritical and cy.....
Little suggests that fabulously wealthy Gulf States and their Middle Eastern and North African benef.....
Russia, backed by China, hoping to exploit mounting doubts in the Gulf about the reliability of the .....
China and Russia are as much allies as they are rivals. A joint Tajik-Chinese military exercise in a.....
Thought that sectarianism was a pillar of the Saud Iranian rivalry? Think again, think Kashmir where.....
These are tough times for Saudi Arabia. The drama enveloping the killing of journalist Jamal Khas.....
Saudi plans to become a major gas exporter within a decade raise questions about what the .....
A Turkish-Chinese spat as a result of Turkish criticism of China’s crackdown on Turkic Mu.....
This week’s suicide attack on Revolutionary Guards in Iran’s south-eastern province of S.....
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s three-nation tour of Asia is as much about demonstrat.....
It may be reading tea leaves but analysis of the walk-up to Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman&r.....
Alarm bells went off last September in Washington's corridors of power when John Bolton&rsq.....
US President Donald J. Trump’s threat to devastate Turkey’s economy if Turkish troo.....
Pakistan is traversing minefields as it concludes agreements on investment, balance of payments supp.....
A heavy soup made of pulled noodles, meat, and vegetables symbolizes Central Asia’s close cult.....
As far as Gulf leaders are concerned, President Donald J. Trump demonstrated with his announced.....
When President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently declared that Turkey was “the only country that c.....
A draft US Senate resolution describing Saudi policy in the Middle East as a "wrecking ball&quo.....
As Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman tours friendly Arab nations in advance of the Group of 20 .....
When Saudi General Khalid bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz went shopping in the late 1980s for Chinese medi.....
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan lands in Beijing on November 3, the latest head of government to.....
Saudi Arabia and Turkey, despite being on opposite sides of Middle Eastern divides, are cooperating .....
It’s easy to dismiss Iranian denunciations of the United States and its Middle Eastern allies .....
An attack on a military parade in the southern Iranian city of Ahwaz is likely to prompt Iranian ret.....
A Financial Action Task Force (FATF) report criticizing Saudi Arabia’s anti-money laundering a.....
Desperate for funding to fend off a financial crisis fuelled in part by mounting debt to China, Paki.....
Iran has raised the spectre of a US-Saudi effort to destabilize the country by exploiting .....
A possible ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the Gaza S.....
With multiple Middle Eastern disputes threatening to spill out of control, United Arab Emirates mini.....
Embattled former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak was the main loser in last month&rsq.....
Lurking in the background of a Saudi-Moroccan spat over World Cup hosting rights and the Gulf crisis.....
Amid ever closer cooperation with Saudi Arabia, Israel’s military appears to be adopting the k.....
Mounting anger and discontent is simmering across the Arab world much like it did in the w.....
Argentina’s cancellation of a friendly against Israel because of Israeli attempts to exploit t.....
Conventional wisdom has it that China stands to benefit from the US withdrawal from the 2015 interna.....
Saudi Arabia’s bitter rivalry with Iran has spilled onto Asian soccer pitches with t.....
A controversy in Algeria over the growing popularity of Saudi-inspired Salafi scholars spotlights th.....
Subtle shifts in Chinese energy imports suggest that China may be able to exert influence in the Mid.....
Egyptian general-turned-president Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi won a second term virtually unchallenged in w.....
Protests have erupted in Iran’s oil-rich province of Khuzestan barely three months after the I.....
Debilitating hostility between Saudi Arabia and Iran is about lots of things, not least who will hav.....
Saudi Arabia, in an indication that it is serious about shaving off the sharp edges of its Sunni Mus.....
The Middle East has a knack for sucking external powers into its conflicts. China’s ventures i.....
A Saudi draft law could constitute a first indication that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s .....
Turkish allegations of Saudi, Emirati and Egyptian support for the outlawed Kurdish Workers Party (P.....
Prominent US constitutional lawyer and scholar Alan M. Dershowitz raised eyebrows when he described .....
Plans to open a Salafi missionary centre in the Yemeni province of Al Mahrah on the border with Oman.....
If week-long anti-government protests in Iran exposed the Islamic republic’s deep-se.....
Kuwaiti billionaire Maan al-Sanea should have seen it coming after Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin S.....
Long-standing Saudi efforts to dominate the pan-Arab media landscape appear to have moved into high .....