Dahlan Will Not Be Harmed

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

There are those who are delighted at the suspension of Dahlan’s membership on Fatah’s Central Committee; there are those who see in it an opportunity to confirm the Palestinian Authority’s determination to set things right; there are those who reject this suspension and issue threats about it, and so on. There are those optimistic that Dahlan will be condemned, and those who say he will be punished and held to account, seeing in it the beginning of a wave of accountability within the Palestinian Authority that heralds better conduct and the correction of past mistakes.

I do not know exactly what stirred Abu Mazen or the members of Fatah’s Central Committee against Dahlan, and I hear plenty of rumors, as others do — perhaps I even hear from circles close to the “brawl” more than others do. But I do know that unseemly and often shameful acts have taken place on the Palestinian scene, at home and abroad, over the years, and that those who committed them escaped punishment and accountability, and, in time, rose to positions higher than the ones they had held before. Under the Palestinian Authority, many scandals occurred, exposed openly before the people, to the point that we came to know “Abu al-Jawwalat” [Father of the Mobile Phones], “Abu al-Niswan” [Father of the Women], “Abu al-Tahin” [Father of the Flour], “Abu al-Isment” [Father of the Cement], “Abu al-Tabikh” [Father of the Cooking], “Abu al-Khadamat” [Father of the Services], Olmert’s friend, the Shin Bet agent, and so on — yet none of them ever reached the gallows, or was sentenced to twenty years of hard labor in the quarries of Jamma’in or Yatta.

…or a hypocrite searching for an agency, or for the favor of an agent, or of the agent’s agent. These men are manufactured, not authentic leaders; they are, as the English word has it, “fabricated,” and no one punishes them but the one who fabricated them, no one dismisses them but the one who finances them, no one replaces them but the one who sees another alternative, and no one holds them accountable but the one who wields the stick over their pleasures. In the end they are partners in a crime against the homeland and the people, and this is precisely the function for which they were created. This is why I never expected punishment for anyone, or a serious investigation of anyone.

I repeat that I do not know Dahlan’s problem exactly, but I do know that Dahlan possesses a great deal of information about various Palestinian leaderships, that he holds large and dangerous secrets, that he knows much of what has been hidden, and that he has knowledge of what is concealed, what is declared, and what has been exposed. And as history has always shown, the criminal fears an investigation into someone who knows of his crime; the implicated man distances himself from anyone who knows of his involvement; the traitor hides from whatever might expose his betrayal. It is possible that Dahlan has done something against those who accuse him, but they will not investigate him seriously, because they know that the price they would pay through an investigation is far higher than the price they would pay by avoiding one.

For this reason the investigation will be a formality; it will remain shrouded in secrecy, will not last long, and the matter will be forgotten — perhaps under pretexts described as patriotic, and as concerned with safeguarding the public interest.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “دحلان لن يصيبه أذى” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.