The Region: Palestinian moderates want peace - with Hamas, not with Israel

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To see what's happening - and what's wrong - with Palestinian politics, consider Muhammad Dahlan. In him is embodied the ideological and strategic straitjacket preventing Palestinians from making peace and getting a state of their own.

Dahlan, 48, is one of the two most able young Fatah leaders, the other being Marwan Barghouti. Dahlan, an architect of the first intifada in the late 1980s, became one of PLO and Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat's favorite proteges. A decade later, however, he broke with Arafat because he thought his boss was letting Hamas get too strong. If Arafat had heeded him, Fatah and the PA would be far better off today.

For many years, Dahlan was the key PA-Fatah "general" battling Hamas in the Gaza Strip. So when Hamas totally defeated Fatah in a 2007 coup and seized control there, Dahlan was responsible for the debacle. Now he's back as special adviser to PA leader Mahmoud Abbas.

Aside from his anti-Hamas credentials, Dahlan has been considered a relative moderate on the peace process. But what does this mean in practice? Dahlan told Al-Sharq al-Awsat that the second (2000-2005) intifada and terrorism against civilians harmed Palestinian interests. His critique, though, was based not on moral considerations but came because such acts hurt the Palestinian image and made Israel react more toughly.

Posted for the Alice-in-Wonderlandy nature of the "analysis". I've been wondering what Dahlan has been up to lately.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1239710698210&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

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1. Dahlan to Hamas: Never recognize Israel

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1237114855755

In the interview, Dahlan was asked about reports that Fatah was demanding that Hamas recognize Israel's right to exist as a precondition for the establishment of a Palestinian "unity government." He called the reports "misleading" and said Hamas was "putting words in our mouths."

Dahlan added: "They say that Fatah has asked them to recognize Israel's right to exist and this is a big deception. For the one thousandth time, I want to reaffirm that we are not asking Hamas to recognize Israel's right to exist. Rather, we are asking Hamas not to do so because Fatah never recognized Israel's right to exist."

He explained that it was the PLO, and not Fatah, which recognized Israel's right to exist when the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993.

Fatah is the largest faction in the PLO. The second largest faction is the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

"We acknowledge that the PLO did recognize Israel's right to exist, but we are not bound by it as a resistance faction," he added.