Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' adherence to refusing to reconcile with his opponent, the dismissed leader of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah), Muhammad Dahlan, pushes the movement into the midst of a crisis of multiple lists that dispersed the voices of the Fatah movement in the legislative elections scheduled for May 22.
Private Palestinian sources told Al-Jazeera Net that the mediation efforts led by Egypt and Jordan to unify the ranks of Fatah before running for the elections collided with Abbas’s refusal to reconcile with Dahlan.
The sources stated that President Abbas adheres to his hard-line stance towards Dahlan despite Egyptian-Jordanian warnings of the dangers of this on the chances of achieving satisfactory results for Fatah in the elections.
On January 17, 2007, Abbas received at his headquarters in Ramallah the heads of the two Egyptian General Intelligence services, Minister Abbas Kamel, and the Jordanian Major General Ahmed Hosni.
The sources said that the main objective of the visit was "an attempt to convince Abbas of the necessity of achieving a Fatah reconciliation that would bring Dahlan and his movement back into the ranks of Fatah, which would enable him to run in the elections with a unified list capable of competing with the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas)."
Despite the failure of the mediation efforts until the moment, it has not stopped, but Dahlan does not place all his hopes on this reconciliation, and he has begun working on the possibility of its failure completely, and is preparing to run for elections with a single list, according to the same sources.
Back to Gaza
The "democratic reform movement" in the Fatah movement - led by Dahlan - took a practical step towards its endeavor to participate in the upcoming elections, with the unprecedented return of two of its most prominent men to Gaza, one of whom is the electoral commission official in the movement, Abdel Hakim Awad.
Awad and hundreds of Fatah leaders and activists left Gaza after the internal division in 2007 that led to Hamas’s control after bloody rounds of armed fighting with members of the Preventive Security Service and Fatah gunmen who owed allegiance to Dahlan.
The spokesman for the movement in Gaza, Imad Mohsen, told Al-Jazeera Net that this return had been scheduled since 2018, after the successful completion of a large part of the societal reconciliation file related to blood issues and the victims of division, and it was not mainly related to the elections, even if it coincided with its preparation.
Mohsen said that about 300 Fatah activists, there is no legal problem preventing their return to Gaza now.
The Dahlan Movement - which has been living for 15 years in the Emirates, which finances its activities - has succeeded in settling the files of a large number of victims of the internal fighting by paying the "legal blood money" to their families, leaving only a few pending files.
How will the current participate in the elections?
"Our constant position from the beginning is to run the elections with a unified list of the Fatah movement, and if President Abbas refuses to do so, we will run in the elections with a list that includes leaders of the movement and patriotic action, and it consists of national and youth figures with professional competence to meet the challenges that plague the Palestinian cause," the movement’s spokesman said .
The spokesman stressed that "no one can exclude the movement and prevent it from running the democratic path, not only the legislative elections, and also the presidential elections, in the form that he deems appropriate to the requirements of the current situation."
On the other hand, a member of the Revolutionary Council of the Fatah movement Abdullah Abdullah played down the importance and influence of the movement, and told Al-Jazeera Net, "Fatah is united and does not suffer from any division, and the so-called Dahlan Movement is an industry and not a national movement."
On the chances of settling internal Fatah disputes, Abdullah affirmed in a decisive tone that "Dahlan is separated from Fatah, and court rulings have been issued against him, and he is not able to run in the elections. As for the members of his party - who are mainly Fatah members - there is nothing that prevents them from returning to the ranks of Fatah."
However, professor of political science, Dr. Naji Shurrab, believes that belittling the movement is wrong and untrue.
Shurrab told Al-Jazeera Net that "the movement has become a reality that cannot be ignored, and not just a Dahlan person. It has proven over the past years that it is a youth organization with a remarkable public presence, not only in Gaza and the West Bank, but also in the Diaspora, and it has attracted dignitaries and enjoys support." Political, financial, regional and Arab.
He ruled out the possibility of achieving a Fatah reconciliation in the life of President Abbas, and Fatah would be the biggest loser.