Fatah's next generation

GAZA CITY - Palestinian politics, which often play out against a backdrop of stuttering guns and wailing sirens, are not for the mild and retiring.

Thus it was a vintage and electric moment last Sunday when Mohammed Dahlan, a leader of the long-awaited "next generation" of the Fatah movement, took the stage of a huge rally in a dilapidated soccer stadium here and waved away his bodyguards.

To Fatah's archrival, he roared into the microphone, "Let Hamas shoot me." The crowd standing raptly in a raw downpour erupted ecstatically at the taunt and afterward paraded the nattily dressed Dahlan on its adoring shoulders.

In the glowing aftermath of the biggest rally Fatah has had in years, there was a sense among many that for the streetwise and popular Dahlan, his time had come. None too soon either, these Palestinians say, for as the violence in Gaza and the West Bank continues to gather intensity, it will take strong leaders to impose authority on a divided and fighting people.

"From here, Dahlan has all the energy and capabilities to be in the front lines of the Fatah movement, and it is from the front line that you pick your leader," said Abu Ali Shaheen, a Fatah activist, who is considered Dahlan's spiritual father.

Dahlan, 44, and the imprisoned Marwan Barghouti, are both regarded as the heirs-apparent to Mahmoud Abbas, the current leader of the Fatah movement and president of the Palestinian Authority. Unlike Abbas, they are charismatic, excellent speakers, men of the street and impatient with the old way of doing things. Barghouti was sentenced to five life terms for murdering Israelis but may be released in a prisoner swap.

"The [young] leadership is different," said Shaheen, 65, drawing a comparison with the old guard, who spent most of their lives exiled in Tunis and not in the territories. "It comes from the battlefield, and Dahlan is one of the battlefield heroes." Shaheen himself walks with a limp these days because gunmen shot him twice in front of his home in Gaza on Dec. 21. He claims the attackers were from Hamas. The Muslim fundamentalist group denies it.

Right now, the territories are experiencing an unprecedented level of internecine violence, and Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, of Hamas, have been unable to rein in their gunmen. Lately, the two groups in this power struggle have threatened assassinations, and Abbas, throwing away his usual caution, has demanded new elections and that Hamas disband its own security force.

On Jan. 4, Hamas may have overplayed its hand when it killed a colonel in the Palestinian security force and six of his bodyguards inside his home. His wife and several children were injured. Hamas claimed the colonel had killed several of its men.

The senior Fatah leadership last Sunday wanted to call off the rally, according to Abdel Hakeem Awad, the head of Fatah's youth movement. They worried that the killing of the colonel, Mohammed Ghayeb, and the overall street violence would keep supporters away. In addition, the weather was dreadful.

But the men organizing the rally, mostly from the younger generation, insisted it should go ahead. The turnout was huge, in the tens of thousands. Fatah says the number was 250,000.

"We have Hamas to thank for this," Shaheen said. "They gave us a great gift."

Awad, the Fatah youth leader, agreed: "They crossed a red line with the attack on the house in Arab values and Muslim values." Awad showed a reporter grisly pictures of Ghayeb's bullet-riddled corpse.

A Hamas spokesman, Fawzi Barhoum, said its forces had been fired on first, and he, too, had pictures. His allegedly were of a Hamas security officer with wide burn stripes on his back that Barhoum claimed were the result of Fatah-administered torture.

Last Sunday, Dahlan - whom the United States would like to see as head of the Palestinian security forces - had the stadium grounds and the surrounding streets in a steady roar. He said he was not going to talk politics and instead delivered a fiery speech attacking Hamas, calling its members "butchers." He warned that, for every Fatah supporter harmed, two Hamas supporters would be harmed.

"I think it was important that Dahlan came out and said something," said Diana Battu, a political consultant on Palestinian affairs. "It was important for the people to hear what he has to say as he has been silent for a while."

She and others say the rally and Dahlan's speech were a culmination of a year's worth of Fatah soul-searching and reform after the beating the old-line Palestinian party took from Hamas in elections last January.

While she does not believe that Dahlan wants to be president of the Palestinian people so long as the Israelis continue to occupy the West Bank and mount incursions into Gaza, Battu said he had "rock star" impact that makes his a powerful force at a time when the elected leadership of Fatah is weak.

But Dahlan has baggage.

For starters, he is reviled by Hamas. Its members have not forgotten that Dahlan, on the orders of Yasir Arafat, rounded up Hamas leaders in 1996 in keeping with the Oslo Accord and the promised effort to halt suicide bombers. Then, last December, Hamas accused Dahlan of masterminding an assassination attempt of Haniyeh, as the prime minister and aides were crossing into Gaza from Egypt.

Despite being regarded in some quarters as a reformer, Haniyeh has been dogged by corruption charges. His house in Gaza is large, but not, his supporters say, so big as to deserve raised eyebrows. When he was the head of the security forces in Gaza, there were also claims that he benefited from Palestinian government monopolies on oil and cement contracts.

Another problem is Dahlan's relationship with the Israelis and the United States. As an influential and secular supporter of a two-state solution, Dahlan has had nice things said about him by the two countries, which in his mind has not always worked to his benefit and has allowed Hamas to call him a collaborator. "The Americans did nothing to help us, but they weakened me by saying good things about me which embarrassed me in the Palestinian street," he once told the Financial Times. "Because I have power in the street, I'm still standing."

Last, as a friend of his - who asked not to be identified in order to speak candidly - said: "He can be very abrasive at the same time that he can be very charming." This, the friend said, can alienate him from some of his fellow Fatah activists.

"Right now, he has a lot of tough choices ahead for him," this friend said. "I think he needs to spend less time fighting on the street and instead continue to focus on reforming Fatah."