Fatah Reform Democratic faction leader Mohammed Dahlan rejected allegations made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday night that the exiled Palestinian politician was behind a Haaretz report accusing Netanyahu of ignoring a warning from the United Arab Emirates ahead of the October 7 attack, FRD spokesperson Dimitri Diliani told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.
Netanyahu, who has also announced plans to sue Haaretz for libel in addition to the report’s author, Shlomi Eldar, claimed that Emirati-based Dahlan was behind the “false report.”
Dahlan, according to claims published by Likud, “needs a weak left-wing government of Eisenkot, Yair Golan, Lieberman, and the Arab parties” so that he can seize control of the Gaza Strip with Hamas.
In a message sent to the Post, the FRD faction claimed that Netanyahu’s “incitement campaign” was an attempt to “drag Dahlan’s name into Israel’s election contest” in the hopes of evading serious questions about the state’s and Netanyahu’s failures and responsibilities surrounding October 7.
“Likud’s claims against Mohammed Dahlan, the head of our faction, including its allegation that he is interfering in the Israeli election, are ludicrous and misleading,” Diliani said. “They expose the confusion gripping Netanyahu and his camp. That camp stands isolated internationally and stained by the shame of the genocide perpetrated against our people.”
Diliani asserted that Dahlan has never participated in the internal political conflicts of Israel and is entirely focused on the treatment of Palestinians by Israel.
“For our people, successive Israeli governments have followed the same course whenever our rights and blood are at stake. They have spilled our people’s blood without restraint,” Diliani accused. “They have maintained the military occupation, expanded colonial settlements and denied our people their legitimate national rights.”
Only the Palestinian people can decide Gaza's future, Diliani says
Diliani also asserted that neither the Likud Party nor Netanyahu himself will be allowed to decide the future of the Gaza Strip, insisting that only the Palestinian people can decide its future.
“We will resist attempts to make Gaza part of Israeli election bargaining. It is an integral part of the Palestinian homeland. Netanyahu conducts his election propaganda with the blood of our innocent children and women,” Diliani said.
The United Arab Emirates has declined to confirm or deny a report alleging that Emirati President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, though sources who spoke with the Post on Wednesday claimed then-US president Joe Biden was not informed of any communication from the UAE that suggested there was prior knowledge of the attack.
Prof. Kobi Michael is a senior researcher at INSS and a visiting professor at the International Centre for Policing and Security at the University of South Wales, told the Post that he doubted Dahlan had been involved in the Haaretz report, reasoning that Dahlan would not do anything to jeopardize the trust he has built with MBZ.
Acknowledging that it was possible Dahlan received information and passed it on to MBZ, leading to the reported warning to Netanyahu, Michael said that such an outcome would indicate that the warning was given either with Hamas’s approval or behind the Islamist group’s back.
“If Dahlan was involved and did it on behalf of the request of Hamas, then he strengthened his position vis-a-vis Hamas and MBZ together,’ Michael reasoned. “If he did it behind the back of Hamas, he put his position vis-a-vis Hamas in danger.”
Far more likely, Michael said, is that Netanyahu’s accusations against Dahlan are part of a broader campaign intended to “distract attention and focus and to elaborate on the idea of external involvement in the election.”
“At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter if MBZ really informed Netanyahu or not,” he concluded. “Even if [he did], it was another alarm in addition to many others that the entire system didn't receive or internalize. The entire system had the information but misinterpreted it.
“The IDF had the responsibility to be ready and to be deployed correctly and to have the right and relevant strategy to prevent any surprising attack; this is the basic responsibility of the military, mainly when the military intelligence itself issued so many alerts and warnings,” he said.