Dahlan pans decision to resume security ties, says PA gave up ‘negotiation card’

Exiled Fatah leader Mohammad Dahlan criticizes Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s decision to resume security coordination with Israel at the present moment, saying that the PA gave up a “valuable negotiation card” in dealings with the new US administration.

The Palestinian Authority ended security coordination with Israel in May in protest of an Israeli plan to annex parts of the West Bank. Although the plan was suspended following a normalization deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates in August, the PA did not resume coordination with Israel until last night.

Dahlan, a bitter rival of Abbas who has resided in exile in Abu Dhabi since 2011, says that the real reason that the PA chose to return to coordinate with Israel is financial. As part of ending coordination, the PA refused over $100 million in tax revenues which Israel collects on its behalf. The so-called “clearance revenues” constitute over 60 percent of the Palestinian budget.

With a gaping hole in the Palestinian budget, hundreds of thousands of civil servants did not receive full salaries for months.

“If the financial, administrative and personal needs were the real motive, as it seems, then we can ask why the Authority originally stopped receiving clearance funds, which are funds belonging purely to the Palestinian people,” Dahlan says.

— Aaron Boxerman