Exiled Palestinian Leader Looks for Regional Allies in Mediation of Nile Dam Deal

Exiled Palestinian politician and former leader of Fatah in Gaza, Mohammed Dahlan, mediated the signing of an agreement for the construction of a controversial River Nile dam project between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan last month, Newsweek can exclusively reveal.

Analysts believe that the move demonstrates Dahlan’s continuing efforts to increase his international influence, potentially setting up a push for the Palestinian leadership in the future.

The leaders of the three African countries convened in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, last month to sign an agreement which confirmed the principles on which Ethiopia’s Renaissance Dam would be built after Cairo raised concerns that the project would hit their vital Nile water supply.

From his perch in the Gulf, Dahlan has also been rumoured to have been engaging in shuttle diplomacy with regional powers, meeting with Israeli officials in France, anti-Islamist military commanders in Libya, and potential Palestinian allies in Abu Dhabi. In his political career thus far, Dahlan has served as the security chief in Gaza, an adviser to Yasser Arafat and Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas’s interior minister.

Analysts believe that this covert mediation effort demonstrates that the Palestinian strongman, still barred from the West Bank by Abbas, is raising his profile as an international figure and building a contact book of influential friends in the Middle East and North Africa region, with an eye on eventually replacing the Palestinian leader.

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“For him, the strategy has to be, even if I don’t openly confront Abbas right now, I’m going to gather as much support for my case regionally and internationally as possible, so that, when the time comes, I will have backers and very influential friends. I’ll have countries that owe me,” says Grant Rumley, researcher of Palestinian and Jordanian politics at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). “He’s stacking the deck in his favour and making moves.”

“For Dahlan, the benefits are abundant. This is completely out of the norm in Palestinian politics,” Rumley adds. “Usually, it is international parties mediating either internal Palestinian rifts or Palestinian-Israeli rifts, it’s rarely Palestinian politicians mediating agreements between other countries.”

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