The man to thwart Palestinian democracy was Dahlan. It was the obvious choice, since Dahlan, a warlord by any standards, had good ties with Israel, a strong position within Fatah and was deeply connected to various Arab intelligence agencies. He also commanded 10 security branches in Gaza, dedicated mostly to cracking down on dissent. Many of those imprisoned and tortured by Dahlan's forces, funded and trained under a program managed by US Lieutenant General Keith Dayton, targeted Hamas fighters, political leaders and supporters.
The plan was a massive failure. In a matter of a few days in the summer of 2007, Hamas routed Dahlan's forces and, until this day, single-handedly controlled Gaza.
Dahlan first sought sanctuary in the West Bank, yet soon had a falling-out with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. He fled Ramallah in 2010, after being accused by his own party of corruption and a coup attempt.
For the last seven years, Dahlan has lived in the United Arab Emirates and become very close to the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammad bin Zayed.
Although Dahlan began amassing wealth in Gaza before his exile in 2006, his fortune in the UAE grew exuberantly.
When interviewing him for the New York Times last November, Peter Baker couldn't help but marvel at Dahlan's wealth from the very first paragraph of his report titled "In Muhammad Dahlan's ascent, a proxy battle for legitimacy."
"His spacious home here in Abu Dhabi ... features plush sofas, vaulted ceilings and chandeliers. The infinity pool in the back seems to spill into the glistening waterway beyond," Baker wrote.
At that time, and still until this day, tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza remained homeless following the Israeli war on the Strip in 2014. A few months earlier, the United Nations had described Gaza as "unlivable."
None of this seemed to matter to Dahlan, who used Arab funds to further divide already divided Palestinian ranks and to eventually exploit Hamas' need to survive as Israel and Egypt worked to bring it to its knees.
An alliance with the weakened HamasIn a move, engineered with the help and support of several Arab governments including Egypt, Dahlan managed to exploit the rift between Hamas and Fatah while presenting himself as the saviour of the dying Gaza Strip.
With no room for him among the top Fatah leadership, he resolved to impose himself back on the Palestinians through an alliance with the weakened Hamas.
The resistance movement managed to withstand Israeli wars, but an Israeli-Egyptian siege proved nearly impossible to overcome. Two million Palestinians in Gaza suffered from life-threatening cuts of electricity, food, clean water, medicine and fuel, not to mention are denied freedom of movement.
Last May, the PA in Ramallah significantly reduced salaries of its employees in the Strip and withheld payments to the Israeli company that supplied Gaza with its limited supply of electricity.
With Israel, Arabs and the Palestinian leadership all involved in breaking the will of Gaza, Dahlan arrived on the scene, with a massive Arab-sponsored largess, offering charity, electricity and supplies.
Of course, he sought a political price in return: a power-sharing agreement.
In June, a Hamas delegation visited Cairo to meet Dahlan under Egyptian supervision. The Hamas delegation was led by Hamas' newly elected leader Yahya Sinwar, who spent 20 years in Israeli jails and led the movement's military wing's resistance against Israel. Sinwar agreed with Dahlan on an "understanding" that would give the exiled warlord a leadership position in Gaza in exchange for an Egyptian decision to open the Rafah border that connects the Gaza Strip to the Sinai desert.
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