In early July, Mohammed Dahlan and a Hamas delegation led by Yahya Sinwar held an important meeting in Cairo. While in the Egyptian capital, Fatah’s former security chief in Gaza, who has been living in exile in Abu Dhabi since 2011 following his fallout with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and Sinwar, who spent 22 years behind bars in Israel, established the Palestinian Joint Liability Committee. Financed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), this committee will compensate each Palestinian family that lost members during the Palestinian civil war of 2006-2007 with $50,000. According to Samir al-Masharawi, one of Dahlan’s allies, the UAE will provide the committee with a monthly $15 million “in support of relief, humanitarian, and development projects” in the coastal enclave to “alleviate [the Gazans’] suffering.”
For years Dahlan has held significant influence in the Emirates, serving as Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan’s security adviser. Abu Dhabi has also supported him regionally. Dahlan’s backing from the UAE has had a lot to do with his staunchly anti-Islamist politics, which date back to the early 1980s when he studied at the Islamic University of Gaza and continued throughout the mid-to-late 1990s and early 2000s when he ordered the arrest of hundreds of Hamas members.
Below the surface, the UAE’s interest in Gaza fits into a larger geopolitical picture: Abu Dhabi is now challenging the regional influence that Qatar expanded via Islamist groups such as Hamas. Both Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members, which have battled for influence from Libya and Yemen to Tunisia and Egypt, see Gaza as another battleground in their proxy competition. By promoting Dahlan’s return to Palestinian politics, Abu Dhabi and other “quartet” capitals (Cairo, Riyadh, and Manama) seek to eject Doha from Gaza. Inevitably, Hamas will face new dilemmas created by the ongoing Qatar crisis with the involved parties seeking to reshape the Palestinian group’s alliances throughout the Middle East.