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HAMAS plot to assassinate Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has
been thwarted after he was tipped off by Israeli intelligence.
Hamas’s military wing, the Izza Din Al-Qassem, had planned to kill Abbas at his office in Gaza, intelligence sources said.
Abbas, who became president of the Palestinian Authority last
year after the death of Yasser Arafat, was formally warned of the
danger by the Israelis and cancelled a planned visit to the territory.
The murder plan is the clearest sign yet of the tensions
inside the Palestinian Authority between Hamas, which swept to power
after elections in January, and Abbas’s Fatah movement.
Hamas leaders, who refuse to recognise the state of Israel,
suspect Abbas of obstructing their attempts to govern, which have been
hampered by a financial boycott from donor nations. “Hamas considers
Abbas to be a barrier to its complete control over Palestine and
decided to kill him,” said a Palestinian source who was an adviser to
Arafat and is a close acquaintance of Abbas.
It is understood that the attack would also have targeted Mohammed Dahlan, Abbas’s strongman in Gaza.
The sources were unable to say who in Hamas’s secretive
leadership had given the order to kill Abbas. But an indication of its
hostility towards Abbas came last week.
In a statement to Al-Jazeera, the Arab television news
network, Mohammed Nazzal, one of its leaders, accused the president of
being party to “besieging and isolating the Hamas-led government”.
Abbas, who is guarded by his own security men, divides his
time between his Gaza and Ramallah offices. While in the West Bank he
is relatively safe, but Gaza — stronghold of Hamas and numerous rogue
terrorist organisations — is a dangerous place. Shortly after his
election to the presidency Abbas narrowly escaped an assassination
attempt in the Gaza Strip.
A recent request to the Israeli government to let him bring in
new weapons for his presidential guard was rejected by Shaul Mofaz, the
outgoing Israeli defence minister.
However, the Israelis could not ignore intelligence
information regarding the imminent threat to Abbas’s life. “We monitor
every movement of Hamas in Gaza,” said an Israeli intelligence source.
“So when we learnt that Abbas’s life was in danger, we made sure to
inform him without delay.”
Matti Steinberg, a former adviser to the head of Shin Bet,
Israel’s domestic security service, said he would be surprised if any
decision to kill Abbas had been taken by Ismail Haniyeh, the
Palestinian prime minister, or Khaled Mashaal, the Damascus-based Hamas
leader. “However, such an action by the military wing of Hamas is very
plausible,” he added.
While Hamas is struggling to maintain power, and Abbas to
remain relevant, economic chaos is spreading in the Gaza Strip and the
West Bank. For the second month in a row 160,000 employees of the
Palestinian Authority have not received their salaries.
Violent clashes erupted in the West Bank town of Hebron early this
morning when Israeli police backed by hundreds of security troops tried
to evict a group of squatters occupying an abandoned Palestinian home.
Police called for further reinforcements after several officers and
settlers were injured in the battle.
