In a dramatic role reversal, Israel may have just saved the life of a key Palestinian leader who was marked for death by extremists in Hamas, the terrorist group that was swept into power in January's upset election.
Citing Israeli intelligence sources, the London Times reports that Hamas’s military wing, the Izza Din Al-Qassem, was plotting to kill President Mahmoud Abbas at his office in Gaza.
"We monitor every movement of Hamas in Gaza,” one Israeli source told the Times. "So when we learned that Abbas’s life was in danger, we made sure to inform him without delay.”
Matti Steinberg, a former adviser to Israel’s domestic security service, said that any decision to kill Abbas was likely undertaken by the military wing of Hamas.
"Hamas considers Abbas to be a barrier to its complete control over Palestine and decided to kill him,” a Palestinian source who was an adviser to the late Yassir Arafat told the Times.
The assassination plan, the paper said, is the clearest sign yet of the fractured relationship between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.
While it's unclear just who in the Hamas leadership ordered Abbas' assassination, there have been recent signs of growing hostility towards the Fatah leader.
In a statement last week to Al-Jazeera, Hamas leader Mohammed Nazzal accused Abbas of being party to "besieging and isolating the Hamas-led government."
