JERUSALEM – There are signs pointing to Hamas’ involvement in the assassination earlier this week of a top Palestinian Liberation Organization man in Lebanon, according to officials from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah organization.
The officials, speaking to WND from the West Bank city of Ramallah, claimed an initial Fatah investigation found some video evidence, witnesses and other signs linking Fatah’s Hamas rivals to Monday’s attack in which Kamal Medhat, the PLO’s No. 2 in Lebanon, was killed in a roadside bomb.
The bombing took place in the Mieh Mieh refugee camp in southern Lebanon. Medhat, a member of Fatah, was killed with three other people, including two of his bodyguards.
The PA officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told WND they believe Hamas took the lead in the assassination, working alongside elements of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorist organization. The officials said Medhat recently had received death threats from what they termed “another Palestinian faction.”
Asked for comment, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum rejected the claims as “totally untrue.”
Media reports painted Medhat as a moderate who played a major role in calming down inter-Palestinian disputes which culminated in previous flare-ups inside Palestinian camps in Lebanon.
But PA officials in Ramallah intimately familiar with Medhat’s work told WND that Medhat was no facilitator of peace between the warring factions.
They said Medhat personally led efforts to fight Hamas in the Lebanese camps and to paint Hamas as an outsider.
Said one source: “He was promoting a campaign that Hamas is really Shiite and is working for Iran. He was making big trouble for Hamas.”
The source continued: “From an analytic point of view, this assassination was meant to send a message to the PLO that Hamas can deal with our people in Lebanon if we continue to arrest them in the West Bank.”
Fatah and Hamas have been at odds since Hamas seized complete control of the Gaza Strip, humiliatingly booting Fatah from the territory in 2007. The two have been negotiating toward forming a unity government that would bring Hamas into the PA.
As is customary following an assassination of an Arab leader in the Middle East, Arab analysis immediately pointed a finger at Israel. Lebanese security sources were quoted by the country’s Daily Star newspaper claiming Israel may have been behind the attack.
Retired Lebanese Army General Elias Hanna, however, allowed that the murder may have been related to Palestinian infighting.
“Relations between Hamas and Fatah will be affected,” he said. “Whoever did this had knowledge about Medhat and what he was doing, and they were able to plant the explosives,” said Hanna. “We can’t exclude Israel from the job, but there are a lot of unknowns.”
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WND Staff