RAMALLAH
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has accused his former national security advisor Mohamed Dahlan of complicity in Israel's 2002 assassination of Hamas leader Salah Shehade, prompting Hamas to call for an investigation into the issue.
Abbas told his Fatah's revolutionary council in Ramallah Wednesday that Dahlan, a sacked Fatah leader who had led Palestinian security forces in the Gaza Strip in the 1990s, had told him moments before an attempt on Shehade's life that the latter would be eliminated "within minutes."
"Soon after, we heard a huge explosion. Dahlan went out and then told me, 'that lucky…had left his home a moment before," Abbas said.
Shehade was later killed in an Israeli airstrike on a Gaza residential building in July 2002. The attack also killed 17 others, including eight children.
Dahlan fell out with Abbas in recent years, prompting the Palestinian leader to expel him from Fatah in 2011.
Dahlan, who has since been critical of Abbas, is currently living in the United Arab Emirates.
Hours after Abbas' remarks, Hamas spokesman Salah Bardawil called for a "comprehensive investigation" into the issue.
"Abbas' assertions…are very serious accusations and require a comprehensive probe," Bardawil said.
Abbas decries Israeli 'aggression,' Gaza rockets
"Israel is killing Palestinians in cold blood," Abbas told a joint press conference with visiting British Prime Minister David Cameron, referring to an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday that killed three Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and several other deadly incidents in the West Bank.
"We denounce the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, as well as the rockets fired from Gaza into Israeli towns," he said in a reference to three days of tit-for-tat violence between Israel and Gaza-based resistance groups.
On Monday, Saji Darwish, 22, was killed after Israeli forces opened fire on Palestinian stone-throwers near the Jewish-only Beit El settlement near Ramallah in the West Bank.
On the same day, Israeli security forces killed a 38-year-old Palestinian-Jordanian man at a border crossing between the West Bank and Jordan.
Another Palestinian man was killed in a car accident on Tuesday while being pursued by Israeli troops in the northern West Bank.
Israel struck several targets in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday night after Palestinian resistance fighters fired dozens of rockets at Jewish settlements in southern Israel, none of which caused any casualties.
The Gaza-based Islamic Jihad group claimed responsibility for Wednesday's rocket barrage, which came in retaliation for the killing one day earlier of three of its fighters in an Israeli airstrike.
The Israeli military has sealed all border crossings with the embattled coastal strip – banning the entry of foodstuffs and other vital commodities – and has prohibited thousands of Palestinian detainees from receiving visitors.
Peace prospects
Regarding ongoing peace talks with Israel, Abbas said the PA had not yet received a proposed framework agreement from US Secretary of State John Kerry, adding that recent leaks about the plan's details were nothing more than media speculation.
He went on to voice hope that a breakthrough could be achieved before the expiry in late April of a deadline for negotiations, dismissing talk of a deadline extension.
By Mustafa Haboosh
englishnews@aa.com.tr
