GAZA CITY
Sacked Fatah leader Mohamed Dahlan fired back at Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, dismissing accusations by the latter that he had been involved in Israel's 2002 assassination of Hamas leader Salah Shehade.
Abbas' claims, Dahlan said via Facebook, are "a perfect example of lying and fabrication and a model of idiocy and ignorance regarding the facts of Palestinian history."
On Wednesday, Abbas, a Fatah leader himself, told Fatah's Revolutionary Council in Ramallah that Dahlan – a sacked Fatah leader who had led the PA's 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 told me: 'The lucky… left home just a moment before," Abbas said.
Shehade was later killed in an Israeli airstrike on a Gaza residential building in July 2002. That attack killed 17 other people, including eight children.
In his statement on Facebook, Dahlan refuted Abbas' claims, saying that there had been only one, successful attempt on Shehade's life. "No one can forget that unless he's a liar and fraud like Abbas," he asserted.
Despite their longtime affiliation through Fatah, Dahlan fell out with Abbas in recent years, prompting the latter to expel him from the movement in 2011.
Dahlan, who has since been a vocal critic of Abbas, is currently based in the United Arab Emirates.
Abbas has also accused Dahlan of involvement in a string of assassinations that have claimed the lives of several Fatah-affiliated figures. He has also hinted at Dahlan's possible role in the death of late Fatah leader Yasser Arafat.
In response, Dahlan has vowed to reveal the "facts" of Arafat's death soon.
Last November, an international team of investigators concluded that Arafat had been poisoned after an examination of Arafat's remains – conducted by Swiss scientists – revealed "unexpectedly high" traces of polonium-210, a highly radioactive substance.
Arafat, 75, died in France in 2004. At the time, doctors had been unable to determine the cause of death.
By Ola Attalah
englishnews@aa.com.tr
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