One of the secret documents that were leaked to the Al-Jazeera TV network claims that Israel had asked the Palestinian Authority to kill a terrorist, according to a report by Britain’s The Guardian.
The terrorist in question is Hassan al-Madhoun, who was killed on November 1, 2005 in Gaza, when the car he was travelling in with another fighter was hit by a missile fired from an Israeli drone. Ten other people were wounded by the blast.
Madhoun was a commander in the Fatah movement’s al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a terrorist group that remained loyal to the idea of the officially backed Arab armed struggle against Israel and refused to accept the new Fatah and Palestinian Authority leadership's announced strategy of peaceful negotiations. Also killed along with Madhoun was Fawzi Abu al-Qarea, a member the Hamas terrorist group.
The leaked document, however, reveals that it may not have been just Israel that was behind the killing. Rather, the document suggests that the counterterrorist action was a result of extensive clandestine collaboration between the IDF, the Israel Security Agency (ISA) and the Palestinian Authority.
The document features handwritten notes in Arabic recording Israel's then-defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, asking the PA interior minister, Nasser Yousef, to help in the elimination of Madhoun, whose whereabouts were known to Israel and to veteran Fatah member Rashid Abu Shabak.
According to the document, Mofaz had asked: “We know his address ... Why don't you kill him? He is not Hamas and you can kill him.” Yousef responded to Mofaz by saying that the “instructions” to kill Madhoun had been given but added that “The situationt is not easy, our capabilities are limited, and you haven't offered anything.”
The report in The Guardian goes on to say that while there was no evidence that the PA played a direct role in Madhoun’s death, the Mofaz-Yousef meeting as documented in this leaked cable, as well as other leaked documents “give a revealing insight into the intimate intelligence and security co-operation between the two sides.”
This leaked document is one of many secret Palestinian Authority documents that were exposed by the Al-Jazeera television and The Guardian. The timing led to speculation in the media that the leaks were intended to motivate renewed talks.
The first batch of documents published on Sunday said that in 2008, PA negotiators offered Israel all the Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem with the exception of Har Homa.
Chief PA negotiator, who reportedly was at the meeting in which this offer was made, dismissed the documents as “a bunch of lies,” while PLO executive committee member Yasser Abed Rabbo attacked the Emir of Qatar for his presumed role in Al-Jazeera’s leak of the documents.
PA leader Mahmoud Abbas said on Monday that the Al-Jazeera report “inadvertently confuses between the many Israeli proposals… and Palestinian positions.”