Hamas: PA security officers helped Israel kill Islamic Jihad commander
The Hamas-controlled Ministry of Interior said in a statement that the cell members collected information about Abu al-Ata, including monitoring his movements.
By KHALED ABU TOAMEHFILE PHOTO: Palestinian Islamic Jihad commander Baha Abu Al-Ata attends an anti-Israel military show at Al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, June 20, 2019(photo credit: REUTERS/MOHAMMED SALEM/FILE PHOTO)Hamas announced on Sunday that its security forces have arrested Palestinian Authority security officers on suspicion that they helped Israel assassinate senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad military commander Bahaa Abu al-Ata on November 12.The Hamas-controlled Interior Ministry said the cell members collected information about al-Ata, including monitoring his movements.“They followed him for several months until the last hour before the [Israeli] occupation assassinated him,” a statement said.According to the ministry, the cell members are officers from the PA’s General Intelligence Service in the West Bank, who were assigned the task of monitoring and following the movements of al-Ata.The statement named General Intelligence Service commander Sha’ban Abdullah al-Ghrabawi of ordering the cell members to collect the information about the slain PIJ commander. It claimed that Ghrabawi, for his part, transferred the information “directly to the Israeli occupation intelligence services.”The Hamas security forces also seized “technical materials” confirming that Ghrabawi had communicated with Israeli intelligence officers, the statement added.In a video posted by the ministry, one of the cell members – whose identity was not revealed – said that in March 2017, he was contacted by Ghrabawi who asked him to form a cell of General Intelligence Service officers in the Gaza Strip. In September 2019, according to the cell member, he received another phone call from Ghrabawi, who asked him for details about al-Ata.Another unnamed cell member who also appeared in the video said he, too, had received instructions from Ghrabawi to collect information about al-Ata.
