Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas was KGB agent, researchers claim
September 8, 2016 Leave a comment
Mahmoud Abbas
Two Israeli researchers claim that a document from the archives of the Cold-War-era KGB identifies the current president of the Palestine Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, as a Soviet agent. The document was found in the United Kingdom, and was smuggled out of Russia by a former senior archivist of the Soviet KGB. Abbas is the leader of the largely secular Palestinian group Fatah, which controls the West Bank. Unlike Hamas, which is designated a terrorist group by Israel and its allies, Fatah is seen by Tel Aviv as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. That is disputed by Hamas, a religiously inspired group, which controls the Gaza Strip and maintains a tense relationship with Fatah and Abbas himself.
The allegation about Abbas’ past emerged on Wednesday in the Israeli media, after two local academic researchers disclosed the contents of a KGB document discovered at Cambridge University’s Churchill Archives Centre in Britain. The researchers, Gideon Remez and Isabella Ginor, of the Truman Institute at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said the document dates from 1983. It was found among thousands of similar documents that were secretly smuggled out of Russia in the early 1990s by British intelligence, following the defection of Vasili Mitrokhin, an archivist in the First Chief Directorate of the KGB during the Cold War. Some of the documents later formed the basis of a two-volume edition on the activities of Soviet intelligence, which was edited by Cambridge University Professor Christopher Andrew.
According to Remez and Ginor, the document identifies Mahmoud Abbas as a “KGB agent” based in Damascus, Syria, codenamed krotov, which in Russian means ‘mole’. Abbas was born in Palestine in 1935, but his family fled to Syria in 1948, following the establishment of the state of Israel and the outbreak of the first Arab-Israeli war. The young Abbas grew up in Damascus, where he went to university and joined the local branch of the PLO, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, of which Fatah is a member. If true, the allegation that Abbas worked for the KGB will not come as a surprise to observers of Palestinian politics. For most of the Cold War, the PLO was known to be close to Moscow, while Abbas was intimately involved with the Palestinian-Soviet Friendship Association, a pro-Moscow group that was widely seen as an agent of communist influence in the Palestinian territories. But the document from the Mitrokhin archives may be the first concrete evidence that Abbas was handled by the KGB.
Palestinian officials quickly dismissed the document on Wednesday as a fabrication and a deliberate slander. Mohammed al-Madani, a member of the central committee of Fatah, and a close associate of Abbas, said the allegation was part of a “clear effort to damage [Abbas] by various actors, including the government of Israel”.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 08 August 2016 | Permalink
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Palestinian intelligence report warns of possible uprising in occupied territories
August 20, 2019 by Joseph Fitsanakis Leave a comment
The report draws on data collected from interviews conducted with young Palestinians in the West Bank, surveillance of militant groups, interrogations with young militant detainees, as well as opinion trends on social media. Much of the data represents the views of Palestinians who are between the ages of 20 and 30. It suggests that they are angry about the lack of opportunity in their homeland and see no future for themselves and their families. They are therefore susceptible to calls for violent action against Israel and against the leadership of the PNA, the report warns. The PNA is accused by young Palestinians of having failed to receive any concessions from Israel in return for its policies of collaborating with Israeli authorities for nearly a decade. It follows that young Palestinian see “no political benefit” in cooperating with Israeli authorities. At the same time, says the report, young Palestinians in the West Bank view Hamas’ call for violent resistance against Israel in an increasingly favorable light. They believe that exercising pressure on Israel through violence is more likely to draw a positive response from the Jewish state in the form of political recognition and financial aid.
The classified report warns that if the economic stagnation in the West Bank persists, and if young Palestinians continue to perceive the PNA’s cooperation with Israel as unproductive, there will be an increase in “shooting incidents and the use of explosive devices” against Israeli targets. Such actions will be easily facilitated by the widespread black market in weapons and explosives in the region, states the report. It also notes that calls for radical action are not only coming from members of Hamas, but also from younger activists within Fatah, the main political faction that makes up the PNA.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 20 August 2019 | Permalink
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