Israeli Intelligence Saves Abbas?

The London Sunday Times reports that Israeli intelligence warned Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas about Hamas's plot to assassinate him:

A HAMAS plot to assassinate Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has been thwarted after he was tipped off by Israeli intelligence.

Hamas’s military wing, the Izza Din Al-Qassem, had planned to kill Abbas at his office in Gaza, intelligence sources said.

Abbas, who became president of the Palestinian Authority last year after the death of Yasser Arafat, was formally warned of the danger by the Israelis and cancelled a planned visit to the territory.

The murder plan is the clearest sign yet of the tensions inside the Palestinian Authority between Hamas, which swept to power after elections in January, and Abbas’s Fatah movement. ...

It is understood that the attack would also have targeted Mohammed Dahlan, Abbas’s strongman in Gaza.

The sources were unable to say who in Hamas’s secretive leadership had given the order to kill Abbas. But an indication of its hostility towards Abbas came last week. ...

...the Israelis could not ignore intelligence information regarding the imminent threat to Abbas’s life. “We monitor every movement of Hamas in Gaza,” said an Israeli intelligence source. “So when we learnt that Abbas’s life was in danger, we made sure to inform him without delay.”