The Times of Israel reports: Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said Friday that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas wouldn’t be alive if not for security cooperation between Israel and the PA.
“The security coordination between Israel and the Palestinians is in [Abbas’s] interest no less than ours, if not more. He is still alive thanks to the security coordination,” Liberman was quoted as saying by the Ynet news site. Liberman was speaking at an event in Jerusalem.
The defense minister, who has long been a harsh critic of the PA chief, pointed to the killing of figures from Abbas’s Fatah party by Hamas during its violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, implying security cooperation between Israel and the PA was keeping Abbas from meeting a similar fate.
Read more here.