"Fatah 'tipped off' about Gaza war
A leaked US diplomatic cable has raised the possibility that Fatah, the Palestinian group in power in the occupied West Bank, knew that Israel was planning an attack on the Gaza Strip before it launched its deadly offensive in December 2008.
The conflict, which ended in January 2009 after three weeks, led to more than 1400 Palestinian deaths and left vast swathes of the Gaza Strip completely destroyed.
According to a June 2009 US embassy cable released on the WikiLeaks website, Ehud Barak, Israel's defense minister, told a US congressional delegation that his country had asked Fatah and Egypt "prior to Operation Cast Lead" whether "they were willing to assume control of Gaza once Israel defeated Hamas".
Barak said that neither Fatah nor Egypt responded positively to the question, but the suggestion that Palestinian leaders knew in advance of the attack on Gaza could prove massively embarrassing for Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president."
--Al-Jazeera--
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