Abbas gives Mashaal an earful in Doha

Hamas’s Qatar-based leader Khaled Mashaal was taken to task by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during a meeting in Doha yesterday.

A senior Palestinian source tells The Times of Israel that the two men had a “difficult” conversation.

The source says that Abbas castigated Hamas to Mashaal and called his people “liars,” after the Shin Bet said that captured Hamas operatives had confessed to a plot to attack PA forces in the West Bank and even stage a “coup” there.

Abbas also informed Mashaal that Hamas would have to choose between unity with Abbas’s Fatah movement and a permanent “divorce,” the source says.

The source adds that the information revealed by the Shin Bet in a press release this week was already known to Abbas’s security forces.

Abbas is scheduled to travel to Cairo today.

— Avi Issacharoff