More on the intelligence-bonanza

(Thanks to a heads-up from commenter Fatima at palestinianpundit, the Egyptian weekly Al-Osboa fixed the link to the story in its current issue about the role of the Gaza intelligence-bonanza in improving relations between Hamas and Egypt). The first two paragraphs of the story (quoted a couple of posts back), went like this:

Political sources told Al-Osboa that Cairo changed its attitude to the Hamas movement after Hamas provided the Egyptian security apparatus with information showing the involvement of certain leaders in the Palestinian Preventive Security and Fatah in a number of suspicious schemes against Egypt.

The sources said Hamas leaders provided Cairo with conclusive evidence of the involvement of one of these [Fatah] leaders in the transmission to Israel of information concerning Egyptian security and political situations, including [information garnered in the course of] meetings that this official had with a number of [Egyptian] officials in the course of his repeated visits to Cairo.

The continuation is as follows:

And the sources said that the Fatah official, who works in an important security position, was involved in the kidnapping of an Egyptian security official in Gaza a year ago, and was also involved in smuggling counterfeit money and arms in to Egypt.

And the sources said this [Fatah] official and his group undertook to arrange a plan to fire on the Egyptian security delegation, twice, in the Palestinian territories, so that they were able to cause the failure of the Fatah-Hamas talks that Egypt was supervising. And they said there is information repeatedly referring to the involvement of this Fatah official in the arming of some of the terrorists who undertook terror operations in Taha and Sharm el-Sheikh, which resulted in dozens of victims.

And the information is that the Egyptian security apparatus [which received this information from Hamas] turned over this information in its entirety to the [Egyptian] political leadership, and that is what led to the occurrence of the change in the Egyptian attitude to Hamas. [For instance] president Mubarak said at the Sharm el-Sheikh conference that talks are the only way to solve the Fatah-Hamas crisis, and he later told an Israeli newspaper that Hamas is not a threat to Egypt's national security.

The sources said that Egypt will re-start in the coming weeks the role of the Egyptian security delegation in Gaza, and that it might also open a consulate in the Gaza Strip. And the sources said they expect there will be an invitation in the coming days to Khaled Meshaal to visit Cairo for discussions on ways to end the crisis with Fatah.

Several of these points were also referred to in the piece in Al-Masriyoun, including the reference to kidnapping of an Egyptian security official a year ago; spying on Egypt; smuggling counterfeit money into Egypt; and support for terrorist attacks in the Egyptian tourist areas of Sharm el-Sheikh and Taha. The main new point in this Al-Osboa piece is that this intelligence information was turned over in its entirety, by the Egyptian security people to whom Hamas gave it, to the Egyptian political authorities, and this resulted in the dramatic change in the attitude of Egypt with respect to Hamas.