Hamas leader's son worked for Shin Bet, memoir claims

The son of a top Hamas leader in the West Bank was an informant for Israel's Shin Bet Israeli internal security organization for more than a decade, according to his memoir to be published in the United States next week, DPA reported.

Mosab Hassan Yousef, 32, helped prevent scores of Palestinian militant attacks, an Israeli newspaper reported Wednesday, citing the book, plus the Palestinian informer's former Shin Bet handler, identified only as Captain Loai.

The autobiography, titled Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices, is due to be published on March 2.

Yousef is the son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a senior West Bank leader in Hamas, the Palestinian radical Islamist movement ruling Gaza.

Hamas, in the 1990s and early 2000s, carried out scores of deadly suicide bombings in Israeli cities. Since it first took part in Palestinian elections in 2006, it has stopped the suicide bombings and instead turned to rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip at southern Israel. Since Israel's Gaza war last winter, however, it has largely abided by an unwritten truce.

According to Haaretz, Yousef junior was enlisted by the Shin Bet in 1997, while serving in an Israeli prison. He fled the West Bank in 2007 and currently lives in California.

Yousef, who earned the nickname the Green Prince, helped prevent dozens of suicide bombings and assassination attempts on Israeli figures, the daily quoted his Israeli handler as saying.

The daily said he also supplied information that led to the arrest of a number of high-ranking Palestinian figures, including Ibrahim Hamid, a Hamas military commander in the West Bank, and Marwan Barghouti, the charismatic West Bank leader of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party, who is serving several life sentences in an Israeli prison for shooting attacks by gunmen of his party, who operated according to the Israeli court under his direction.

Yousef thwarted an Israeli plan to assassinate his own father, added Haaretz. It quoted his Shin Bet handler as saying he was not paid for supplying the tips, but did it because "he wanted to save lives."