BACKGROUND
HELEN DAVIS
Foreign Correspondent
alestinian leaders in
the Israeli-occupied
territories have laun-
ched a desperate campaign
to rein in masked youngsters
who are killing and robbing
fellow Palestinians in the
name of the intifada (upris-
ing).
More than 350 Palestin-
ians accused of collaborating
with the Israeli authorities
have been "tried" and ex-
ecuted by kangaroo courts in
the occupied territories since
the intifada erupted in
December 1987.
Palestinian leaders now
admit that some were
wrongly accused but they
are more concerned about
the effect all this has had on
young Palestinians, many of
whom have taken the law
into their own hands to set-
tle political and religious
scores.
They are also concerned
that the violence has
unleashed a wave of armed
robberies, including attacks
on Palestinian shops and
post offices, under the guise
of the "nationalist
struggle."
In the first six months of
this year, more Palestinians
have died at the hands of
their own people than as a
result of action by the Israeli
security forces. In the past
two months alone, 20 Pales-
tinians have been killed by
Israelis during disturbances,
while 50 have been killed by
fellow Palestinians.
One attack by masked
"nationalist" youths in the
Gaza Strip last week
resulted in the death of a
wealthy local merchant,
Mazen Khayal, and the theft
of $400,000.
On the same day, another
masked gang robbed a jewel-
ry store in the West Bank
town of Nablus, stabbing
and seriously wounding a
shop assistant.
In the Gaza Strip, where
up to 40 per cent of the
750,000 inhabitants are
thought to support the
Islamic fundamentalist
llamas movement, gun-
fights, fist-fights and graffiti
wars have erupted with sup-
porters of the Palestine Lib-
eration Organization.
After one such shoot-out in
the Gaza Strip, doctors at
the Anglican Hospital were
p
Artwork by D. B. Johnson. Copynohte 1991. D. B. Johroon. Distributed by Los Angeles Times Synrkete.
Intifada Continues
To Turn Inward
Some Palestinian leaders acknowledge that their
people are more afraid of masked Palestinian
youths than of Israeli soldiers.
operating on Amer Masrouji,
a PLO activist who had been
shot, when Hamas sup-
porters broke into the
operating room and stabbed
him repeatedly in the chest.
A major source of violence
in Gaza is over public
displays of religious obser-
vance and "hijab," the
Islamic dress code, with par-
ticular problems focusing
on Hamas demands that all
school girls must wear
headscarves or veils as a
sign of religious piety.
A local restaurateur and
Communist Party member
who attempted to intercede
on behalf of a group of girls
who objected to wearing
veils was beaten so severely
that he had to be treated in a
hospital.
To further underline the
point, a Hamas slogan was
painted on a wall near his
restaurant declaring that
unveiled women would be
considered as "collaborators."
"The Communist Party
calls on our brothers in
llamas to use a democratic
dialogue," was daubed
alongside.
But this was met with an
even larger and unequivocal
response from llamas:
"Communism is a cancer in-
side the nation's body and
we will cut it out."
Fundamentalist-style fer-
vor, however, is not confined
to the Gaza Strip: In the
West Bank town of Nablus
last Friday, for example,
masked youngsters publicly
flogged two men suspected of
theft in the town center to
popular local acclaim.
The Palestinian cause has
already been politically
damaged by the close identi-
fication of PLO chairman
Yassir Arafat with the cause
of Saddam Hussein's Iraq,
and materially damaged by
the subsequent halt in aid
from the Gulf states.
Palestinian leaders know
it is unlikely that the Israeli
authorities will intervene to
stop the internecine blood-
letting, which is deflecting
anger away from them, turn-
ing Palestinians against
each other and further
draining energy from the
nationalist struggle.
The Palestinian leaders
ascribe much of the recent
upsurge in violence to the
sense of frustration caused
by a failure to translate the
intifada into tangible polit-
ical gains. They also ac-
knowledge that such expec-
tations are even less likely
to be fulfilled if uncon-
trollable mob violence con-
tinues unrestrained.
One indication of concern
came from Faisal Husseini,
the most senior Palestinian
leader in the occupied ter-
ritories, who has gone public
with a call for "fresh think-
ing" and a "practical
reassessment of the in-
tifada."
"We must start working
under the slogan of
reconstructing the shape
and infrastructure of the in-
tifada," he said. "We must
reassess the intifada and
rebuild it on an economic
and educational basis."
This was followed by a
spate of articles in the
Arabic press by other in-
fluential Palestinians who
have sought to halt the wave
of anarchy and to calm pas-
sions. Some of the articles
have publicly denounced the
killing of collaborators and
condemned those who give
themselves the right to
"try" to kill suspects.
"Who has the right to im-
pose the death penalty on an
innocent person who has not
been convicted, and who can
decide whether a person has
actually fallen to collabora-
tion or not," asked two Pa-
lestinian journalists,
Nabhan Khraishe and
Sirhan al-Salaymeh.
"We fell silent while the
disease was spreading," they
added. "Almost all of us
whisper to ourselves, but we
do not dare speak out loud."
According to another arti-
cle, Palestinians in the oc-
cupied territories are now
more afraid of masked Pa-
lestinian youths than they
are of Israeli soldiers.
Adnan Dumairi, a Pales-
tinian activist who has been
jailed four times since the
start of the intifada,
laments: "Today, we are
afraid of ourselves more
than anything else."
Daoud Kuttab, a leading
Palestinian journalist in
Jerusalem, conceded that
"mistakes have been made
in the past and attempts are
being made now to deal with
this problem (of suspected
collaborators) in a more
civilized way."
There were also plans to
persuade young people to
channel their energies into
building up "national in-
stitutions" instead of
"wasting this energy inter-
nally," he said.
The problem is that the
young Palestinians, once
hailed as the heroes of the
intifada, may no longer be
listening. ❑
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
31