A Dirty Business
AND TOUR SOUTHFIELD'S
FINEST RETIREMENT
COMMUNITY
Is Israel obligated to take in Palestinian collaborators
when it pulls back from the territories?
INA FRIEDMAN ISRAEL CORRESPONDENT
A
s the negotiations in
Taba drag on, BTselem,
the Israeli Information
Center for Human
Rights in the Occupied Territo-
ries, has published an impres-
sively researched, somber, and
often harrowing 208-page re-
port titled "Collaborators' in the
Territories during the Intifada"
that raises troubling questions
for both sides.
Three years in the making,
the report addresses — for the
first time in the organization's
history — violations of human
rights by Palestinians in the oc-
cupied territories.
adding that only 3540 percent
of these victims were actually
associated with the Israeli au-
thorities, whereas 10 percent
(including many of the 107
women victims) were "moral of-
fenders" and 50 percent were
murdered on purely criminal
grounds.
The discrepancy in defini-
tions is a key point. While the
Israelis admit to working with
a wide network of informers,
both in the field and within Is-
raeli prisons, the Palestinian
"shock forces" that have carried
out the "executions" include in
their definition of "collaborator"
in painful positions for long pe-
riods or applying pressure to
their necks, shoulders or limbs).
The "executioners" also used
such grisly and often lethal
methods (not learned from the
Israelis) as puncturing victims
with sharp instruments, burn-
ing them with red-hot metal,
dripping boiling plastic or rub-
ber on them, hanging them, and
igniting or amputating their
limbs.
During the first year of the
intifada, Palestinians who con-
fessed to collaboration were of-
ten released with a warning to
mend their ways. Others were
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Perhaps inevitably, it also
contains a searing indictment
of Israeli authorities for both
creating the problem of masses
of collaborators — often in ways
that violate the Fourth Geneva
Convention — and failing to
deal with the plight of the
30,000-50,000 "burned" collab-
orators and their families who
will remain in the territories
with the onset of self-rule.
Despite widespread attention
to the subject, the number of
Palestinians murdered for sus-
pected collaboration since the
start of the intifada is still open
to dispute.
The Associated Press puts
the figure at 779. Israeli mili-
tary authorities say it is 942,
land dealers, "fixers" (interces-
sors with the Israeli authori-
ties), employees and appointees
of the military government, and
"moral offenders" (drug users
and dealers, pornographers, ho-
mosexuals, prostitutes and oth-
ers)."
Equally loose, the report
finds, were the procedures for
proving the charges against al-
leged collaborators. Some vic-
tims were summarily executed.
Others were first interrogated
under torture — in some cases,
the report adds, through meth-
ods learned by the "shock
squads" from their own inter-
rogations while in Israeli de-
tention (placing bags over
suspects' heads, tying them up
treated to admonitory punish-
ment: mutilation with axes,
kitchen knives or razor blades;
broken bones or bullets wounds
in the legs; house arrest or se-
vere social ostracism.
Such "warnings" were meant
to lead suspected collaborators
to "repent" — an option revived
at the end of 1993, when the
Hamas announced its suspen-
sion of executions for two
months to give collaborators a
chance to atone (though even
then the killings continued).
From 1988 onward, howev-
er, the execution of suspected
collaborators became rife. Most
were shot, knifed, or axed to
death. A number met their end
in public executions ("people's