Intifada On Wheels
Israeli cars and other stolen property are flooding
into Palestine.
ERIC SILVER
n American friend, visit-
ing Israel, rented a car and
drove down to the Dead
Sea for a picnic. He was
sitting in a quiet spot along the
shore when a car with blue West
Bank license plates pulled up.
Two Arabs jumped out, an-
nounced that they had a gun
(though they didn't produce it)
and demanded his wallet. He
handed it over. "Now, the keys,"
said one of the men, who
snatched them from him and
drove off with the car.
When the visitor finally made
it to an Israeli police station, the
duty officer shrugged. "They'll be
in Jericho by now," he said.
"Nothing we can do about it."
Jericho and Gaza, the two en-
claves Israel ceded to Palestinian
self-rule under the Oslo peace
agreement, are awash with stolen
Israeli vehicles, many of them
openly driven by Yassir Arafat's
officials and security men. In
Gaza alone, the total is estimat-
ed by the Palestinian police at
25,000.
Most of them were taken not
at gunpoint but in the night by
Israeli car thieves. They drove
them to the border and handed
them over to Palestinian part-
ners, who smuggled them across.
In Gaza the cars are instantly rec-
ognizable by their chocolate-
brown "temporary" license plates,
issued by the Palestinian Au-
thority.
It is a kind of intifada on
wheels. Israeli property is seen
as fair game. The Palestinian po-
lice gave the new owners until
April 8 to register their vehicles
but have dropped no hint that
they might then be returned to
Israel. Licenses are valid for three
months. After that the Palestin-
ian Authority decides what hap-
pens to the stolen vehicles.
When the whole of the West
Bank was under Israeli occupa-
tion, wry Palestinians, menaced
by soldiers and armed Jewish set-
tlers, used to call it "the Wild
West Bank." Under Palestinian
autonomy, Gaza and Jericho
have become even wilder.
In Gaza last week, Palestinian
secret police arrested 17 Arabs
suspected of collaborating with
the Israeli security forces.
Interrogators drove one of
them, 32-year-old Muhammad
al-Jundi, to a site in the Jabaliya
refugee camp, where an Israeli
undercover unit shot dead six
members of Mr. Arafat's Fatah
Hawks in March 1994, two
months before the Israeli evac-
uation.
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SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
The alleged collaborators, Mr.
al-Jundi among them, are said to
have confessed to guiding the Is-
raelis to their target — and last
November to Hani Abed, a leader
of the Islamic Jihad fundamen-
talists, one of whose suicide
bombers recently had blown up
a Tel Aviv bus. Mr. Abed died
when his car exploded under him.
In Jabaliya last Saturday the
Palestinian interrogators sum-
marily executed Muhammad al-
Jundi.
This was no isolated aberra-
tion. Last November, Col. Jibril
Rajoub, head of the Palestinian
Preventive Security Force in Jeri-
cho, ran his own slate in Fatah
elections in the West Bank town
of Ramallah, still under Israeli
occupation. He sent Nasser Abu
Hmeid, who had been convicted
by an Israeli court of nine politi-
cal murders, to reinforce his mes-
sage.
Mr. Hmeid, who had been re-
leased on condition that he stay
in Jericho, was arrested by Israeli
police. He was armed with a
Kalashnikov assault rifle and
was driving a car rented by
Colonel Rajoub's office. He is now
back in an Israeli prison, serving
out his nine life sentences.
This spring, Victor Elias, a
nephew of Bethlehem Mayor
Elias Freij, was attending a soc-
cer match. Disturbances broke
out between rival spectators, and
a Palestinian policeman fired in
the air. Mr. Elias, a 20-year-old
Christian Arab, objected to the
action. "You might hit someone,"
he protested.
The police arrested him, cart-
ed him off to Jericho and beat
him in an interrogation cell.
When one of the policeman saw
a crucifix around his neck, he
snarled: "We're going to teach
you Christians a lesson, just like
we did in Beirut." Only after
Mayor Freij, who is also minis-
ter of tourism in Mr. Arafat's ad-
ministration, interceded was his
nephew sent home, bruised and
bleeding.
Whenever such incidents be-
come public, Palestinian Justice
Minister Freih Abu Medein
promises that complaints will be
investigated and the perpetrators
prosecuted by a military court.
Yet in most cases nothing hap-
pens.
Freih Abu Medein is a well-
meaning Gaza lawyer. The ques-
tion is not whether he wants to
stop the rot but whether the
politicians have the power to
control their own security ser-
vices. ❑