Dealing With Collaborators (Arab brutality alert)

Dealing With Collaborators

//Palestine Chronicle//MLN//IMC.org//
http://palestinechronicle.com/

Saturday, March 16 2002 @ 05:52 AM GMT

By Muna Hamzeh

Until this week, the killing of collaborators had never been turned into a public display in the Occupied Territories. In the first Intifada, collaborators were killed, but their bodies were never hung in public or tied to the backs of pick-up trucks and dragged through the streets.

But twice this week, once in Ramallah and once in Bethlehem, Palestinians killed three collaborators and made a public display of their bodies.

In the first case on March 12, the body of Ra'ed Naem Odeh was hung upside down at
Al-Manara Square in the center of Ramallah. The Al-Aqsa Brigade said they shot and killed him on suspicion of collaborating with the Israelis to assassinate one of the Brigade's senior members, Muhanad Abu Halawa and two of his comrades, earlier this month.

Today in Bethlehem, Mahmoud Sabatin and Deifallah, were shot dead by group of Palestinian militiamen. The bullet-riddled body of Mahmoud Sabatin, was then tied to the back of a pick-up truck and dragged from neighboring Beit Sahour to Bethlehem.

He was dragged into Manger Square were the militiamen attempted to hang him but were prevented from doing so by Palestinian police.

Both men were killed on suspicion of collaborating with Israel and leading to the assassination of the military leader of the Fatah hawks in Bethlehem, Hussein Obeiat in November 2000. I was still in Dheisheh the day Obeiat was assassinated.

We drove to the scene shortly after an Israeli Apache gunship shelled Obeiat's car as it drove down a street in Beit Sahour, killing him instantly and two women who were walking by. It was clear that day that the Israelis would have not been able to assassinate Obeiat had they not had help from collaborators. How else would a gunship have shown up at the precise moment that Obeiat drove by?

Between the start of the Al-Aqsa Intifada on September 29, 2000 and February 5, 2002, the Israeli military - with the help of collaborators - has been able to assassinate 62 Palestinians. This number, provided by LAW, a Palestinian human rights group, includes 20 innocent bystanders who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Turning the killings of collaborators into a public display may seem like a barbaric act for those of us who don't support violence in any form. Yet the issue of collaborators has long been swept under the carpet at a very high cost to the Palestinians, as all the assassinations have shown. The Palestinian Authority has failed to address the issue or even deal with it. How could it when many collaborators work within Arafat's security forces and ministries.

When Arafat first arrived in Gaza in May 1994, I was working on a documentary film for Channel Four in London that kept me in Gaza for extended periods of time for nearly six months. Some of the Palestinians we were filming were members of the Fatah Hawks resistance fighters, who later joined Arafat's security forces because they sincerely believed that was how they could best help build a Palestinian state.

I remember how angry these young men were when they reported to work, only to discover that some of those higher ranking than themselves were collaborators, whom they had personally kidnapped and interrogated in the first Intifada. Within a few months after the inception of Arafat's Authority, many of these former Fatah Hawks lost faith in their leadership for its clear lack of commitment to rid its ranks from those willing to sell their fellow countrymen for a buck.

The fact that the Palestinians are willing, for the first time, to make such a public display of the killings of collaborators underlines the extent of the need to rid themselves, once and for all, of those willing to commit the highest act of treason. Perhaps the hanging in Ramallah two days ago and the lynching in Bethlehem today will make the hundreds of other collaborators consider the cost of their collaboration. Hizbullah in South Lebanon was able to succeed in riding itself of collaborators and the Palestinians have to do the same if the resistance is going to have any chance at bringing the occupation to an end.

For their part, the Israelis will continue to recruit collaborators in whatever way they can. They detain young teenagers, torture them physically and psychologically and then seduce them with money as a way to end their pain. After rounding up 600 men in Dheisheh this week, the Israeli military was not able to arrest a single person that they claim is a member of a "terrorist" group. Instead, the army released all 600 men with the exception of 70.

Then they released 50 more, until the final count of who they actually took away was only 20. According to sources in Dheisheh, all 20 males are between the ages of 16-18 and non "have anything to do with anything". How many of those will be tortured into collaboration? How many will succumb to the coercion? And how can a 16 year old civilian, with no training on how to handle pressure under torture be expected to resist the temptation of ending his horrible physical and psychological pain? Clearly, the Palestinians need to create a the conditions whereby young detainees are de-briefed upon their release. And they need to create the conditions whereby it would be impossible for un-repenting collaborators to live within Palestinian society.

Up until now, those known to have collaborated with the Israelis have been able to return to their homes and live their lives unharmed. True, no one socializes or mingles with them. But they are there, watching what takes place around them and reporting it to the Israelis. At this stage in the game, when Israel has no red lights to stop it from committing its war crimes, collaborators need to be ostracized and forced to leave the Palestinian Territories. The damage they have done historically, and in this Intifada particularly, cannot be downplayed or overlooked anymore.

The fact that the Palestinians have been able to produce so many collaborators can no
longer be excused or ignored.

And perhaps it is time for Palestinian resistance fighters to learn another lesson from Hizbullah . Their fighters were never seen parading down the streets, with their guns in hand, and their faces exposed for all to see. The South Lebanese say the identity of the fighters was never revealed to the local population. In the end, Hizbullah was able to rid South Lebanon of their occupiers without signing any agreements, let alone agreements that contain one degrading compromise after another.

As brutal and barbaric as the scenes of this week's hanging and lynching may seem, it is time to clean house. It is time to impose some serious internal changes. We are quickly reaching another Sabra and Shatilla and another Palestinian Nakba. We need to rethink our strategies before we wake up one day and discover that the unthinkable has happened, again. And when that happens, not even Allah will be able to save us.

As brutal and barbaric as the scenes of this week's hanging and lynching may seem, it is time to clean house.

MAY SEEM? What world do these barbarians live in?

Oh, the same ones that'd bomb a disco, a pizza parlor, shoot up a Bat Mizvah, bomb a street three times--killing a pregnant woman and her husband, leaving two small children orphans & on & on & on...oh, that's who.

Why, to hear this fella tell it, you’d think that muslims were brutal savages capable of unspeakable violence and burning with rage hotter than one thousand suns.

But the islam I know is peaceful… and fun loving.

Owl_Eagle

”Guns Before Butter.”

We drove to the scene shortly after an Israeli Apache gunship shelled Obeiat's car as it drove down a street in Beit Sahour, killing him instantly and two women who were walking by. It was clear that day that the Israelis would have not been able to assassinate Obeiat had they not had help from collaborators. How else would a gunship have shown up at the precise moment that Obeiat drove by?

Bump for collaborators.

Time to lease several AC-130 gunships to Israel.

Next Palestinian lynching, it's hamburger time.

Hmmm...some simple and warm observations on Peaceful Islam:

The Al-Aqsa Brigade said they shot and killed him on suspicion of collaborating with the Israelis to assassinate one of the Brigade's senior members

The bullet-riddled body of Mahmoud Sabatin, was then tied to the back of a pick-up truck and dragged from neighboring Beit Sahour to Bethlehem

Both men were killed on suspicion of collaborating

Perhaps the hanging in Ramallah two days ago and the lynching in Bethlehem..."

Boy are we lucky that Islam is a peaceful religion! Could you imagine if these Muslim extremists were to do something barbaric with the bodies? Shhheeeessshh... After this article, I have no idea what we are so worried about. < /serious sarcasm>

Don't worry! We'll be all White!

I have met Palestinians on the internet that do support Israel, and they would perfer to be ruled by them, rather than the Islamic extremists, but we never read about that.

Reporters can't get any supportive-to-Israel Palestinians to talk on the record -- they're afraid they'll be strung up next. It seems very similar to some ruled-by-organized-crime neighborhoods here in the States.

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