 The body of a suspected informer for Israel hangs from a power pole as a crowd of children watch in the southern West Bank town of Hebron on Tuesday. AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis |
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The militiamen entered a Palestinian jail at dawn Tuesday and seized three men accused of collaborating with Israel. All were shot execution style, and two of the bloodied corpses were hung by their ankles from poles on a busy Hebron street. The third was dumped next to the scene of the previous night's killing, where a group of Palestinians kicked and spat on the body.
It was the second straight day that members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a militia linked to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, had openly attacked accused collaborators - pointing to the widespread disarray in the Palestinian government and security forces.
The killings were shocking for the brazenness of the attackers, the widespread public support they received and the open participation by passers-by and youths.
In the wake of Israel's West Bank offensive directed at Palestinian militants, many angry Palestinians are demanding revenge, and the closest targets at hand are fellow Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel.
Dozens of suspected Palestinian collaborators have been killed during the nearly 19 months of Mideast fighting, with many of the deaths coming in recent weeks.
The practice was even more widespread in the first Palestinian uprising, from 1987-93, when some 800 were slain, accounting for about one-third of all Palestinian deaths related to that uprising.
Israel has long relied on a vast network of Palestinian informants to keep tabs on Palestinian militants.
Israel presumably received such information when army helicopters swooped down on Hebron just before midnight Monday and fired rockets that incinerated the white Mitsubishi sedan carrying Marwan Zalloum, leader of Al Aqsa in Hebron, and his bodyguard.
Zalloum, who was in his 40s, was accused by Israel of orchestrating deadly attacks, including an April 12 suicide bombing in Jerusalem that killed six. "I am attacking the Jews because they took my land, took my freedom, took everything from the Palestinians," he said in a January interview with Fox News.
When Zalloum's fellow Al Aqsa gunmen seized the three suspected collaborators on Tuesday morning, they took men who had been jailed for extended periods, and therefore were in no position to provide any recent information on Zalloum.
After shooting all three in the head and chest, the attackers tossed their bodies in the street around 9 a.m., next to the burned out shell of Zalloum's car.
The large crowds that quickly surrounded the bodies included men and women, some of whom lifted their children so they too could see. All three of the dead had duct tape over their mouths.
While men threw stones and kicked one body, ropes were tied around the other two, who were dragged down the street to lampposts and hung upside down by one ankle.
Hundreds of Hebron residents gathered around each body, causing a traffic gridlock. Some onlookers climbed the stairs of a nearby mosque for a better view. A few approached the bodies and stuffed cigarettes into the bullet holes in the dead men's torsos.
After more than three hours, the bodies were collected in the back of a pickup truck as the crowd cheered and whistled, and then chanted, "God is great."
"There should be more killings of collaborators, and of the Israelis, who killed Marwan," said Munzer Majid, 28, an accountant.
The killings came only a day after Al Aqsa militiamen in the West Bank town of Ramallah shot three alleged informers, killing one and wounding two, in a crowded downtown square less than one mile from Arafat's besieged compound, which is surrounded by Israeli troops.
Col. Talal Idwakat, a commander in the Palestinian intelligence service cited three reasons for the recent increase in attacks against collaborators.
The Israeli incursions in Palestinian cities have provoked great anger, he said. Israeli air strikes have destroyed Palestinian jails and prisons, prompting Palestinian security officials to release prisoners they say they cannot protect. And Israel's targeted killings of Palestinian militants has focused attention on the key role played by collaborators.
Still, Palestinian authorities say they oppose such killings.
"We are against anybody taking the law into his own hands," Idwakat said. "We realize that one of the goals of the Israeli invasion was to create chaos in our cities."
The Palestinians convicted and executed several collaborators early on in the current uprising, drawing strong criticism from the European Union. Since then, about 40 Palestinians have been sentenced to death for collaboration, but the executions must be approved by Arafat, and he has not done so.
Mark Heller, an Israeli at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, said the Palestinian leadership has not attempted to confiscate weapons in private hands, and there's virtually no chance it will do so now and go against the sentiment of the increasingly radicalized Palestinian street.
"When people are dragged out of jail and a mob is screaming kill them, it takes a lot of guts to stand up and say, 'stop.'"
