In the argot of the area, Makawi was a “collaborator”–one of hundreds, if not thousands, in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Palestinian informers have helped Israel control the occupied territories for more than three decades. But since the latest surge of violence erupted last September, Israeli authorities are paying or intimidating agents into providing life-and-death information, including names of those behind the uprising. Now, Palestinians are retaliating. Officials in Gaza and elsewhere have rounded up dozens of suspected collaborators and sentenced four of them to death in hasty trials. Two have already been executed; others thought to have spied for Israel have been killed on the streets by vigilantes. “It’s a sad story,” says Palestinian Justice Minister Freih Abu Medeen. “[The collaborators] have done terrible things to their people, but they are also victims of the Israeli occupation, much like other Palestinians.”
Makawi’s story seems fairly typical. Six years ago, an agent of Israel’s Shabak security service stopped him at the Erez border crossing and gave him a choice: either betray your people or lose your magnetic card–a coveted permit that allows Palestinians to work in Israel. For years, Makawi’s assignments were almost trivial. He described to his Shabak handlers the comings and goings at his Rafah refugee camp, told them who seemed particularly hostile to Israel and who had been spending a lot of time at the mosque and might come under the influence of Islamic groups. Every month, a Shabak agent would meet him at the Erez crossing, debrief him and slip a few bills into the plastic covering of his magnetic card–the equivalent of about $300. It wasn’t much, even by the standards of impoverished Gaza, but it supplemented Makawi’s income as a day laborer in Israel.
Last November, two months after the fighting erupted, Makawi’s handlers asked him to monitor Jammal Abdel-Razek, a local organizer of attacks on Israelis–and Makawi’s nephew. On Nov. 22, Makawi told the court in his confession last week, his Israeli handler asked for Abdel-Razek’s precise location and his minute-by-minute travel plans. At 9:00 a.m., Makawi called the agent to tell him Abdel-Razek was traveling with a friend from Rafah to Khan Younis in a new Honda automobile. Israeli soldiers intercepted the car near the Morag settlement an hour later, spraying it with bullets. Both men died, along with two passengers in a taxi traveling behind the Honda. “I thought the Israelis were only going to follow him,” Makawi told the three judges during the trial at Gaza’s police headquarters. “I didn’t think they would kill him.”
Spectators who had assembled to hear the Makawi verdict went wild. Several cried out “Alahu Akbar (God is great)”; others pushed forward toward the defendant. In the chaos, one spectator pulled out a gun. He was sitting in the second row, directly behind Palestinian police chief Ghazi Jabali, less than 10 yards from Makawi. A cluster of policemen jumped on Jabali, blanketing him with their bodies. Another group wrestled the gunman to the ground before he fired a shot.
The message for Palestinian authorities was clear: if they didn’t carry out the death sentence, other Palestinians would. Two days later, Makawi was hooded, tied to a pole in the same police compound where he was tried, and put in front of a firing squad. Eight Palestinian policemen emptied their automatic rifles into his limp body, the last shots fired by one eager gunman at point-blank range.
The Palestinian Authority is also seeking other solutions to the collaborator problem. One option: a pledge not to arrest those who onfess to their activities. Yousef Issa, head of the “Israel desk” at Palestinian Preventive Security–the shadowy equivalent of Israel’s Shabak security service–says dozens of informers have taken advantage of this amnesty offer in recent weeks. As proof, he introduced me to “Ahmed” in the cavernous Gaza headquarters of Preventive Security. Ahmed was escorted in by three agents. His head was wrapped in a kaffiyeh to hide his identity; only his dark eyes were visible. In an hour-long interview, Ahmed explained how Israeli police caught him stealing cars seven years ago and freed him from jail when he agreed to work for Shabak. At first, that involved giving the Israelis the names of other car thieves and drug smugglers. Later, he was asked to spy on members of the Palestinian Authority, security officials and Islamic militants.
“Whenever I objected to an assignment, they threatened to tell the Palestinian Authority that I’m a collaborator,” he says. “I was trapped.” When fighting erupted last September, his Israeli handlers instructed him to go the confrontation lines and provide names of the organizers of the violence. Soon, he says, his own children were on those lines and might have ended up as names on his list. “My feelings started to change. I wanted to cry when I saw my own kids were going to the protests to participate in the intifada, while I was collaborating. I felt regret and fear. What if my kids would find out that I work for the Israelis? How would they react?”
Some in Israel, meanwhile, are critical of their security service’s failure to help its informers. “We haven’t done a good job of protecting these people after they help us,” one high-ranking Shabak official told me. In addition to not trying to get Makawi out of Gaza, the official also accused his organization of mishandling the case of Allan Bani-Oudeh, a collaborator executed by Palestinian authorities a week ago. Bani-Oudeh was recruited by Shabak nine months ago to spy on his cousin, a top Hamas activist who spent most of the past two years in a Palestinian prison. When Palestinians freed the cousin from jail for a weekend in late November, Israeli agents told Bani-Oudeh to lend the prisoner his car. The agents had secretly planted explosives in the headrest; when Bani-Oudeh called his handler to tell him his cousin, Ibrahim Bani-Oudeh, was now behind the wheel, Shabak pressed the button. The blast sent the activist’s head crashing into the windshield; his body remained on the seat. “Using his car to kill the Hamas man made it clear to every Palestinian that our guy was involved in the killing,” the former Shabak official says. “When you compromise a man like this, you have to give him protection. And we didn’t.”
Both collaborators, Makawi and Bani-Oudeh, were arrested days after the assassinations. Their separate trials lasted just a few hours. Only twice during the proceedings did Makawi’s court-appointed lawyer speak out on his behalf. The bulk of the “evidence” used to convict him came from Makawi’s own confession, which was produced in court in the form of a long, handwritten document. Yet when the time came for the judges to rule, they did not hesitate. Both men were to be shot to death–abandoned by Israel, traitors to their fellow Palestinians.
