The atrocities and war crimes committed by the Israeli Defense Forces have overshadowed another layer of human rights abuses in Gaza. While more than 1400 Gazans died at the hand of Israeli soldiers, hundreds more Palestinians have been killed at the hands of their own government. As Amnesty International reported in its paper, "Hamas’ Deadly Campaign in the Shadow of the War in Gaza," dozens of Palestinians have been killed or badly beaten and tortured by Hamas in the days surrounding the Israeli assault on Gaza. Hamas’ disregard for the rule of law and human rights demonstrate its inability to function as a legitimate governing body and its failure to serve the Palestinian people.
As noted in the AI report, Hamas targets include former detainees accused of "collaborating" with the Israeli army who escaped from Gaza’s central prison when it was bombed by Israeli forces on 28 December 2008. Other targets included former members of the Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces and other activists of the Fatah party.
Most of the victims were taken from their homes and killed by the Hamas militia. For those victims not summarily executed by gunshots to the head and chest, victims were often kneecapped, severely beaten or otherwise permanently disabled by their attackers. On some occasions, the killings took place in hospitals in the presence of uniformed Hamas officials.
Spy or Die, Then Die
The motivation behind these killings stems from the victims’ collaboration with Israeli intelligence. This reveals yet another dark chapter in the lives of thousands of ordinary Palestinians trying top survive amidst the conflict.
In an article originally published in the National and reprinted in AntiWar.com, the methods employed by Israeli intelligence to recruit Palestinian collaborators is chilling. Once forced into collaborating for the Shin Bet, the Israeli domestic intelligence service, a Palestinian’s life is in permanent peril. Discovery of such a relationship means certain death.
So why would a Palestinian choose to collaborate with the Israelis?
There are a variety of reasons, including torture while in Israeli detention, promise of early release from prison and offers of access to needed medical treatment that might otherwise be denied. As noted in an article published in 2008,
The Shin Bet . . . has recently turned its attention to sick Gazans and their relatives who need to leave the Strip. With hospitals and medicines in short supply, some patients have little hope of recovery without treatment abroad or in Israel.
According to the Israeli branch of Physicians for Human Rights, the Shin Bet is exploiting the distress of these families to pressure them to agree to collaborate in return for an exit permit.
Last month [August 2008], the group released details of 32 cases in which sick Gazans admitted they were denied permits after refusing to become informants.
The more traditional means of recruiting informants has been a staple for the Israelis for decades.
As with other occupation regimes, Israel has long relied on the most traditional way of recruiting collaborators: torture. While a decision by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1999 banned torture, the evidence suggests the Shin Bet simply ignored the ruling.
Two Israeli human rights groups, B’Tselem and Hamoked, found last year that seven "special" interrogation methods amounting to torture are still being regularly employed, including beatings, painful binding, back bending, body stretching and prolonged sleep deprivation.
Detention provides other opportunities for recruitment. In the past 17 years alone, 150,000 Palestinians have been prosecuted by the military regime. According to the Israeli group Yesh Din, 95 percent of these trials end in plea bargains, offering yet another chance to persuade a detainee to turn informant in return for a reduced sentence.
This leaves many Palestinians in the terrible dilemma of avoiding further torture or death in the present in exchange for spying on their neighbors, their communities and of course, Hamas. Should an informant fail in his duties, all Shin Bet needs to do is to let it be known that the informant "was" a spy for Israel. Hamas will then take care of the problem created by its enemy across the border.
For the Palestinian victims who fell at the hand of their own government, the ultimate price was paid for their acts.
In response to the AI report, Ihab al-Ghussein, a spokesperson for Hamas not unsurprisingly rejected the report’s findings. In one of the most cynical statements to spew out of the region in recent weeks, he was quoted as saying that "anyone who was attacked should file a complaint and, if they are afraid as Fatah claims, I call on them to come to me in person to handle the issue."
Hamas cannot rise out of the trenches of war and become a legitimate political force if it continues to wage war on its own people. Compounded by the greater problems of the systematic elimination of the Palestinian people by the government of Israel, the plight of the Palestinian people will only get much worse. It is time for Hamas and Fatah to settle their differences and make peace between them and with their own people. If Palestinians are to survive, then the real focus must be directed at the far greater problems facing the Palestinian State just outside its borders.