The Enemy Within

The accused are doomed from the start. The judges refer to them openly as "traitors." No private lawyers will represent them, and their government-appointed attorneys put up little or no defense. Palestinians arrested for collaborating with the Israelis are a pitiable lot. Even relatives keep their distance, out of both shame and fear. In a Nablus courtroom two weeks ago, the nephew of a Palestinian official assassinated by the Israelis beat up a relative of the collaborator on trial for helping carry out the hit. But the simple allegation that one is a collaborator can be a death sentence. This year suspected collaborators have been shot in front of their families or in parking lots on busy streets. No one pursues their killers. With every Israeli hit on a Palestinian leader, the search for traitors intensifies. In the past two weeks five suspects have been lynched; six have been given death sentences. "It's a witch-hunt," says Bassem Eid, a human-rights activist. "There's a huge hatred in society toward the collaborators."

It is a hatred that has overflowed into paranoia. Last Tuesday, as a handful of Israeli tanks demolished a police station in the town of Jenin in the northern West Bank, which is under Arafat's control, some Palestinians at first said the Israelis made the dramatic stab in order to rescue 70 collaborators imprisoned there. In fact, there were no such prisoners. The Israelis wanted to punish Jenin, which has been the base for several recent suicide bombers. Yet Palestinians believe that Israel would risk its troops two miles inside enemy territory only to rescue its valuable operatives. Without collaborators, Palestinians say, how would the Israelis have such stunning success targeting and killing activists in Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's own Fatah Party?

The truth is, Israel's assassinations are six parts gadgetry to four parts information from collaborators. Technology is the foundation of Israel's intelligence operation. In 1996, Israel completed a $4 million network of antennas in hilltop Israeli settlements throughout the West Bank that enables it to listen in on every cellular-phone call Palestinians make. At the Jerusalem headquarters of military intelligence's listening division, Unit 8200, computers scan the calls for key words that signal conversations worth a hearing by one of the hundreds of soldiers stationed there. Even with no one on the line, a cell phone emits a signal every few seconds, so Israel can trace the owner constantly. Assassinations are carried out with the aid of unmanned drones that fly high and send back detailed surveillance photos.

Of course, just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. Part of the Palestinian fear is justified. When Israel pulled out of Palestinian towns beginning in 1994, it had to expand its operation for finding and maintaining collaborators to keep track of events now outside its area of control. The Shin Bet, Israel's domestic security force, set up a special unit to select likely collaborators from among the close circles of Hamas activists and Palestinian Authority officials. The Shin Bet men who run the collaborator network in Bethlehem had two mobile homes as offices three years ago. Now they have seven. They have even paved a parking lot and planted a little garden. Each Palestinian town has about 10 agents working its collaborator network.