An Intifadeh Of the Soul

(8 of 9)

Of the 947 Palestinians killed so far during the uprising, at least 230 have been shot, beaten, stabbed or hacked to death by fellow Palestinians. Collaboration is not the only capital offense. Some victims have offended Islamic factions by trafficking in drugs and sex. Others were killed in personal vendettas.

An activist who calls himself Yazeed is 29. He bites at his fingernails, his thin face crossed by sudden gusts of anger and fear, and says, "Killing the collaborators will cut the fingers of the Shin Bet." Yazeed has spent seven years in Israeli jails for his work in what he calls the "armed struggle against the Zionist occupation." He refuses to marry: "Why should I? I have nothing to offer my children." Besides, he expects to be a martyr.

Yazeed says he has personally executed three people accused of collaboration. He feels no remorse. He insists that collaborators are given warnings, a chance to "come to their senses."

Why does a Palestinian become a collaborator? Life under occupation is very inconvenient; the occupier controls every detail. The Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security agency, can arrange a thousand favors to ease the way. They might come to an unemployed university graduate, for example, and say, "Why suffer? We can make you a teacher." In return the Shin Bet will start by asking something very easy: "We just need the names of your neighbors." By degrees the collaborator is drawn deeper into the web. If he tries to retreat, ^ the Israelis say, "We will expose you as a collaborator." It is widely believed in Nablus that Shin Bet agents have given drugged drinks to Palestinian women, then removed their clothing and taken pictures, threatening to shame them by showing the pictures to their families unless they cooperate. Some corrupt village mukhtars (headmen) have collaborated in exchange for permission to gouge money from their people. That is a dangerous game. Such collaborators wind up turning their homes into armed fortresses, with transmitters to keep in touch with the Shin Bet.

THE PRISONER'S TALE

Pictures hang high on the walls of a Palestinian's house, the tops of the frames nearly touching the ceiling. Is it that such elevation of the gaze suggests respect for the figures pictured there -- for the father staring down in formal Arab robes, for the first son, working in one of the gulf states and sending home the money that the family survives on? Such images look down upon Qassem in his sitting room. His own gaze is lowered. He is talking about his prison time and about being interrogated by Israeli agents.

Qassem has served three stretches in jail on suspicion of being an activist. He is a man in his mid-30s, with black Heathcliff eyes and deep grooves like parentheses around his mouth. In the dusk he recalls the rituals of interrogation.

"You begin with two days and nights isolated, standing up, handcuffed, with a sack over your head. You just hear crying, loud voices, an iron door slamming. You are very frightened. If you fall, they throw cold water on you to wake you up."

Ex-prisoners are always very precise about how many hours, or days, they have been subjected to various stages of interrogation, but it is hard to know how they can be sure of the passage of time, especially if their heads are covered with sacks.