TITLE: Palestinian Tells Tale of Double Life

AUTHOR: Charles M. Sennott

PUB: Boston Globe

DATE: January 19, 2001

HEBRON, West Bank - A thin man in his mid-30s nervously lit another cigarette and shifted uncomfortably in the chair inside the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority's Preventive Security service. He had reason to be nervous. Abu Ahmed, as he introduced himself, said he had been helping Israeli security agents obtain information about his Palestinian neighbors and friends for the last 15 years. He had turned himself in the day before, he said in an interview Wednesday, choosing the Palestinian Authority's offer to surrender and face court proceedings rather than risk swift Palestinian street justice or to endure any longer a life of duplicity, which he described as ''worse than being in prison.'' Abu Ahmed's story offers a glimpse into the world of collaborators, and the tactics allegedly used by Israeli agents to sign up young Palestinians - exchanging money, freedom, sex, or sometimes a coveted permit to work in Israel, for information about Palestinian activities. The interview also shed light on what Palestinian authorities interrogating Abu Ahmed and other alleged collaborators describe as a vast network of agents used by Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza. Israeli military officials declined to comment on the use of what they call in Hebrew ''sayan,'' or helpers. Abu Ahmed's decision to turn himself in was made amid the Palestinian Authority's avowal of an all-out offensive against anyone who has collaborated with Israeli agents of the Shin Bet, officially known as the General Security Services. Last week, the Palestinian Authority's justice minister, Freih Abu Medein, announced a 45-day period in which collaborators could turn themselves in and face trial. After that, Medein warned, they will face severe punishment, in some cases execution. Underscoring his warning, the Palestinian Authority publicly executed two convicted collaborators last week in Gaza. The condemned were sentenced to death by firing squad after trial in a military court that was condemned by Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups. Then they were paraded out into a courtyard before a cheering crowd. A dark hood was placed over the head of each man, and their hands were tied behind their backs. As they stood before a wall of sandbags, nine riflemen opened fire. Two more collaborators have been condemned to execution and four face life sentences. Some Palestinians were also taking justice into their own hands; at least four alleged collaborators turned up dead in the West Bank and Gaza within the last week. According to Palestinian security officials, collaborators have deeply penetrated the structure of the Palestinian leadership of the Intifadah, or uprising, that has fought a running conflict with Israeli military forces for nearly four months. Specifically, Palestinian officials say, collaborators have assisted Israeli covert units with assassinations that have killed more than 20 Palestinian militia leaders and activists. Majed Faraj, director general of the Hebron headquarters of Preventive Security, the Palestinian Authority's central security service, said Abu Ahmed was among 40 collaborators who have turned themselves in to his office. He said scores of others had surrendered throughout the West Bank and Gaza. Faraj, who interrogated Abu Ahmed, would not comment on the details of his case, but said, ''Each will be judged case by case. There may be pardons for light offenses, or for those helpful to us. Those who committed grave offenses will face severe judgments.'' Abu Ahmed, Arabic for ''father of Ahmed,'' declined to be identified further. ''I was in a personal conflict that was worse than living in a prison,'' he said, describing years of working with Israeli agents and ultimately being moved from his native West Bank village near Hebron to inside Israel, where he continued to work for the Israelis. ''I thought I am either going to be killed or I am going to have to live in this psychological conflict that separated me from my home and my family. So I decided to free myself from this prison, and bring myself in,'' he said. During the interview, he was surrounded by half a dozen agents from the Palestinian Preventive Security service. He was born in a village near Hebron and is the father of three children, he said. His involvement with the Israeli Shin Bet began in 1985, when as a teenager he was arrested for throwing stones at Israeli troops occupying the West Bank. He said his recruitment followed methods allegedly used by Israeli officials today. First, the Israelis offered him leniency in exchange for providing names and information on local leaders or friends who were throwing stones. Other methods of recruitment, he said, included enticing young Palestinians from traditional families with sex or drugs and then threatening to expose their involvement. After he provided the first few names, Abu Ahmed said, the Israelis kept up the pressure. They produced photos of him meeting with the Shin Bet and said they would release them if he did not cooperate. He said he was only a teenager at the time, and there was no way to consult with his parents or any adults or friends. So he continued to collaborate throughout the first intifadah, from 1987 to 1993. When the Palestinian Authority returned to the West Bank and Gaza after signing a peace accord with Israel in 1994, he said, the Israelis offered to protect him by helping him leave his village and pay for his rental of an apartment in the Israeli town of Beer Sheva. This began the second phase of his work, he said. He lived there over the last seven years, severing ties to his family in Hebron. He was used by the Israelis as a broker, providing Israeli work permits for Palestinians living in the West Bank. As word spread that he could provide the permits, hundreds of Palestinians submitted applications to him. The Israelis would look at who applied, keying in on clans or villages they wanted to penetrate, he said. Applicants who served their purposes would get permits. Abu Ahmed was allowed to take a cut of about $250 for each permit. He said some of the Palestinian workers would then be approached to work as collaborators. If they refused, their employers would be pressured to fire them. If they kept trying to work in Israel, they would be arrested for illegal entry. The Shin Bet ''would make life hell, and they were recruiting many, many people as collaborators this way every year since 1994,'' said Abu Ahmed. He boasted that his information on who accepted the work permits could ''break wide open'' the Israeli network of collaborators. ''I'm not just a big fish, I am a whale,'' he said. Lieutenant Colonel Olivier Rafowicz, a spokesman for the Israeli Defense Forces, said there is a military policy against commenting on Palestinian ''helpers.'' An Israeli security source said, ''in conflict, every country in the world needs information for defensive purposes. This is true throughout history, from the Bible when Moses sent spies to the land of Canaan until today.'' Inside the office, one of Abu Ahmed's Palestinian interrogators, a big man with a dark mustache, offered him another pack of cigarettes. It was ironic, Abu Ahmed said, that he was now sitting in this particular office. The building once housed the West Bank's Civil Administration, where the Israeli military was stationed during occupation before Palestinians took over the building and implemented self rule. ''You know, this is the same room where the Israelis first interrogated me. This was the Shin Bet office,'' he said with an awkward smile. ''And now I am back.'' None of the Palestinian officers - now his jailers - laughed. END top