Collaborators - Recent Cases in the Palestinian Territories
by Dan Williams

When I left here, where I had been working as a correspondent, in 1992, I took many naive ideas with me and one of these was the thought that perhaps the collaborator question would fade away. This is one of the many wrong ideas I took away with me in 1992.

Of course both sides - although engaged in peace talks all these years - maintained certain preparations for conflict and on the Israeli side this included the maintenance and even creation of collaborator networks. The difficulties the Palestinians have in dealing with this, judging by the three recent cases which I have looked at, stem from the length of time collaboration has been a problem in the Palestinian community - a problem which, of course, predates 1967, it predates 1948, it goes back, under different definitions, to the 1920s and 1930s.

In this specific era of this very strange occupation, in which the Palestinian Authority also governs certain areas, there is a new difficulty. This is that, having not used the years in control of the big towns in the West Bank and Gaza to establish some sort of system of justice or even a system of law and order, it is very difficult for the Authority to then suddenly intervene and say, 'We the Authority, with a court, are going to take care of the collaborator issue.' It has already been awkward and it's going to continue to be awkward because there are many difficulties people have accepting the effectiveness of the Palestinian Authority in this manner.

I looked at three cases and I think the details are fairly well known so if I do bring anything new it'll be regarding the 'aftermath' of these cases. One is the case of the assassination of Ibrahim Bani Odeh, the Hamas bomb-maker in Nablus who was decapitated by an explosive put in the headrest of his car. Another is a case in Bruqin, near the Green Line southwest of Nablus, of the murder or killing of an alleged collaborator. Three leaflets came out after the killing accusing the victim, Mohammed Musa Abdul-Rahman, whose nickname was Hanoun, of being a collaborator but no one in the village seems very persuaded by this. The third case is the Bethlehem assassination of Hussein Abayyat, a Fateh gunman who was rocketed in his car in Beit Sahour. In this case two alleged collaborators have subsequently been sentenced to death although their executions have not yet been carried out.

The Assassination of Ibrahim Bani Odeh

I will start with the Nablus case, which seems like the most open and shut case, yet there are some 'difficulties' with it. Ibrahim Bani Odeh actually grew up in the Gulf, was in the army in Jordan, and returned to the Nablus area on a family reunification permit having to do with his marriage to a Palestinian woman. His expertise was, apparently, making bombs and in this activity he lived a rather solitary life but he was befriended by a distant relative, Alan Bani Odeh. The village the Bani Odeh family comes from is called Tammun, but Ibrahim rarely visited it. This man befriended him, they had coffee together and, in what is a traditional display of Palestinian friendship, Alan did many favors for Ibrahim; he tiled his bathroom floor, he helped plaster the walls and, fatally, he would frequently lend him his car.

There is some mystery about Alan Bani Odeh's history. Some people in Tammun say that he, from a very young age, worked in an Israeli settlement in the Jordan Valley. In any case, at some point he was, according to his relatives, picked up by the Israeli authorities and told that he would be thrown into jail for one reason or another if he did not spy on Ibrahim.

Anyway the relationship continued and one day, according to the court records, Alan was told by his Israeli handler to be sure to get the car to Ibrahim on a certain day and to tell his Israeli handler when this had been accomplished. One day they had coffee together and it appears that Ibrahim had had some sort of revelation and suddenly didn't trust Alan anymore and they didn't leave together. Nonetheless Alan, after several phone calls to Ibrahim's wife was able to find him in central Nablus, tell him that he needed to go to Ramallah and would only leave his car with him - Ibrahim, 'the only man he trusted in Nablus with his car'.

Fifteen minutes later, near Nablus Circle, the car blew up, decapitating Ibrahim and blowing a hole through the roof. Alan got a call from his handler (supposedly) telling him to come to some checkpoint outside of Nablus, where he was picked up by the Israelis and whisked away into Israel. A few days later he came back however, apparently at the behest of his brothers who wanted him to clear his name because the family was immediately in jeopardy over this issue. Everyone knew that it was Alan's doing - one way or another.

The court case was not open to the public; it lasted two hours; he was sentenced and then executed in a semi-public execution at Nablus jail to which there was an invitation list for VIPs but, as there was a clamor for other people to get in, several hundred people eventually attended this execution.

Essentially all sides agree on the details of the case accept on one point and it shows the difficulty in really 'closing' a collaborator case. This is true traditionally in Palestine but especially in today's atmosphere. All sides agree that Alan Bani Odeh collaborated with the Israelis and that he was tailing and feeding information to the Israelis about the movements of Ibrahim Bani Odeh. Where they differ is when it comes to whether Alan the collaborator knew that the bomb was in the car. Supposedly Alan came back to Nablus to say, 'yes I collaborated, but no I was not aware of this - I was tricked by the Israelis.'

He laid out a story of being at a settlement, having a meeting with his Israeli handler where the car was out of his sight; he comes back and it's surrounded by soldiers; it is weird but he does not think much of it. He later identifies this moment as being the moment when the explosive was placed in the headrest of his car.

In what may be more of an indication of Nablus' 'personality' rather than a general Palestinian 'personality', no one in the city seems dissatisfied with the judgment or even the way the case was handled; closed - not closed, secret - not secret, evidence - not evidence ... you cannot really get an objection or suggestion as to how it was or should have been done out of the people of Nablus. Lawyers in Nablus would not take the case. Not for the same reasons as Bethlehem's lawyers in the other case, but because they 'will not defend a collaborator'. They do not seem, in principle, to be against the Security Court, which is the court in Palestine that handles these cases, but simply will not handle collaborator cases.

Despite this, closing the case is difficult. Not because of the dead collaborator but because of his family in Tammun. At first the entire clan got together and renounced the collaborator - meaning, as I understand it in Palestinian society, 'he is without protection'; 'indefensible'; 'challas'. Later, however, the brothers amend their renunciation and say, 'he was tricked and he should not have been executed.' So this has created a certain amount of tension in the village because the issue has become - "if these people are defending the collaborator shouldn't they be expelled or something? Shouldn't something happen to them?'

The Authority has not spoken out on this matter; so the local government - in this case the Palestinian Authority - has not done what would be presumed the natural thing and stepped in to say, 'It is finished; enough.' In fact it is Hamas that has stepped in. Hamas issued a leaflet saying 'it is finished'. It is all in rather opaque language but the climax is: "God judges people, not other people." In other words the execution is finished and these people should be left alone. Whether that's going to be the end of it ... I do not know. It seemed rather tense there; the family was more or less forced to put a big poster of the dead Ibrahim over their store as a sign that they are agreed with all this.

In this Nablus case, despite the acceptance of the sentence and even the way it was handled, there are still Palestinian traditional components that have not yet been adequately resolved. Part of the family does not accept the court case, which puts them at odds with other parts of the family. Nonetheless, that is the most open and shut case of the three that I have looked at.

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