Occasionally there is an outbreak of panic about collaborators among the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, such as occured over two weeks ago in the Gaza Strip after the assassination of Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi. Rantisi was aware that Israel had targeted him for death, and that they were trying to kill him. At least once before he was saved from an assassination attempt, and since then he had taken extra security measures: he surrounded himself with bodyguards, switched hiding places, and didn't travel in his familiar car. In spite of that, the Israeli security services managed to catch up with him and to kill him, only a few weeks after he was chosen to head Hamas in Gaza.
How did the Israelis do it? How did they manage to overcome, quickly and easily, all the security measures that Hamas set up around Rantisi? Such questions were not asked in Gaza a few weeks earlier, after Israeli missiles hit and killed Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, because Yassin, who was hit in the street in his wheelchair, didn't have meticulous security measures like Rantisi.
The assassination of Rantisi immediately aroused reactions of panic and fury. The Palestinian security services, like the general public in the West Bank and Gaza, are well aware that a certain part of the success of the Israeli secret services stems from technological advantages. Israel has surveillance and listening devices that make it possible to locate, identify and hit anyone they want to assassinate. But the general opinion in the territories is that the Shin Bet security services wouldn't have succeeded in killing so many wanted men with such precision without the help of collaborators who provide them with up-to-date information.
The subject is very familiar to all the residents of the West Bank and Gaza, because there is almost no Palestinian family that hasn't been exposed over the years to enticements and pressure to help the Israeli defense branches. In past years - and to a certain degree even now - tens of thousands of Palestinians have been in need of various permits from the Israeli administration in order to go abroad, to work and trade in Israel, to help a son imprisoned in Israel, or to pass through the checkpoints. In other words, masses of Palestinians are exposed, to some degree, to blackmail and to pressure to collaborate.
After the assassination of Rantisi, there was a frenzied attempt to find those who had informed on him. Such a frenzy affects broad sectors of Palestinian society: People begin to search their surroundings, they are suspicious of one another, and they engage in whisper campaigns and implied accusations. In many places an ugly atmosphere is created, which makes is difficult to carry on the regular work of government institutions and services in the territories.
Against this backdrop, Hamas spokesmen began to level accusations at the Palestinian Authority after Rantisi's death, for doing almost nothing to find and to try the collaborators. At Hamas meetings it was declared that from now on, exposure of collaborators will enjoy top priority among all Hamas activities. "We must persecute the agents [collaborators] and eliminate them," wrote Adli Sadek, for example, in his regular column "From here and there," in the PA newspaper Al Hayat al Jadida.
In light of the collaborator panic, the security apparatus of the PA in Gaza was forced to respond. Last week they presented to the media a father and son accused of collaboration with the Israeli security services. The two, who were not allowed to speak to the journalists, were said to have kept tabs on Rantisi, and to have made his assassination possible.
The phenomenon has broader implications as well. There isn't, nor has there ever been, a clear definition in Palestinian society as to what constitutes collaboration. What about work in Israel? And commercial ties? And political or cultural cooperation? Israeli Arab writer Emil Habibi, who was considered loyal to Arab nationalism, and who was an MK and an Israel Prize laureate, said shortly before his death that after dozens of years of activity, he cannot decide whether or not he is a collaborator. There is one thing on which the Palestinians have agreed all along, and that is that anyone who informs on his friends is a collaborator who should be killed.
