E-MAIL THIS LINK
To: 

Palestinians bumping off collaborators
  • Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel have frequently been targeted by fellow Palestinians during nearly 18 months of bitter fighting with Israel, but in recent days, the pace of these vigilante-style killings has picked up sharply. Seven suspected collaborators have been slain by Palestinian gunmen in the past week alone, compared to about two dozen until then. The killings echo a grim pattern established during the first Palestinian uprising against Israel, which lasted from 1987 to 1993. In those years, more than 800 suspected collaborators were slain by fellow Palestinians -- about one-third of the total Palestinian deaths in that intefadeh.

    The latest killings -- many of them chillingly gruesome and highly public in nature -- appear calculated to terrorize any Palestinian contemplating cooperation with the Israeli security services. Palestinian militiamen behind the slayings promise their anti-collaborator campaign will intensify. Collaborators "are very dangerous -- they're more dangerous than the Israelis," said Abu Mujahid, a spokesman for the Al Aqsa Brigades, a Palestinian militia group linked to Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction, which claimed responsibility for at least five of the recent killings. "They're the enemy you don't know -- they're within, they're among us."
    It's like they're... they're... terrorists?
    Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2002-03-16
    		•
    http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=2382