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Collaborators with Israel are no longer thrown into snake pits but ‘sentenced to death in court.’

Jerusalem – The killing of «collaborators» by fellow Palestinians once again has gained notoriety. In the context of the current al-Aqsa intifada, at least seven Palestinians have been murdered already – either with their backs against a wall facing the rifles of Palestinian Authority «policemen,» or under the burning wrath of irregulars armed with pistols, axes and knives.

On Jan. 13, PA Minister of Justice Freih Abu Meiden gave crude expression to this reality when he declared that «anyone we lay our hands on will not merit the mercy of the Palestinian people or the mercy of the Palestinian law.» Later that day, Palestinian human-rights organizations reported to Israeli television that Arafat’s regime had assembled a list of more than 20,000 Palestinians slated for execution for collaborating with Israel.

Of course there is nothing new under the sun. This type of killing is as old as Palestinian nationalism itself. During the 1930s, then-Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini, the most prominent Palestinian leader in British-ruled Palestine, imposed a reign of terror of such proportions that by the end of the decade, moderate Arab opinion in Palestine had all but disappeared.

In this period, thousands of Palestinian Arabs were exiled or murdered in a most brutal manner. Moreover, according to historian David Pryce-Jones, not all of those suspected of treason were immediately assassinated. Some were kidnapped, taken to the mountain areas under rebel control and there thrown into pits infested with snakes and scorpions. The bodies of the victims then were left on the city streets for days, after a shoe had been ceremoniously shoved into their mouths as a symbol of disgrace and an example to others.

During the first Palestinian intifada (from 1987 to 1993), masked activists from all PLO factions and Islamic groups killed scores of their brothers suspected of collaboration, often acting on mere rumor.

The mildest estimate puts the number of those killed during this period at almost 1,000. Such was their zealous devotion to the cause that Fatah activists persisted in murdering alleged collaborators to the point of disregarding orders from the Tunis-based PLO leadership at the time, which itself wanted to coordinate all political assassinations.

Collaborator killing did not vanish with the creation of the PA. During the first year after Israeli troops withdrew from Gaza and Jericho (May 1994) alone, 31 Palestinians suspected of being collaborators were murdered. In 1995, the PA established the so-called State Security Court, which has special jurisdiction over security offenses. As such, it functions outside the Palestinian Civil Court system. Collaboration is considered national treason by the PA, so it consequently falls within this court’s jurisdiction. The court provides no right of appeal «and thus operates in contravention of international fair trial standards» in the words of the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment.

The New York-based organization Human Rights Watch stated in a letter sent in 1999 to then-President Clinton that «trials in these courts are typically closed to the public, last a few hours and severely limit the defendant’s chances to prepare a defense. Sentences sometimes are issued just hours after the arrest of the accused.»

Sentences issued by the State Security Court, including life imprisonment and the death penalty, are subject to ratification or veto only by Yasser Arafat himself. Since its establishment in 1995, 33 death penalties have been issued, five of which have been carried out.

Of course, among the various categories of collaborators, by far the most despised group is made up of those Palestinians who sell land to Jews. Some are murdered extra-judicially, others are brought to trial under the terms of the 1997 Property Law for Foreigners. This anti-Semitic legislation effectively has made the PA one of the few entities in the world — since the fall of the Nazi empire — that mandates the death penalty for the sale of lands to Jews.

To say that the conduct of the PA with regard to collaborators is at odds with the Oslo accords and with international law – which burdens the PA with elementary norms of civilized behavior – would be trivial. True, the fact that instead of throwing collaborators to pits full of snakes, the Palestinian leadership now condemns them to death in trials «as short as traffic courts,» as journalist Helen Schary Motro observed, undoubtedly must be considered civic progress for the chaotic Palestinian society. Judged by less relative standards, however, this ongoing human-rights atrocity may be seen as revealing commentary on the true character of the future 23rd Arab nation in the Middle East.

Julián Schvindlerman is a political analyst and journalist in Jerusalem.