Hassan Ouda, 19, a Gaza city resident, was very happy to hear the Israeli occupation has agreed to issue a permit for him to go to the West Bank to visit his relatives there. But Ouda realised when he approached the Erez Border Crossing connecting the Gaza Strip with Israel that he celebrated prematurely. As soon as he reached the crossing, occupation soldiers arrested him and took him to a nearby military location. He was surprised to find himself facing an agent from the Israeli domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet, who at first tried to convince Ouda he knew everything about him and he had intelligence Ouda is connected to military operations against Israel. No evidence of the claim was offered. Ouda kept calm and rejected the accusations. The intelligence officer switched from accusing him to trying to blackmail him. He told Ouda he would allow him to continue his trip to the West Bank through Israel if he agreed to cooperate with Israeli intelligence and gather information about the resistance in the Gaza Strip. When Ouda refused, he was transferred to Ashkelon Prison where he was tortured and abused by Shin Bet interrogators for two days non-stop with the aim of forcing him to agree to cooperate. When they failed in their endeavour, Israeli intelligence officers released Ouda and told him not to even “dream” of applying for a permit to go to the West Bank in the future. What happened to Ouda happens to almost all Palestinian youth who try to leave the Gaza Strip to the West Bank through the Israeli-controlled Erez Crossing. The procedure is almost identical: the occupation approves a permit for a young man to enter Israel and as soon as he arrives at Erez, he is blackmailed with sticks and carrots. Israel intelligence agents use the same blackmail tactics with women and the elderly, whether their reason for travel is urgent medical treatment or visiting relatives or for commerce or education. Al-Ahram Weekly reviewed several files on blackmail at Erez documented by human rights groups operating in the Gaza Strip. Israeli intelligence agents tried to blackmail a 69-year-old Palestinian man who suffered from advanced stage cancer and needed to travel to an Israeli hospital for treatment. They conditioned his entry into Israel with providing them with intelligence on the Palestinian resistance. The man refused and died at his home in Gaza 10 days after trying to leave. There are testimonials also describing how women from Gaza are blackmailed by Israeli intelligence, including one from Khan Younis who also suffers from cancer and needed an operation at a West Bank hospital. She was unable to go there after turning down Israeli offers to work with Israeli intelligence against the Palestinian resistance. How Gazans are treated at Erez reflects how keen Israeli intelligence is on recruiting Palestinians to spy on the Palestinian resistance. Palestinian security agencies say there are Palestinians who buckle under the pressure and agree to cooperate with Israeli intelligence. Meanwhile, Palestinian security sources in the Gaza Strip told the Weekly that Shin Bet recently stepped up efforts to recruit agents among Palestinians through social networks, especially Facebook. Sources said since there is less direct contact between Shin Bet agents and Palestinians in Gaza after “disengagement” in 2005, which ended the direct Israeli military presence in the Gaza Strip, while recruitment via social networks has become the top source of recruiting by Shin Bet. These websites are also used to lure Palestinian resistance operatives and arrest them. The source added Shin Bet also uses female agents who are fluent in Arabic to befriend Palestinian youth on these websites, and turn them into agents. This is all done in a systematic way with specific targets that could provide Shin Bet with valuable information in its war on Palestinian resistance. The source told the story of a young Palestinian who was a member of a resistance group and who was sent a friendship request on Facebook from a girl who introduced herself as a Palestinian living in an Arab town inside Israel. The source said the young man became interested in the virtual girl and after she got his phone number, they began talking to each other and a romance developed. He started telling her about his work in the resistance. She asked for details out of concern for his safety. The girl called him once and proposed he should come live at her family home after they get married, where her ailing mother lives. The fictitious girl reassured him that her “uncle” could smuggle him out of the Gaza Strip into Israel across the border from the Gaza Strip, and she would be waiting for him at the border with her uncle. The young man was excited about the plan and went to the border point where he would meet her and her “uncle”. He was shocked when Shin Bet agents and the Israeli army arrested him. During interrogation he was put under extreme pressure to agree to cooperate with Shin Bet, and when he refused he was referred to a military tribunal based on the information he had given the girl about his resistance activities. Today, he awaits sentencing. The source said the Gaza government's security agencies have arrested many agents who confessed they fell in the trap of espionage through social networks and virtual relationships. Since 1967, the Palestinian resistance has killed thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip after they were caught collaborating with Israel. Two months ago, the Gaza government carried out a massive campaign to convince Palestinians that are collaborating with Israel to repent and turn themselves in, and that they would not be interrogated at intelligence headquarters but at locations that would not raise suspicions around them. (This is the second such campaign by the Gaza Ministry of Interior. Three years ago, it undertook a similar campaign). The ministry gave agents a two-month period to turn themselves in, and some agents did so. The ministry claims to have lists of agents collaborating with Israel, and where there is evidence connecting them to Israeli intelligence it will arrest, interrogate and prosecute them if they do not take the initiative to turn themselves in. The grace period for “repenting” ended Friday and security forces launched a broad arrest campaign of those accused of collaborating with Israel. Ibrahim Salah, director of the public relations and media department at the Ministry of Interior, said the arrests aim to close the file for good. Salah said the margin of error in arresting collaborators is “zero per cent”. He added: “Agents who turned themselves in during the last campaign were more than the number in previous campaigns. Any agent who surrenders is an asset for the Palestinian people.” Salah declared security agencies in the Gaza Strip have new names and lists of collaborators who are under close surveillance. Meanwhile, Palestinian security forces revealed some agents attempted to flee with their families from the Gaza Strip at the end of the ministry campaign.
