The occupation has written a shameful page in Palestine's history, reports Saleh Al-Naami Mohamed Shahid, 22, was shocked when the Palestinian security agencies told him who had helped the Israeli army bomb his home in Al-Maghazi Refugee Camp, completely destroying it. It was AM, a young man of 18 years who lived in the same camp. This youth had confessed during interrogation by the security agencies that he had been charged by the Israeli domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet with following Shahid, who is an activist in the Ezzeddin Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. AM was to follow Shahid's movements and report on who frequented his house. Al-Ahram Weekly obtained a copy of a summary of the young man's confession, revealing that the Shin Bet officer in charge of him told him to go to an agricultural area east of the camp near the border with Israel. There, someone gave him a small bag holding several pieces of metal, and he was told to throw them on the roof of the Shahid family's house. The youth didn't know that these metal pieces were sensitive electronic equipment that issued pulses picked up by F-15 planes to determine the house's location and then bomb it. And this is exactly what took place. AM threw the pieces onto the roof late at night, and in the early dawn planes bombed it, completely destroying it. Luckily the Shahid family had left the house under the insistence of Mohamed, who had expected that it would be bombed after other houses had been targeted in the camp. The house's destruction caused serious damage to a number of other houses nearby. AM's confession about the conditions of his recruitment by Shin Bet reveal the truly hideous face of the occupying state. It shows no hesitation in exploiting the suffering of Palestinians, first causing that suffering and then using it to its own benefit. AM said that he was from a poor and broken family; his parents were separated and the family was living under very difficult circumstances. Prior to the war on Gaza, he had received a cellphone call from an Israeli intelligence officer who asked him to help the Israeli army obtain some simple information in return for money. He hesitated and didn't reply. The officer later contacted him again and made him the same offer, and this time AM agreed. The Shin Bet officer asked him to follow the movements of resistance fighters in the camp and to inform him of them via cellphone calls. AM was not the only young man arrested in Al-Maghazi Refugee Camp on the charge of collaborating with Israel and providing intelligence during the war on the Gaza Strip. More than 20 were arrested, all of whom provided detailed information on their role during the war. A Palestinian security source told the Weekly that the security agencies has succeeded during and after the war in dismantling dozens of collaboration networks. All of these collaborators gave information on their role in helping the Israeli army strike at resistance targets. Another Palestinian security source told the Weekly that Shin Bet has used different approaches in the recruitment of collaborators. In many cases collaborators are recruited during their attempts to obtain travel permits to leave the Gaza Strip for the West Bank or abroad in order to continue their education or to receive medical treatment. At other times they are blackmailed with photographs of themselves engaged in sexual relations. This source says that Shin Bet has been using these traditional recruitment methods for a long time, but that new methods are now also being employed. These include Shin Bet officers asking their collaborators to collect personal information about young Palestinians who have problems, specifically financial problems. The Shin Bet officers then contact them and tempt them to offer information on the resistance in return for paltry sums of money. Collaborators are told to go to locations where they'll find a sum hidden in an empty cigarette box as their payment for providing intelligence. This source says that sometimes Shin Bet contacts youth whose families have taken a negative position towards Hamas and tries to lure them into cooperating with Israel as the only way to put an end to Hamas rule. Yet not all collaborators were arrested -- some were assassinated by Palestinian resistance fighters after they were caught collaborating with the occupation. This took place during the war, when the security agencies were not otherwise occupied. Some of these collaborators were identified by local residents as they led occupation soldiers into the areas where resistance fighters could be found and where arms were stored. On 8 January, an Israeli special operations unit raided a number of homes belonging to Hamas military leaders south of Gaza city and destroyed them. A number of local residents were surprised to see two local men accompanying the soldiers to these houses wearing Israeli military uniforms. When the soldiers finished combing the houses and blew them up with dynamite, resistance fighters caught the men, who confessed that they had in fact led the occupation soldiers to the houses. They were killed once their confessions had been recorded. Proof that the Israeli army does not take any precautions to protect the security of collaborators is found in the sharp-toned messages sent between Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin and the chief of general staff Gabi Ashkenazi. Yuval had claimed that the way the army used collaborators during the war on the Gaza Strip had resulted in many of them having their identity revealed, which had led to their assassination. Yet the army responded to Diskin's letter in a way that showed how little collaborators' lives meant. Maariv printed a copy of Ashkenazi's letter that said, "What concerns us in the end is the lives of our soldiers, not the lives of collaborators. We recruit collaborators so as to prevent our forces from being harmed, and we are not much concerned whether the identity of these collaborators is revealed and they are assassinated, for in the end they are Arabs killing Arabs." Israeli paratroops commander General Herzl Halevi has confirmed that the information that collaborators transmitted to Israeli intelligence and the Israeli army during the war was highly significant in preventing severe losses for the army. In an interview with Israeli television channel two last Saturday, Halevi said, "If it weren't for the role played by the collaborators in helping us, we couldn't have ended the war with relatively few losses. If a large number of soldiers had fallen, the Israeli army would have been incited and would not have allowed the war to continue." Halevi said that when the Israeli army started waging war on the Gaza Strip, it possessed a great deal of sensitive information on the capabilities of the Palestinian resistance, and thus there were not many surprises during the war. "We received information and descriptions that were very detailed. Collaborators led us to mined houses and to electricity poles and tree where bombs had been planted," he said. Halevi holds that the success of the war on the Gaza Strip lay in the success of the intelligence agencies. Channel two reported a leading Shin Bet officer as saying, "The importance of collaborators in Gaza has grown for us since our withdrawal in 2005. Simply put, they form the eyes and ears of Israel. They are recruited with humble financial lures or by promising medical treatment or travel permits." Shin Bet has even gone so far as to try to recruit top officials and intellectuals who have sour relations with Hamas. Former mayor of Khan Younis and academic Fayiz Abu Shamaleh, who was dismissed from his post after Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip, told the Weekly that one day he was surprised by a phone call from a Shin Bet officer who verbally attacked Hamas and asked him to collaborate with Israel. He exploded in anger and berated the Shin Bet officer, telling him never to contact him again. Clearly the suffering Israel inflicts daily on Gazans has broken the will of some and let them be seduced by the occupiers. The Zionist movement has actively recruited collaborators since before 1948, yet despite its success, has not been able to break the Palestinian national will to continue resisting the occupation. As one Palestinian resistance fighter told the Weekly, "The cause and fate of Palestine are determined by its noble resistance fighters, not by collaborators."
