Palestinian Firing Squads Execute 2 as Collaborators

Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority sent two men before firing squads and condemned two others to death Saturday for collaborating with Israel. Their public trials and their executions, the first ever of convicted Palestinian traitors, were carried out before hundreds of cheering spectators.

State security courts had found all four men guilty of providing Israel with information leading to the assassinations of Palestinian militiamen during the 3-month-old uprising against Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Two other men convicted of the same charge were sentenced to life imprisonment.

The activation of firing squads, in a West Bank public square and a Gaza police station courtyard, introduced a chilling new weapon into the conflict as U.S. officials tried to push the two sides toward agreement on the outlines of an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty during President Clinton’s final week in office.

Under U.S. pressure, Arafat has taken several recent steps unsettling to his followers. He has quietly instructed militants to curb their shootings and car bombings while talking of renewed cooperation between Palestinian and Israeli security police. Late Saturday, he met with former Prime Minister Shimon Peres for the highest-level negotiations in weeks.

At the same time, the Palestinian leader has come under intense pressure from his militant Fatah movement to retaliate for an Israeli assassination campaign that, by Palestinian count, has targeted and killed at least 20 militiamen since the uprising began Sept. 28.

The result was a triptych of ghastly scenes Saturday in which downcast men in their teens and 20s faced public humiliation, condemnation and death for betraying the 53-year-old Palestinian struggle for statehood. Together, the images sent a message that the deadly tit-for-tat against Israel will continue, under a cloak of legality, along with any peace talks.

In Gaza City, Majdi Makawi, 28, was blindfolded and tied to a wooden pillar in the police courtyard. He had been convicted Friday of collaborating in the slaying of Fatah commander Jamal Abdel Razek and three other militiamen at an Israeli checkpoint Nov. 22.

Nine policemen opened fire at Makawi with automatic rifles--using a mix of live and blank ammunition--setting off chants of “God is great!” from about 100 spectators, including the slain commander’s family.

In the West Bank town of Nablus, Alam Bani Odeh, 25, released the hand of his 3-year-old daughter and said goodbye to his weeping mother and wife as he was led before 1,000 noisy spectators in an enclosed public square. The women and girl were led away before he was hooded and bound to a post.

With hundreds chanting and cheering outside the enclosure, six policemen in blue uniforms and black masks fired at a red target drawn on his bare chest. Odeh had been convicted Friday of helping Israeli agents plant the car bomb that killed his cousin, alleged bomb maker Ibrahim Bani Odeh, on Nov. 23.

Here in Bethlehem, Mohammed Deifallah, 29, and three teenagers stood with bowed heads behind a blue metal barricade at the end of their trial. They were convicted of helping Israel monitor Fatah militants’ movements. Applause erupted four times in the packed courtroom, after each verdict of guilty.

Deifallah and another defendant were sentenced to death for helping Israeli helicopters track the moving car of militia commander Hussein Abeiat and kill him with rocket fire Nov. 9. The remaining two got life sentences of hard labor.

“These four people betrayed their country in return for money, so their consciences are dead,” declared Judge Fathi Abusrour, the court president.

Palestinian gunmen among the spectators spilled into the street afterward and fired their weapons skyward in celebration.

Arafat’s usually secretive state security court system for the first time opened its courtrooms to the public. The Palestinian leader ratified Friday’s death sentences before they were carried out.

“The message is that there will be zero tolerance for Palestinian collaborators,” said Bassem Eid, director of the independent Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group.

At the same time, he added, “Arafat is trying to turn the focus of the Palestinian people away from any deals he’s cooking with the Israelis and give more public attention to the issue of the Israeli assassinations.”

Israeli officials criticized the executions, but their impact on the peace talks was unclear.

“I am against executions, whether in Texas or in Gaza,” Peres said before leading the Israeli side into nearly three hours of talks Saturday with Arafat and his aides.

Neither side reported progress on narrowing their differences over a Clinton peace proposal.

Palestinian human rights groups also took issue with Saturday’s executions because they were ordered by the security courts, which are often criticized for riding roughshod over defendants’ rights.

Friday’s three-hour trial offered a rare glimpse of a security court.

Two of the three judges were police investigators. They appointed a lawyer for all four defendants. An independent counsel showed up to represent one of the men and asked for a postponement of the trial so he could read up on the charges. His petition was denied.

With much of Bethlehem’s Palestinian police force in the courtroom or watching through four windows, the defendants pleaded not guilty.

But the trial consisted mainly of a review of their alleged confessions, according to which two of them received training at Israeli army camps. Deifallah, the chief defendant, was allegedly paid $200 for photographs of the targeted commander.

No witnesses were called. The court-appointed lawyer, Shafik Ibrahim, limited his defense to an appeal for mercy and consideration of the defendants’ youth.

Security court verdicts cannot be appealed to regular Palestinian tribunals. Only Arafat can commute their sentences.

Palestinian militias summarily executed hundreds of Israeli collaborators during a 1987-93 uprising, or intifada. But until Saturday, the Palestinian Authority had used the death penalty in just three cases--two murders and a rape--since its founding in 1994.

As the new intifada gained force and Israel began targeting the movement’s leaders, however, Palestinian militants stepped up their demands for firing squads.

Eid, the human rights activist, said militiamen have executed at least five suspected collaborators without trial since November. Early this month, a mob turned up at the state security prison here demanding one of the four accused collaborators, a local journalist said, but it was dissuaded by the police.

Cries for blood of the men convicted last week came even from their own families. Suspects in all three trials were accused of collaboration that led to the deaths of blood relatives.

Jamal Bani Odeh, a teacher related to both the Gaza defendant and the slain Fatah commander, put it bluntly: “Arafat has moved against our own militants and put some of them in prison. The least he can do now is go after those who cooperate with Israel.”