New Phase in Mideast Bloodshed

Only God and the Israelis know for sure if Ikhlas Khouli, a widowed Palestinian mother of seven, was guilty of collaborating with Israel, say residents of this dusty town.

But most have their suspicions.

Two days after members of the militant Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade pumped her body full of bullets and left it in the town square to serve as a deterrent, neighbors, the town mosque, even other relatives had turned against Khouli and her survivors.

Collaboration is just about the worst crime imaginable in this community, residents say. Amid charges that Khouli passed on information that led to the death of militia leader Ziad Mohammed Daas at the hands of an Israeli sniper Aug. 7, her children are having trouble finding a place to bury her.

Dozens of men have been executed as collaborators by Palestinian militants since the intifada started 23 months ago. Khouli, however, is the first reported female informant. Much like the recent advent of female suicide bombers, her death has opened another grisly chapter in Mideast bloodletting.

Khouli’s eldest son, Bakir, 17, sits on a chair in their one-room house fidgeting as he considers a terrible question: Did his words seal his mother’s fate?

The men from Al Aqsa came for him, and their interrogation was so terrifying, he says, that he can’t remember everything he told them.

“I would have told them I owned East Jerusalem to end the pain,” he adds, lifting a worn yellow T-shirt to show several scars on his skinny back, some large, some small, all fresh.

Bakir refuses to answer the militia’s charges that he gave his mother information on where Daas was hiding and that she then passed it on to her brother in Israel, who has been labeled “a known collaborator.”

In the company of his sisters and a niece, Bakir recounts his memories for the umpteenth time. How three unarmed brigade members he’d never seen arrived at their door Friday afternoon at 3:30, blindfolded him and took him by car to a nearby refugee camp. How they beat him with electric wires that ripped his skin, drew blood and filled his brain with an unearthly pain.

After the men finished questioning him around 9:30 that evening, they took him back to the family’s house to get his mother. She initially refused to go with them but was eventually persuaded. After the two were taken back to the camp, Bakir says, he caught only a glimpse of her again because they were placed in different rooms. The next afternoon, he was released.

“Your mother is dead,” one of the men told him, without any explanation.

An amateur videotape reportedly taken by Al Aqsa and played on Israeli evening news programs shows Khouli confessing. She wears a yellow Islamic head scarf and glasses and sits before an upturned mattress saying she passed on information about Daas to her brother living in Israel.

“Was your confession coerced?” asks an unknown voice.

“No,” Khouli responds, looking frightened.

“Do you have anything to tell Palestinians?” she is asked.

“I would like to tell all boys and girls, young and old, that even if it means death, do not collaborate,” she replies.

Tulkarm Gov. Izzedine Sharif says he’s concerned that outsiders will use the incident to smear Palestinians and Tulkarm. He says that everyone is entitled to a trial and that he disapproves of anyone who takes justice into his or her own hands.

But Israel must also bear blame for Khouli’s death, he adds, because the curfew and occupation have prevented Palestinian police from protecting Tulkarm’s citizens or otherwise doing their jobs.

“Even though Israel was in control of the city when this happened, they drove her to the camp and interrogated her,” he says as he sits at his desk beneath a large picture of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. “Israel only thinks about its own security, not the security of Palestinians.”

At the Khouli house a few blocks from the governor’s office, two orphaned daughters, a niece and a friend sit against a nicked plaster wall, their looks of resignation mixed with tears. The room has little more than a cupboard and several foam mattresses.

“All of society seems to be turning against us now,” says Najla Khouli, 18, the eldest of Khouli’s children. “Even our grandmother won’t talk to us,” she adds, dabbing her eyes with a paper napkin.

She hasn’t seen the tape of their mother’s confession but believes it must have been coerced. Even if her mother was a collaborator, she adds, which she wasn’t, they could have shot her legs or done something other than kill her.

Callers identifying themselves as members of the Al Aqsa militia claimed responsibility for the execution in calls to Reuters and Associated Press shortly after Khouli’s body was dumped next to a disfigured monument plastered with posters of so-called “martyrs” and children killed in the intifada.

Tulkarm residents said Monday that they thought it was natural for family members to deny having collaborators in their midst given the stigma they could expect for years, if not generations.

“This is something that stays with families forever,” said Kader Nofel, 23, a clerk in a shop a few feet from the square. “Even killing her in that way was small punishment. This is the worst crime imaginable, lower than animals.”

Several Tulkarm residents said they believed the circumstantial evidence against Khouli, even if they were uneasy about torture or execution without a trial. The evidence included her brother’s living in Israel as a known collaborator, they claimed, and the fact that she was often seen walking or meeting with strangers, actions viewed under Islamic tradition as improper for a woman.

“I might have some reservations because she had kids,” said Maysa Bodran, 35, a woman working in a pharmacy a few steps from the Khouli house. “But traitors deserve what they get. She should have thought of her kids and family before she got involved with the Israelis.”

Several residents said tough measures are essential in the current political environment.

Mahmoud Sami, 38, owner of an electronics store, said he saw the videotaped confession and didn’t believe it was coerced.

“We need this sort of deterrent, even though I’m not sure it always works,” he said. “People continue selling out to the Israelis.”