The Middle East war nobody knows
By Lawrence Henry
The American Prowler
July 16, 2002

There is a great unreported story in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, what amounts to an unreported war: the war of the Palestinian resistance. No, not that Palestinian resistance, not the Palestinian Authority's, or Hamas's, or Hezbollah's, or the Al Aqsa Martyr Brigade's, resistance to Israel. The resistance within Palestine to all those terrorist entities. The resistance that constitutes an Israeli fifth column within the West Bank and Gaza.

This resistance gets reported only under one rubric – "suspected collaborators" – and only under one circumstance – the execution of those "suspected collaborators." Sometimes these executions take place under a thin cloak of criminal procedure, as sentences carried out by the Palestinian Authority after trial. More often lately, they are simply slaughters in the street, often accompanied by mobs baying for blood and mutilation – and getting it.

The collaborators are not Jewish spies, though certainly the Mossad must provide them some support, and must debrief them when it can. When they are identified at all, it is evident they are Arabic and Muslim.

What they do is not pretty. They identify leaders and technical experts among the terrorist groups, guide the Israeli Defense Force to those terrorists, and help in getting them arrested or killed. People naively and wonderingly look back at the Nazi scourge in World War II and wonder why no "good Germans" arose to bump off Nazi party leaders and SS generals.

This is why:

"GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) January 13, 2001 – Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority put two men before firing squads Saturday for collaborating with Israel in killings of Palestinian militiamen, executing them before weeping family members and crowds of hundreds amid cries of 'God is Great!'

"Palestinian courts in Gaza City and the West Bank town of Nablus on Friday convicted Majdi Makawi, 28, and Alam Bani Odeh, 25, of involvement in separate attacks that killed Jamal Abdel Razek, a leader of Arafat's Fatah movement, and Palestinian bomb-maker Ibrahim Bani Odeh. Arafat upheld the courts' execution orders.

"In Nablus, the 3-year-old daughter of Bani Odeh clung to his hand as he waited for execution, his mother and wife crying beside him."

So is this:

"The Independent, By Robert Fisk in Ramallah, August 9, 2001 – Preferring to avoid the controversial trials that have condemned nine alleged collaborators to death, Yasser Arafat's intelligence operatives are now murdering Palestinians suspected of spying for Israel, killing at least 20 men in the past nine months, at least six of whom were more than 50 years old.

"Palestinian police no longer investigate the 'mysterious' killings of men believed to have worked for Israel's Shin Bet intelligence service, who in some cases helped the Israelis to murder Palestinian militants; many of the Palestinian killers have been masked, at least one victim has been gunned down by men wearing Palestinian police uniforms while another was killed by fellow prisoners in a Majido prison in Nablus – under the full control of Arafat's Palestinian Authority."

And this:

"The Telegraph (U.K.), By Alan Philps April 24, 2002 – Gunmen pumped dozens of bullets into three suspected Palestinian informers and strung one up yesterday in a gruesome ceremony at the site of a burnt-out vehicle where the Israeli air force had killed two leading militants."

And most recently, these paragraphs, buried at the bottom of a July 14 story by AP's Ibrahim Barzak:

"More than a dozen Palestinians are now on death row after being convicted of collaborating with Israel in the targeted killings of militants.

"Two convicted informers were executed in January 2001. But Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who gives the final authorization for an execution, came under international pressure to stop the executions and has not permitted any more since then.

"However, Palestinian militias have taken the law into their hands, rounding up and executing suspected collaborators. Dozens have been killed."

If, as Ibrahim Barzak reports, "dozens have been killed," there must be hundreds of such "collaborators."

Heroes are dying here, heroes who have braved the insanity gripping their people to fight for real freedom – freedom from the thuggish tyranny of the terrorist gangs, freedom from ignorance and hatred. Mostly we do not know their names, and we never will. We are almost never told that they are winning. As Uri Dan wrote in the New York Post on July 13:

"Three weeks ago in Israel, in a single day, there were 58 terror alerts – some 'very hot' – of planned Palestinian attacks. But none was carried out – thanks to an enormous security blanket thrown over the West Bank that has given Israelis a long stretch without the deadly bombings that have claimed hundreds of lives."

A key element in that "security blanket," as Dan reported, is "greater collaboration from Palestinians who either oppose homicide bombers or are paid informers."

Perhaps some historian of the future will tell the story of these heroes. Except in passing, no reporter today is doing it.