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Palestinian firing squads execute alleged collaborators

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January 14, 2001 

GAZA CITY-- (AP) - 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!"

The executions - believed to be the first of collaborators - as well as new convictions Saturday for four other accused collaborators, come as the sides plan another session of high-level peace talks despite public pessimism about the chances for a deal before Israel's Feb. 6 elections.

Arafat spokesman Nabil Aburdeneh told the Associated Press that Saturday night's scheduled talks in Gaza would be attended by the Palestinian leader himself as well as former Israeli premier Shimon Peres, who is minister of regional development in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

Peres spokesman Yoram Dori would only say that such a meeting was "possible."

An Arafat-Peres meeting would be the highest-level encounter in months, suggesting hopes might still exist for some sort of deal before the Israeli vote. Polls show Barak trailing far behind hawkish opposition leader Ariel Sharon, who opposes the territorial concessions Barak appears ready to make.

Peres, like the others, was pessimistic earlier.

"There has been no real movement until now," Peres told reporters. "It's hard for me to believe that in this short time the differences could be bridged."

The sides have been trying to reach a deal by an unofficial deadline of Jan. 20 - the last day in office for U.S. President Bill Clinton, who has been intensively involved in the Mideast peace efforts and has proposed a framework for a final Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

The return to talks was accompanied by Israel's lifting of blockades on two major Palestinian cities - Bethlehem and Jericho - and a decrease in violence.

The last-minute peace efforts have continued despite the bloodshed of the now more than 3-month-old uprising: bombs have gone off in Israeli cities; Jewish settlers have been gunned down; Palestinian civilians that Israel says were violating curfews have been shot and killed.

And Israel, in recent weeks, increasingly had been suspected of singling out and killing men seen as leaders of the uprising. Israeli officials have confirmed some such hits, and defend the practice overall.

The executions Saturday were of men suspected in helping Israel carry out these so-called assassinations.

"This is a clear message to anyone thinking of betrayal of his people and his homeland," Palestinian Justice Minister Freih Abu-Maddien said afterward. "We will not forgive anyone like these."

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 bombmaker Ibrahim Bani Odeh. Arafat upheld the courts' execution orders.

Razek, a Fatah commander in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, died Nov. 22 when Israeli soldiers opened fire on two cars at a checkpoint, killing him and three other people whom Israel said were also militia members. Razek was a nephew of both Makawi, the accused collaborator, and a Palestinian Cabinet minister.

Saturday morning, Palestinian officials tied Makawi to a stake in a courtyard at police headquarters in Gaza City, blindfolded him, and put nine policemen before him with a mix of live and blank ammunition in their Kalashnikov automatic rifles.

Five members of each family, Palestinian Cabinet ministers and Fatah leaders looked on. The slain man's family burst into cries of "Allah Akbar," or "God is Great," when a police commander gave the order to fire on the accomplice of his killer.

"I was hoping to have the honor to shoot him," said 29-year-old Ahamad Abdel Razek, a cousin of the slain Fatah leader and one of hundreds waiting outside the Gaza execution site. "We are very happy."

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.

Palestinian police say Bani Odeh helped Israeli agents plant the car bomb that killed his cousin, bombmaker Ibrahim Bani Odeh, on Nov. 23. The bomb exploded in a car's headrest.

A six-member police firing squad executed him in a square in the middle of Nablus, with 1,000 people watching and 1,000 more waiting outside. The women of the condemned men's family were taken out of sight before the execution.

"God will forgive you," the condemned man's brother, Ali, a member of the Hamas militant group, told him just before the squads opened fire.

Later Saturday, a court in the West Bank town of Bethlehem convicted four other Palestinians as collaborators in the November killing of militia commander Hussein Abayat, hit by rockets fired from Israeli helicopters as he drove in the West Bank town of Beit Sahour.

The court sentenced two to death and two to life in prison with hard labor. Three of the four men, include one sentenced to death, are 18; the other condemned man is 28.

The executions require approval by Arafat. It was not clear when they would be carried out.

During the 1987-1993 Palestinian uprising, hundreds of suspected collaborators were killed. But the Palestinian Authority has used the death penalty comparatively sparingly since its founding in 1994, and Saturday's were believed to be the first executions of Palestinians convicted as collaborators.