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Palestinian informers ask for more protection from Israel

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January 23, 2001 

JERUSALEM-- (AP) - Seven Palestinian informants, who say they have helped Israel combat attacks by Palestinian militants, protested outside Prime Minister Ehud Barak's home Monday and called on Israel to provide them with additional protection.

The men said they were living in fear after the Palestinian Authority's recent executions of two men convicted of collaborating with Israel. Two more Palestinians have been convicted and sentenced to death, but have not yet been executed.

The group also said that two other Palestinian informants were kidnapped Sunday night from the Israeli coastal town of Jaffa and taken to the Palestinian territories.

"I wanted to help Israel because it's a democratic country," said Yunis Aweda Ras el-Amud, one of the seven. "And I thought that Israel would defend me."

El-Amud is among a large numbers of Palestinian informants allowed to settle in Israel for their safety since Israel began withdrawing from parts of the West Bank.

El-Amud, 58, said he began helping Israel's Shin Bet security service in 1975 when he told them about an alleged bomb plot.

Several demonstrators, including el-Amud, said they were still helping Israel, though they made no attempts to conceal their identities at the protest Monday.

The informants said they fear that Palestinians may try to harm them or their families, particularly in the current climate of tension. More than 360 people have been killed, most of them Palestinians, in nearly four months of violence.

In the West Bank last week, authorities found the body of a suspected collaborator who had been shot several times.

The Palestinian Authority has offered an amnesty to Israeli informants - the Palestinians call them collaborators - who turn themselves in over the next month.

Ayub Kara, a member of the right-wing Likud Party member in Israel's parliament, joined the protest of the informants to show his support. Kara has tried and failed to push a law through parliament that would give Palestinian informants citizenship in Israel.

"It's a very big problem that the government of Israel doesn't help these people who help Israel," Kara said. "I don't know what is happening here."

Kara says the two Palestinians who he claimed were kidnapped on Sunday were likely turned over to the Palestinian Authority.

But police in Tel Aviv said they had no information about a kidnapping of Palestinian informants.