One of Israel’s many crimes against the Palestinian people is that of recruiting collaborators. The lines that Israel has crossed in this regard will be remembered - with good cause - as a particularly sordid crime.
This happened last Thursday evening at Qalandiya Checkpoint, as Mohammad, along with the other beggars, was standing near the long line of cars from Ramallah bound for Jerusalem. A car stood in line. In it was a religious man, says Mohammad, a religious Jew who apparently lost his way. Got confused. Children nearby who saw him – for whom he is a settler, which he might very well be – threw stones at him. Or perhaps one stone, Mohammad thinks, but not sure. For he took off and did not see what ensued.
The next day Mohammad came to the checkpoint again, as always. With a pile of disks for sale. For that is what he does. And four soldiers came out of the checkpoint compound, looked around, saw him and told him to come along. What have I done, he said. And they said, you throw stones. And he told them, I don’t throw stones. They said again, you threw stones at the religious guy, and they hurled all his disks on the ground and they got smashed, and they gripped him and shackled his hands in back, and took him with them into the checkpoint.
At the checkpoint, he says, they got him into a room near the turnstiles, and four men entered with him – two soldiers and two policemen, and they began to beat shackled Mohammad again and again. Kicks, slaps, blows, over and over again.
He knelt on the ground, he hung his head to protect his face, he says, and they went on hitting him, and in his heart he just thought how much he’d like to throw stones at them right this minute, the stones he never threw, but he didn’t do anything and he didn’t say anything, because he knew they would only hurt him more.
While they hit him they kept on saying, you were throwing stones. And he said he didn’t, and they hit him again. And again they said, you were throwing stones, and hit him. And at a certain moment, one of the soldiers showed him someone’s photograph and said, this is you, it’s your picture. And Mohammad told them, It’s not me. Look, that’s not me. But it didn’t make any difference to them. And once in a while they kept hitting him. And then after some time, he couldn’t say how long, they showed him some pictures, and said: Do you know them? And he said, I don’t. And they said, come work with us, Mohammad. And he said, no, I don’t want to. I’m no spy. Let me go. And they hit him again.
Then someone in uniform came and told Mohammad,sign here, and he signed something without knowing what it was, in Hebrew. And he didn’t want to ask so as not to be hit again.
And I think, and I remain silent, about what he signed for them. Was it the usual form in which he confirms that he has not been hit nor has anything been stolen from him etc. The form that everyone is obliged to sign, especially after being hit. Or was it something else.
I’m dying to kill them, he said. They can offer him a million. Still he would never agree to work with them. Dying to kill them, he muttered again and again, restless.
More time went by, he couldn’t tell how long. Then someone else came into the room and body-searched him. When he was through, he took him out, and two others waiting outside took him to the police station at the checkpoint, where he waited for about three hours.
After a three-hour wait, he was taken to Abu Yussef of the Security Services.
Abu Yussef, of course, is not his real name. Captain Abu Yussef. Which is how the Security Services usually call themselves. Captain this or that, with some pseudonym or other.
After entering Abu Yussef’s room, he was unshackled and offered coffee, and Abu Yussef was nice to him, he says unsmilingly, and told him to make himself comfortable. And he really drank his coffee quietly.
After a while, Abu Yussef suddenly asked Mohammad, your father’s name is such and such? Right? And you live in this place? And your little sister’s name is so and so?
They knew everything about me, Mohammad said. Everything. Where I live. My sister’s name. Everything.
We want you to help us, the Secret Services man continued, while they drank coffee.
What am I, a spy? Exclaimed Mohammad, upset.
Help us and we’ll let you go, Abu Yussef explained with chilly simplicity. If you don’t help us, we’ll arrest you.
But I didn’t do a thing, I threw nothing, that picture was not of me, why all of this? He made his transparent claim. And Abu Yussef paused, and then repeated, as if Mohammad hadn’t said a word, help us, work with us, and we’ll give you what you want. We’ll give you money. You’ll be comfortable.
I don’t need money, thank God, Mohammad said and patted his trousers` pocket. I don’t need anything.
But you’ll get a permit, the Secret Services man persisted, and go wherever you’d like. You are security-prevented right now, after all. You want to work, don’t you? So work with us.
And Mohammad said, if I want to go into Jerusalem, I’ll go by myself. I don’t need anyone’s help. And time went on, until Abu Yussef got annoyed, said Mohammad, because again and again he refused to work with them, and Abu Yussef told people to come and take him out, and they came and shackled him again and took him away.
What does Abu Yussef look like? We asked.
Elderly. Big and fat.
After being taken out of Abu Yussef’s room, and taken back to the room where they had hit him earlier, another soldier in uniform came and showed Mohammad once again the pictures he’d been shown before, and the soldier asked Mohammad: Who are these people in the photos? And Mohammad said, I don’t know, and he really didn’t know. So, until evening time, this went on, and once in a while he was hit again, and then they let him go.
There’s the soldier, he says. And points at the checking post barring the vehicles from moving freely. This is one of the fellows who hit me. He hit hard. Go now. Go take his picture. And we thought, what could ever happen to a soldier of the Occupation Army who hits a Palestinian, lawfully. When the law is on their side. And we thought to ourselves, how normal that soldier looks, and how easy it is, apparently, to do terrible things, and how hard it is to bear this truth.
Then I asked him if this was the first time he was asked to collaborate. And he said it was the second time. And told us about the first which had been not too long ago.
It was around the time they came looking for his uncle Ismail and his friend Aduan for all sorts of things. They came to the checkpoint, found him, took him to Beit El. To Captain Asher. Who told Mohammad right away, bring us Ismail and Aduan and we’ll give you anything you want. And if you don’t inform us about them, the captain threatened, you’ll go to jail.
So I told them, okay, send me to jail, Mohammad says.
And he was jailed for four days, during which he was interrogated and threatened and they tried to pressure him into collaborating. And after four days they let him go.
A month later, after Ismail and Aduan were caught, the same Captain Asher of the Secret Services phoned him and told him to come to Jib Crossing right away. That if he doesn’t show up, the captain warned, he’d be picked up at home.
Saying a Secret Services man will come to pick someone up at home is a serious threat. Because Mohammad knows just as Captain Asher knows, that if he will be picked up at home, everyone would know he’d been summoned for a Secret Services interrogation, and the inevitable question whether he agreed or not in his interrogation would stick to him like a his own shadow. It would stick to him and taint him and make him suspect.
This is a regular, intentional tactic by which, frequently, summons to a Secret Services interrogation are handed to persons other than the one summoned. In the village. At the checkpoint. Always in public. Always in a crowd. Or most of the time. And clearly the point is not merely to recruit the collaborators, but rather to do it in a way that incriminates those who are being pressured, especially to sow mistrust amidst the Palestinians. To incite and disintegrate any social immunity. Mutual solidarity. Trust. To poison and decompose society from within. And this is the deeper purpose largely underlying the industry of collaborator-recruitment.
So Mohammad, who naturally feared looking like someone whom the Secret Services come to pick up by car, hurried to where Captain Asher told him. Jib Crossing. And the captain waited for him there, indeed, and took him in his car to Giv’at Ze’ev settlement. He has a Skoda, Mohammad said. A Skoda car. And Captain Asher told him that his uncle Ismail said he had worked with him. And Mohammad said, then have me confront Ismail. And Captain Asher did not confront him with Ismail, and did not answer him.
Then Captain Asher said, come help us, and we’ll give you what you want.
And Mohammad said, no.
And Captain Asher said, if you don’t work with us, you’ll never get a permit. And you won’t find work. And you won’t enter Jerusalem. Because he knew Mohammad wants a permit.
And Mohammad told him, I’m not a spy. I’m not a spy. I’m not a spy. And Captain Asher did not answer. Only drove him to Jib Crossing, and threw him out there.
Until the next time. Which has already taken place. With Captain Abu Yussef. Nor is it the last time. And how many times will he withstand the beatings. And the threats.
Hopefully forever.
I asked him about his shoes, they seemed good ones for some reasons. And he told me dismally that they are indeed some brand, I’ve forgotten which. But they’re torn, he added, and showed me. And I saw they were torn. And I saw his tooth was broken and not fixed. And how young he is. And many other things.
Meanwhile Ahmad, Mohammad’s uncle, sat down next to us and said, yesterday we cleaned windshields, Rauf and I, and the Israeli police came and asked, “Are you Rauf?” He said yes. So they shackled and took him away. Do you know him?
And I said, maybe. Only I don’t remember the name. And he said, this is a nice guy. And I thought to myself, naturally he’s a nice guy as Ahmad says, or a good boy. Or child. Only now they’re probably showing him photographs and saying to him: if you don’t tell us who they are, if you don’t collaborate, we’ll jail you, or take from you or not give your sister the medical care she needs. And some captain will offer him coffee, and make him feel at ease. And say, come work for us. And maybe he’ll say, no, I’m no spy. I don’t want to. And he’ll be made to sign and be tainted with the stamp of his refusal. And that means that at any checkpoint anywhere he’ll always be taken aside and made to wait for hours. As a hint, that this is the fate of anyone who refuses them. And when he will want to study or need medical care for himself or for someone close to him, he will be told, no, unless you work for us. And the moment will come when a summons to this or that captain of the Secret Services will arrive, in public on purpose, so that everyone would know that he has been summoned by the Security Services and everyone would suspect him. And finally he is likely to surrender. For he is dead anyway. And the dead cannot be killed. And his life will be ruined. More than will seem to him at that moment. And after Rauf they will take this one or the other. For they are godless. Because for them Palestinians are transparent at best, or cockroaches at worst.
For that is Occupation.
Since this conversation at Qalandiya on Saturday, a friend called and said his son came for his semester break from the Jordanian university where he has been studying, and as he crossed Allenby Bridge, he and other students coming on home leave just like him were given a summons for Captain Aiman for the following week.
His voice broke as he said this, knowing more than his young and inexperienced son does, that a door of no-choice has just been cast into his young life from the moment Captain Aiman stepped into it.
And most likely next week, as the father knows, his son will be summoned into this or that room, and offered coffee, and told to make himself comfortable, and told the names of his brothers and sisters, and finally told that if he wants to proceed with his studies in Jordan, he must work for them. And he will say no, he will not want to work for them.
But when he will return to Allenby Bridge on his way back to school at the end of his semester break, he will probably be detained and not allowed through, for no apparent reason. Or perhaps he will be ordered to wait. And he will wait. And he will be taken to the captain’s room at Allenby Bridge, and offered coffee. And told to make himself comfortable. And that if he wants to study in Jordan or be cured of cancer in Egypt or be issued a work permit or live and breathe, he must work for them, and they will rule his fate - in their commonplace, sordid, coldly cynical way.
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