RAMALLAH, 27 May 2007 — The Palestinian Preventive Security (PPS) service in the West Bank yesterday announced that a network of local collaborators with the Israeli occupation was recently smashed and a number of arrests were made.
The PPS statement accused the network of receiving orders from the Shin Bet (Israeli intelligence services), and was ordered to watch the members of the group. The PPS says the group was involved with recruiting Palestinian youths to “impede the intifada”.
It also said that the anti-espionage section of the agency “achieved great success in pursuing and arresting members of the network ... several citizens were involved in this dirty act, and were ordered to recruit as many Palestinians as possible, in order to impede the intifada and any resistance activity, and to damage the moral and ethical values of Palestinian society.”
The PPS said that the recruitments of new agents by the Israelis “depend on two main elements: terrorizing the agent or the fulfillment of his desires. With regard to the fulfillment of desires, they pay the agents a great amount of money and facilitate their travel, permits, work permits, etc. After the target falls into their trap, he is supplied with a telephone, network credit, and in some special cases they are supplied with computers to ease communication.”
“With regard to the terrorizing factor, the target is pressured and threatened by defaming him, especially morally and ethically. This is done by experienced agents, by choosing young men and women in order to get them involved in sexual relations, and then take covert photos of them in deferent positions, before finally blackmailing them,” the statement said.
The statement also said that: “In some cases, some of the recruits were ordered by the Israeli intelligence to have sexual intercourse with girls under threat of being killed. They are often then attacked by Israeli officers, and then taken to a camp for interrogation. The girls are then forced to become agents, so as not to be defamed or revealed by the Israeli intelligence, while simultaneously, the girls are threatened with jail terms if they refuse to accept the deal with the Israelis. When she accepts, she is ordered to use her body to get Palestinians involved with her, and consequently with the Israeli intelligence”. The locations of these traps are normally at Israeli checkpoints and barriers, civil administration offices, the centers for issuing work permits, in addition to the intelligence service centers, according to the PPS statement.
The statement said that, at the beginning, only simple demands are made from the newly recruited agents, over limited information, “but over the days, the demands become more important, complicated and after time the agents find themselves so deeply involved that they can’t extricate themselves from the situation they are in.”
After the agent gets deeply involved, the Israelis only pay them little for their services, compared to the amount they were given when they were recruited. “People involved in such acts are drawn from all kinds of people; you can find university students, government employees, laborers, and even an imam in a mosque.”
PPS urged the Palestinians to be alert and “to keep their eyes open, and urge parents to watch their children to look after them, so they can avoid such traps.”
