Read Online A Month by the Sea by Dervla Murphy - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Dervla Murphy
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possible political alternative to Fatah. Also, the Lebanese year drew the exiles close to Hizbollah who gladly provided military training ‘more advanced than anything we had before’. When the Islamists were allowed home, because of international pressure, ‘we had a welcome back like we were a winning army!’
Meanwhile Amira had been coping with six children under twelve and she remembered the 1992–94 years as one long nightmare . Then, partly as a result of the Second Intifada in 2000, economic conditions rapidly worsened throughout the OPT and, as Israel continued to expand its settlements, Arafat’s support dwindled. Factional violence on the Strip increased when the PLO failed to persuade Hamas to join its ranks and pick the fruits of the overt (Madrid) and covert (Oslo) peace processes.
During this period of internecine bloodiness informers proliferated and in 1994 Amira’s brother Riham was executed by al-Majd , a special intelligence unit set up by Sheikh Yassin to detect and punish collaborators. The family was never given proof of Riham’s guilt but Sari said there was no reason to doubt it. Sheikh Yassin, being a wise and just man, made sure that all al-Majd recruits were well-trained and responsible. A Palestinian informer’s shame stains his whole clan but almost always his immediate family is helped by ISIs and on the very day of Riham’s killing his widow and seven children were ‘adopted’ by three ISIs.
On the West Bank I twice heard informers being shot close to my pad and I listened to a few debates with Internationals about the ethics of such executions. Happily no one ever sought my opinion. Under Israeli military rule collaborators are responsible for incalculable suffering, property loss, injury and death. One can’t condone these executions but neither could I bring myselfto condemn them where the alternative of life imprisonment is impractical. Every society abhors informers. I vividly remember, in the 1940s, two grey-haired maiden ladies moving from a distant county to my home town in rural Ireland and being identified, in whispers, as the relatives of an informer recruited some twenty years earlier by the Black-and-Tans. An aura of horror surrounded these unfortunate sisters of a man who had betrayed his own – for
money
!
The news from Syria was unsettling many Gazans and my friends felt concerned about Khaled Meshaal, Yassin’s successor and a long-time exile from the OPT, for years based in Damascus as head of Hamas’ Political Bureau. Sari then told me about the extraordinary events of October 1997, when Mr Netanyahu, in his first term as Prime Minister, ordered Meshaal’s assassination during his residency in Amman, Jordan. Meshaal was already seen as one of Hamas’ most talented young leaders. It’s not nice to bomb or shell the resident of a friendly state, so two Mossad agents, bearing stolen Canadian passports, chose to spray poison on their target. When caught in the act they were arrested and Meshaal was rushed to hospital. As he lay there, his recovery uncertain, an angry King Hussein did a deal with Netanyahu. In exchange for an effective antidote, and the release of Sheikh Yassin and several other prisoners, Mossad’s dudes would be freed. Soon after, Sheikh Yassin visited his friend, Meshaal, in hospital and found both the King and Arafat there to greet him. Then he was helicoptered to a Strip vibrating with cheers and enveloped in banners. These celebrated ‘the Sheikh of the Intifada’ – pictured beside Yahya Ayyash, Hamas’ most efficient bomb-maker, known as ‘The Engineer’, who had been assassinated in January 1996. Sari later showed me the spot where Ayyash switched on his mobile and died. He had been given it by a collaborator.
For Hamas the Israelis’ inexorable assassination campaign had been far more damaging, politically, than Cast Lead – or so Sarireckoned. Between 2002 and 2004 the IDF ‘took out’ most of their senior leaders –
Meanwhile Amira had been coping with six children under twelve and she remembered the 1992–94 years as one long nightmare . Then, partly as a result of the Second Intifada in 2000, economic conditions rapidly worsened throughout the OPT and, as Israel continued to expand its settlements, Arafat’s support dwindled. Factional violence on the Strip increased when the PLO failed to persuade Hamas to join its ranks and pick the fruits of the overt (Madrid) and covert (Oslo) peace processes.
During this period of internecine bloodiness informers proliferated and in 1994 Amira’s brother Riham was executed by al-Majd , a special intelligence unit set up by Sheikh Yassin to detect and punish collaborators. The family was never given proof of Riham’s guilt but Sari said there was no reason to doubt it. Sheikh Yassin, being a wise and just man, made sure that all al-Majd recruits were well-trained and responsible. A Palestinian informer’s shame stains his whole clan but almost always his immediate family is helped by ISIs and on the very day of Riham’s killing his widow and seven children were ‘adopted’ by three ISIs.
On the West Bank I twice heard informers being shot close to my pad and I listened to a few debates with Internationals about the ethics of such executions. Happily no one ever sought my opinion. Under Israeli military rule collaborators are responsible for incalculable suffering, property loss, injury and death. One can’t condone these executions but neither could I bring myselfto condemn them where the alternative of life imprisonment is impractical. Every society abhors informers. I vividly remember, in the 1940s, two grey-haired maiden ladies moving from a distant county to my home town in rural Ireland and being identified, in whispers, as the relatives of an informer recruited some twenty years earlier by the Black-and-Tans. An aura of horror surrounded these unfortunate sisters of a man who had betrayed his own – for
money
!
The news from Syria was unsettling many Gazans and my friends felt concerned about Khaled Meshaal, Yassin’s successor and a long-time exile from the OPT, for years based in Damascus as head of Hamas’ Political Bureau. Sari then told me about the extraordinary events of October 1997, when Mr Netanyahu, in his first term as Prime Minister, ordered Meshaal’s assassination during his residency in Amman, Jordan. Meshaal was already seen as one of Hamas’ most talented young leaders. It’s not nice to bomb or shell the resident of a friendly state, so two Mossad agents, bearing stolen Canadian passports, chose to spray poison on their target. When caught in the act they were arrested and Meshaal was rushed to hospital. As he lay there, his recovery uncertain, an angry King Hussein did a deal with Netanyahu. In exchange for an effective antidote, and the release of Sheikh Yassin and several other prisoners, Mossad’s dudes would be freed. Soon after, Sheikh Yassin visited his friend, Meshaal, in hospital and found both the King and Arafat there to greet him. Then he was helicoptered to a Strip vibrating with cheers and enveloped in banners. These celebrated ‘the Sheikh of the Intifada’ – pictured beside Yahya Ayyash, Hamas’ most efficient bomb-maker, known as ‘The Engineer’, who had been assassinated in January 1996. Sari later showed me the spot where Ayyash switched on his mobile and died. He had been given it by a collaborator.
For Hamas the Israelis’ inexorable assassination campaign had been far more damaging, politically, than Cast Lead – or so Sarireckoned. Between 2002 and 2004 the IDF ‘took out’ most of their senior leaders –
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