Targeted Killings (Part II)
When we left, JINSA was plumbing the State Department for a position on the Palestinian killings of “traitors and collaborators.” The Department took the view that the problem is “due process” and the “rights of the accused,” not the definition of “traitors and collaborators” that the PA uses. If people are “T&C” under the terms of PA law, and if the PA made its case in a fair court, the State Department would have no trouble with the imposition of the death penalty. (See JINSA Report #203.)
We would.
When we left, JINSA was plumbing the State Department for a position on the Palestinian killings of “traitors and collaborators.” The Department took the view that the problem is “due process” and the “rights of the accused,” not the definition of “traitors and collaborators” that the PA uses. If people are “T&C” under the terms of PA law, and if the PA made its case in a fair court, the State Department would have no trouble with the imposition of the death penalty. (See JINSA Report #203.)
We would.
“T&C” are loosely defined as those who help Israel locate and eliminate wanted terrorists and/or give Israel information to stop an attack being planned or underway. Those activities are obligations of the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo (and subsequent) Accords. They are the very definition of the “full security cooperation” between Israel and the PA that was the underpinning of all other cooperation. The Palestinians were to halt propaganda and incitement to violence, arrest terrorists wanted by Israel, confiscate illegal weapons, and shut down the loosely defined “terrorist infrastructure.”
If they had met those obligations, all sorts of PA officials would have been “T&C.” OK, so maybe that’s why they don’t do it.
The definition is the definition of traitors under wartime conditions; giving aid to the enemy. But if Israel is the enemy, what happened to the solemn obligation for a peaceful resolution of differences that Yasser Arafat undertook to Yitzhak Rabin in 1993?
The fact is that the Palestinians never gave up their “war option,” and the current war far predates Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount in September, and well predates the collapse of the Camp David II summit last July. Israel complained almost from the beginning of Oslo that the Palestinians had too many men under arms and weapons not permitted by the agreements – mortars are only the latest and most egregious example. Several times during the 90s, participants in JINSA’s Flag & General Officers Trip to Israel met with commanders of the Palestinian “police.” After each meeting, our guests said, “Those aren’t police, they are soldiers.”
As far back as March 2000, Israeli officials were talking about the “Lebanonization” of the West Bank, the militarization of the population and an increase in roadside bombs. The New York Times wrote about the radicalization of children before Camp David.
In October, the PA launched open warfare against the people and the State of Israel. Executions are just one way that the PA dictatorship controls its people while it runs the war. (Call them “T&C” if you like, but the truth is that many people have been killed for running afoul of the PA or other gangsters in non-Israel-related areas.)
The rules of engagement for war are different from those under the “peace process,” and friends of Israel have to know that if the latter ever existed, it is over now.