Traitors & Collaborators

This is old ground – the killing of Palestinians who work with Israel by Palestinians who deem cooperation with Israel to be “treason” or “collaboration.” A State Department official told us [JINSA Reports 203, 204 and 276] that the U.S. government would not judge the Palestinian definition of “traitors and collaborators,” but that we do not approve of “extra-judicial” killings.

This is old ground – the killing of Palestinians who work with Israel by Palestinians who deem cooperation with Israel to be “treason” or “collaboration.” A State Department official told us [JINSA Reports 203, 204 and 276] that the U.S. government would not judge the Palestinian definition of “traitors and collaborators,” but that we do not approve of “extra-judicial” killings.

The example he used to solidify the principle was that of a Chinese person who helped the U.S. in China and was caught by the Chinese government. “We are sorry if they are executed, but in fact they violated the laws of China. It is not for us to judge how governments define crimes against the state or the punishments they mete out.”

With that in mind, we note that Abu Mazen has approved the death sentences of three Palestinians accused of helping Israel capture or eliminate Palestinian terrorists. According to Arutz-7 news service, the governor of Gaza announced that Abu Mazen transferred several cases “to the mufti (arbiter of Islamic law) of Jerusalem … Abu Mazen then signed the decisions.” PA executioners will carry out the sentences.

Never mind Abu Mazen for the moment; he does not surprise us. We have two questions. Does the State Department accept that these executions will be legal when they are carried out? Will the U.S. be complicit?

We ask the first because Abu Mazen is clearly the “legitimate” authority in the newly “legitimate” PA and the cases were clearly reviewed by an arbiter of Islamic law before he signed the death warrants. The PA appears to have met the requirement for legal executions.

The fact that we appear to have no opinion of the definition of the crime for which they will die brings us to the second question – will the U.S. be complicit in the executions? Their “crime” was nothing more than “dismantling the terrorist infrastructure” required by the U.S. of the PA in the Road Map, e.g., “to arrest, disrupt and restrain individuals and groups conducting and planning violent attacks …”

If there are Palestinians that do those things as a matter of fear or conscience, in accordance with the U.S. vision of Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation and in opposition to the policy of the PA that calls them traitors; and if the PA arrests, tries and executes them; then a) the PA isn’t committed to doing the job the U.S. has assigned it and for which it is getting money and political legitimacy from Washington, and b) the U.S. is a party to the death sentence by its failure to require a definition of “treason” that excludes the precise cooperation the U.S. demands.

It is a convoluted sentence but a simple thought. If Palestinians and Israelis are to attempt to forge a common future, the U.S. government cannot accept that Palestinians will be executed by their government for working with Israel, and cannot accept as legitimate any PA law that says they will.