The Collaborator
While the Shin Bet will say nothing about how it conducts its covert battle against terror groups, published (and censored) testimony by ex-officials, along with Palestinian human rights reports, creates an outline of how the agency has recruited and run collaborators over the years. In the best case, the operative who is meeting a prospective informer can provide something the target wants -- such as money. One ex-informer, recounting to me his decision to work with the Shin Bet at the beginning of the Israeli occupation, stated bluntly that money was his motive: ''I came from hunger. You see bread in front of you. You're not going to take it?'' It's often not much bread. Yaakov Perry, who headed the Shin Bet from 1988 to 1995, notes in his autobiography, ''Strike First,'' that payments to informers are necessarily small, lest ''sudden riches arouse suspicion.''

Another form of payoff has been the Israeli-issued permits needed by residents of the occupied territories -- a permit to work or do business in Israel or a ''family reunification'' permit, allowing a Jordanian-born wife, say, to join her husband in the West Bank. In one case Perry describes, a Palestinian man sought a permit for his wife to receive gynecological treatment at the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem; Perry, then a young operative, offered to secure the permit if the man would sign up as an informer.

Business contracts have provided another lever, says Bassem Eid, head of the East Jerusalem-based Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, which condemns Israeli use of informers as a violation of human rights and international law. ''The [Israeli] Civil Administration decides to pave a road,'' Eid says. ''A Palestinian businessman applies to get the contract. It's worth millions of shekels. Some will collaborate to get access.''

An operative can also play on the rivalries that fragment Palestinian society, exploiting the gaps between ''the Dehaishe refugee camp and the people with the big houses next to it,'' Politi says, ''or between Hamas and the secularists.'' The agent will try to convince the potential Palestinian recruit that by collaborating, he will be doing the right thing for his own people. Indeed, another ex-informer said that he agreed to work with the Shin Bet because he witnessed a bloody grenade attack by Palestinians against Israeli civilians. ''If you want to carry out attacks, get soldiers,'' the man said. ''Not the civilians. That's against religion and law.''

Israel has also used stronger inducements, Eid says, like offering a deal to someone arrested as a drug pusher or as a car thief: ''We'll close the file if you become a collaborator.' Most will accept.'' Palestinians have also charged that Israeli recruiters use sexual blackmail, but confirmation is hard to come by. There is one known case of Shin Bet's using sexual blackmail, but it was against Jewish terrorists. In the early 80's, the agency was hunting Israeli extremists who had set bombs in the cars of two West Bank mayors and the garage of a third. The investigation was going nowhere when Shin Bet investigators discovered that a settler known for extreme views had been having an affair. They arrested him, took him to a Jerusalem hotel room and showed him a video, taken in the same room, of him in the act with his lover. They threatened to show his wife the video unless he told everything he knew about the bombing. (The man refused.) Presumably, the agency has used similar methods on Palestinians.

Once someone has given Israel a bit of information, a canny operative can force him to provide more information by threatening to unmask him as an informer. That is one purpose of paying a source, Perry says. ''The money . . . incriminates him, so that turning back becomes much harder for him, if not impossible.''

Recruiting an activist who is already deep within a hostile Palestinian organization provides his controllers with the quickest payoff. But Perry's account shows that outsiders also have value. An informer meeting his controller -- at a secret spot in the occupied territories or in an apartment the agency has rented inside Israel for the purpose -- can bring tips about what is happening in a village or refugee camp: who, for instance, has taken to meeting whom under the fig tree at the edge of town. If an informer usually travels to work in a neighbor's van, Perry says, his controller may tell him to switch to the bus, so he can ''stop off on the way home at a crowded coffee house and keep an ear out for information that moves around such places.''
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/18/magazine/18PALESTINIAN.html?pagewanted=all&position=top