For Arab Informers, Death; For the Executioners, Justice
"My daughter made a mistake," she said. "My daughter fell into the trap of my brother. My daughter was cheated by her uncle. My daughter was an informer. Everybody looks at us in a different way. I want to turn the page. I want a decent life."

As Muyasar Ibrahim ranted on, her other children, ranging from a toddler to a young man, huddled anxiously around her at the entrance to their three-room hovel at the end of an alley. They alternately urged visitors to leave and glanced fearfully at a clutch of Palestinian youths laughing and watching from the alley.

On Friday, the 43-year-old woman's 17-year-old daughter, Rajah Ibrahim, was shot dead as a collaborator by members of the militant Aksa Martyrs Brigades. Six days earlier, Ms. Ibrahim's sister, 35-year-old Ikhklas Khouli, was similarly killed. Six months earlier, Ms. Ibrahim's husband was executed.

In the street, there was no pity, no doubt that justice had been done.

Collaboration has always ranked as a heinous crime among the Palestinians. Dozens of men have been killed as collaborators, often publicly. Ms. Khouli and Ms. Ibrahim, however, had the distinction of being the first women executed in the current uprising, and their deaths attracted considerable attention.

The band of neighborhood boys happily led reporters to show them Ms. Khouli's similarly meager home a block away — or at least its remains. After she was killed, the family moved in with her daughter's husband in a village a few miles away, and two days later the home was burned down. Now a broken door and a few charred mattresses litter the darkened rooms.

"We don't want them to come back," explained an 18-year-old who gave his name as Mahmoud.

"They should have hanged them in front of everybody," shouted another youth. "She deserved it."

In a videotaped confession Ms. Khouli made before she was shot, in all the accounts given in the streets and in a furtive interview with members of Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, the story was that the women had been working for Ali Yassin, the brother of the two women. A "well known" collaborator, as people described him, he had fled to Israel and now worked with the Israelis.

Some said he had threatened the women, others that he gave them money. But the consensus was that he had recruited them — one to use her many children to report on the movements of Palestinian militants, the other to plant a bomb.

In an unusual move, a spokesman for the Brigades agreed to an interview. Everybody was talking about the executions, he said, and he wanted to explain.

After a furtive meeting in the open street, during which the man and a clutch of his comrades repeatedly glanced in all directions and made calls on their cellphones, he led reporters to an apartment hung with posters of Aksa "martyrs," who had been killed in clashes with Israel. An AK-47 assault rifle hung over one.

The most prominent poster was of Raed al-Karmi, a 27-year-old leader of the group in Tulkarm who was killed by a hidden bomb in January. Many Palestinians, and some Israelis, say his death broke an informal cease-fire that had been in force for several weeks, and prompted Al Aksa, an offshoot of Yasir Arafat's Fatah movement, to begin carrying out attacks inside Israel, which until then had been largely the work of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

To the Israeli Army, Mr. Karmi was a terrorist, whom they had already tried to kill in September. In Tulkarm, he has been a folk hero, a warrior to whom songs were composed, who commanded fierce loyalty in the streets.

Rajah Ibrahim, the man explained, had been responsible for bringing in the bombs that killed Mr. Karmi and for burying them at a spot he often passed. Before the uprising, most of the men in Tulkarm worked in Israel, which is right outside the town. Most of them were barred from entering Israel, but women — including Ms. Ibrahim, a seamstress — were still allowed to cross.

"While in Israel, Rajah was recruited by her uncle," said the spokesman, a burly man who would not give his name. "She met with two Israeli officers and her uncle at the checkpoint, with two other girls, who are now in Israel, who are known to us. They gave her two bags, a black one and a red one. One of the girls led her to the place where she should put the bomb, and the other helped her dig a hole for it. Her brother kept an eye out."

The militants in Tulkarm were wary of men coming back, but nobody noted a girl carrying bags. "It came as a big surprise to us to realize that Israeli intelligence started using Palestinian women and girls in certain missions," the man said.

"To be honest, the girl didn't know what she was doing," he said. "She was promised a better job, more money. She knew it was a bomb, but not for whom. She didn't ask why."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/02/international/middleeast/02PALE.html