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Palestinians Defend Executing Collaborators, Denounce Vigilantes
JERUSALEM (News Agencies) - Palestinians Monday defended their controversial policy of executing those convicted of collaborating with Israel, while calling on individuals not to engage in vigilante justice.
Faisal Husseini, the most senior Palestinian official in Jerusalem, said Palestinian security courts were right to hand down death sentences, two of which were carried out on Saturday, the first executions by the Palestinian Authority for collaboration since that body's formation in 1994.
Later Saturday, military courts - whose decisions cannot be appealed - sentenced in rapid succession two other men to die.
Responding to international censure regarding the policy - which has come mainly from European states - Husseini said: "When someone is assisting the Israelis with information that helps them kill one of our leaders without even giving him one minute to defend himself, it is difficult to criticize us for using military courts.
Since the Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, began in September, the Israeli army - often using snipers - has assassinated about a dozen Palestinians suspected of orchestrating anti-Israeli attacks.
Both Palestinians put to death over the weekend, and others due to face a firing squad, were found guilty of providing information that aided Israel carry out pinpoint, "elimination" attacks.
The Israeli assassinations have mainly targeted activists from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's political and guerrilla faction, Fatah, and members of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas.
Husseini said military courts were used because Israel had placed Palestinians in a state of war.
"They [the Israelis] are putting us in a military state and in an atmosphere of war," he said.
On Monday, the dead body of a Palestinian man, whom locals described as having been known for giving information to the Israeli security services, was found dumped on his doorstep in the West Bank, witnesses said.
Husseini warned Palestinians not to take the law into their own hands.
"There is only one body responsible for taking this critical decision and carrying it out. Only one body," he stressed at a Fatah assembly in Jerusalem.
"Any attempt from an individual or group to do this will bring charges onto them."
Sakher Abash, a Fatah leader in the West Bank town of Ramallah, called on Palestinian double-dealers to turn themselves in, saying that the justice handed out would fit their crimes.
"The door of the revolution is open to all," he told another Fatah rally in Ramallah.
The European Union Monday condemned the weekend executions, but stopped short of threatening a halt to aid to the Palestinian Authority.
"To our deepest regret, the Palestinian Authority has broken with its commitment to have a moratorium on executions," said Gunnar Wiegand, spokesman for EU External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten.
He added that Swedish Prime Minister Goeran Persson had been in telephone contact with Arafat, and that the EU foreign policy troika had undertaken a "diplomatic demarche".
Ali Abu Mustafa, secretary general of the opposition Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), said that critics, while condemning Palestinian policies, turn a blind eye to abuses and crimes perpetrated by the Israeli army.
"Who talks about condemning death sentences? Why don't they condemn Israel for what happened in Hebron?" he asked the Ramallah rally.
In the southern West Bank town of Hebron on Friday, Israeli soldiers - responding to the sound of an explosion - entered a restaurant, shot a man in the head and then dragged away his lifeless body, leaving a wide trail of blood.
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