Collaborators find no mercy among Palestinians
Palestine, Politics, 10/11/1999

"There isn't anything worse than being a collaborator against your own people," said Yousef as he watched an Israeli television report on a former spy who served the Israeli Mossad for a number of years in Lebanon. The report, aired last weekend, showed how Palestinian collaborators who acted against their own people and served in the rank and file of the Israeli intelligence have finally found themselves neglected by the Israeli authorities and find no place to go.

Riyad Kanaan of Dabouriya village in the Galilee was one of those who served the Mossad for a number of years and furnished them with valuable information on the PLO in Lebanon. Today, after ten years of useless efforts to obtain the minimum of care from his former superiors, he decided to sue the Israeli government and the Mossad for US $220,000.

Riyad lives today in Nazareth. His search for an easy and quiet life has so far taken him to five different towns and villages, but he had always been kicked out or forced to leave because people could not forgive his past. "What happened to him and to many others of his like," commented Yousef, who lives in Nazareth, "is a good lesson to those who think they can get away with being collaborators with the Israelis." "Once a dog, always a dog. They use them and then throw them to the dogs," he said.

Riyad's son was stabbed twice in Nazareth by youths who knew the history of his family. "He is my father, my brother and my friend. I have nobody else. They all dumped me once they knew my father was a spy for Israel," said the son. In the beginning, he said, people befriended him in order to hear the truth from him and to learn of what his father did in Lebanon. They always wanted more and more information. When he had nothing else to tell them, they severed ties and distanced themselves from him. The daughter's luck was no better at all. She too spends most of her time at home unable to go to the streets. "Even if I go out, I have no friends and there is no place to go to," she said. "There is no place for us here and I think we should leave the country," Riyad told his children a number of times but so far has not been able to leave.

In 1971, Riyad Kanaan infiltrated through the northern borders into Lebanon and headed up north to Beirut. He was stopped at a roadblock manned by Fatah fighters who detained and interrogated him for six months. Upon his release, he decided to join Fatah and became active in the Western Sector, a department headed by the late Khalil Al Wazir, Abu Jihad, and was in charge of military operations inside the Occupied Territories and in Israel.

"I had the chance to meet all sorts of commanders in the Western Sector and I worked until the year 1982 in the information department of the Western Sector," Riyad told Israel television on Friday night. "During those years I worked in technical and educational departments and I was close to Abu Jihad," he said. Abu Jihad was the second in command in the PLO forces. An Israeli elite commando unit raided his house in Tunis in April 1988 and riddled his body with more than 60 bullets.

Six years after being in Fatah, Riyad was appointed head of the southern sector in Beirut. He rented a house next to the beach, got married and had four children. In 1977, he received a letter from his brother asking him to go and see him somewhere in Europe. They met and they both went into the Israeli embassy compound. His brother introduced him to someone named Mike.

Mike, a Mossad agent, squeezed off Riyad every piece of information he had at his disposal. The following day, Riyad was flown to Tel Aviv where he underwent an intensive training course at one of the Mossad stations north of Tel Aviv. In his television interview, Riyad said he gave Mike details on his activities in Lebanon and on activities of many other members of Fatah. He also analyzed ways of thinking of Fatah leaders, their decision-making process and the way they evaluate their daily matters.

Upon Riyad's recruitment to the rank and file of the Mossad, his superiors promised him a sum of US $500,000. When he finished his course after a week, he returned to Beirut and started sending messages, sometimes twice a day, to his superiors in Tel Aviv. His service lasted for five years and came to an end in 1982. Riyad claimed in his television interview that when Israel invaded Lebanon and heavily bombed civilian targets around Beirut, he decided to quit his job and cease all kinds of collaboration with the Mossad. He said his superiors suggested that he move and operate in another Arab country, but he refused and decided to return to Israel.

Riyad was on the run along with his family until 1988 when he returned to his home village, Dabouriya. He renovated his parents' house, but a while later it was set on fire. A group of youths who knew Riyad's history did not like his presence in the village and attacked the house with Molotov cocktails. "I took out my machine gun and opened fire in all directions. It took the police some seven hours to arrive to my rescue. When they arrived, everything was ashes," he said. The police decided to evacuate him and his family from Dabouriya to Nazareth. In Nazareth, Riyad thought he could start a new life. He repeatedly pleaded to his superiors to pay him the money they promised but to no avail.

"It hurts that the office and people who worked with me and respected and trusted my reports in the past have no kind word to tell me now," said Riyad. In the past, he added, he was so influential and powerful and that he could easily reach any official. Today, he added, he cannot even reach his former superiors to explain his situation to them. "They showed no respect to me despite of all what I did for them," he said bitterly.

Carmi Gileon, former head of the Shin Bet: "I met Riyad when he first arrived at the Shin Bet rehabilitation department which took care of spies and collaborators. I know his history in general. I would not of course talk about the secrets that involved his work with us because they are still considered highly classified secrets. But I can say the man did an outstanding work and was one of the best spies Israel ever had. I would also say that everybody in the intelligence community accords him all due respect."

Gileon, claimed that the assistance Riyad received from the Israeli government "guarantees a respectful standard of living for him and for his family. "Certainly," said Gileon, "there are problems with the vicinity and the neighborhood that does not easily accept these collaborators," admitted Gileon who argued that the whole situation is not easy for him "but that is not the same as saying that the government of Israel has an ethical duty to help this man."

Ten years have passed since Riyad first demanded his money from the Mossad.

Three months ago, he decided to sue the government and the Mossad for close to a quarter of a million US dollars. Said his lawyer, Avi Tagar: "Riyad's problem needs a root solution. It is inconceivable for a man like him to go to the office and receive $200 per week and that is it. He lives today in a government-owned apartment." The lawyer said his client does not pay any rent but still this is not enough for someone like him. "I think the government of Israel will have to address the issue of spies and collaborators in a more intensive way once the Israeli army is pulled out of Lebanon. There will be many many cases like this in the future."

Yousef, at the end of the television report, was almost speechless. He said that what Riyad has gone through should be a lesson not only to Palestinian collaborators but also to traitors all over the world. None of the Palestinians who collaborated with the Israeli authorities over the thirty years of military occupation could find a listening ear among the public. Not even a sign of mercy. Some may understand the reasons why those collaborators worked with the Israelis but could not forgive them for not backing away once the chance was given to them.

During the years of the Palestinian uprising, leaflets issued by the Unified National Command of the Intifada gave collaborators a chance to repent what they did. They asked them to show up in their local mosques, hand over their guns and renounce collaboration with the Israelis. Those who did went back home safe and ceased their ties with Israel. Those who refused were chased out of their villages and sometimes even attacked along with their families. "These collaborators," concluded Yousef, "have dumped all their ties with their own people, lost their past and are now looking for their future, which is doomed to remain as black as their deeds were."

Previous Stories:
  Collaborators helped Jewish takeover of Jerusalem   (6/24/1998)
  Story of a Palestinian collaborator   (2/21/1998)
  Families of imprisioned Palestinians pressuring Israel   (10/28/1997)

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