>>A number of attacks in Iraq have been certainly destructive, but it
>>seems to me that the proportion of attacks that solely or primarily
>>target civilians who occupy no political office out of the total
>>number of attacks is higher in historic Palestine than in Iraq.
>
>In Palestine, the armed factions don't target other Palestinians.
>That's more like Abu Nidal's style, a madman who didn't deserve
>support.
"Palestinian militias summarily executed hundreds of collaborators during the first intifada" (Suzanne Goldenberg, "Public Death for 'Collaborators,'" _The Guardian_, January 15, 2001, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,422379,00.html>).
"Suspected Palestinian collaborators have been frequent targets of unidentified gunmen, who are rarely caught" ("Unrest Erupts in Gaza Strip," July 3, 2002, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2090520.stm>).
***** In the chaos of Nablus, the enemy is not always Israeli Palestinian factions turn on each other in West Bank city
Chris McGreal in Nablus Wednesday February 11, 2004 The Guardian
The leather-jacketed heavies surrounding Ghassan Shaqa are not there to shield him from the Israeli troops grinding their way through the casbah in search of "the resistance". It is from other Palestinians that the mayor of Nablus seeks protection.
His brother was murdered two months ago in an ambush almost certainly intended for the mayor: one of dozens of Palestinians killed by Palestinians in recent months as the West Bank city of about 150,000 people has crumbled into lawlessness, organised crime and vigilante justice.
But there are many in Nablus who say that Mr Shaqa is contributing to the destabilisation by his bitter political, and some say violent, rivalry with the area's governor, Mahmoud Aloul.
Armed gangs have abducted the governor's brother, razed a family business and tried to assassinate his political allies in the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
With the collapse of order has come a surge in extortion, kidnapping for ransom and the settling of feuds between rival families dressed up as killing collaborators.
Among the dead are several innocent bystanders killed in the crossfire of botched abductions and gunbattles on the streets. They include a 13-year-old boy shot on his way to get a haircut and a mother of three murdered while buying medicine for one of her children.
Taysir Naserallah, a leading representative of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement in Nablus, said repeated Israeli invasion of the city, compounded by months of curfews and economic collapse, had brought about the chaos. But Mr Arafat was also to blame, he said.
"We are living in a state of chaos in Nablus because you don't know who is hitting who, and there are a lot of people taking advantage of it," he said.
"There are two factors behind this: the collapse in the Palestinian Authority's control because of the Israelis, and Arafat's refusal to trust anyone with power. He appointed a mayor and a governor for Nablus who are two men in the same seat trying to do the same job. Arafat plays them off against each other to keep control." . . .
Mr Shaqa, who is a member of the PLO executive committee and the national security council, estimates that nearly 40 Palestinians have been killed by other Palestinians in the anarchy of recent months, almost as many as have died in the city at the hands of the Israelis. . . .
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1145446,00.html> *****
B'Tselem, among other organizations, collects detailed statistics on Palestinian killings of suspected Palestinian collaborators.
BTW, this is a practice hardly unique to Iraqis and Palestinians. Take a look at the history of any national liberation movement, beginning with the American Revolution.
>>More importantly, it is a mistake, on your part as well as
>>Pilger's, to speak of "the existing armed resistance" as if it were
>>a monolithic force who have practically identical ends and means.
>
>Yes. There are probably sections of the resistance that don't
>indiscriminately target civilians and don't like it when others do.
>But so far they haven't spoken out, organized politically or
>distinguished themselves from their unscrupulous comrades. Also,
>these people don't solicit international solidarity, which is one
>reason why I wonder why anyone would offer it.
The reticence of resistance fighters makes the job of US anti-war activists difficult, because we have no clear idea of their political composition, but, if we really think about what it takes to resist the occupation by force (at least until resistance fighters get really well organized, politically mature, and very actively and broadly supported by Iraqi masses) solely from the point of view of physical survival and military effectiveness in the short run, their silence makes sense. The fewer clues you give to the intelligence analysts of the army of occupation, the better your chance of staying alive and continuing armed struggles becomes. One of the main military advantages that resistance fighters have over foreign soldiers is that nobody knows who resistance fighters are, whereas foreign soldiers are readily identifiable and their bases and movements easy to chart. Knowledge = Power. -- Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>