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Corporate Scandal: The Dark Side of Uber

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Extortion, Blackmail and Exploitation in Palestine
By: Noura Mansour

    Extortion and blackmail are systematic procedural Israeli practices at checkpoints in Palestine. Extortion, defined as coercion into giving up certain things (be it property or information) against one’s free will, has been existent for decades. These policies however severely intensified in 2007 after the inter-Palestinian political split.

    There have been countless testimonies and reports concerning this issue in the last decade, meticulously documented by human rights NGOs such as Physicians for Human Rights – Israel, B’Tselem and the Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights. The Israeli soldiers and the Israeli General Security Service (GSS) usually target the most vulnerable of society and manipulate them. The most exploited groups are:
1. The marginalized and unprivileged. These are the weakest in every society, political and social outcasts or people in financial distress, such as orphans and homosexuals.
2. People who depend on Israel for services. These are prisoners, detainees, students and people in need of medical care.

    According to reports, collaborators are often asked to provide information that may seem harmless, such as reporting on the types of clothes that are hanging outside specific houses. However, these are pivotal clues that can assist a targeted assassination operation by Israeli forces. This kind of information indicates whether the targeted person has returned and is staying in a given household. Others were asked to transfer money and distribute it as payments to other collaborators.

Damned if you don’t

    Once targeted for collaboration, Palestinians are interrogated, tortured and subjected to cruel and inhumane treatment. They have to spy on their friends, neighbors or families, or else have their secrets exposed or be denied a service they are depending on. They have no choice, and whichever way they choose, they suffer psychologically, socially and often even physically. There are 4 main strategies:

Collaboration under detention: Any reason is good enough to arrest someone or detain them for interrogation. Detainees are exposed to numerous strategies to extract information – threats of violence, harsh prison conditions and spies who try to befriend you in prison. Refusing to collaborate could mean life in prison, even if there is no evidence against you. Addameer, a prisoner support and human rights association reports that there are 6500 Palestinians political prisoners, 500 of whom are under illegal administrative detention. This includes 182 children.  After release from detention they are assumed to have collaborated and lose trust of the community, often driving them collaborate.

Collaboration at risk of exposure: If you have any secrets – if you’re gay, or engaged in extramarital or premarital sex – these will be used against you. In some instances, the suggestion of these claims might be enough to destroy your life and relationship with your spouse and family, regardless of their truth.

Palestinians are often forced to collaborate if they want to travel within or get out of Israel. Given that there are hundreds of checkpoints, separating villages towns and cities this could happen to anyone. According to B’Tselem and OCHA there are 99 fixed checkpoints (2014), 256 flying checkpoints (2013) and 532 Physical Obstructions (2012). The two most reported cases are:

Collaborate or you cannot study: Applications for travel permits are examined by different functions within the Civil Administration, and by GSS, However, GSS has the right of veto and effectively has the final say on the matter, according to PHR-Israel and B’Tselem. Palestinians students in the West Bank, who are also reliant on Israeli permits to pursuit their right to education, have reported that although they were in possession of the necessary entry permits, Israel revoked the permit after they refused to collaborate with GSS. 
  
Collaboration at risk of physical harm or death: In cases where the target is a patient who applied for a permit to enter Israel for medical treatment (the majority of cases in Gaza), the patient faces the risk of permit rejection which could have detrimental effects on their health and even lead to death. As an occupying power, Israel is obliged to provide health services and ensure the right to health of the occupied population. As a minimal standard, Israel is prohibited from denying access to health services.  Israeli exploitation of Palestinians' medical distress and other needs constitutes a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva convention and the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. 
 
Damned if you do

    In case they break under pressure and collaborate, a long process of exploitation begins. You might start cooperating in order to stop them from bothering you, but the more you collaborate, the more they own you. There have been cases where collaborators who wanted out were threatened to be exposed by Israel, or had their family members threatened. 

    For Palestinians, collaborators become enemies. They are perceived as traitors who are not to be trusted, since they might have facilitated Israeli assassinations and operations against their own people, family and friends. In case they are exposed and caught they could face execution. 

    Many are eventually forced to detach themselves from their families, friends and surrounding and start a new life elsewhere. They are usually resettled in Israel, where they live in horrible living conditions. They have no social networks and struggle to adapt. No matter how hard they try though, they are rejected by Israeli society. Zionist ideology insists on creating a pure Jewish state, and new Arabs will be resisted and face new forms of discrimination. For the Israeli government, they are no more than tools, only good as long as they are functioning well. 

Positions of Palestinians and moving forward

    Just like resistance, collaboration is also a by-product of oppression. In order to be immune toward such divide-and-conquer techniques, which aim at destroying the social fabric and unity of the Palestinian nation; Palestinians must be united under a clear national strategy towards liberation and full realization of their right to self determination. 

    Executing collaborators will not eradicate this phenomenon, instead Palestinians need to fight the source and make sure Israel is held responsible for it’s illegal and inhumane practices. The movie “Omar” by the director Hani Abu Asa’ad, should spark  an important conversation about this issue of extortion. It sends a powerful humane message of unity, understanding and never raising arms in the face of your own people, including collaborators. All Palestinians suffer from the same source of oppression, and all are equally victims of Israeli policies. The fractured local political scene makes a fertile ground for planting more collaborators, the only way to counter that is through a real unity and cooperation between all Palestinian social and political fractions.