Use and Lose: Israel’s Palestinian collaborators

Since the foundation of the State of Israel, Israeli security agents have recruited tens of thousands of Palestinians to a network of informants and collaborators that was established in Israel, and after 1967 also in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, using false promises, blackmail, coercion, violence and exploitation of personal distress.

On the surface, collaborators (Hebrew: MASHTAP, Arabic: Ameel) lead normal lives in their communities, but in parallel they lead a dangerous clandestine existence in which they act as informants or carry out missions in collaboration with the Israeli mechanisms of occupation. They are asked to provide...