Stigma of life in 'Traitors' Village'

By Tim Butcher
BBC, Dahaniya

In Gaza, a community of Arabs accused of collaborating with Israel live under Israeli protection.

I knew he was a collaborator, and he knew I knew he was a collaborator, but the 50-year-old sheikh still danced around the issue.

"It is you who said 'collaborator'. I say I am someone who had to do something because my life was in danger.''

He was looking at me askance, from under a pristine, white headdress, pulling on a cigarette as he skilfully delivered this subtle piece of semantic revisionism.

Sheikh Shtiwe Shtiwe Ermillat has said this a thousand times before, I thought to myself, as our conversation continued.

It is here Arabs who helped the Jewish state have ended up, corralled together in a sort of dusty witness protection programme

The tribal elder was charming, he was candid and, for a brief moment, he was almost convincing, but I could not help wondering how his reasoning would stand up to a mob of Palestinians if they ever got a hold of him.

Outside his modest single-storey home I saw the answer.

Less than a grenade's throw away, was a high, well-maintained security fence manned round the clock by heavily-armed Israeli soldiers.

Protection

The sheikh and the 350 other Arabs who live in this tiny, dusty corner of Gaza - Palestinian land occupied by Israel since the 1967 war - have to be protected by the Jewish state.

In the eyes of many Palestinians, the village of Dahaniya is "the village of traitors'".

Arabs who helped the Jewish state have ended up here, corralled together in a sort of dusty witness protection programme.

Some are Egyptian, Bedouin tribesmen who helped the Israeli army during its 1970s campaigns in the nearby Sinai peninsula, and others are Palestinians, who sold out, working as informers for Israel's notoriously unscrupulous Shin Bet spy agency during the first and second intifadas.

Attack

No-one from the village is allowed through the security fence into Gaza any more.

Ten years ago a woman from here went to the market in the closest Gazan village of Rafah.

With Israel's transfer this summer of Gaza to Palestinian control, what is to become of the "village of traitors''?

She was kidnapped, beaten, held incommunicado for a month and only released after the intervention of senior Israeli intelligence figures.

No-one doubts what would have happened if it had been a man, not a woman.

"They would have turned him into kebab,'' Abed Shtiwe said trying to make a joke.

None of the villagers I was with laughed.

I could not help feeling sorry for many of them.

Handover

In the eyes of most Palestinians, they sold their souls by working with Israel, but what have they got in exchange?

The right to live in a sandy, litter-strewn village, surrounded on all sides by hostile Israeli soldiers.

Last year the village soccer pitch was churned into a building site by Israeli tanks. There was no explanation, no apology.

But the Dahaniya question is about to come to a head.

With Israel's transfer this summer of Gaza to Palestinian control, what is to become of the "village of traitors''?

The problem is that not many Jewish Israelis want Arab collaborators moving in next door

A high-level defence ministry committee has convened to consider all options, but one thing is certain, it will not be safe for all the villagers to remain.

Mohammed Shtiwe, the 17-year-old son of the sheikh, spoke for many when he said he wanted a future in Israel.

"All my life I have lived under Israeli control. I don't even know any Palestinians well. My future must be in Israel,'' he said.

Stigma

Tatty though the village is, by the standards of Gaza, it is rather upmarket.

Many of the men are given day passes to enter Israel to work, mostly as farm labourers.

The work is hard and not that well paid, but by comparison with the Palestinians in Gaza, which is famously crowded and devoid of employment, the villagers of Dahaniya are well-off.

"We were allowed a family day last year when my cousin from Gaza came here. And when he saw my jeans, he said: 'Those cost £75. How can you afford jeans that cost £75?'" Mohammed explained.

"Sometimes I speak to them on the phone and they tell me they have no work, no money and no future. I don't want to be a part of that.''

The problem is that not many Jewish Israelis want Arab collaborators moving in next door.

They might have helped Israel, but the stigma of being a collaborator is an ugly stain for any community.

'Old Testament-style brutality'

Earlier this year, Palestinians elsewhere in the occupied territories meted out justice to a convicted Arab collaborator.

In front of a large crowd, Muhammad Mansour was beaten, shot at close range in the side of the head and then the mother of one of the men he betrayed was then called forward to stab his lifeless corpse and pluck out his eyes.

It was a display of Old Testament-style brutality and I wondered if it might one day be applied to the villagers of Dahaniya.

Many of them, like the 17-year-old Mohammed, are the sons or grandsons of Arabs who collaborated, so perhaps they would be let off.

But does not the Old Testament say something about the sins of the father being visited on his offspring?

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 14 May, 2005 at 1130 BST on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.