Posted on 05/06/2005 5:57:42 PM PDT by blam
Fear of Old Testament-style revenge grows among Arabs in 'village of traitors'
By Tim Butcher in Dahaniya
(Filed: 07/05/2005)
The village of Dahaniya is protected round the clock by the Israeli army but the 350 residents are not Israelis living in fear of a suicide bomber. They are Arabs grouped together in what is known in the Gaza Strip as "the village of traitors".
Inside the security fence that shields the villagers from the vengeance of their neighbours, fear is growing as the date of the Israeli army's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip approaches.
Abed Shtiwe, a 37-year-old farm labourer, knows he is on a wanted list. The fact that his father and grandfather allegedly betrayed fellow Arabs by working for Israel makes him feel like a dead man walking.
The death penalty, legal in the Palestinian community, can be applied with Old Testament brutality for collaborators. A recent suspect had his eyes gouged out by the mother of a man he was said to have betrayed.
For decades, the use by Israel of paid informers has been a cornerstone of Israel's success in defeating its Arab foes. Now that the pull-out is looming, Israel has a problem in knowing what to do with them.
"Look what happened to a woman from this village who was caught a few years ago trying to shop at the market in Gaza," Mr Shtiwe said. "They beat her, blindfolded her and interrogated her, and she was just trying to buy a few things.
"If they do that to a woman, imagine what they would do to a man - they would turn him into a kebab."
Standing outside the tatty community hall of Dahaniya, Mr Shtiwe's words won the nodding agreement of a group of onlookers but one old lady was angry at a foreigner asking questions about the past. "Get lost! Get lost! We are not collaborators but you people keep saying we are," she shouted.
Mr Shtiwe claimed most of the villagers were not Palestinian but descendants of Egyptian Bedouin who allied themselves with Israel through the 1970s during fighting in the nearby Sinai peninsula.
For more than 10 years, it has been impossible for the villagers to go to the local Gazan town of Rafah for fear of kidnap and murder.
"Look, it was my father who helped Israel and my grandfather who helped Israel before him but now the Palestinians will expect me to pay," Mr Shtiwe said. "They will want to settle accounts."
Special permission is needed by Palestinians wanting to cross from Gaza into Dahaniya.
Ramzy Ali comes from Gaza each day to teach English. While he acknowledges the "sensitivities" of the village, he said younger generations should not be punished for the sins of their fathers. "Why punish someone for someone else's crime?" he asked.
But when asked if the people of Dahaniya had a future in Gaza, he said perhaps it would be better for them to relocate to Israel.
The village is a modest clutch of single-storey houses arranged round a grid of dusty, goat-infested lanes.
On the village periphery, the villagers maintain Bedouin-style donkey corrals made of gnarled branches and scrap metal.
The villagers must await the decision of an Israeli government committee that is considering the fate of Dahaniya in the run-up to Israel's disengagement from Gaza due later this summer.
While thousands of Jewish settlers are demanding the right to stay in Gaza, the Muslim community of Dahaniya is adamant that it wants to move to Israel. But Israel is worried about the cost of the relocation and the problem of finding a new home for the "traitors".
Past attempts to rehouse collaborators have created problems as the families have been shunned by Israelis, who regard them as untrustworthy.
The village chief, Sheikh Shtiwe Shtiwe Ermillat, 50, pulled slowly on his cigarette and looked out of the corner of his eye when asked what he wanted to happen.
He has spent a lifetime dealing with the accusation of being a traitor and his answer was as languorous as it was unconvincing: "I am first of all an Egyptian, then an Arab and then a Muslim. What is acceptable to my village of Dahaniya is acceptable to me."
People really need to read that and realize what animals these people can be.
Israel should relocate these Arabs to Israel.
Ask John Kerry what to do with them. He knows what he did with the Montagnards.
Seems as if Isreal is gong to do to them what we did to the Montagnards.
It would be a sin if they did , but I am afraid you are right. The problem is there is only so much land in Israel and most of it is filled. These people claim to be Egyptian. but I doubt Egypt would help them either.
Why America if they are Egyptian first? Why not let them go back there?
That's what should not happen with these Arabs.
If they are under threat because they helped Isreal then Isreal is morally obligated to protect them.
I'm of the opinion that the Arab Islamists have not yet risen to the level of an animal...
All evidence points to them stuck at the cockroach level...
Semper Fi
Awful!
It’s nice to see the Telegraph write about Dahaniya, but you won’t find much media interest in them. If there were 350,000 Arabs like this in Gaza, still a small minority, maybe Oslo would have ended differently, but there weren’t.
Their plight is an old one. As some of you know, in 1995 Israel turned over administration of over 95% of the population of the West Bank and Gaza to the PA, resulting in a security/legal system aspiring to Sadaam status, and an educational system and media that would have done Goebbels proud.
Who are the 5%? Recognizing a decade ago that Jews would likely be slaughtered under the Palestinian Authority (If you’re reading this President Clinton, you knew that, that’s why you refer to the current Prime Minister by his terrorist name), Israel retained responsibility for Jews in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as a small Arab community in Gaza called Dahaniya. You’ll find that in Annex 1, Article IV-6 of the Agreement on the Gaza Strip and the Jericho Area, 5/4/1994Maybe there’s another that I’m not aware of.
Essentially the Dahaniya Arabs live like the Jews, aka “settlers”, targeted by the terrorists protected by the IDF in a protected enclave. Thus the articles lead, The village of Dahaniya is protected round the clock by the Israeli army and comments like Inside the security fence that shields the villagers from the vengeance of their neighbours. The same as the “settlements” where the IDF portects "settlers" behind walls from Arab vengence.
It’s my understanding that from the beginning of the unilateral withdrawl, the residents of Dahaniya were going to be resettled within Israel. I don’t think there’s ever been a question of that, it's been policy for over a decade. Two issues remain, which a commission is determining. First, will they be resettled as a community, or dispersed. This decision hasn’t been made regarding Jewish residents of Gaza either, and is clearly a problem to be resolved. And second, will they be citizens of Israel (likely requiring legislation), or simply permanent (that means permanent, as in as long as they want to stay) residents. In either instance unless they want to stay, they’ll be in Israel, like the Jewish residents of Gaza, further from the reach of their Arab bretheren.
Yes, they should be in Israel. They have worked to help Israel and for order. A good citizen to take in, I'm thinking.
Because history needs to repeat itself time and time again.
Doesn't it?
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