August 27, 2002

THE son of the first known Palestinian woman to be executed as an Israeli collaborator said yesterday that gunmen tortured him until he invented a story about his mother's involvement in a militant's death.

Ikhlas Khouli, a 35-year-old mother of seven, was shot dead at the weekend after being seized from her home in the northern West Bank city of Tulkarm.

Bakir Khouli, 17, lifted up his T-shirt at his one-room house in Tulkarm yesterday to reveal black and blue marks he said were made by electrical wires shortly before his mother was killed.

"They accused me of helping Israeli intelligence," he said. "When they started beating me with this wire, I confessed and invented a story."

Dozens of suspected Palestinian collaborators have been killed since the beginning of the Palestinian intifada in September 2000, but Khouli was the first woman reported executed.

A member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, linked to the Fatah movement of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, said the militia seized Khouli from her house on Friday and took her to a deserted building where they videotaped her confessing that she had spied for Israel.

He said she had admitted having delivered information that led soldiers to the group's Tulkarm chief, Ziad Daas, on August 7, when he was shot and killed.

She was executed as a lesson to others who would consider collaborating with Israel, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades member said.

Khouli had said she had recruited her son, Bakir, to assist her, he said.

Bakir said he told his torturers he had informed his mother of Daas's whereabouts. But he said he made up the story to avoid further torture.

Bakir said the gunmen allowed him to catch a glimpse of his mother shortly before she was taken away and shot.

Her bullet-riddled body was dumped in a street of the northern West Bank town on Saturday night.

Najla'a Khouli, 18 and the eldest of the family's seven children, said their father died of an illness eight months ago and that she was engaged to be married and would soon be leaving the family home. "Who will take care of my brothers and sisters?" she asked.

An Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades leader said his group was forced to "strike with an iron hand" to prevent collaboration with Israel.

"I know that this woman had children but we had no choice. We left her son alive to take care of the children," he said.

Asked why his group employed torture, he said: "This is the only way you can get confessions from such people who betray their people."

Meanwhile, Israeli chief of staff General Moshe Yaalon, in his first public speech since taking the job last month, described Palestinian militancy yesterday as a "cancerous" threat that must be excised before a political settlement could be achieved.

Addressing a rabbinical conference in Jerusalem, he said the Palestinians must be made to understand political goals could not be achieved through terror.

General Yaalon's support for a clear-cut military victory unsoftened by political compromise reflects the attitude of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and conflicts with the view of left-wing politicians. including Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who called for offering elements of political compromise even before the intifada is suppressed.

Contrary to a widely held view, the intifada was not a popular uprising but a carefully planned strategy by the Palestinian leadership, the general said.

"It is the Palestinian leadership that is conducting this war and determining its character," he said.

The Daily Telegraph

-- Anonymous, August 26, 2002