Foreign informants for Israel left scraping, doubt it was worth it
Palestinians and other Arabs who risked their life spying for the Israelis and are now unable to live in their home countries and are forced to scrape a living in Israel, denied either residency or a state pension, RT’s Paula Slier has discovered.
READ MORE: Attack on RT journalist: ‘Israeli army respects nobody’
The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) relies heavily on intelligence, which in a lot of cases comes from informants from Palestine in its ranks, like Muhammad Saad who was an informant for the Israeli army from 1984.
“In 1994, during the Gaza Jericho agreement, I was abducted by members of the Fatah movement. They took me from the intelligence head office to their secret place in Dariya,” he told RT. “From the minute that they arrested me, it took them two days until they notified my family I was in their hands.”
As a result he was blacklisted in Palestine and is now forced to live in Israel. But despite risking his life for them as a spy, the Israelis refuse to grant him citizenship or acknowledge his right to residency. Muhammad receives no pension either, so he has to scrape a living on what little savings he has and relies on handouts from friends.
“I expected Israel to give me an identity card and residency, the rights I deserve, the rights all in Israeli intelligence deserve, but it didn’t happen,” he said.
Amen Elhaj was another Israeli collaborator recruited by Mossad because he was a cleric and spiritual adviser to the leader of Lebanon’s liberal party and had sympathetic views toward Israel. But despite a successful career in intelligence gathering, things ended badly for him.
“I had a close relationship with the person that recruited me but in the end I didn’t even get an Israeli ID,” he told RT. “I paid for everything out of my own pocket.”
Under Palestinian law, anyone from caught spying for Israel faces the death penalty, but both Elhaj and Saad are now forced to live in poverty in Israel and doubt the price they paid was worth it.
