Saying that Israel has a moral responsibility to help Palestinians who collaborated with Israeli security authorities, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin announced this week the government will take special measures to help the collaborators and provide them with shelter in Israel.
Speaking before the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Tuesday, Rabin said a special authority has been established to help collaborators relocate from their homes in the autonomous areas of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank district of Jericho.
The new authority, Rabin told the committee, has been budgeted with “large sums of money.”
Reserve Gen. Shlomo Gazit, a former head of intelligence, has been appointed the authority’s special adviser.
Every collaborator who wants to move to Israel, said Rabin, will be helped to do so and will be given an Israeli identity card.
Noting that there would be difficulties in arranging for their relocation, Rabin said the chief consideration must be ensuring their safety.
Palestinians suspected of helping the Israeli authorities have long been targeted for revenge killings by fellow Palestinians.
Two weeks ago, the newly named justice minister of the Palestinian governing authority, Freih Abu Medein, said that Palestinians convicted of collaborating with Israel might be given the death penalty.
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