In Haaretz Magazine verscheen afgelopen weekend een lang en bijzonder interessant interview met Mosab Hassan Yousef, die jarenlang informant was voor de Shin Beth en tientallen aanslagen hielp verijdelen. Hieronder een paar citaten, maar lees vooral het hele interview. Hij redde niet alleen de levens van honderden Israeli's, maar ook van vele Palestijnen en van Hamas leiders zoals zijn vader. Door zijn toedoen werden sommigen van hen niet geliquideerd maar gearresteerd, en deze mensen zijn deels alweer vrijgekomen in een van de gevangenendeals.
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Israel's man in Hamas just 'wanted to save lives'
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I wish I were in Gaza now," says Mosab Hassan Yousef by phone from California. "I would put on an army uniform and join Israel's special forces in order to liberate Gilad Shalit. If I were there, I could help. We wasted so many years with investigations and arrests to capture the very terrorists that they now want to release in return for Shalit. That must not be done."
"I was in jail with Hamas people, with senior figures in the organization who ran an apparatus called Majad, a kind of internal security body of Hamas aimed at uncovering Israeli agents. They tortured prisoners, most of them from Hamas, whom they suspected of collaboration. My job was to write down the confessions and testimonies. As the sheikh's son, I was trusted. It was there that I lost my faith in Hamas. They killed people for no reason. While everyone was warning me about the Shin Bet, for the first time in my life I saw Hamas people torturing their comrades, members of their nation, with exceptional cruelty. The truth was of no interest to them. If they so much as suspected someone, that was the end of him. They tortured people brutally, burned them, jabbed them with needles, put out cigarettes on them."
After his release from prison in 1997, Yousef started to meet with Captain Loai, and says, "I had no plans to kill anyone or to be a spy, I was just curious." Already in their second meeting, he relates, the Shin Bet man managed to surprise him.
After his release from prison in 1997, Yousef started to meet with Captain Loai, and says, "I had no plans to kill anyone or to be a spy, I was just curious." Already in their second meeting, he relates, the Shin Bet man managed to surprise him.
Yousef: "He explained to me that if I wanted to work for the Shin Bet, I had to respect a few rules. 'You must not befriend loose women or behave immorally,' he told me. 'Do not sleep with women or behave like a wise guy - especially you, the son of a sheikh. You have to find work and get along.' One time, Captain Loai stopped the meeting and asked me if I had already recited the midday prayers. Surprised, I said I hadn't. He then asked me to purify myself [by washing hands, face and feet] and pray, and then said we would continue.
"It was important for them that I would continue to be the person I was, for me not to change, to be serious. They wanted respectable people, who were respected in their society, not those with a poor reputation. I became even more curious and wanted to learn more about them. My handlers told me time and again, 'You must respect your father and your mother and not do anything bad to anyone.' They did not yet ask for information about anything or anyone, and I became more and more serious in regard to them. My handlers, for their part, respected me and treated me very well and even helped me with my studies. I was stunned by their behavior. They did not want to take action against the Palestinians as such, only against the extremists. I looked at these people, whom in the past I had so much wanted to kill, and discovered that everything I knew about them was incorrect."
Yousef recalls: "I drove them to the meeting, and when we returned he told me that they had agreed that the next day, after Sharon's visit to the mount, they would foment demonstrations and in the end an intifada. Their plan was to stir up riots that would continue for two to three weeks.
"They planned the intifada, and don't let anyone tell you anything different," he continues. "[However,] the Hamas leadership in Hebron and Gaza did not want to take part in the riots, because they said [Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat did not deserve to be helped after he persecuted the organization so harshly. And the truth is that Hamas in Gaza did not take part in the demonstrations at the start of the intifada. But my father was in favor [of participating]."
What do you mean by "planned"? Did Arafat ask them to do it?
"I can't tell you for certain that he gave an order. But he did give them his blessing. Listen, man, what do you think? Barghouti, Hussein al-Sheikh, all those who organized the demonstrations - they met with Arafat every day. So what did they talk about? But that is not the worst thing I discovered at the time about Arafat. I was the one who revealed that the first squad of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade was actually a group from Arafat's Presidential Guard, Force 17, which got money from Barghouti, who got it from Arafat."
"I tell you again, I did everything out of a sense of mission, in order to save human lives," Mosab Yousef says. "Take, for example, Jamal Taweel, a senior figure in Hamas. If I had not worked for the Shin Bet, Taweel would now be dead. He was due to be assassinated, but because I was the one who provided the information about his location, he was arrested. He spent a few years in prison and maybe will hate me now, but he is now free, lives with his family and is the mayor of El-Bireh. I am not exaggerating or showing off," he says in the phone call from California. "I supplied priceless information. No one but me was capable of obtaining it."
"That is not a solution. Today we do not have a leadership worthy of ruling, not Hamas and not Fatah. The Palestinians move between the corrupt leadership of Fatah, and the Hamas leadership, which sends them all to die. Besides, Hamas cannot make peace with the Israelis. That is against what their God tells them. It is impossible to make peace with infidels, only a cease-fire, and no one knows that better than I.
"The Hamas leadership is responsible for the killing of Palestinians, not Israelis. Palestinians! They do not hesitate to massacre people in a mosque or to throw people from the 15th or 17th floor of a building, as they did during the coup in Gaza. The Israelis would never do such things. I tell you with certainty that the Israelis care about the Palestinians far more than the Hamas or Fatah leadership does. Israel withdrew from Gaza, and instead of the place being built up and cultivated, look what happened there. We need to take a break from these leaders. And I call on the government of Israel: Never accede to Hamas demands, not even about Gilad Shalit. They will not hurt him - he is too important to them. Even if it goes on for 10 years, Israel must not give in and release all those people from prison."
Read the whole interview here:
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