Treachery for treatment

Salah Al-Naami - Al-Ahram Weekly - October 13, 2007
His calm demeanour belies the personal tragedy he is living. Journalist Bassam Al-Wahidi, 30, is on the verge of giving in to perpetual darkness. This will happen if he doesn't have an operation to reposition his retina, an operation that he was supposed to have had last month in a Palestinian hospital in Jerusalem. Although Al-Wahidi, a news presenter on the Voice of the Workers radio station in Gaza, had completed all the necessary administrative procedures required of him to travel to Jerusalem, officers in the Israeli domestic intelligence agency, Shin Bet, at the Erez Crossing on the northern border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, won't allow
him to cross until he agrees to become an Israeli agent and provide information on the activities, leaders and members of Palestinian resistance movements active in Gaza.

Avner, a former top Shin Bet officer, admitted in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Maariv published last Friday that officers in charge of enlisting agents are ordered not to hesitate in exploiting any human condition, no matter how severe, in order to enlist the largest number possible of Palestinian informants. Shin Bet, like Mossad, is directly answerable to the Israeli prime minister. The prime minister approves all of the operations it carries out personally.