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Partners in Crime
Khaled Abu Toameh
(December 25, 1997)Palestinian and Israeli crooks are enjoying an evermore profitable union. And efforts to thwart them are being hampered by the indifference of Palestinian legislators and the direct involvement in some crimes of Palestinian officials.
When prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived at the Erez Checkpoint for a pre-dawn meeting with Yasser Arafat in October, some members of the Israeli entourage noticed a shiny black Mercedes, with no registration plates, among the luxury cars in the Palestinian motorcade. The missing plates, and the presence on the windscreen of parking stickers for Herzliyah, left the Israelis in little doubt that the Mercedes SEL, worth about $130,000, had been stolen from an Israeli owner. But because they were anxious not to disrupt the talks, a police officer who was there that day told The Jerusalem Report, "We decided not to make a fuss about it." That incident at Erez underlines several of the problems Israel faces in trying to counter the growing wave of Palestinian property crimes - principally, but not only, the epidemic of car thefts. At a time of deteriorating relations between Israel and the Palestinians, crime, ironically, is one of the few areas where a partnership is flourishing: Joint Israeli-Palestinian gangs carry out many of the car thefts; joint gangs too engage in smuggling meat, vegetables and fruit into Israel; joint gangs are even involved in forging Israeli currency. And Palestinian politicians and security officials don't merely turn a blind eye to what is going on; in many cases they are directly involved themselves: Palestinian sources claim that an aide to Yasser Arafat is involved in the meat racket, and that several Palestinian Authority officials have taken bribes to facilitate the vegetable-smuggling.
As for the stolen cars, the appearance of the Mercedes at Erez indicates that Palestinian officials have no compunction in displaying their new acquisitions in open view of their Israeli counterparts - knowing that Israel is not about to start a diplomatic incident by trying to investigate. Israeli police sources say innumerable stolen cars have been acquired by PA and Palestinian security officials through black market dealings in Gaza and Ramallah. Usually, say the sources, the officials use an intermediary to cloak their involvement, but in some cases they buy directly from the thieves. In all, a staggering 32,956 cars were stolen in Israel in the first nine months of this year. Price lists circulate widely: A thief can expect to make up to 8,000 shekels (over $2,000) selling a newish Mercedes to a black market dealer, up to 5,000 shekels for a BMW, and up to 3,000 for a Subaru, Mitsubishi or similar family sedan. So desperate have some insurance companies become to avoid paying out for replacements that they have even begun negotiating with the thieves: The Sahar agency, for instance, paid a Gaza gang 60,000 shekels in August for the return of a Jaguar worth almost 500,000 shekels. Just a few days after the Erez meeting, at the very same crossing point, Israel did take action against a high-profile Palestinian figure driving an allegedly stolen car. Musa Abu Sabha, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council who also works for the Palestinian Ministry of Justice, was arrested driving a white Mercedes reported stolen hours earlier from a Jerusalem dealership. The policeman who stopped him, Amal Abu Rish, had, along with his colleagues, been given instructions to look out for four cars stolen from the same dealership. When he asked Abu Sabha for his papers, the legislator presented the VIP card issued by Israel to most PLC members, and threatened to file a complaint against the cop if he checked the vehicle. Unmoved, Abu Rish did check, and found that the number on the car chassis differed from the one on the Palestinian registration document Abu Sabha was carrying. Abu Sabha was remanded into custody by a Jerusalem magistrates court and later bailed out and placed under house arrest.
Abu Sabha is a resident of Yatta, a town south of Hebron - where Israel is responsible for overall security, but the PA maintains day-to-day control - famous for its "car slaughterhouses." According to Israeli police sources, most stolen cars are driven out to Yatta to be broken down into spare parts, which are often then sold back to Israeli dealers. The best models, though, are taken to the black marketeers, and often sold on to Palestinian officials. Abu Sabha told investigators he bought the car in Ramallah from a man whose name he does not know. But police suspect that he knew exactly what he was buying.
At a special session in November, the PLC failed to approve a request by the PA's attorney general, Fayez Abu Rahmeh, to lift Abu Sabha's immunity so that he could be extradited from Israel and prosecuted by the PA. Many PLC members expressed sympathy with Abu Sabha, suggesting he was the victim of an Israeli "conspiracy." Rawya Shawwa, a PLC member from Gaza, for example, told The Report: "There is no reason why we should automatically endorse the Israelis' accusations against our colleagues. I tend to believe that Abu Sabha has been framed as part of an Israeli attempt to blackmail Palestinian officials." Hatem Abdul Qader, a PLC member from Jerusalem who was himself briefly detained by Israeli police recently for driving without a license, added that "Israel is deliberately exaggerating the issue of car thefts to harm the reputation of the PA. True, some individuals are involved in crime. But that doesn't mean all Palestinians steal cars." The day after the PLC session, another Palestinian official was detained at Erez. This time it was Zakariya Balousheh, a general in the Gaza security services, found driving a stolen BMW. Balousheh convinced Israeli police he had nothing to do with the theft, and blamed it all on his driver. The following day, Balousheh published a statement in the Palestinian press, warning the public "not to believe Israeli propaganda and rumors." However, The Report has learned, he has since been placed in detention in Gaza, for having embarrassed the PA. Palestinian security officers say they do their utmost to fight car thefts and other property crimes. Their lack of success, they claim publicly, stems in part from the fact that the criminals are not only Palestinians but Israeli too. "We know of many cases where Israeli thieves bring the stolen cars to their Palestinian friends inside the PA-controlled areas," a Palestinian colonel in Ramallah told The Report. "The majority of Palestinian car thieves don't even have permission to enter Israel." The partnership applies to the meat-smuggling business as well. Israeli police, together with the ministries of agriculture and health, are now investigating the illegal sale of meat, imported by butchers in Al-Ram, in the West Bank outside Jerusalem - who pay lower customs duties than would Israeli importers - and sold on to non-kosher restaurants in Jerusalem and Herzliyah. Similarly, smuggling rings bring fruit and vegetables from the West Bank and Gaza for sale at Israeli markets, circumventing health supervision and import regulations. Hundreds of tons of intercepted produce are destroyed by inspectors each year. And one ring is alleged to be involved in providing "Made in Palestine" labels for Israeli citrus products, to faciliate their export to Jordan and other Arab countries.
Yet another partnership flourishes in the forgery of currency. In early November, the Palestinian police in Qalqilyah arrested three Israeli Arabs and five Palestinians found in possession of 10,000 shekels' worth of forged bills. A few months ago, another forgery ring was broken in Jenin. Privately, the Palestinian sources admit, a complicating factor is the involvement of Palestinian officials in some of the illegal activities. Earlier this year, a car thief apprehended in Jerusalem's Musrarah neighborhood told police he had been sent by Colonel Jibril Rajoub, the Palestinians' West Bank security chief. "Rajoub's man," he said, "promised me 1,000 shekels per car." The Palestinian colonel told The Report he knew of "at least three cases where senior Palestinian officials ordered from the thieves a specific model of luxury car," which was then custom-stolen. There was no way for the Palestinian police to act in such cases, he said, unless they had orders from Arafat. And, although Palestinian peace negotiator Sa'eb Arekat and Foreign Minister David Levy agreed recently to set up a "joint mechanism" to counter car thefts, it has yet to be established. Similarly, according to Palestinian sources, it is one of Arafat's aides who today manipulates the meat market in the territories, including smuggling to Israel, in return for a "commission." And it was the Palestinian Minister of Agriculture, Salah Abdel Jawad, who disclosed to a PLC committee recently that three senior officials in his own office - including his deputy - were involved in the falsely stamped Israeli citrus scam, taking bribes from Israeli businessmen in return for their services. Israeli police also point out that Palestinian policemen are themselves involved in these crimes. In the past three years, Jerusalem police have arrested dozens of Palestinian cops for car thefts and factory break-ins. Some of those arrested say they resorted to theft because of financial problems. The average police salary is $300, and is not always paid on time. A former adviser to Arafat told The Jerusalem Report that the crime wave was more than likely to escalate. Preachers in the mosques of the West Bank and Gaza often tell Palestinians at Friday prayers that it is halal - religiously permissible - to steal from Jews, even though the Koran clearly outlaws theft. "We are talking here about a norm of behavior," explains the ex-Arafat aide. "The Palestinian police is still not acting as a law-enforcing force, but rather as a force whose aim is to defend the Palestinians against a future Israeli aggression. Crimes such as the stealing of Israeli cars are regarded by the majority of Palestinians, including senior officials, as a legitimate weapon against the Israeli economy. Many Palestinians will ask you, 'The Jews stole all of our land, so why can't we steal back some of their property?' "
Some people believe the Israeli government's delicate handling of the car theft epidemic may have something to do with the boost to tax revenue provided each time a stolen car has to be replaced. These critics note that the "slaughterhouses" at Yatta and elsewhere operate in full public view, and assert that it would be easy for the government to close down the trade there if it wanted to. Certainly, the early-November case of the theft of the brand-new Mercedes belonging to Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, stolen from outside the Jerusalem home of the Shas party's spiritual leader, demonstrates how effectively car thefts can be tackled when the will is there. The theft, clearly, was a case of Israeli and Palestinian crooks working hand in glove: The car keys were taken from inside Yosef's home. But the recovery, too, was a case of cooperation, this time between Israeli and Palestinian police. Within 24 hours, the rabbi's car was traced to Beit Omar, a village in the Hebron area, and returned to him undamaged.
1997
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