It took four years in a prison cell for Palestinian Abdel Hamid el-Rajoub to decide to work as an Israeli informant. Not that he ever planned it that way. Rajoub is in his 60s now. He grew up in a Palestinian village near Hebron, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. He says he was 19, an emotional young man, when he got involved in fighting Israel.
"It was my right," he says, "to fight Israel and the occupation."
Rajoub looked up to an older brother, who he says was part of the military branch of the Palestinian political group Fatah and was killed by Israeli soldiers. Rajoub joined Fatah's fighting wing too, and says he took part in an attack on Israelis in the mid-1970s that landed him in Israeli prison.
Life inside was oppressive, Rajoub says, but the worst part of it came from fellow Palestinians. Fatah members, he says, wrongly accused him of passing information to Israeli intelligence.
It is a charge that is difficult to disprove, particularly inside a prison community where suspicions run deep and risks are high. Being accused of working as an informant was potentially so dangerous that Israel moved Rajoub from the general prison population into a solitary cell.
"I was in the Israeli cell alone for four years, waiting for Fatah to realize I was not an informant," Rajoub says. "But an apology never came. I thought a lot during those four years. I realized that my problem was with Fatah, not with Israel."
A Key Role That's Often Invisible
In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, informants have long played a key role. Palestinians pass information to Israeli security agents for a variety of reasons, including personal gain or needing something from Israel, such as a work permit. In Rajoub's case, the motive was revenge. He wanted to hit back at Fatah, feeling it had betrayed him.
Still, it hurt.
"It was a painful decision," Rajoub says, choking up. "Whenever I remember that moment, I cry."
Rajoub stayed in prison, but in special cells full of other informants like him. Their job was to put on a show of being real prisoners, to fool other Palestinians into revealing information Israeli intelligence couldn't get.
Former Israeli intelligence officer Chaim Nativ calls it theater - and a useful part of interrogation. Nativ worked in the Arab section of Israel's Shin Bet internal security service for 30 years.
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