09/06/2002
EDITORIAL NUMBER=0-10113

KILLING PALESTINIAN WOMEN

Since the start of the latest wave of anti-Israel terrorism in September 2000, dozens of Palestinian men accused of helping Israel have been killed without benefit of trial or any process of law. Their deaths were often public and brutal.

In August, a Palestinian widow and mother of seven children became the first woman to suffer this sad fate. Ikhklas Khouli was kidnapped at gunpoint from her home in the West Bank city Tulkarm. She was taken to a deserted building where she was evidently coerced into confessing on videotape to being a "spy" for Israel. She was then driven to the town square and shot repeatedly in the head and chest.

Ikhklas Khouli was later said to have been implicated by the "testimony," produced under torture, of her seventeen-year-old son. Bakir Khouli was seized by gunmen hours before his mother was taken. He told reporters he was beaten with electrical wires until he invented a story about his mother's involvement in the death of a Palestinian militant.

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade took responsibility for the slaying of Ikhklas Khouli. The group is allied with Yasser Arafat's Fatah Movement and has been officially designated a terrorist organization by the United States. A spokesman for the group defended its methods by saying that torture is "the only way you can get confessions from such people."

Al-Aqsa also claimed responsibility for the execution of the second Palestinian woman killed by terrorists for alleged cooperation with Israel. Six days after Ikhklas Khouli was slain, her seventeen-year-old niece, Rajah Ibrahim, was seized by masked men, videotaped, and shot to death in Tulkarm. Ibrahim was also accused without evidence by an Al-Aqsa spokesman of working with Israeli intelligence.

Neither Ikhklas Khouli nor Rajah Ibrahim was given the right of due process of law. Neither was able to defend herself in a legal proceeding. Neither was convicted by evidence, only by accusation.

The goal of terrorists is to control a population by fear. The deaths of these women in Tulkarm are acts of terrorism. They are impediments to a peaceful future in Palestine. As President George W. Bush has said, "The way to a peaceful future can be found in the non-negotiable demands of human dignity. Dignity requires the rule of law."