Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Veteran PLO Peace Negotiator Busted by PA as Spy for Israel

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinian officials said on Sunday they had arrested a member of their peace negotiating department for spying for Israel, a development likely to deepen distrust between the sides at a time of deadlocked diplomacy and simmering street violence.

The man, whose name was not released, is part of the management staff in the umbrella Palestinian Liberation Organisation’s (PLO) negotiations department and is accused of “collaborating with Israel,” a security official told Reuters.

Another official said the suspect was arrested two weeks ago.

Al Ayyam newspaper, published in the West Bank city of Ramallah where Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s U.S.-backed administration is based, described the suspect as a 20-year veteran of the PLO team and said he had confessed to the charge.

How long he had spied for Israel and what damage he might have done remained unclear, Al Ayyam said, citing an unnamed senior Palestinian official.

Israeli officials did not immediately respond.

The PLO and Israel signed interim accords in 1993 that won limited self-rule for the Palestinians, but after several rounds of talks their goal of statehood in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and in the Gaza Strip remains out of reach.

The stalemate, as well as Muslim anger over perceived Jewish encroachment on a contested Jerusalem shrine, has contributed to Palestinian street attacks and protests that erupted in October and have drawn a tough response from Israeli security forces.

A Palestinian tried to stab Israeli soldiers on Sunday near the West Bank town of Nablus and was shot dead, the army said.

That brought to at least 148 the number of Palestinians killed in the last three and a half months, 94 of whom Israel described as assailants. Most of the others died during violent demonstrations.

In the same period, Palestinian stabbings, car-rammings and gun attacks have killed 24 Israelis and a U.S. citizen.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.