Destroying the Network Of Palestinian Collaborators

By Frank Collins

Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, like many other occupations in history, could not have continued over the past 21 years without the help of a network of Palestinian collaborators. The Israeli army is just not big enough to police effectively the 1.5 million Palestinians under military occupation. Nor can it possibly maintain the intimate knowledge it needs of the inhabitants of Palestinian towns and villages, or their community relationships, without the help of Palestinian collaborators. Smashing the collaborator network has therefore become a primary task of the uprising.

Nearly half a century later, the occupiers are Israeli rather than German, and the setting is Middle Eastern rather than European, but the collaborators of both periods are cut from the same cloth.

The majority of collaborators in Nazi-occupied Europe were among those who were reasonably satisfied with their position in society, even under occupation, and they came predominantly from the upper classes. They were joined by opportunists from the lower classes who saw in the Nazi occupation a dislocation of society that might enable them to move ahead and improve their position. In both cases, the collaborators put narrow self-interest ahead of any obligation to their neighbors and displayed mistaken confidence in the permanence of the occupation.

Nearly half a century later, the occupiers are Israeli rather than German, and the setting is Middle Eastern rather than European, but the collaborators of both periods are cut from the same cloth. The Israelis have relied on well-placed Palestinians, who in turn have recruited opportunists to serve the occupation in secret as well as out in the open. There is no doubt as to the identity of the open collaborators. They are the Israeliappointed mayors, mukhtars, and others who enforce the rules of the occupation. They carry Israeli-supplied weapons and threaten those who challenge their Israeli-given authority in any way. Their identities are thus well known to the whole community.

Identities of some of the secret informers have emerged more slowly during the years of the occupation. Since some of them report directly to the Israelis rather than to Palestinian middlemen, elimination of the known collaborators would not necessarily sever all links between Israeli authorities and the network of informers.

Notorious Palestinians Working for Israel

Even before the uprising, some of the collaborators had become notorious. The Israeli-appointed mukhtar in a village near Jerusalem kept a gun on his desk, very visible to those who came to consult him about village or personal business. The flunkeys who openly served the mukhtar derived their authority by virtue of that gun, even if they did not carry one themselves.

In another village near Bethlehem, the Israeli-appointed mayor's brother sold land that he did not own to Israeli developers by forging bills of sale. The occupation authorities supported the fraudulent land dealer against the farmers who owned the land.

Before such land sales could be recorded, however, formal surveys had to be made. Whenever these were attempted, villagers placed themselves between the surveying party and the land to be surveyed. When the occupation authorities finally sent troops to accompany the surveyors, a party of villagers threw stones at the surveying group. The mayor's brother, the fraudulent land dealer, carried a gun supplied by the Israelis. He, together with his armed bodyguards, fired on the villagers, killing one with 14 shots to the chest, and wounding 10 others. Fourteen of the villagers, including some of the wounded, were arrested and held up to 10 days before being released. The killer remained free.

Villagers then attacked the mayor's house, burning and destroying it. The mayor and his brother subsequently moved to Ramallah, a West Bank town near Jerusalem, where they live in a mansion purchased with the proceeds of their land sales.

Such people obtained their offices through appointments by Israeli occupation authorities after the last and only elections in the occupied territories, held in 1976. The Israelis complained that the mayors and council members elected by the Palestinian public were overwhelmingly pro-PLO. Eventually, most of them were removed from office by the Israeli authorities, who replaced them with appointed officials, most of them well-known collaborators.

Collaboration Formalized Within the Village Leagues

In 1982, occupation authorities sought to formalize their network of collaborators by establishing "Village Leagues," one for each village and refugee camp, to serve as the central people's organization in each location. Although the Village League idea turned out to be a dismal failure, it served a very useful purpose for the Palestinian communities by unmistakably revealing the identities of many members of the collaborator network.

The Village Leagues, which survived until early in the intifadah, were headed on a national level by Jamil Amleh, a resident of the West Bank village of Beit Aula. At one point after the intifadah began, the Beit Aula villagers ordered Amleh and his cohorts to remain in their homes for several days. Amleh then resigned and turned over his weapons to the village committee, which disabled the weapons and left them for the Israelis to pick up. Since his resignation, Amleh has written and published a book seeking to explain himself.

The Amleh case has been the archetype of hundreds of others. Long before the beginning of the intifadah, gentle methods for dissuading known collaborators were already being used. These included subtle ostracism and partial business boycotts. In traditional villages of strong personal and family relationships, ostracism can be devastating. With the coming of the intifadah, these methods of dissuasion have proven remarkably effective. Very few individuals who have been carefully but unmistakably "warned" continue working with Israeli authorities.

When they do, however, violence and killings have followed. In the village of Kabatiya, the Israeli-appointed mayor was besieged in his home. While holding off the villagers by gunfire, the mayor killed a young boy. When the mayor's ammunition ran out, the villagers entered his home and beat him to death. Then they hung his body from a utility pole.

If this combination of peaceful and violent action eventually eradicates collaborators, the reach of the occupiers will be largely diminished. Without information supplied by Palestinian collaborators, Israeli soldiers may besiege a village, brave its stone-throwers, and enter the area. But having done so, they can only administer beatings and make arrests on a random basis. So far, such haphazard actions have only increased the determination of Palestinian villagers to resist, just as was the case in European areas under Nazi occupation two generations ago.

Frank Collins is an American free-lance journalist who divides his time between Jerusalem and Washington, DC.