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Collaborators — types, reasons The Phenomenon of Collaborators in Palestine  Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (PASSIA), Jerusalem Saleh Abdel Jawad Pp. 111 THE USE of collaborators in Palestine is a phenomenon that existed since 1948, following the Arab-Israeli war that led to the creation of Israel. According to analyses, some Palestinians may have collaborated voluntarily, thinking that they were helping Palestine or to improve their social and family status. The Palestinian national movement took a stance in opposition to collaborating in land selling in 1935, when meetings were held to address the issue and a religious decree (fatwa) was issued. PASSIA published a series of bulletins, each addressing one of the outstanding issues of the Palestinian-Israeli final status talks and examining their complexities, contexts, the basic negotiation positions of Israel and the Palestinians, as well as recent proposals for their resolution. Recently, it published a book about collaborators in Palestine. The book aims to clarify important aspects of the phenomenon of collaboration and to delve deep into the issue of collaboration to further understand it independent of political motivations. It explains that the Palestinian collaborator, in the Israeli strategy, serves to gather information and to create mistrust, spread confusion and undermine collective self-confidence within Palestinian society. The book is based on studies presented at a one-day conference in 2001 in Jerusalem to explore the phenomenon of collaborators within Palestinian society. Saleh Abdel Jawad, head of the History and Political Science Department at Bir-Zeit University, writes that the collaborator betrays his own people either because he is in a position of weakness and suffering (i.e., under torture or in need of healthcare during detention, etc.) and/or perceives the occupying power to be invincible, and he and his people to be hopelessly weak. “Against the backdrop of the 33-year-old Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the Oslo Accords failed to do anything to alleviate the problem of collaboration. This was partly because Israel used Oslo as a way to continue the occupation through other means, and as such, the role of the collaborator remained intact and essential to the occupier,” explains Abdel Jawad. He divides collaboration into the various “types” that have been historically present in the Palestinian society. The first is the land dealer. This person intermediates between Israelis and the general Palestinian population in order to acquire Palestinian lands. The second kind of collaborator is the intermediary. This collaborator acts as an intermediary between the Israeli occupation and the population. A third kind is the armed collaborator. This is a collaborator who became a well-known land broker or intermediary and, as such, was completely marginalised and isolated form the Palestinian society. The fourth kind of collaborator is the informant. The “jasous” provides information on the activities and movements of certain groups as well as general information about political activity in a given area. In addition to these kinds of collaborators, adds Abdel Jawad, there are three other types, which the Palestinian society tends not to talk about. The first is the economic collaborator, whose job is to push Israeli products onto the Palestinian market and to mobilise propaganda against Palestinian products. In his essay titled “Collaborators — recent cases in Palestinian territories”, Dan Williams, correspondent for The Washington Post, discuses some cases of execution of collaborators by the Palestinian National Authority. Williams explains that such cases, in the strange situation of occupation, in which the Palestinian authority also governs, shows lack of democracy and its institutions and harms the struggle against Israel. “[PNA] pretends now to take up the battle against collaborators, but they are unequipped to do it, unequipped to convince people that they can do it and unequipped to right injustices,” writes Williams. The book consists of two parts, in Arabic and English. The book can be found at Bustan Lil Kutob bookstore in Shmeisani. Hada Sarhan Monday, December 1, 2003 |