Abbas' Village League

A Good Article

By Arjan El Fassed, The Electronic Intifada, Sep 10, 2007

"For as long Palestinians have resisted violent Israeli policies against them, successive Israeli governments have tried to undermine Palestinian unity and foment divisions. A principal strategy has been to try to foster alternative leaders willing to abandon fundamental Palestinian demands for justice and focus on an agenda with which Israel is comfortable.

This is taking place now as Israel shuns the elected Hamas movement, and tries to prop up the discredited Fatah leadership headed by Mahmoud Abbas. Following the elections, Israel kidnapped dozens of elected officials belonging to Hamas and is still holding them in its prisons......

Just as it has done with Hamas leaders more recently, Israel dismissed the PLO mayors, expelling many of them into exile. In 1980 the mayors of Hebron and Halhoul were deported and the mayors of Nablus and Ramallah were severely maimed by car bombs planted by Israeli death squads. In March 1982, Israel occupation authorities dismissed all elected Palestinian mayors and city councils.....

.....So began a slow decline until Arafat died under mysterious circumstances in November 2004. Arafat was replaced by the current Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who had long enjoyed explicit backing from Washington and who was the key Palestinian figure in the secret channel that led to Oslo.

Abbas is now explicitly armed and backed by Israel and the United States and has declared war on the Hamas movement. We can reach back to another precedent to understand his current role. Following the debacle (from Israel's perspective) of the 1976 municipal elections, it set up the Village Leagues in the 1980s. These were bodies staffed by Palestinian collaborators appointed by Israel.

Unlike the National Guidance Committee and many of the officials elected in 1976, the Village Leagues did not struggle against the occupation. While Israel attempted to suppress an authentic Palestinian national movement and uproot the influence of the PLO, the Village Leagues were an attempt to impose an Israeli form of limited autonomy. The Village League of the Hebron district was established in 1979, headed by former Jordanian Cabinet Minister Mustafa Dudin. In 1981, two more leagues were established in Ramallah and Bethlehem districts. Some members of the Village Leagues had criminal histories.

Because of their willingness to collaborate, Village League leaders were given a facilitator role by Israel; money was channeled through them and they received various benefits from the Israeli rulers. Through a series of military orders, the Leagues were authorized by Israel to arrest and detain political activists and establish armed militias, as well as carry out administrative and bureaucratic tasks such as issuing drivers' licenses. Palestinians living in rural areas had to turn to the Village Leagues for everything from work permits to family reunification permits.....

Israel hoped that the Village Leagues would create and empower a "moderate" Palestinian leadership that would then to agree to negotiate with Israel on the subject of "autonomy" -- a code word for limited self-rule under continued Israeli occupation and colonization. The leagues were designed to provide a "moderate" Palestinian leadership that would be prepared to negotiate with Israel on the subject of autonomy for the West Bank. For that same purpose the Palestinian Authority was established and it is for this reason that Abbas is currently allowed to talk with Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

There is a disturbing parallel with current Israeli policy: just as Israel now uses the Abbas-dominated militias of the Palestinian Authority to crack down on those who resist the occupation, Israel attempted to do the same with the Village Leagues. Members of the Village Leagues had little hesitation when it came to the use of force: they manned roadblocks, carried out checks on identity cards and broke up meetings and demonstrations against the occupation.

It is not known how many members the Leagues had and how much support it received. What is known is that Village League leaders were widely viewed as corrupt, dishonest and having accepted an Israeli definition of the problem. The aims of the Leagues were, in the words of the Hebron district Village League leader Mohammad Nasser: "to improve relations with Israel, to prevent terrorism, to combat communism and to work for the establishment of peace and democracy." If one replaces the words "communism" with "Islamic extremism" then one has a description that matches almost exactly the stated goals of the Abbas leadership even as it cracks down on civil liberties, gerrymanders election laws, and shuts down over one hundred civil society organizations.

Yet despite Israeli efforts to invigorate the Leagues with massive support, by 1983 they had begun to disintegrate, unable to operate in the face of public resistance. Many Palestinians already consider the players in Abbas' regime as little more than criminals and collaborators. It is only a matter of time before today's Village League, headquartered in Ramallah, headed by Abbas and his unelected prime minister Salam Fayyad, and armed and funded by Israel, the European Union and the United States, is also disbanded by the people."