The Palestinian Village Leagues (Harakat al-Rawabet al-Filistiniyya) were a group of rural leadership organisations in the Palestinian West Bank active between 1978 and 1984. Based on clan structures, the Village Leagues were created and armed with Israeli support as part a framework in which the Israeli government believed it could undermine the influence of the more urban, nationalist, and left-wing Palestine Liberation Organization. Widely considered among the Palestinian population as inauthentic and as collaborators, the Village Leagues were ultimately dissolved less than a decade after their creation.
History Creation Israel established the Israeli Military Governorate after capturing the West Bank during the Six-Day War in 1967. In 1976, the Israeli government allowed city councils across the occupied West Bank to hold elections. The result was an overwhelming victory for nationalist candidates, most of whom were younger, more educated, and less pro-Jordan than the previous Palestinian political establishment, and most of whom were supportive of the PLO. The results shocked the Israeli government, who had a policy of not recognising or negotiating with the PLO and who had hoped that the elections would result in victories for more moderate and less nationalist candidates. These mayors would subsequently play a leading role in the formation of the National Guidance Committee, a progressive and nationalist leadership coalition that aimed to coordinate opposition to the Israeli occupation.
Following the elections, , a professor of Arabic literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and who had previously served as a paratrooper under Ariel Sharon, was named as the new chief Advisor on Arab Affairs to the Military Governorate. As advisor, Menahem and his assistant, Yigal Carmon, argued for a significant change in the way that the Israeli government administered the occupation. Milson believed that the Governorate needed to end its policy of minimising the visibility of the occupation in day-to-day Palestinian life, to take a more active role in internal Palestinian politics, to cultivate pro-Israeli Palestinians as leaders, and to turn the Governorate's focus away from urban areas, which were the strongholds of nationalist sentiment. Instead, Milson believed that the Governorate should turn towards rural Palestine, which he and other Israeli Orientalists believed was still primarily structured according to centuries-old conservative clan norms, norms that were opposed to the PLO's modern nationalism, that were predisposed towards clientelism, and that the Israeli government could subsequently exploit.
In a 1986 article in Commentary, Milson explained his reasoning that "instead of assuming that the Palestinians in the territories could not or should not play a role in the political process, the new policy assumed that they could and should; instead of the requirement that the IMG remain 'neutral,' the IMG would actively attempt to curtail PLO influence and simultaneously encourage those Palestinians who openly recognized Israel," saying that he had "a clear political goal to this policy: to develop conditions conducive to the emergence of Palestinian leaders ready for peace negotiations." In 2016, Carmon explained that they wished to promote "moderate elements who understood that terrorism endangered the Palestinians themselves," and that "although we were well aware that these elements were not dominant and that the positions they espoused were not largely shared by the urban elite that for years had constituted the leading sector of Palestinian society, we also knew that most members of the non-urban population - the silent majority - were prepared to accept this approach if assured of an Israeli commitment to it."
The next year, the right-wing Likud party would win the Israeli legislative elections and would form government for the first time under Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Begin's term as Prime Minister would bring about a number of significant changes to Israeli policies towards Palestine, including massively expanding Israeli settlements and enacting increasingly strict measures to try and forcibly suppress Palestinian nationalism. According to Salim Tamari of Birzeit University, the Likud government wished to "overturn what it saw as Labor's legacy of appeasing Palestinian nationalist forces, evident in the emergence of pro-PLO forces in the 1976 municipal elections and the toleration of the Jerusalem-based Palestinian nationalist press."
As a result of the changes in Israeli policy, Mustafa Dodin, a Palestinian-born former minister in the Government of Jordan who had moved back into the West Bank in 1975, came out of retirement to try and take on a leading role in Palestinian politics. Dodin was politically pro-Jordan and anti-PLO, having backed the Jordanian monarchy during Black September in 1970 and consitently having advocated for the Jordanian option, believing that an independent Palestinian state was not viable.Aronson, Geoffrey. Israel, Palestinians and the Intifada. Creating Facts on the West Bank. Kegan Paul International, 1990. He proposed the creation the Palestinian Village Leagues as rural-based leadership organisation based on clan structures that could serve as a counterweight to PLO influence in the West Bank and could lead towards peace negotiations with Israel. The Military Governorate approved Dodin's proposal in 1978 via Israeli Military Order No. 752, with Village Leagues being formed in seven different West Bank regions, and offered him Israeli support.
In 1981, Begin named decorated former military commander Ariel Sharon as Minister of Defence, giving him responsibility for the occupation. As Minister of Defence, Sharon quickly moved to re-organise the Military Governorate into the Israeli Civil Administration, naming Milson as its head. Together, Sharon and Milson moved to expand the role of the Village Leagues. In 1982, the seven Village Leagues were officially affiliated together with the creation of the Federation of Village Leagues.Lustick, Ian, Donald Peretz, Emile A Nakhleh, & Vivian Bull. The West Bank: History, Politics, Society, And Economy. Routledge, 2019.
Activities and positions The Village Leagues officially declared their purpose to be "the resolution of local disputes among villagers in the most efficient and least costly methods" as well as the development of "rural cooperatives and social and charitable societies which will work for the benefit of all villagers." The Leagues took on a number of municipal government functions, including issuing drivers' licences and travel permits, policing functions, as well as undertaking municipal development projects. They also ran their own newspaper, al-Mira'aa. As well, the Leagues held several "Yes to Peace" rallies, co-organised with the Civil Administration. They were funded via subsidies from the Israeli government as well as collecting their own taxes from Palestinians.
In a January 1983 interview with Leeora Bush of the Zionist Federation of Australia, Dodin stated that the priorities of the Village Leagues were: preventing the emigration of Palestinians from the Occupied Territories, improving Palestinian-Israeli relations, opposing communism and terrorism, and establishing democracy. In the interview, Dodin claimed that "before 1977, an Arab would be killed for talking to a Jew, but now Arabs and Jews are friends and soon terror will be no threat at all here." In a June 1983 interview with The Australian Jewish News, Dodin stated that "we are suffering under the occupation," but that the occupation could only be ended "by negotiation. No Arab country will fight Israel. The PLO was stupid to try to build an army." Dodin further stated that "We are too small for a state of our own. The solution must be a federation with Jordan." In August 1983, Dodin indicated that the Village Leagues supported the Reagan peace plan.
Bishara Qumssiyeh, the head of the Bethlehem Village League, supported Israeli demolition of Palestinian property in response to disturbances, saying that "our city of Bethlehem lives on tourism. If parents allow their children to attack tourist buses, they deserve more than having their houses blown up."
Conflict between the Village Leagues and Palestinian nationalists In November 1981, the head of the Village League in Ramallah, Yusuf Khatib, and his son were ambushed by a group of Palestinian militants who opened fire on their car, with his son being immediately killed and Khatib dying of his injuries a few days later. The PLO claimed responsibility for the assassination. Khatib's funeral was attended by a range of Israeli and Village League officials, with both Dodin and Milson given eulogies.
According to scholar Hillel Cohen, the establishment of the Village Leagues "enraged the PLO. Members of the Leagues were under constant PLO surveillance; they were harassed, and sometimes attacked, by local activists... Their names and activities were reported to the PLO and to Jordan, which also opposed them."Zureik, Elia, David Lyon, & Yasmeen Abu-Laban. Surveillance and Control in Israel/Palestine: Population, Territory and Power. Routledge, 2010. Pages 108-109. In March 1982, Mayor of Tarqumiyah Kamal Fatafta, a Village Leagues member, was injured when his car was booby-trapped with an explosive device.
The Village Leagues targeted Palestinians who opposed them when they could, including arresting a Birzeit University professor in March 1982 and forcing opponents out of their homes at night. According to American researcher Mark Tessler, the leaders of the Village Leagues "frequently flaunted their new-found influence and used their administrative power to settle scores with their enemies." According to Geoffrey Aronson, "League officials made a practice of using their newly-acquired power to grant favours as well as settle personal and political scores... Vocal opponents in Hebron had their windows smashed. In Bethlehem, they met with physical abuse." In July 1982, six Palestinian youth were injured in a clash with Village League members, where the youth threw stones and the Village Leagues members responded with gunfire. In August 1984, five members of the Village Leagues, including the head of the Bethlehem branch, Bishara Qumssiyeh, were convicted by an Israeli military court of arson and attempting to kill prominent nationalists.
Israeli support The Israeli government offered the Village Leagues significant support, including both financial, administrative, and legal support. Financially, the Israeli government gave the Village Leagues tens of millions of Israeli new shekels per year. Administratively and legally, the Israeli government pressured rural Palestinian politicians to join the Leagues, restricted funding and approval for development projects in Palestine not run by the Leagues, refused to grant travel permits to Palestinians unless those permits were approved by the Leagues, and subsidised the purchases of essential materials by League supporters. Development projects built by the Leagues were frequently built to be dependent on the Israeli electric and water grids. The Israeli government also provided weapons and military training to the Village Leagues, particularly following Yusuf Khatib's assassination in 1981. According to Geoffrey Aronson, "the raison d'être of the Leagues was to complement other aspects of Israeli policy. Their dependence upon Israel for political support, funds, and later physical protection was a deliberate element of government policy. If the mayors were instruments of the PLO, as Israel claimed, the Leagues would advance Israeli influence."