Collaborators in the Occupied Territories:
Human Rights Abuses and Violations:
An Interview with Dr. Saleh Adbul Jawad
Collaborators in The Occupied Territories: Human Rights
Abuses and Violations was one of the first and most extensive
documents to deal comprehensively with the complex and
multifaceted issues of collaboration in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip. While it was published by B'TSELEM, Dr. Saleh
Abdel Jawad, the Director of the Center for Research &
Documentation of Palestinian Society, along with Yizhar Be'er
were its main researchers and writers. While its publication
coincided with Oslo, it was impossible to predict how the
phenomenon of collaboration would fare in the post-Oslo
period. The following interview with Dr. Saleh Abdel Jawad
clarifies this issue as well as provides insight into Dr. Jawad's
more personal feelings towards his role in the unprecedented
research of a very controversial and sensitive subject.
How did you become involved in researching such a
controversial issue and when and how were you approached by
B'TSELEM to become one of their main researchers? Finally,
were you at all reluctant to accept such a position?
I was interested in this question just as many other
Palestinians are and always have been. Since 1963
the whole phenomenon of collaboration became a
very prominent and impressive one within our
society and it was then that I took an active role in
inquiring about the subject. My interest was of
course hightened by my frequent personal
exposure to the issue of collaboration and its
insidious effect on our society. I started collecting
occasional data on the issue in the early 80's and
then more seriously after the Intifadah erupted. It
was then that I really started thinking of doing a
book on the subject. I naturally approached various
Palestinian individuals and centers with the idea,
but many were either intimidated or reluctant to
sponsor work on such a subject. I approached
Feisal Husseini at the Arab Studies Association,
yet received no response. Later I approached
Ibrahim Qurien from the Palestinian Press Center,
and he was very reluctant. Finally I approached al-
Haq--more than once, with two proposals--but
they too were extremely reluctant to be involved
with such research.
After all this B'TSELEM heard that I was working
on the subject and approached me to be only a
counselor for the project. They already had an
Israeli scholar working with them. Yet, this scholar
was missing three crucial elements in his overall
analysis of the issue and those were: the violation
of the human rights by the collaborators
themselves, how the Occupation perpetuated this
phenomenon, and finally how the entire system of
Israeli Occupation was designed to create and
recruit never ending legions of various types of
collaborators. These were three absolutely critical
elements in this subject that I insisted be a part of
the study if I were going to be on the project. The
Israeli scholar accepted the first condition but
refused to entertain the last two and for these as
well as other reasons, he finally left the project. It
was then that I became the main researcher for the
subject. In 1993 after becoming director of the
Center, I became extremely busy with other
projects, so Yizhar Be'er entered the project as a
second researcher.
What was your final objective with this project and how did you
as a Palestinian Political Scientist who has lived amongst this
phenomenon approach the subject differently than Israeli
researchers at B'TSELEM?
I wanted to understand this insidious phenomenon
that during the Intifadah alone claimed more than
900 lives, by understanding the socio-political and
economic reasons that have always fueled this. The
killing of collaborators or being a collaborator
were two ugly aspects of the Palestinian society,
our evil face if you will, that was used by Israeli
propaganda to present us as savages butchering
one another whenever we have the chance. It was
important that a Palestinian scholar demystify this
issue and give a comprehensive analysis of the
subject and I'm sure that those who read this report
will walk away with a better appreciation and
understanding of the complexity and sensitivity of
the issue.
Why do you think that other Palestinian individuals and centers
rejected the idea?
Like I said it is obviously a very sensitive issue and
unfortunately many of them didn't understand how
the killing of collaborators created an air of
ubiquitous fear and Orwellian intimidation
amongst our people. In fact, it was these factors
that perpetuated such a pervasive silence on the
subject. Many of the people who were killing
collaborators could be seen as "serial killers," in
the sense that they would kill multiple times and
that they were often responsible for creating a
climate of fear and terror within the Palestinian
society. The irony was that in many cases those
most zealous inflicters of punishment against
collaborators were collaborators themselves.
The phenomenon of collaboration seems to be one solely
indicative of the Intifadah and that time period, what would you
say of collaboration in the Post-Oslo period, and what of its
enormous influence that still resonates in Palestinian society?
The phenomenon continues, but after the
establishment of the National Authority, many of
the well known collaborators fled to live with the
Israelis. The Palestinian Authority is also obliged
by agreement not to arrest, harm or interrogate any
suspected collaborator. Despite this fact, two
people were killed near Hebron recently for
suspected collaboration by members of a Fatah cell
that was obviously operating on its own
commands. The fact is, the stigma and aftermath
of collaboration will be with us for a very long
time.
Right-wing Zionist propaganda has for years portrayed Arabs in
general and Palestinians in particular as an inherently violent
and bloodthirsty people, and after reading some portions of this
publication--particularly Punishment of Collaborators--one
begins to wonder if this is true. How would you respond to a
statement that says your work as a Palestinian scholar helped to
legitimize a right-wing Zionist myth?
First of all, it is absolutely imperative that anyone
reading this work does so in context. Since the
beginning of this program I stressed with
B'TSELEM that this report not be presented as a
random list of human right abuses of Palestinians
against collaborators, but that the whole
phenomenon of collaboration and how its is
perpetuated, maintained and exploited be
thoroughly examined. Secondly as far as the
accusations of being inherently violent, once again
people need to understand the context in which
such violence occurred. Occupation is a violent
state of being, and the Israelis became masters of
employing and creating tactics that would stir civil
strife, cause hatred and animosity, and
occasionally erupt in violence.
Collaborators are perceived by the people as the
worst and most dangerous type of enemy, and in
many case the people's loathing for them was
completely understandable. Yet throughout the
Intifadah, the Israeli authorities attempted to blur
the lines between who was a collaborator and who
was a patriot, who was truly religious and who
was merely presenting himself as a religious
Muslim in order to extract information from other
activists. The goal was to instill a sense of
pervasive doubt and confusion amongst the people,
and in this environment, many innocent people
were either killed or tortured as suspected
collaborators. In fact, in many cases some of the
more ghastly deaths and acts of torture were done
by collaborators themselves posing as nationalists
attempting to extract confessions from other
collaborators.
Lastly my reasons for working on this publication
were to demystify, examine and try to understand a
complex and multifaceted phenomenon that
attempted to unearth the very foundation of
Palestinian society. Now if someone tries to use
this as a basis for perpetuating Israeli myths about
the inherent nature of Palestinian violence, or to
hypothesize about any other convoluted point,
there's not much I can do. Yet, I should add that
this Zionist concept of Palestinians being
inherently violent is part and parcel of the colonial
legacy of Zionism, which like many other colonial
idealogies presented all non-Europeans as
inherently primitive, violent, backwards and all the
rest. The fact is that every revolutionary or political
movement throughout history has had a very
violent record of dealing with this issue. Even the
Jews during their "War of Independence"
massacred numbers of other Jews for being
suspected of somehow working with British
forces. The French Revolution gave way to the
Reign of Terror that violently claimed thousands of
lives, yet no one talks or talked about the inherent
violence of Frenchmen or Jews.
With gratitude to rhinocerous, who unearthed this massive study.
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