Eurasia Press & News
As mass starvation spreads across Gaza, and with no end in sight to the war or military occupation, Israel’s renewed push for the clan management of public affairs in the West Bank and Gaza has been called a desperate attempt to bypass Palestinian statehood.
The latest manifestation of this strategy emerged in early July when five prominent Hebron sheikhs, led by Sheikh Wadih al-Jaabari, sent a letter to Israeli Economy Minister Nir Barkat proposing to break away from the Palestinian Authority and establish an “Emirate of Hebron” that would join the Abraham Accords while recognising Israel as the Jewish nation state.
Israel has long sought to weaken the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, while one of its key war aims in Gaza is to eliminate Hamas.
After more than 18 months of a genocidal military campaign, a governmental and political vacuum in Gaza has created an environment that bolsters the emergence of armed militias supported by Israel, serving as field operatives in achieving its military and political objectives.
Fragmenting Palestinian unity
Imad Abu Awad, director of the Jerusalem Centre for Israeli Studies, told The New Arab that Israel’s core motivation is eliminating “any political dimension to the Palestinian cause,” instead creating “an economic and regional framework that addresses Palestinians’ daily needs while binding them to Israel”.
This economic dependency model serves a broader strategy of “fragmenting what is already fragmented and legitimising partition,” Abu Awad added.
“Israel wants the West Bank to become separate cantons that it deals with individually, where tribes interact with Israeli civil administration supervising each city rather than with a unified Palestinian political entity,” he explained.
Said Abu Rahma, a political writer and analyst, shares this assessment, telling The New Arab that the strategy aims to create “a popular alternative to official Palestinian institutions that enhances Israeli control while weakening any comprehensive national project”.
This is apparent in the Hebron proposal, where Sheikh al-Jaabari proposed immediate economic benefits, including work permits for up to 1,000 Hebron residents.
The proposal explicitly rejects Palestinian statehood, with al-Jaabari stating: “There will be no Palestinian state – not even in 1,000 years. After 7 October, Israel will not give it.”
Echoes of failed colonial policies
However, the current clan governance proposal represents a revival of failed colonial strategies, rather than innovative policy.
Abu Rahma noted that “Israel used similar tactics in the seventies and eighties with the Village Leagues project, relying on local tribes to marginalise the PLO”.
The Village Leagues, active during the early eighties, were Israeli-sponsored rural leadership organisations based on clan structures designed to undermine Palestinian nationalism.
Despite Israeli support, including weapons, funding, and administrative privileges, the leagues were widely considered among the Palestinian population as inauthentic and as collaborators and dissolved within a decade.
“What we’re seeing is recycled colonial policy with modern tools,” Abu Rahma told The New Arab. “This is an updated version of Village Leagues designed to penetrate Palestinian social fabric and dismantle traditional representative structures.”
Despite these strategic objectives, experts identify significant obstacles to implementation. Abu Awad distinguishes between legitimate tribal mediation, where some might facilitate daily life under occupation “under the banner of serving people, like some traders do,” and outright collaboration like the Abu Shabab phenomenon, which he describes as “clear collaboration involving raising weapons against Palestinians”.
Abu Awad is referring to Yasser Abu Shabab, a convicted drug trafficker and gang leader from Gaza’s Tarabin Bedouin tribe, who escaped from a Hamas prison during the Gaza war and subsequently began collaborating with Israeli forces.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has admitted to arming anti-Hamas militias, including Abu Shabab’s 300-strong group operating in eastern Rafah, which has been accused of looting humanitarian aid and conducting intelligence operations on behalf of Israel.
“The tribal approach won’t succeed strategically or gain popular acceptance, though it may exist tactically with variation from place to place,” Abu Awad said, attributing potential limited success to the Palestinian Authority’s weakened state and restricted territorial control.
Thair Abu Atiwi, director of the Arab Centre for Research and Studies in Palestine, told The New Arab that its failure is inevitable due to “widespread Palestinian awareness that such militias serve occupation agendas aimed at destroying the national project”.
Gaza: Testing ground for tribal governance
The tribal governance model extends beyond West Bank applications to encompass Gaza’s post-conflict reconstruction. Abu Rahma explains that “at the beginning of the war, the occupation tried to use some tribes and village heads to receive aid, but it failed because the village heads feared being accused of dealing with Israel”.
But despite initial failures, he warns of continued attempts.
“Israel will continue trying later in Gaza to push social or tribal figures to communicate under the cover of relief or de-escalation, especially in the post-war phase, if it fails to impose political arrangements with existing parties,” he told The New Arab.
Using tribal and village heads to secure aid in Gaza may be a preliminary introduction of this project under a humanitarian guise.
Abu Atiwi, director of the Arab Centre for Research and Studies in Palestine, emphasised that “Palestinians won’t support militia expansion because they recognise these as colonial projects designed to damage the cause and conflict for freedom”.
This popular rejection extends to tribal and family levels. Abu Shabab’s own Tarabin clan disowned him for supporting Israel, while numerous West Bank families have issued statements condemning relatives who collaborate with Israeli initiatives.
Even among the Hebron sheikhs’ proposal, critics note that the initiative represents individual leaders rather than a broad tribal consensus, Abu Atiwi argued.
Both Palestinian analysts agree that countering Israeli strategies requires internal Palestinian reform.
“Confronting these proposals starts with Palestinian Authority self-reform, then broader factional unity and restoring missing national cohesion,” Abu Awad told The New Arab.
Israeli Economy Minister Nir Barkat has reportedly held over a dozen meetings with the Hebron sheikhs since February, indicating sustained Israeli investment in cultivating these alternatives to Palestinian national institutions.
Palestinians must respond to these initiatives with an immediate clan and national disavowal of anyone joining such militias, Abu Atiwi said, while building a national consensus capable of protecting people and preventing Israeli attempts at exploitation.
