Mixture of Boy Scouts, Street Gangs : Palestinian Youths Take Leaders’ Roles in Unrest

The five clean-cut Palestinians sitting around a newspaper office here ranged in age from 16 to 29, and collectively they have been in Israeli jails a dozen times.

The youngest, Khalil, held down the total, they said laughingly. Although he has been taken in for questioning, he has yet to spend his first night in a cell.

The five agreed to meet with a reporter on condition that their full names not be revealed, so that they would not risk more jail time. And they talked about their involvement in a movement that is both an important, though sometimes indirect, force behind the current wave of unrest rocking the occupied territories, and a key reason why the authorities are having such trouble bringing the situation under control.

The five are all activists in the “Youth Committees for Social Action,” more popularly known here as Shabibeh, the Arabic word for youth.

The semi-secret Shabibeh movement is a peculiarly Middle Eastern cross between the Boy Scouts of America and a Los Angeles street gang, joined by the potent bond of Palestinian nationalism.

It is by far the largest of several Palestinian youth movements that emerged in the occupied territories during the late 1970s and early 1980s. It gained strength in the local leadership vacuum created during that same period by Israel’s crackdown against the now-outlawed National Guidance Committee, made up of older leaders identified more directly with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Asked how important the Shabibeh movement is in the current unrest, an Israeli security source familiar with intelligence reports commented: “These groups don’t come and say: ‘I’m (with) Shabibeh .’ (So) it’s very hard to know what’s their percentage.”

However, this source added, “There’s no doubt that they have a weight.”

Three of the four Palestinians that the government expelled from the territories last Wednesday for alleged “incitement and subversive activities” were accused, among other things, of organizing or controlling Shabibeh activities. Of the five other Palestinians still awaiting expulsion, one is similarly accused of being a Shabibeh leader.

The security source said there are about 200 Shabibeh committees on the West Bank alone. Palestinian sources put the total in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip at twice that number.

In Every Village

“There are committees in almost every village, every university, every city,” said Mohammed, a clerk at a West Bank academic institution.

“Just in Nablus we have seven or eight,” added Yehia, an engineer.

Although loosely committed to the political line of the PLO’s mainstream Fatah wing, headed by Yasser Arafat, each committee operates with considerable autonomy under its own leadership, Palestinian and Israeli security sources agree. A national Shabibeh leadership exists only in theory, added Yehia.

“We used to have one at one time, but they were all arrested,” he said.

The large number of committees and their relative independence is a key to the movement’s strength, since the authorities have proved unable to simply decapitate it.

“It’s like a well that doesn’t have an end,” said Majid, a journalist. “They (the Israelis) take people, but as long as women give birth there are replacements.”

Little Official Contact

Unlike some of the older Palestinian leaders, with whom Israeli officials once maintained direct or indirect communication despite their political differences, Shabibeh members have virtually no contact with the Israeli authorities except at the end of a night stick or in an interrogation center.

The Shabibeh movement evolved from a shift in Fatah strategy in the late 1970s, said a Palestinian source, a moderate who supports the PLO. Until then, he said, the organization relied principally on what it calls “the armed struggle,” directed from outside Israel and the occupied territories--what the rest of the world usually calls terrorism.

Then Fatah “woke up to the fact that there is political gain to be made here, and it started to encourage grass-roots activities,” the Palestinian source said.

Framework Created

Among the young, that meant creating an organizational framework within which to channel youthful energies and establish loyalties that would strengthen the nationalist hold in the territories.

“Any clever leadership recognizes that the future is with the younger generation,” commented Moshe Maoz, a Hebrew University Arabist and author of a book on Palestinian leadership in the West Bank.

That framework was Shabibeh, which was particularly successful in the 28 West Bank and Gaza Strip refugee camps. Later, branches of the movement were formed among university students and trade unionists.

The basis of Shabibeh is ostensibly community service, and even the Israeli security source conceded that committees typically organize activities ranging from cleaning streets to distributing sweets to the relatives of Palestinian prisoners on Muslim holidays.

Public Projects

These public Shabibeh activities are frequently recorded in the Arabic language press of the occupied territories. Last Aug. 24, for example, the Shabibeh committee in Rama, near Tulkarm, was reported to have improved a dirt road leading to the village cemetery. On Nov. 29, the Shabibeh committee at Ramallah Middle College did a day of voluntary work at a local crippled children’s home.

Other activities may not be so public.

According to the Israeli army, for example, one of the Palestinians about to be expelled, Adil (Bashir) Nafa Hamad, 27, organized a Shabibeh committee in the Kalandia refugee camp near Ramallah and used it to incite anti-Israeli disturbances.

“More likely than not,” conceded a Palestinian source, Shabibeh is involved in pressuring merchants to close their shops in support of nationalistically motivated commercial strikes such as the one that virtually shut down the major towns on the West Bank during most of last week.

Pool for Terrorists?

The Israeli security source with access to intelligence information contended that the youth movement is also used as a recruiting pool for terrorism, “real terrorists--not only throwing Molotov cocktails.”

The source said he did not mean to imply that all Shabibeh activists are terrorists. “They choose out of them those who are fit for their operations,” he said.

The Shabibeh committee in the Balata refugee camp on the outskirts of Nablus is a case study in the ongoing struggle pitting these nationalistic Palestinian youths against the Israeli authorities and their network of Palestinian collaborators.

Israeli security sources said it was to break the growing power of the Shabibeh that troops cracked down in Balata early last month, stepping up foot patrols in the camp, conducting midnight raids on homes and arresting scores of youths.

Camp Under Curfew

The tension boiled over last Dec. 11, when a clash between troops and rock-throwing residents led to the shooting death of two Balata women and an 11-year-old boy. The camp has been under curfew most of the time since.

Four of the five Shabibeh activists interviewed here are members of the Balata committee, which they said numbers about 700 dues-paying youths aged between 12 and 25. Many more support their activity, the activists said, but are unable to afford the monthly dues, which amount to approximately $1.25.

“The bylaws of Shabibeh say that anyone, to become a member, must have the recommendations of two current members, a good character, and willingness to do voluntary work,” said Mohammed, the clerk at the West Bank academic institution.

Secret Balloting

Leaders are elected by secret ballot to an administrative committee. The elections “are supposed to be every six months, but not a single one has lasted that long before the committee members were broken up and put in jail,” Yehia said. “For this reason, we’ve been trying for some time to keep the members of these committees secret.”

“The Shabibeh came to fill a gap that was left by the occupation, whether on a health, social, cultural or political level,” commented Mohammed. “On every level there is a gap, and on every level, Shabibeh has an activity to fill this gap.”

Mohammed said the organization sponsors lectures on hygiene and arranges sports competitions with youths from other camps and villages. Khalil, 16, and still in high school, said Shabibeh students have formed a committee to combat smoking and drug abuse.

Culturally, said Majid, “the Shabibeh encourage(s) people to wear Palestinian dress, the women to wear traditional gowns and the men to wear kaffiyehs (head scarfs).”

Who Controls Camp?

The members were less direct in discussing their political activity, which is illegal on the West Bank. But Yehia did say that “one of our ways of opposing occupation is to run everything without the Israelis.” That was at the heart of last month’s confrontation, he agreed.

“This is the main point--who controls the camp.”

“There is no direct relationship” between Shabibeh and the PLO, the engineer said. However, he added, “as a popular organization (Shabibeh) reflects the opinion of a majority of the people, which supports the PLO and its current leadership.

“Since we support the PLO and consider it to be our representative, it’s natural that we follow the guidance of the PLO,” Yehia added.

“But that doesn’t mean that we take direct orders from the PLO, like an army,” interjected Omar, another journalist.

It is impossible from a practical point of view for the PLO leadership abroad to go into every refugee camp and make decisions about specific actions, Yehia agreed. “They give each committee the privilege of deciding on the ground what needs to be done.”

No Indoctrination

Although the Shabibeh promotes the PLO program in camps, villages, or communities, said Majid, it is not in business to indoctrinate.

“Fatah has an organization and it has its own structure for educating its cadres,” he said. “We are not Fatah.”

Similarly, he said, it is the PLO’s “social departments,” not Shabibeh, that distribute money to the relatives of prisoners and those killed in clashes with Israeli troops.

The current unrest, said Yehia, is bigger than Shabibeh.

“Everyone is demonstrating now--the young, the old, businessmen. It’s a popular uprising. Everyone is involved, not just the Shabibeh. “

Shots and Stones

As they spoke, shots rang out on a nearby street where Israeli soldiers confronted Palestinian youths throwing stones. The group went to the window for a better look. From there they also watched as three plainclothes officers emerged from the local police station and jumped into a car bearing a blue license plate that is supposed to identify the owner as a Palestinian resident of the West Bank.

It was apparent to all, however, that these men were agents of Shin Bet, the internal Israeli security police charged with keeping tabs on the Palestinians by either infiltrating their organizations directly or working through a network of Palestinian informants.

“This is the kind of power struggle we’re talking about,” said Yehia. “The Israelis want to give the power to the collaborators and we want it for the nationalists. We are fighting the occupation and its agents.”

According to the Israeli security source, Shabibeh activists in Balata attack not only informants, but also those considered to be collaborating economically with the occupation authorities.

The activists who spoke to the reporter admitted only that they try to isolate collaborators.

“Occupation is not just occupation of our land,” said Yehia. “They also interfere in our lives, our culture, our values. So our job is to safeguard our culture and our values.”

“By Palestinian national standards, we are good citizens,” added Majid. “By Israeli standards, we are not.”