Culture : Family Law : Palestinians in Israeli-occupied lands turn to tribal traditions for justice, leaving the PLO and military officials on the sidelines.

Suppose you’re a Palestinian cruising through this historic city, chosen to be the capital of a new Palestinian enclave. Then some menacing-looking guy with a black-and-white head scarf and an attitude plows into your car. Who are you going to call?

The answer to that question says much about justice these days in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.

If you answered the Israeli military police, try again. Ditto for the Palestine Liberation Organization’s local office. Or the sheik at the local mosque. Or even a lawyer.

These days, when there’s trouble afoot in Jericho, Abu Ghazi’s the man to see. Patriarch of the powerful Kaabneh tribe, he holds court in the reception room off his garden, where he dispenses advice on resolving everything from fender-benders to home burglaries.

In Jericho, his word has the force of law in a way the Israeli military authorities never had. And as the chaos and confusion of the transition to Palestinian self-rule evolve, the time-honored prescriptions of Abu Ghazi’s tribal traditions are questioned by almost no one.

Somebody stole your VCR? Get him and his father in front of Abu Ghazi and get them to give it back to you, plus an apology. Trying to subdivide your land as the pre-autonomy real estate boom hits Jericho? Get Abu Ghazi to sort it out with your neighbors. Husband not paying his alimony? The tribe, backed by the PLO popular committees, will talk him into making payments.

“We put our face into the fight, and immediately the fighting stops,” Abu Ghazi explained in a recent interview. “As Palestinians living under occupation, there has been an increase in the number of cases handled under tribal law, because we don’t want an Israeli who is our enemy to be our arbitrator.”

As Israeli authorities’ ability--and willingness--to intervene in local disputes wanes on the approach to Palestinian autonomy in Jericho and the Gaza Strip, PLO officials admit that in the time before a Palestinian police force arrives, they have been unable to take on the job completely themselves.

And as Jericho itself wavers on the edge of the frustration that comes with continuing delays in the autonomy plan, PLO leaders say they have been more than willing, in the interim, to hand over most civil enforcement to tribal traditions.

In a society centered on the family from birth until death, the extension of families into tribes has long formed a foundation of Arab society. Political power and business success are often more a function of a person’s last name than his skills in entrepreneurship or speechmaking. In Arab societies from Palestine to the Gulf undergoing modernization at a dizzying pace, the old tribal leaders and traditions remain constant reservoirs of respect.

“Tribal law has always existed. It was inactive during the intifada (the Palestinian uprising), but now it has been reactivated because Israeli authorities are refusing to investigate crimes,” said Abu Maxim, spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Jericho. “We are resorting to tribal law because we don’t have any other mechanisms to handle these crimes.”

Adnan Hamad--who leads the Palestinian Democratic Union in Jericho, a pro-peace-plan PLO faction--said PLO officials fear Jericho could descend into the turbulence seen in the Gaza Strip if local political leaders are not able to deal with the widening dissatisfaction. That fear has grown in the wake of the February massacre by a Jewish settler of dozens of Palestinians at a Hebron mosque, which has sent violent shock waves throughout the occupied West Bank.

“Things aren’t as difficult here as they are in Gaza, but there is a change,” Hamad said, noting that an initial sense of euphoria in Jericho has given way to impatience.

“On Sept. 13 when the agreement was signed, when there was a quarrel between two people, they just smiled and it’s finished,” he noted. “Now, any single problem becomes a big one, and there is a crowd in the street, shouting and fighting. . . . What we want is to prevent people from hurting each other, and to make people quiet and do their business in the little time that we have” before a final agreement on Palestinian autonomy begins to take effect.

Once the autonomy agreement is signed--possibly within the next few weeks--Palestinians in Gaza and Jericho will be subject to a new national authority appointed by the PLO, with an elected ruling council to succeed it within a matter of months. Gradually, civil rule in Palestinian population centers throughout the West Bank will come under the new authority’s purview.

“Here, the people for years have felt there is no authority, and the new authority we’re going to have is not yet here,” said Hamad. “A lot of disputes that were suspended during the intifada , especially land disputes, have come to the front of the picture now. With all this traffic, we had 20 car accidents last month, with two killed. What do we do? We are using what we call traditional law, a law that has always worked for the Arabs throughout history.”

Indeed, Palestinians point to an example last month in neighboring Jordan, where King Hussein, in tribal tradition, sat down the quarreling parties of North Yemen and South Yemen to seek a truce.

Tribal laws have even found their way into cosmopolitan East Jerusalem, where the frenetic activity to win a piece of the action as peace dawns has put many an Arab businessman’s nerves on edge.

Hanna Ghazzawi, whose Petra Rental Cars leases most automobiles in the occupied territories, had sold a car to another businessman, who didn’t like it and brought it back. Insinuations about the transaction flew on both sides.

In October, Ghazzawi’s sons were attacked one night outside a restaurant. The attackers, the boys said, were from the Abu Aysha family--one of Palestine’s largest and the one that had been involved in the sour car deal. The two sons roared over to the Abu Aysha family businesses and smashed up more than 30 cars there.

Israeli police in Jerusalem sent three vehicles to sort out the mess. Officers took reports and left at 11:30 p.m. Then the real work started. Abu Yacoub, patriarch of the Sharabati tribe, was called in for a full rundown on the case and left at 2 a.m. for the Abu Aysha house, where he negotiated a three-day truce.

Abu Yacoub later went to the diwaniyya , the traditional Arab reception and meeting place, of Abu Aysha. The Abu Ayshas said they weren’t prepared to start talking until Ghazzawi put up 200,000 Israeli shekels, almost $70,000.

“We paid the 200,000 shekels, and they gave us a three-month truce period,” Ghazzawi recalled in a recent interview. “In Arab tribal law, the three months are important to defuse the high emotions. And within this three-month period, no one of us is to attack them. And no one from them is to attack us. Because to do otherwise would be to insult the tribal leaders.”

On Jan. 21, one of the biggest events on a Palestinian social calendar then took place: Ghazzawi invited 200 business leaders, politicians, dignitaries and family friends from as far away as Bethlehem, Gaza, Hebron and Nazareth for lunch, then paraded with them in a caravan to Ramallah for the sulha --the official process of mending under tribal law--with the Abu Aysha clan, which had 200 of their closest friends and neighbors on hand as well.

Tribal leaders consulted alone first. Abu Aysha agreed to give back 135,000 shekels of Ghazzawi’s 200,000-shekel down payment on justice; he kept 65,000 shekels for his damaged cars.

“We were received inside. We shook hands, we hugged, we kissed and we made up,” Ghazzawi said. “Somebody stood up for me from the tribe and thanked them for demonstrating goodwill. Hearts became clean and white. And that was the end of it.”

In Jericho, Abu Ghazi conducts similar sulhas for any imaginable sort of offense, including murder. Recently, when a young woman was kidnaped from her home in Jericho and found dead nearby, the police were powerless to investigate, as were local PLO officials. That’s when the elders started asking questions, and it began to look as if the woman’s father-in-law was the culprit.

Tribal leaders from Bethlehem, Hebron, Ramallah and surrounding villages were called in. “We knew that there was going to be a huge amount of money that was going to have to be paid in this case,” Abu Ghazi said.

By agreeing to pay 15,000 Jordanian dinars, about $21,000, as truce money--thus possibly avoiding a murder by the woman’s family--the man essentially admitted his guilt, in Abu Ghazi’s view. “The minute he paid the initial money, he was guilty, and I would say he will end up paying 50,000 or 60,000 dinars more,” he said.

“There are different degrees of punishment, and the punishment depends on the intensity and the intention of the crime,” he said. “There are many times when something happens by accident, where tolerance and forgiveness seem to be the appropriate response. And of course we can’t send people to prison, so we have to increase the fines they must pay.”

Palestinians who are busily drafting new legal codes for self-rule scoff at the prospect that the tribal ways will play any role in the Palestine of the future. They say it is decades of Israeli occupation that have created the present situation.

“In the Gaza Strip, this traditional way of dealing with things through sulha , it was almost vanishing before the occupation, because the Palestinian civilian judicial system had created a means of dealing with civil disputes,” said Raji Sourani, director of the Gaza Center for Rights and Law.

After Israel’s occupation in 1967, he said, the Israelis transferred much of the authority to military courts in cases ranging from traffic offenses and drugs to taxation and theft, and ordinary decisions of the civil magistrate often went unenforced.

“The credibility of the system is gone, and for the people, what to do? What’s the alternative? The alternative was in a way of having this sort of tribunal law, and unfortunately, people have begun to be more and more dependent on it.”