Testimonies of former Israeli conscripts, collected by the NGO Breaking the Silence, show how the Hebrew State distributes in the greatest opacity of circulating authorizations in order to obtain the collaboration of certain Palestinian notables.
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In 2020, when he landed in the Israeli civil administration, the arm of the army which manages the current affairs of the Palestinians in occupied West Bank, Nadav King quickly understood that to be a good officer, he Bnei Siakh needed. In Hebrew, this term means “interlocutor”. “Euphemism that actually designates Palestinian collaborators, specifies the 24 -year -old Israeli who left the army in 2021.
Posts in Bethlehem, in the center of the West Bank, one of its main prerogatives was then to distribute permits for Israel, outside the official canals, to these collaborators and their relatives, in exchange for their loyalty. “This is one of the practices that most illustrates the corruption of civil administration,” he says. What should be the basic law of each person [circulating freely] becomes the privilege of a small number. “
His testimony, as well as those of more than fifty former soldiers assigned to COGAT (Coordination of Government Activities in the Territorials), the army organ on which the civil administration depends, were published by The NGO of Israeli veterans Breaking The Silence in a new report entitled “Military regime”, released Monday 1 er August.
It offers an unprecedented overview of the bureaucracy of the Israeli occupation and its arbitrary practices, including the use of the Bnei Siakh. The latter are recruited from the local notables: mayors or community leaders, religious dignitaries, security managers or businessmen who have interests with Israel. In Bethlehem and the surrounding area, the Israelis also target Christians who are “seen by soldiers like Westerners to whom we can talk, notes Nadav King. They bring a lot of money to the city”.
A “key role in the Israeli occupation”
The relations with these collaborators are narrow: at the time when Nadav King was in office, two or three of them came every day to request services, directly in the offices of the civil administration. The soldiers “sometimes went to their homes, invited for the Knafeh”, a famous Near Oriental dessert with angel cheese and hair, describes the young Israeli.
On his sofa, in the heights of Haifa, a city in the north of Israel, Nadav King scroll through a conversation on WhatsApp with his superior of the time, archived on his personal phone. Almost every day, he received a new request. A blow, it is the mayor of a neighboring Israeli colony who requires permits for a dozen of his protégés, so that they can go to pray in Jerusalem; Another day, it is a mayor who requires the lifting of the movement restrictions imposed on his daughter … all outside of any official procedure, in opacity.
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