The Legacy of the Past, The Problem of Collaborators and the Palestinian Case

In attempting to come to some understanding of the nature and extent of Palestinian collaboration with the Israeli authorities throughout the years of occupation, this study seeks to locate the Palestinian experience within a comparative context by examining the nature and extent of collaboration in occupied Western Europe during the Second World War. In recent years a growing amount of research has become available on this topic, and it is through an exploration of the many forms that collaboration took during this period that one can begin to grasp the complex and contradictory nature of the phenomenon. The book also examines the main features of the épuration or purge instituted by the liberal democratic regimes of Western Europe in the wake of their liberation from German occupation. Attention is then turned towards the Palestinian experience, and an overview of the phenomenon of Palestinian collaboration with the Israeli occupiers is presented. The paper concludes on a more speculative note, suggesting guidelines for the establishment of the infrastructure, programmes and procedures required in order that the Palestinian national home might be cleansed in a manner that might lay the foundations for national reconciliation rather than division.