I doubt I was the only one who opened this morning’s Wall Street Journal article with contempt — and ended in uneasy reflection.
At first glance, it felt like we had entered the Hebron branch of “Abu Shabab.” This approach — embodied by a figure from the Jabarri family — has long served as a point of coordination with the occupation forces. Many in Hebron, especially merchants, have come to see it as a way to protect local interests.
It’s no surprise that such a figure rises in the name of the “tribe” — especially in Hebron, where this model was not only tolerated but quietly encouraged by the Palestinian Authority. Over more than a decade, as formal law faded and institutions crumbled, tribal structures filled the vacuum.
When citizens found no legal system to turn to, the tribe became both judge and protector. Tribal codes replaced civil law.
It reached a point where murderers could buy their freedom with atwa payments, and family disputes — from divorce to child custody — were settled in tents, not courts. The tribe stepped in not because it was ideal, but because the state was absent.
Over time, this tribal model spread to other regions — even to Jerusalem, which is fully under Israeli legal authority. Tribal authority, once an exception, began to feel like the rule.
And this was no accident. Israeli governments have long cultivated this approach: encouraging the idea that Palestinians are nothing more than tribal clans — fragmented, self-contained, and governable by local leaders.
I first heard this theory more than twenty years ago, from Israeli orientalist academic Mordechai Kedar. He insisted that Palestinians were simply Bedouin tribes, and that “the Palestinian people” was a myth.
I remember laughing at his words then — mocking their arrogance. I still believed in the strength of our people, in our unity. I thought we were bigger than this kind of reductionist, Biblical-framed narrative.
Perhaps the cracks had already begun. But I held onto hope — that we were more than tribes, more than what Kedar claimed.
But let’s be honest: Kedar didn’t invent this vision. Long before his so-called Emirates Plan, the idea of bypassing national leadership through tribal intermediaries was born in Hebron itself.
In 1978, Mustafa Dodin, a pro-Jordanian politician from Dura, near Hebron, proposed the creation of “Village leagues” Rawabet al Qura — rural leadership councils structured around clans. Israel embraced the idea quickly. Hebron, with its deep tribal networks, became the test site for what would become a systemic strategy: replace collective national representation with fragmented, local leadership tied to Israeli interests.
Kedar didn’t originate this — he gave it academic polish, and rebranded it for a new generation.
Perhaps no one understands the language of tribes better than Kedar — the Torah‑observant Zionist — shaped by the very tribal structures of ancient Israel. He projected this heritage outward — onto Arabs — from petty kings to the Sharifs of Hejaz, as if tribalism were a uniquely Arab affliction. But in truth, he speaks from within a lineage grounded in the Twelve Tribes of Israel, a society divided by bloodline and covenant until it fractured completely.
His perspective is not just academic — it is strategic. Kedar served for over 25 years in Israeli military intelligence (AMAN), specializing in Palestinian society and Arab media. His theories are part of a broader security doctrine, not detached analysis.
The so-called “Village leagues” Rawabet al Qura — now rebranded as the “Emirates Plan” — is his direct proposal: fragment the West Bank into eight tribal emirates, each governed by a local sheikh who replaces the role of a president. These mini-states would be tied directly to Israel’s security and economic infrastructure.
In this vision, Hebron is no longer an ancient Palestinian city with deep national and spiritual roots — it becomes a tribal fragment, reabsorbed into a colonial framework. A replay of the 1970s Village leagues experiment, where Israel sought to manufacture a substitute Palestinian leadership.
In this vision, Hebron is no longer a city of resistance, heritage, or economy — it becomes a tribal micro-unit, restructured under the occupation’s terms. A “local representative” replaces a national leader. A sheikh stands in for a president.
The recent Jabarri statement doesn’t feel like a deviation from this model. It echoes the very theories Kedar has promoted for many years— promoting tribal emirates as a replacement for Palestinian statehood. His plan fragments the West Bank into manageable, clan-based zones that serve the occupation’s long-term strategy.
And yet, I don’t write this as a blanket rejection of tribalism. On the contrary — no nation can emerge without a form of it. Ibn Khaldun called it ‘asabiyyah: the deep social solidarity that forges political identity from shared loyalty.
Today, we see it everywhere. Donald Trump doesn’t lead a party — he leads a tribe. In authoritarian swagger, racial hierarchy, and populist mythology, he resembles the sheikh more than the statesman.
The world, once open in rhetoric, has turned inward. Borders tighten. Belonging contracts. Tribal belonging — ancient or modern — is no longer a curiosity; it is political currency.
But Ibn Khaldun warned us: ‘asabiyyah without ethics leads to tyranny, not unity. It may bind people together — but only to build castles on sand.
Which brings us back to Hebron. According to the Wall Street Journal, Jabarri didn’t wait for approval — he presented his vision voluntarily. Was it ambition? Opportunism? Or simply an intuitive grasp of the message Israel has broadcast for years: “Give us submission, and we will give you peace — through our gates.”
His statement reads like a surrender note — an Oslo sequel stripped of even the hope. The so-called “emirate” accepts Israel’s dominance in advance, reciting the phrases the occupation has long demanded: “Yes, we recognize Israel as a Jewish state.”
And if it required including a clause condemning anti-Semitism — in its exclusively Zionist definition — the pro‑emirate semitic faction in Hebron would not hesitate to add it.
The demands are clear and direct: work permits for the people of Hebron, conditional peace through Israel’s gateway, crowned by joining the Abraham Accords — with Sheikh al‑Joulani himself, before being officially appointed “Sharia judge of New Syria.”
Perhaps Sheikh Jabarri will open his tent as the “Abrahamic Coordination Office,” since Hebron — the cradle of Abrahamic heritage — deserves to receive the first waves of normalization from the UAE, Bahrain, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt. Planes would land directly at the “tent‑airport” of the Hebron Emirate, then proceed to the Ibrahimi Mosque, Sarah, Rebecca, Isaac, and Jacob’s Tombs. And they might continue later to the Bethlehem Emirate for blessings at Rachel’s Tomb.
We might not even need a new airport; Ramon Airport is ready and not far from the Hebron Emirate. Coordination via it would be easy and secure, with no intimidation or concerns for tribal kings or major Arab kingdoms.
But beyond the satire — beyond the “Trumpian” theater of tents and shrines- maqamat — the Jabarri statement holds something more troubling: a quiet, damning shift of blame.
It suggests that Israel didn’t just benefit from the Palestinian Authority — it created it.
And behind that suggestion lies a truth too many Palestinians feel but fear to say aloud:
Oslo humiliated us instead of liberating us.
It delivered neither sovereignty nor dignity. Instead, it imported a class of rulers — disconnected, corrupt, insulated — who governed not for liberation but for privilege, contracts, and power.
They arrived from abroad, built ministries instead of states, signed agreements instead of charters, and humiliated their people in the name of stability. For many, like Jabarri and those who support him- and do not support him- the dream of statehood has become a burden they are desperate to shed — even if what replaces it is tribal, local, or half-foreign.
And here, I pause.
I do not excuse him — but I understand him.
Perhaps this collapsing authority will only die when its final mirror — these “emirates” — replace it completely: fragments of identity, confined to corners of Ramallah, whispering slogans history has already stopped listening to.
What Jabarri proposes — though distorted —reflects something real.
t speaks for a segment of Palestinians who have finally dared to name the truth:
Years of marginalization. Starvation. Exclusion.
A small class inherited the dream of the state — and turned it into a private estate.
And with deep regret, I must say it: the dream of the state died before it was born.
It died when the national cause became a checklist: property deals, donor programs, NGO grants, and hollow ministries.
It died in the villas of Ramallah.
It died when statehood was reduced to contracts and convoys.
It died in the streets — when the sons of officials drove luxury cars into the middle of intersections, grabbing parking spots by force, running red lights, daring any policeman to stop them.
And if one did try to write a ticket, they answered with a smirk:
“This country is ours.”
And when the Wall Street Journal quoted Jabarri’s statement, one line stood out — a critique not of Israel, but of the Palestinian Authority itself:
The Authority appears only when it’s time to collect taxes — especially in Hebron.
That, at least, was true. Painfully, precisely true.
Hebron, the largest governorate in the West Bank by area and population, is the least represented in successive governments — and there is no need to remind that those governments are eternal “transitional” ones, with no path to elections.
So why shouldn’t the people of Hebron consider independence, and save what they can of their humanity, in a time when the Palestinian is being uprooted even from the idea of existing as a human being?
Maybe — just maybe — the people of the so-called Hebron Emirate can keep their city prosperous, safe, and governed by their own will — as they already do in practice.
And perhaps, with greater effort, the “Wali al-Amr” (ruler) might issue a decree for a kingdom… similar to the neighboring kingdoms.
This is what we have reaped from Authority corruption, lack of elections, absence of integrity, and division that has become inevitable.
What is being proposed today under the name “the Hebron Emirate” is only a cracked mirror of the national project’s collapse — and a brittle, transparent pass from the Authority’s failure to the occupation’s manipulation of the gaps it created.
The betrayal here is not only in Jabarri’s announcement, but in every moment of silence, collusion, complacency, and corruption that made this declaration seem, to some, like a solution rather than treason.
If what we are living today is the death of the Palestinian dream, it was not crushed by the occupation’s force alone — but handed over, tribe by tribe, person by person, at the tables of authority and vested interests.