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During the first intifada, Palestinians in the Occupied Territories often took severe measures against those suspected of questionable loyalties or of “collaboration” with the occupier. 64 Oddly enough, Palestinians working as policemen under Israeli rule were not automatically included in this category. At the outbreak of the intifada in 1987, the grassroots Unified National Command of the Uprising ordered all Palestinians in the territories serving in the Israeli police force to resign. The few who did not agree and who worked as active collaborators in security matters were targets of violence—at least seven of them were killed during the intifada.

Rather, they are standard and human loyalties are generally more complicated than they appear. 66 The recently prominent Israeli Jewish “refuseniks” who have declined to serve in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were attacked by other Israelis as part of a fifth column or as anti-Semites. ” Israeli television Channel 2 broadcast a documentary on the soccer team of Tuba, a Bedouin village in the north. In the middle of the final match against the team from Migdal (now a Jewish town), national and football tensions escalated.

16 Students called up for reserve duty receive special consideration in the scheduling of classes, in exams, and in grades. 18 These deferrers also receive various preferences. Arabs who serve in the Israeli military qualify for some of these benefits (although for non-Druze Arabs, service is voluntary and therefore they are ineligible for deferrer’s status). Yet only a few of the soldiers I interviewed mentioned the preferences universities give to veterans as a major attraction of military service.