One of the central dilemmas facing Israel's control over the territories conquered in 1967 has been the inability of the successive Labor and Likud governments to establish a substantial group of collaborators to mediate its rule.1 Nothing similar to the Zionist bond with the leaders of the Druze community in the Galilee (both in the pre-state period and after 1948), with the Bedouins of the Negev, or the military alliance with Saad Haddad's militias in South Lebanon has existed during Israel's 16 year rule in the West Bank and Gaza. The reasons for the absence of such native surrogates in the West Bank may be found in current Israeli irreconcilability with any form of Palestinian nationalism, as well as in the relative ethnic homogeneity of the Palestinian population in the highlands, which has hampered the traditional Israeli strategy of penetrating local power groups. Whatever the failings of Palestinian resistance in the occupied