LEBANON

Lebanese mayor killed in Israeli airstrike on Nabatieh

October 2024: In southern Lebanon, the mayor of Nabatieh, Ahmed Kahil and at least five others were killed in an Israeli airstrike. The attack raised fears that Israel's expanding air campaign, designed to crush Iran-backed Hezbollah, could increasingly include public officials and buildings, which so far have been spared. Lebanon's caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, condemned the attack on the provincial capital, saying it "intentionally targeted a municipal council meeting to discuss the city's service and relief situation."

 

The UN’s Special Coordinator also condemned the Israeli attack on Lebanon. In yesterday’s (16 October 2024) statement, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert* called the Israeli actions a violation of international humanitarian law. “Civilians and civilian infrastructure must be protected at all times.” She appealed to both sides in the conflict to respect and protect civilians and civilian institutions, which are vital in mitigating the destruction caused by the fighting. “the attack on Nabatieh follows other incidents in which civilians and civilian infrastructure have been targeted across Lebanon. The reported killing of a humanitarian first responder is, tragically, part of this pattern.”

 

The attack was the most significant against a Lebanese state building since the latest escalation in fighting, which began about two weeks ago and has raised concerns about the safety of the country’s state infrastructure.

A spokesman for the Israeli military said its forces had launched raids on dozens of Hezbollah targets in the area and destroyed a tunnel used by the Iran-backed group. "We know that Hezbollah many times takes advantage of civilian facilities," Israel's UN ambassador Danny Danon said at a meeting of the UN in New York City.

 

Nabatieh’s regional governor, Howaida Turk, told the French news agency AFP that while the majority of Nabatieh residents had already left the area following heavy Israeli air strikes, the mayor and other municipal employees had stayed behind to help those who remained.

 

* Jeanine Antoinette Hennis-Plasschaert is a Dutch politician from the liberal People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). She was Dutch Minister of Defence from 2012 to 2017. She has worked for the United Nations since 2018, until 2024 as UN Special Representative for Iraq and since then as UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon.

 

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PALESTINE

Palestine mayors struggle to serve both occupiers and the local population*

October 2024: Since the occupation of the Palestine West Bank in 1967, Israel has experimented with different forms of rule. Since the 1990s, the occupying power has delegated certain governing responsibilities to the Palestinian Authority (PA), an organisation that, Israel hoped, would act as a buffer between the military occupation and the Palestinian population.

 

Now, a recently published book provides an analysis of towns and cities across the West Bank. Its author, Diana B. Greenwald, offers a new theory of local government under indirect rule - a strategy that is often associated with imperial powers of the past but persists in settings of colonialism and state-building today.

 

The book Mayors in the Middle traces how what the author calls the ‘Israel-PA regime’ has influenced the constraints and incentives of Palestinians serving in local government. The author has based her findings on numerous interviews with Palestinian mayors, council members, staff, activists, and political elites, as well as careful data analysis of municipal governance under occupation.

 

Diana Greenwald argues that mayors are both seen as part of the ‘Israeli-PA regime and as opponents. She draws illustrative parallels with British colonial India and South Africa’s apartheid regime.

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* Diana B. Greenwald is an assistant professor of political science at the City College of New York. Mayors in the Middle Indirect (Rule and Local Government in Occupied Palestine) is published by Columbia University Press.

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