National Guidance Committee (1978)

A Palestinian leadership committee that was established in 1978 inside the occupied West Bank and Gaza to oppose both the Egyptian-Israeli Camp David Accords and Israel’s new Likud government. It was the second such body with this name (see National Guidance Committee [1967]). It was led by mayors of major cities and included journalists, labor and professional unions, women’s and student organizations, businesspeople, and religious figures. Although the NGC adopted a stance of peaceful protest and institution building, calling for independence, the Likud government (which came to power in 1977) saw it as a threat and launched attacks on the mayors in particular and the NGC as a whole. In November 1979, Israel jailed Bassam Shak‘a, the mayor of Nablus, and issued him with a deportation order for refusing to connect the city’s water and electricity to Israeli utilities. While Shak‘a was able to fight this order in court, the mayors of Halhoul and Hebron were deported the following May. In June 1980, car bombs severely wounded the mayors of Nablus and Ramallah. On August 31, 1980, Israel froze the elections of municipal councils and subsequently created the Civil Administration as a unit within the COGAT. Banned by Israel in 1982, the NGC dissolved soon after.