ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses developmental processes of change over time in Arab local authorities. It emphasizes the role of appointed Arab village mukhtars in regard to the main concerns of the Ottoman agrarian regime: tax collection, law and order. The chapter analyzes the minutes of Arab local authority meetings: most significant is that today both municipal and national. Formally, Arab local authorities operate within the framework of regulations that hold for the administration of all local government in the state. In itself, the extensive process of municipalization that has occurred in Israel is an indication of additional complex processes of change, and the forestalling of change, for the Arab national minority. Successive Israeli governments have attempted to divide, separate, and isolate Arab communities, lineages, sects, and religious groups, and especially, local councils; that is, to keep their activities separate and local.
