On the History of Palestinian collaborators with Zionists:

In his groundbreaking book Army of Shadows, Hillel Cohen,
a research fellow at Hebrew University's Truman Institute for the
Advancement of Peace, exposes this particularly nefarious side of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Cohen has spent years in numerous Israeli
and British archives gathering information that many would pre­fer
to forget, and in Army of Shadows he sum­mons his findings to
document the actions of a seemingly endless number of Palestinian
mukhtars (village leaders), land merchants, in­­formers,
weapons dealers, journalists, busi­nessmen, farmers and teachers who
collaborated with the Jews between 1917 and 1948. By focusing on them,
Army of Shadows chron­icles a tragic chapter in the people's
history of Palestine, one that many Arab scholars have refrained from
writing because it contradicts the dominant ethos of Palestinian
national unity. Zionists have ab­­stained from recording it as
well because it undermines their claim that the Palestinians were able
to unify and fight against the es­tablishment of a Jewish state
after the UN partition resolution of November 29, 1947. Cohen reveals
that many Palestinians signed pacts with the Zionists during the 1948
war and that some even fought with the Jews against the Arab armies.

Collaboration is a very thorny issue, primarily because of its
corrosive blend of betrayal, exploitation and deceit, so it's not
surprising that Army of Shadows created a stir when the Hebrew
edition was published in 2004. Both liberal Jews and Palestinians found
the book difficult to digest because each group found its side portrayed
in unflattering terms. Many Jewish readers were upset by Cohen's
revelation that the prestate Zionist intelligence agency, Shai, and the
Jewish Agency's Arab bureau exploited almost every honest Jewish and
Palestinian relationship to advance narrow Zionist interests. There
were, Cohen notes, many Jews who desired only friendship or good
business relations with Palestinians but were eventually identified by
the Shai, which used them to collect information and enlist Palestinian
collaborators. The Jewish Agency even helped establish and finance
Neighborly Relations Committees, which initiated mutual visits and
Jewish-Palestinian projects, ranging from pest control to the
sending of joint petitions to the Mandatory government. The rationale
for the creation of these committees was not only to enhance coexistence
but also to recruit informers.

[...]

Army of Shadows also disturbed Palestinian readers because
it reveals for the first time the extent of Palestinian collaboration
with the Jews during the Mandate period and the ensuing 1948 war. Some
Palestinians were opportunists who collaborated with the Zionists to
make money or advance their careers–these were primarily land brokers
and people seeking administrative jobs. Others were mukhtars who
wished to advance their regional or village interests or, in cases of
internal competition, to solidify their leadership with the Zionists.
Still others can be characterized as Palestinian patriots who simply
disagreed with the dominant national leadership. Finally, there were
those who had Jewish friends and did not view Zionist
immigration as a catastrophe. The problem, though, as Cohen
points out, is that regardless of the motivation, collaboration
contributed to the fragmentation of Palestinian society at a time when
its very fate was being determined.

Simultaneously, Cohen underscores the Palestinian leadership's
failure to cultivate a unified national ethos. While disunity among a
people is in no way unique, in this case, as Cohen shows, it was
aggravated in two ways. First, a totally different and competing
national movement was making claims on the same territory, and this
movement knew how to profit from splits within Palestinian society in
order to undermine national aspirations. Indeed, the Zionists exploited
the fissures to recruit and deploy collaborators, and this ultimately
served to deepen internal Palestinian discord and frustrate
Palestinian nation building.

Second, and more disturbing for a Palestinian readership, Cohen
stresses that instead of capitalizing on the fact that Palestinian Arabs
shared a national consciousness and were divided mostly on pragmatic
questions about how to achieve their goals, the dominant Palestinian
group, led by Hajj Amin al-Husseini and loosely organized under the
auspices of the Arab Party (established in 1935), defined all competing
nationalist views and actions as treasonous. Collaborators, accordingly,
were no longer just those who aided the Zionists' military efforts; they
were local and regional leaders, merchants who traded with Jews,
journalists who wrote in favor of the Zionist project and, most
important, land dealers who helped Jewish institutions locate and
purchase Palestinian land. 

H/T: arabist