Policing Palestine

The Palestinian Authority (PA) occupies a singularly ambiguous position within Israel/Palestine. Created after the Oslo Accords in 1994, it has been defined ever since by an enduring question: who is it meant to serve?

In Policing Palestine, Alaa Tartir looks at developments since 2007 in search of an answer. Drawing on several years of original empirical research, and foregrounding the voices of Palestinians themselves to create a powerful narrative framework, he concludes that Palestinians face multiple levels of oppression, including from their own national governing body.

Deconstructing the PA state-building project from below, Tartir lays bare the consequences of an aid-dictated and donor-driven state-building process: the criminalisation of Palestinian resistance against the Israeli colonial occupation; the professionalisation of authoritarianism in the aftermath of the security sector reform venture; and the securitisation of peace as a manifestation of the stability-first mantra of the international aid framework.