1

[ Forthcoming: Third World Quarterly, June 2015 ]

Palestinian unity and everyday state formation:

Subaltern ‘ungovernmentality’ versus elite interests by Sandra Pogodda and Oliver P. Richmond1

Abstract With Palestine gaining increasing international recognition for its sovereignty aspirations, this paper investigates the ongoing Palestinian state formation process. It examines in how far grassroots movements, domestic political leaderships and international actors have promoted or undermined intra-Palestinian unity and societal consensus around the rules, design and extent of a future Palestinian state. The paper introduces the novel concept of everyday state formation as a crucial form of grassroots agency in this process. Moreover, it illustrates the internal tensions of contemporary statebuilding: without reconciliation across multiple scales - local to global - the complex interactions of structural, governmental, and subaltern power, tend to build societal fragility into emerging state structures. Keywords: Palestine, state formation, statebuilding, resistance, unity, grassroots agency Introduction Recent political developments give rise to cautious optimism about Palestine’s

independence becoming imminent: In November 2012, an overwhelming majority of

countries (138 out of 193) de facto recognised the sovereignty of Palestine by granting it

non-member state status in the UN. While this move falls short of bestowing Palestine

with the characteristics of genuine statehood, it demonstrates growing international

support for Palestinian sovereignty. Last year’s unprecedented level of pro-Palestinian

protests worldwide (condemning Israel’s latest attack on the imprisoned population of

Gaza in the summer of 2014) suggests that international awareness towards Israel’s

human rights violations in Palestine is growing.

2

At the domestic level, opinion polls consistently point to the establishment of a

Palestinian state as the top national priority within Palestinian society.2 Popular

preferences regarding the nature of this state – whether a sovereign Palestinian state

alongside Israel is more desirable than the one-state solution – are divided.3 Common to

both scenarios would be the underlying motivation to overcome the rightlessness of

statelessness4 though, which Palestinian society is currently subjected to. Divisions

between the two governments in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip currently aggravate

the possibility of asserting this national priority at the international level. Since Hamas’s

election in 2006, the rivalling parties have oscillated between brief attempts to establish

unity governments and open conflict. The latter has been aggravating political

fragmentation rather than providing a unifying basis for the state formation project.

Given that the national political process has been stagnating under external pressure, this

article examines which actors are currently pushing the state formation agenda forward,

which external obstacles they are facing and what their internal limitations are. With the

examples of new states in mind that descended into domestic violence soon after

independence (such as South Sudan in 2014 or Timor-Leste in 2006), this paper examines

the capacity of national and grassroots initiatives in overcoming political fragmentation

as well as social fault lines and thus bringing about a stable foundation for a future

Palestine. In particular, it introduces and analyses the concept of everyday state

formation5: the capacity and limitations of non-violent grassroots movements in

delineating the political space of an emerging state by pushing back the coercive power

and governmentality of Israel’s military occupation. Grassroots initiatives geared towards

state formation are examined here as platforms to create societal consensus around the

rules, design and extent of a future state in order to mitigate tensions within the emerging

Palestinian body politic. ‘Consensus’ and ‘unity’ as the two terms used in this study to

capture broad-based consent are thus aspirational in terms of striving for the most

inclusive and representative agreement, not in terms of expecting a perfect accord across

all layers of society. Based partly on original interview material6 and partly on the

analysis of secondary sources, the article presents everyday state formation as a useful

concept to investigate the contribution of grassroots initiatives to the process of state

formation.

3

State formation, power, and the local turn

Central to this analysis are different types of power and their relation to emancipation and

the formation of a state. In order to dissect the relationship between power and state

formation we deploy three approaches.7 Firstly, direct or structural power is projected

from its holders onto their subjects in a unidirectional manner, brooking no opposition.8

This view on power has traditionally shaped the state formation debate in the disciplines

of History and Politics.9 Centralised governments were often the outcome of power

struggles between the coercive capabilities of different elites.10 Modern forms of state

formation or external statebuilding have been aimed at reinforcing the state’s

infrastructure to allow political elites to exercise material - military and economic -

power over weaker counterparts and the general population, inevitably provoking a

complex mixture of compliance and resistance.

Secondly, power as governmentality operates in a subtler manner through discourses,

knowledge, as well as institutions. This type of power (also sometimes called ‘soft’ or

‘normative’ power)11 works through the naturalisation of beliefs as a subtle technology

whose workings the individual is often unaware of.12 Governmentality denotes the use of

governance by international and state actors to constitute their subjects, potentially

against their will, in political, economic, and rights terms. Resisting governmentality and

self-policing is thus a necessary condition for subalterns’ exercise of power.

Finally, subaltern power implies that critical agency, resistance, and everyday patterns of

activity are able to some degree at least to subvert both forms of power.13 This may be

exercised through guerrilla or insurgent tactics as well as through non-violent grassroots

initiatives, hidden forms of resistance as Scott has outlined.14 Subaltern power may

mitigate identity issues and inequality, while promoting autonomy, self-determination

and liberation, or custom.

In the case of Palestine, external intervention through direct, structural and governmental

power has systematically prevented the formation of a state. Starting with the British

Mandate for Palestine (and its abuse by implementing the Balfour Declaration)15 to

4

Israel’s military occupation and the internationally driven ‘statebuilding’ project, external

forms of power have historically undermined local politics in the pursuit of security and

geopolitical interests. Israel’s direct, structural and bio-power have fragmented the

territorial, social and political unity needed for the formation of a Palestinian state.16

Internationally financed statebuilding efforts meanwhile remain within the liberal peace

and subsequent neoliberal state framework:17 limited and focused on security and

institution building, rather than an emancipatory social contract and social justice.18 Even

the liberal character of this enterprise is debatable given that neither democratization nor

trade liberalisation has been pursued, while security measures are solely geared towards

Israeli needs.19 In addition, the internationally sponsored Israeli-Palestinian peace process

has tried to establish a governmentality, which aimed to make the current ‘matrix of

control’20 acceptable as a step towards Palestinian sovereignty.

The realisation that consecutive Israeli governments have used the Oslo process as a

pacification strategy21 emptied of any emancipatory content has led to

‘ungovernmentality’. This largely uncoordinated form of subaltern resistance against the

governmentality of pacification manifests itself in grassroots initiatives all across

Palestine.22 Non-violent subaltern agency has so far received scant attention in the state

formation debate though. Anthropologists have identified cultural practices at the heart of

state formation process, but tend to be more concerned with the abstract nature of the

state and its effects on the subject than with the role of subaltern power in shaping it.23

Where subaltern agency is the focus, it appears only at the margins of the state.24 While

hinting at the possibility that states could be produced through everyday encounters,25

anthropological scholarship has yet to define the institutional and strategic pathways, in

which this happens, as well as the limitations of this agency. Of particular interest to this

study are thus initiatives that play a vital role in the Palestinian state formation by

pushing back the encroachment of the Israeli state, countering divisive political

interference, helping to create the social foundation and identity of an emerging

Palestinian state or simply support everyday life. This paper argues that such everyday

state formation implies an emancipatory form of subaltern agency, which provides some

navigation points from domestic consensus for external policy.

5

Locally driven forces of state formation foreground cultural and identity issues, questions

of historical justice, socio-economic inequality, and power sharing, which conflict with

Israel’s preferences. This highlights the legitimacy gap between the subaltern and

international aid interventions. Understanding everyday state formation and its encounter

with the liberal peace architecture demands serious attention to the way how direct,

structural or governmental power exercised by states or internationals disallows existing

agency for emancipation and social justice. Everyday state formation offers innovation

and navigation points for - local, state, and international – policymakers, who seek to

regain lost legitimacy by promoting Palestinian independence while being weary of the

danger of post-independence fragility. Such innovation already exists, we argue, in many

small corners where mobilisation for a viable Palestinian state proceeds in various ways,

dealing with a range of issues and inequalities, and imagining how a viable order may be

constituted.

National elites in the state formation process

The outburst of inter-factional violence between Fatah and Hamas in 2007 came as a

shock to a society that sees itself as the victim, not the perpetrator of violence. Between

October 2006 and August 2010 more than 470 Palestinians had been killed in inter-

factional fighting,26 while torture in Palestinian prisons became pervasive.27 In addition,

inter-factional structural violence perpetuates the repressive and discriminatory conduct

of the occupation: campaigns of political arrests, the politicisation of the judiciary, the

obstruction of political participation, crackdowns on political rights and civil liberties as

well as discrimination in public sector employment.28 Structural violence is thus

disruptive to civil society, political life and socio-economic development in the occupied

Palestinian territories.29 After eight years of bitter rivalry and three failed attempts at

creating a unity government,30 Fatah and Hamas signed another unity agreement on 23

April 2014. Accordingly, a technocratic government under the leadership of Prime

Minister Rami Hamdallah was sworn in in June 2014 and is supposed to rule the West

Bank and the Gaza Strip, while overseeing new elections in 2015. Given the continuing

tensions between the two parties, doubts remain with regard to the durability of the unity

6

government though. Elections have again been indefinitely postponed, while Fatah and

Hamas are competing over the control of the pledged reconstruction assistance.31

During the eight years long split between the Fatah-ruled West Bank and the Hamas-

governed Gaza Strip, both movements have amassed structural and direct power with the

aim to improve their respective positions in this internal Palestinian rivalry. Since 2006,

the Hamas-Fatah rivalry has resembled a Tillyian process of state formation.32 Both

governments, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, have systematically failed to

investigate killings and torture allegations, aggravating feelings of insecurity and

lawlessness in the population;33 campaigns of political arrest and degrading treatment of

political prisoners were intensified especially between 2007 and 2010;34 the transfer of

jurisdiction from civilian to military courts show signs of a ‘military dictatorship’ and

significantly constrains civil society;35 crackdowns on the freedom of expression

happened reportedly at an unprecedented scale.36 Human rights violations are employed

tactically by Fatah and Hamas to repress their respective opponent and erode its

organisational structure.

Both parties’ waning legitimacy forced them into the latest unity deal though. Hamas was

increasingly isolated in the region and thus ran out of funding for its governance of the

Gaza Strip. Severing its ties with the Assad regime in Syria cut Hamas off from Iranian

support, while the new military government in Cairo helped Israel to destroy the tunnels

as one of Hamas’s last sources of income.37 Fatah, by contrast, had come out of the latest

round of negotiations with Israel empty-handed and without a strategy on how to end the

Israel occupation.

In terms of the state formation process, however, the unity agreement would only be a

first step though. In the interest of overcoming the current fragmentation into competing

statelets and to promote national unity, the interim government would have to merge the

currently separate governance structures of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, harmonise

laws between the entities and reform the PLO to allow its transformation into a shared

body politic of all Palestinian parties. The agenda of statehood makes institutional

reforms more significant: the institutional design of any statebuilding process at the

7

moment of its inception appears to enshrine already materialised interests as a permanent

feature of the regional and international landscape. In this sense sovereignty creates a

zero sum game among domestic elites.

External influence on Palestinian (dis-)unity and state formation

Intra-Palestinian divisions have often been fuelled by external influences. Fatah’s

crackdowns on Hamas, for instance, were often the response to Israeli and international

pressure on the Palestinian Authority to do Israel’s bidding. Israeli politics have been

playing a particularly divisive role, fragmenting Palestinian society politically, socially

and geographically. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s open admission38 that he would never

allow a fully sovereign Palestinian state makes Israel’s divisive interventions appear as a

deliberate strategy to undermine Palestinian statehood aspirations. By withholding

Palestinian taxes from the PA, the Israeli government has been fuelling tensions between

Fatah and Hamas. Additionally, Israeli security services have been using information

technologies to foment divisions within Palestinian society.39 Israel’s technological

control over Palestine40 has allowed Israeli security services to establish an all-pervasive

system of surveillance, blackmailing Palestinians to become Israeli informants.41

Moreover, Israel’s settlement enterprise has been fragmenting Palestinian society

geographically42 to an extent that two thirds of Palestinians have naturalised the notion

that an independent Palestinian state is no longer feasible.43 Cutting off communities

from each other through continuously expanding settlements and settler roads moreover

reduces individuals’ social circles and thus additionally undermines Palestinian unity on a

social level. Furthermore, Netanyahu forces the Palestinians to choose between national

unity and democracy: By preventing elections from taking part in East Jerusalem, he

cajoles the PA to either relinquish its claim on the political unity of all three parts of

Palestine or to continue governing without a democratic mandate.

Palestine’s dependency on foreign aid44 has allowed international donors to use their

structural power and governmentality in divisive and manipulative ways. Traditionally,

EU and US donor policies have toed Israel’s line on boycotting Hamas, fuelling political

8

divisions through aid conditionalities and biased mediation processes.45 In contrast to

previous attempts at Fatah-Hamas reconciliation, the EU and the US welcomed the

current interim government though since it does not include any Hamas affiliates.

Considering the need for elections and Hamas’s current popularity after the 2014 war on

Gaza, technocratic governance is not a long-term solution though. Caged in by its anti-

terrorism policies, neither the US not the EU are able to support a future democratically

elected government that includes Hamas due to the movement’s blacklisting as a terrorist

organization.46 In a hypocritical47 attempt to overcome the contradiction between their

objective of democracy promotion and their security interests, the US and the EU agreed

on the Middle East Quartet’s three conditions for dealing with Hamas: financial and

diplomatic sanctions on Hamas would be lifted, if the movement renounces all violence,

recognises Israel and adheres to previous diplomatic agreements. Hence, unless Hamas

models itself on Fatah’s failed negotiation strategy, any unity government will be starved

of European and American aid. In sum, the national reconciliation process is prone to

manipulation by external actors and remains most likely to collapse under the financial

pressure exerted by external actors.

Thus direct, structural and governmental forms of power continue to fragment Palestinian

society and undermine political unity. By limiting Palestinians’ democratic choices and

funding unelected PA institutions instead, international donors are aggravating tensions

between Palestinian society and its unelected leadership. Hence, external and domestic

legitimacy remain irreconcilable. Local legitimacy for Hamas (as the only line of defence

against Israel’s military occupation) clashes with external notions of legitimacy, backed

by the structural and governmental power of Palestine’s biggest donors. Consequently,

the PLO could only pursue international financial support for its state formation project at

the expense of domestic legitimacy and inner-Palestinian reconciliation. According to

Ramzy Baroud genuine Palestinian unity can only be formed at the subaltern level and

requires a rethinking of Palestine as a concept:

‘For true unity to take place, it has to be shaped entirely by Palestinian national priorities. It cannot be linked to aid, and tribal political allegiances. It should not be aimed to please the US and the EU or to accommodate Israeli security. True unity would have to go back to the

9

original questions that split Palestinian communities in Palestine and around the world in the first place. It has to contend with important questions concerning Palestinian identity, national aspirations, resistance and the outlook of an entire generation that was born after the signing of the Oslo accords in 1993.’48

Everyday state formation in Palestine If direct, structural and governmental power has generated disunity and failed to bring

about Palestinian sovereignty, can grassroots agency (meaning the range of subaltern

agency) contribute to Palestinian unity and state formation? For a state to be stable and

peaceful, it needs to be based on a societal consensus - on its institutional framework,

territorial expansion, its identity and socio-economic orientation - and it requires

institutions to mediate conflicting interests within society. This section analyses

community-based state formation processes in Palestine aiming to create these

prerequisites and introduce a typology of everyday state formation. In contrast to the civil

society sphere,49 peaceful community-based state formation processes tend to be largely

free of foreign intervention since foreign governments tend to lack both, the leverage and

interest to intervene in this space.

Everyday state formation in the pre-state condition of Palestine constitutes a sphere in

which local initiatives assume functions traditionally performed by the state or create

societal cohesion as the basis for a viable state. This ranges from defending borders and

community territory against Israeli annexation through demonstrations and everyday

practices such as farming in restricted areas, to reinforcing Palestine’s identity and

defending its historical positionality through the creation of new archives, and to building

viable communities as the foundation of an emerging state.50 By doing so, everyday state

formation signals how the political space and institutional expansion of a durable state

could look like, while creating an enabling environment for this political project at the

community-level.

Hence, everyday state formation exceeds the framework of resistance, in which local

political agency in Palestine is traditionally discussed. Resistance negates oppressive

forms of power, but it is often criticised for falling short of rearticulating the terms of

10

power.51 Delineating the political space of an emerging state and creating its societal

preconditions, by contrast, goes far beyond negating oppression. Similar to critical

readings of resistance,52 everyday state formation could also be exercised in favour of a

new hegemony, or it may play straight into the hands of the old elites. This is particularly

problematic in the sphere of state formation, where a new coercive power emerges, which

could be hijacked and deployed against the very movements that enabled it. Hence, the

subsequent typology aims to elaborate whether everyday state formation pursues

emancipation, justice or social cohesion in order to ward off such risks. We will

distinguish between four varieties: mobilization for national unity, assuming state

functions, and creating viable communities and defending historic rights and conducting

public diplomacy.

Mobilizing for national unity

In response to national unity being blocked by elite interests, a Palestinian youth

movement formed under the name ‘March 15’. Its goal was to “get past the old identities

– Fatah, Hamas, religious, secular, Israeli and Palestinian Arab” to create a ‘one state’

movement, encompassing not only the populations of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip,

but also the Palestinian refugees abroad and the Palestinian inhabitants of Israel.53 By

organising the largest unapproved demonstration in the Gaza Strip since the Hamas

government came into office, March 15 was able to effect the swift resumption of unity

talks.54

For March 15 overcoming the stalemate between Fatah and Hamas was only a means to

the end of reinstating the democratic process in Palestine though. The young activists did

not believe in either party’s strategy for the future. They criticize Fatah’s ‘statebuilding’

as a façade,55 reject Hamas’s armed resistance for the consequences that it inflicts on the

Palestinians, and deny the possibility of achieving statehood through UN recognition. For

the young activists reforming the PA holds no emancipatory potential. They regard the

PA as a subcontractor of the occupation, not an administration effectively working

towards independence for its people.56 Hence, according to March 15 activists, the PA’s

11

authoritarian tendencies are neither new nor surprising given that it represents the

continuation of the occupation by other means.57

As an alternative they suggest a return to the pre-Oslo era, which they associate with

more effective local democracy, a more vibrant civil society and less economic

dependence on Israel prior to the establishment of the customs envelope through the Paris

Protocol.58 Most importantly, before Oslo – so the argument – Israel accepted the

financial responsibilities of an occupying force and provided public services to the

Palestinians. Forcing Israel back into direct occupation,59 while ending European and

American subsidization of the occupation would make the occupation unsustainable for

Israel. Reoccupation, however, lacks traction in the Palestinian population due to its

exposure of Palestinian society to an even more brutal form of oppression.

Moreover, the movement’s strategy seems to be based on a misguided understanding of

the location of power in Palestine. As one coordinator of unarmed resistance groups put

it: ‘These young people thought they would fight the same battle against a dictator as the

Egyptians or Tunisians. But Abu Mazen is not the same kind. Most of the time you feel

you have to force him to stay.”60 Abbas’s multiple resignation attempts and his bowing to

structural power indeed mark his politics as an indicator for a deeper structural problem.

The PA’s dependency on foreign aid provides donors such as the US with ample financial

and diplomatic leverage to manipulate Palestinian politics. Divisive political decisions

thus often appear to be a direct result of pressure exerted by donors. Abbas’ anti-Hamas

measures61 or the PA’s reluctance to integrate Hamas’ security forces with the heavily

US-sponsored PA security forces (the latter is a vital step in terms of state formation and

political unity)62 serve as prominent examples. While Abu Mazen, Salam Fayyad, and

Mohammed Dahlan have been associated with the policies that are fuelling inter-factional

conflict,63 removing them from power might not change Palestinian politics as long as

Western donors boycott Palestinian unity.64 Being unable to draw up a platform with

mass appeal that engages with the structural power trap, March 15 all but vanished from

public view.65

Assuming state functions

12

In the absence of fixed borders and a military to defend them, Palestinian territory is

under constant threat of annexation by Israel. The most effective defence against this

direct power, however, has emerged not through peace negotiations but through non-

violent tactics such as the ‘Stop the Wall’ campaigns. Initiated during the height of the Al

Aqsa Intifada in 2003, when Palestinian resistance was marked by suicide terrorism, the

movement’s founders intended to return the methods of the Palestinian struggle to

unarmed resistance. They realized that Palestinian resistance could not win ‘Israel’s

game’ - an armed struggle against the most powerful army in the Middle East.66 Drawing

lessons from the ANC’s fight against apartheid it became clear that international

legitimacy was key in order to change the asymmetry of power in favour of the

Palestinians.67 External perception of Palestine’s independence struggle thus had to shift

from suicide terrorism towards peaceful resistance against oppression. Unarmed

resistance movements kept growing, even when the international headlines were

dominated by the insurgency of the Al Aqsa Intifada.68 ‘Stop the Wall’ campaigns staged

unarmed demonstrations against Israel’s separation wall, which cuts through Palestinian

territory in the West Bank, separating farmers from their income and reducing the

territory of a future Palestinian state. The demonstrations in Budrus and Bi’lin attracted

sufficient international attention and drew participation from international and Israeli

activists to allow the movement to halt and later reverse the some of Israel’s land grab.69

Many other campaigns are still ongoing, yet they meet increasing IDF violence, lack the

support of the PA and face decreasing public interest.70

Beyond simple acts of resistance, ‘Stop the Wall’ creates platforms for inter-ethnic,

cross-confessional and inter-factional collaboration through its appeal to the core

Palestinian experience of the past century: being driven from ancestral land. Countering

the experience of victimization with political mobilization constitutes an emancipatory

and “unifying experience”, changes individuals’ perception of “the Palestinian other and

the self”.71 The limitations of this type of everyday state formation lie in its dependence

on external support (international media attention and the participation of international

protesters) in order to transform the struggle over land from a violent to a legal battle.

13

Small-scale farming in Area C is another act of everyday state formation that defends

community territory from Israeli encroachment. Area C contains 61 percent of Palestine,

connecting 227 villages and urban areas, while harbouring some of Palestine’s most

fertile areas. As the largest contiguous territory within Palestine, Area C is crucial for the

formation of a state. According to the Oslo Accords, Area C was supposed to be

gradually transferred back from Israeli to Palestinian control by 1998, pending a final

peace agreement. Since this final agreement has never materialised some of the 150,000

Palestinian inhabitants of Area C have continued farming in defiance of Israeli

restrictions. Beyond negating Israeli authority, this agency exceeds resistance by

generating the means to sustain rural communities as a form of sumud (steadfastness in

the face of Israel’s occupation).

Yet this form of everyday agency is constrained by direct and structural power. Farmers

run the risk of seeing illegally built structures demolished and farmed land confiscated by

Israeli authorities. Resistance farming has traditionally been supported by the Palestinian

Agricultural Relief Committee (PARC) and more recently also by the EU72 and the

World Bank, since studies concluded that unleashing the potential of Area C would

“provide whole new areas of economic activity and set the economy on the path to

sustainable growth."73 A neoliberal appropriation of resistance tactics by structural power

might aggravate the precariousness of Palestinian farmers though. The PA has recently

removed farmers from their land with the intention to build industrial parks on some of

Palestine’s most fertile plains, dispossessing small farmers in the process.74

Creating the basis for viable communities

With regard to societal unity, protest movements such as ‘Stop the Wall’ provide only a

thin layer of unity. Their rationality of bonding through a common aspiration intractably

links notions of unity to the existence of a common enemy. After achieving Palestinian

statehood though, this bonding strategy is bound to crumble. In the absence of societal

conflict resolution mechanisms, Palestine could plunge from its struggle against the

occupation into a struggle with itself. A future state built on a deeply divided society

might generate its own resistance, pitting different notions of Palestinian identity,

14

autonomy, and rights against one another. This would provide Israeli strategists with

opportunities to reverse Palestinian sovereignty.

Local conflict resolution initiatives are hedging against such risks. They take on any type

of social conflict75, mediate between the conflict parties, provide trauma counselling,

train individuals in conflict resolution mechanisms and empower the weaker segments of

society through psychological, social, economic and religious support. Teaching

communities conflict resolution mechanism provides the micro-level of society with

coping mechanisms to navigate the pressure of the occupation and its side-effects.76

Often trained in traditional conflict mediation techniques (‘sulha’), they aim to strengthen

communities as well as inter-community dialogues. Established in the 1990s, these

initiatives were responding to the institutional vacuum of the early Oslo years, when the

emerging Palestinian Authority remained limited to Gaza City and Jericho, while the

occupied people rejected the authority of the Israeli occupation as illegitimate.

The aim of strengthening communities as building blocks of the Palestinian nation gives

these organisations a vital role in everyday state formation. Their political project is not

limited to undoing the socio-psychological damage of the Israeli occupation. Indeed, they

aim at a deeper reform of Palestinian society by levelling power asymmetries and

anchoring conflict resolution mechanisms in the very fabric of Palestinian society.

Importantly, local conflict resolution initiatives tend to maintain their distance to day-to-

day politics and thus remain beyond the grasp of political elites. Equally, their inner-

Palestinian reconciliation agenda is too localised, small-scale and long-term to pose a

visible threat to direct power.

Defending historic rights and conducting public diplomacy

Given that “history plays an important role in state formation, in legitimizing the origins

of the state”77, governments tend to create and maintain their own archives. Through

classification or declassification of files, rules of access, and even the cataloguing of

information, archivists can control the writing of history to some extent. In the Israeli-

Palestinian context, Israeli archivists use such strategies in order to prevent the

15

recognition of Palestinian land claims and to re-write the history of the nakba.78 Indeed,

Israeli national archives tend to be administered by the Israeli Defence Forces, rendering

the writing of history a strategic resource in the conflict. Previously accessible material

was frequently re-classified after critical Israeli historians published archival material that

undermined the official Israeli account of historic events.

In response, Palestinian historians started to collect material to substantiate their counter-

narrative and to record historical Palestinian claims regarding land, dispossession and the

violence of Israel’s direct power. Gathering and publishing Palestinians’ accounts of past

events is essential to assert historic rights and to expose different types of colonial

strategies applied in occupied Palestine. Its emancipatory aspiration elevates this

endeavour from resistance to everyday state formation. Since there is not one history of

Palestine, the number of archival projects grows with the questions asked about the

past.79 However, any of those projects highlights the accounts of some individuals, while

silencing others. Hence, archival projects raise the problem of representation80 in the

attempt to solve it.

Non-violent resistance has over time refined and diversified its strategies, based on its

insights into the modus operandi of Israel’s direct and structural power. Unarmed

resistance is based on the realization that Israel’s occupation rests not only on its military

but also on its representation in the media and its international support. Recent public

diplomacy campaigns have shown that the two latter pillars are linked and can be

weakened: The outcry in the international media over the IDF’s killings of unarmed

protesters on nakba-day 2011, the massacre on the Freedom Flotilla in 2010, as well as

war crimes in the recent Gaza wars suggest that the international image of Israel’s

occupation is changing. Similar to the radical idea of re-occupation but at lower personal

costs to the Palestinians, such events may make the occupation politically too costly for

Israel. If portrayed in the international media, the peaceful provocation of IDF violence

creates a moral conundrum for Israel’s allies. Granting military aid to or allying with an

army that shoots at peaceful protesters, massacres children and attacks UN schools might

be irreconcilable with many countries’ self-image of conducting a just foreign policy or

16

possessing ‘smart power’. Hence, by exposing direct power, the location of power can be

changed.

Such change does not happen easily though. The first intifada (1987-1993) illustrated that

popular perceptions do not necessarily shift as radically as the media narrative. Years

worth of TV footage pitting Israeli tanks against stone-throwing Palestinian children

radically changed the media portrayal of the conflict,81 but only moderately altered public

conceptions of the conflict.82 Hence, everyday state formation’s capacity to sever the

alignment between structural, governmental and direct power might be limited.

Conclusion: reflections on national reconciliation, resistance and everyday state

formation

In order to create a viable Palestinian state some form of inner-Palestinian consensus is

necessary at different levels. The integrity of Palestinian state institutions cannot be

restored without national reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah. Society at large needs

to agree on the rules, design and extent of a future state. Local conflict resolution

mechanisms are equally indispensable in order to prevent the violent outbreak of

unresolved tensions within society. Moreover, this difficult internal harmonisation

process is constantly challenged by the divisive interference of Israel and Palestine’s

biggest donors. While the homogenisation of the local to state/regional/ global order has

appeared very unlikely, recent concessions may indicate donors’ growing recognition of

the limitations of structural, governmental and direct order in stabilizing local political

orders. And in the interim, relative power drives politics in the absence of a practical and

conceptual mechanism through which acute differences can be mediated without being

eradicated, in political and economic terms and including justice across space and time.

Resistance reflects a failure of governance in meeting democratic aspirations or demands

for historical justice, socio-economic inequality, and emancipation. As a mechanism to

effect the different types of intra-Palestinian consensus needed to stabilize an emerging

Palestinian state, however, resistance provides limited tools. Resistance to a state or

policy for not meeting its own normative or technical standards may not necessarily

17

represent critical agency, in that it merely holds power up to its own standards or

replicates it.83 Finding unity in resistance against Israel’s structural power and

inappropriate international blueprints only provides a thin layer of societal consensus.

While Palestinian resistance has come a long way from mirroring and thus perpetuating

violence (i.e. in the al Aqsa Intifada) to turning power on itself through its reflection in

the media and delineating its own peaceful state formation project, it is currently

constrained by geographical, political and societal fragmentation. John Darby’s concept

of achieving a harmonious society through common aspirations fails to take into account

the fleeting nature of political goals and the multiple levels of resistance that may oppose

or support them, and the dynamics that structural power tends to provoke. Given the risk

of using resistance to establish new oppressive structures – like Fatah and Hamas

individually did in their enclaves since 2006 - Michel Foucault advises that resistance

should not result in new patterns or institutions of exclusion.84

By introducing the novel concept of everyday state formation, this paper tries to illustrate

that viable forms of grassroots agency are already working towards creating the

conditions for an inclusionary state. In contrast to subaltern agency that strays into

insurgency mode, everyday state formation retains a focus on societal and political unity

and exceeds resistance by demarcating the political space of an emerging state. Yet, its

effectiveness remains limited if structural, direct or governmental power fails to support

it. Hence, in the circulation of power in state formation processes grassroots agency is

easily unhinged by difference across domestic and external actors, even if the subaltern

amasses the essential legitimacy they all require. As Foucault pointed out, emancipation,

or liberty, produce new power relations, and therefore new claims for emancipation.85 For

Foucault, a 'daily ethico-political struggle' needs to ensue to create the conditions in

which resistance can oppose domination and new forms of subjectivity can emerge for

autonomy and equality.86 This requires platforms for internal consensus building in the

pursuit of a viable Palestinian state.

In more general terms, some new conceptual insights may be gleaned from our

interrogation of everyday state formation and the power-relations it engenders. The

obvious problems raised by Israeli exercises of direct, structural and governmental power

18

in terms of Palestinian resistance and fragmentation led external actors to create a

‘governable-scape’ according to the liberal peace and neoliberal state architecture. This is

a space of pacification and neoliberalism, which has neither granted rights safeguards,

nor democracy or security to the stateless Palestinians. Both Israeli structural and donor

governmental perspectives see the putative Palestinian state as an ‘ungovernable-scape’

where national unity is either unlikely or undesirable. Given the failure of the liberal

peace and the neoliberal state architecture to cater to Palestinian rights and needs,

everyday state formation agency has developed numerous examples of Palestinian self-

governance, some of which are suggestive of local and very persistent, subtle, but also

effective, processes to create a viable basis for an emerging Palestinian state.

From the external perspective, governmentality and structural power appears to be met by

Palestinian ungovernmentality. Everyday state formation is more than a negation of

governmentality though since it mobilises for conflicting goals: different notions of

autonomy, sovereignty, unity, and reconciliation. Thus, northern and elite structural

power is exercised to produce an illusion of governmentality: a space where both local

agency and international governmentality is ineffective, enabling ever more invasive

forms of intervention in the name of pacification on the part of the Israeli state.

Ungovernmentality is a discourse of local and human erasure in the interests of northern

or elite interests, culture, and ideology, reminiscent of colonialism. The local is erased

from donor discourses to provide space for the post-colony to prosper according to the

liberal peace and neoliberal state architecture. However, ‘ungovernable-scapes’- local

agency/ systems that are not under Israeli or donor authority- continue to be self-

governing, developing modes of unity and state formation at the community level. They

are cognizant of their very limited structural and governmental power, but they doggedly

seek to influence the state and external forms of the power through their own subaltern

means. Hence, a societal consensus on the shape, content and institutional layout of a

future Palestinian state through everyday state formation is essential to prevent subaltern

agency and exercises of power to control ‘ungovernmentality’ from continuing to wrestle

futilely with each other.

19

References:

Arendt, Hannah. “The Perplexities of the Rights of Man”. Chapter in The Portable

Hannah Arendt, edited by Peter Baehr, 31 – 45. New York: Penguin Books, 2000.

Barnett, Michael and Raymond Duvall. “Power in International Politics”. International

Organization 59, vol.1 (2005): 39-75. DOI:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0020818305050010.

Boege, Volker M. et al.. States emerging from hybrid political orders – Pacific

experiences. The Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, Occasional

Papers Series, 2008. Accessed February 27, 2015.

http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:164904/Occasional_Paper_No_11__Onli

ne_final.pdf&sa=U&ei=dBpRU43MJYqpyASvioDwBQ&ved=0CDcQFjAG&us

g=AFQjCNG_dd1_8BASj4-t0ul4POBUEu04hg

Butler, Judith. “Subjection, Resistance, Resignification: Between Freud and Foucault”. In

The Identity in Question, edited by John Rajchman, 229- 249. London: Routlegde,

1995.

Cronin, David. Europe’s Alliance with Israel: Aiding the Occupation. London: Penguin,

2010.

Dana, Tariq. “Palestinian Civil Society: What Went Wrong?”. Al-Shabaka Policy Brief

April 2013. Accessed February 27, 2015. http://al-shabaka.org/node/597.

Daniel, Anne-Marie A. “US Media Coverage of the Intifada and American Public

Opinion”. In U.S. Media and the Middle East: Image and Perception, edited by

Yahya R. Kamalipour, 62 -72. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1995.

Das, Veena and Deborah Poole. Anthropology in the Margins of the State. Santa Fee:

School of American Research Press, 2004.

de Vasconcelos, Alvaro, ed. “A Strategy for EU Foreign Policy”. ISS Report no.7,

European Union Institute for Security Studies, 2010. Accessed February 27, 2015.

http://www.iss.europa.eu/uploads/media/A_strategy_for_EU_foreign_policy.pdf

20

Doumani, Beshara and Chris Gratien. "Writing the History of Palestine and the

Palestinians." Ottoman History Podcast no. 170, 15 August 2014.

http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2014/08/writing-history-palestine.html

Esposito, Michele. “Quarterly Update on Conflict and Diplomacy: 16- May – 15 August

2010”. Journal of Palestine Studies 40, no.1 (2010): 127 - 166.

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Penguin, 1996 [1970].

Foucault, Michel. “Governmentality”. In Power: Essential Works of Foucault 1954 -

1984, edited by James D. Faubion, 201 - 222. London: Penguin Books, 1994.

Foucault, Michel. Security, Territory Population. London: Palgrave, 2004.

Foucault, Michel. “The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom.” In

Ethics, Subjectivity, and Truth, edited by Paul Rabinow. The New Press, 1997.

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality Vol. 1: The Will to Knowledge, Volume 1.

London: Penguin, [1976] 1998.

Foucault, Michel. “The Thought from Outside”. In Foucault/ Blanchot by Michel

Foucault and Maurice Blanchot, 7-60. New York: Zone Books, 1987.

Gilmour, David. 1996. “The Unregarded Prophet: Lord Curzon and the Palestine

Question”. Journal of Palestine Studies 25, no.3 (1996), 60 – 68.

Gordon, Neve. Israel’s Occupation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.

Gross, Oren. "Mending Walls: The Economic Aspects of Israeli-Palestinian Peace."

American University International Law Review 15 (2000): 1539-1626.

Halper, Jeff. “The 94 Percent Solution: A Matrix of Control”. MERIP 216 (2001).

Hammami, Rema. “Palestinian NGOs Since Oslo: From NGO Politics to Social

Movements?”. Middle East Report 214 (2000): 16 – 19, 27 +48.

Hazkani, Shay and Chris Gratien."The Politics of 1948 in Israeli Archives." Ottoman

History Podcast no. 166, 19 July 2014.

21

http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2014/07/the-politics-of-1948-in-israeli-

archives.html

International Crisis Group. “Palestinian Reconciliation: Plus Ça Change”. Middle East

Report no.110, 20 July 2011. Accessed February 27, 2015.

http://www.crisisgroup.org/~/media/Files/Middle%20East%20North%20Africa/Is

rael%20Palestine/110%20Palestinian%20Reconciliation%20Plus%20Ca%20Cha

nge.pdf

Khalidi, Rashid. Brokers of Deceit: How the US Has Undermined Peace in the Middle

East. Boston: Beacon Press, 2013.

Krohn-Hansen, Christian and Knut Nustad, eds. State Formation: Anthropological

Perspectives. London: Pluto Press, 2005

Kurtz, Donald. Political Anthropology: Paradigms and Power. Boulder: Westview Press,

2001.

Manners, Ian. “Normative Power Europe: A Contradiction in Terms?”. Journal of

Common Market Studies 40, no. 2 (2002): 235-258. DOI: 10.1111/1468-

5965.00353.

Moughrabi, Fouad. “American Public Opinion and the Question of Palestine”. ADC Issue

Paper no. 22. Washington: American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

Nye, Joseph. Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. New York: Public

Affairs, 2004.

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), Annual Report 2013. Accessed February

3, 2015. http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/2014/annual%20English%202013.pdf

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), Annual Report 2010. Accessed February

27, 2015. http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/2011/Annual%202010%20E.pdf

22

Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR). “Palestinian Public Opinion

Poll No. 52”. 5-7 June 2014. Accessed February 4, 2015.

http://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/465

Parsons, Nigel and Mark B. Salter. “Israeli Biopolitics: Closure, Territorialisation and

Governmentality in the Occupied Palestinian Territories”. Geopolitics 13, issue 4

(2008): 701-723. DOI:10.1080/14650040802275511.

Pelham, Nicolas. “Gaza's Tunnel Phenomenon: The Unintended Dynamics of Israel's

Siege”. Journal of Palestine Studies 41, no. 4 (2012): 6- 31.

Pickett, Brent L. “Foucault and the Politics of Resistance”. Polity 28 (1996): 445-447.

Pogodda, Sandra. “Everyday state formation: subaltern agency in pre-state and

revolutionary societies” forthcoming.

Pogodda, Sandra. “Inconsistent Interventionism in Palestine: Objectives, Narratives, and

Domestic Policy-Making”. Democratization 19, issue 3 (2012): 535-552.

DOI:10.1080/13510347.2012.674361

Qarmout, Tamer and Daniel Beland. “The Politics of International Aid to the Gaza Strip”.

Journal of Palestine Studies 41, issue 4 (2012): 32-47.

Qumsiyeh, Mazin. Popular Resistance in Palestine: A History of Hope and

Empowerment. London: Pluto Press, 2011.

Randle, Michael. Civil Resistance. London: Fontana, 1994.

Richman, Alvin. “American Attitudes towards Israeli-Palestinian relations”. Public

Opinion Quarterly 53 (1989): 415-430.

Richmond, Oliver P. A Post-Liberal Peace. Abington: Routledge.

Richmond, Oliver P. “Critical Agency, Resistance, and a Post-Colonial Civil Society”.

Cooperation and Conflict 46, no.4 (2011): 419 - 440. DOI:

10.1177/0010836711422416.

23

Richmond, Oliver P. Failed Statebuilding. Yale University Press, 2014.

Richmond, Oliver P. and Jason Franks. Liberal Peace Transitions: Between Statebuilding

and Peacebuilding. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009.

Robinson, Glenn E. “The Growing Authoritarianism of the Arafat Regime”. Survival:

Global Politics and Strategy 39, no.2 (1997): 42 – 56.

Rogan, Eugene L. and Avi Shlaim. The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Rose, David. “The Gaza Bombshell”. Vanity Fair, April 2008. Accessed February 27,

2015. http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/04/gaza200804

Rubenberg, Cheryl A. The Palestinians – In search of a just peace. London: Lynne

Rienner Publishers, 2003.

Said, Edward. “The Morning After”. London Review of Books 15, vol. 20 (1993): 3-5.

Sansour, Vivienne and Alaa Tartir. “Palestinian Farmers: A Last Stronghold of

Resistance”. Al Shabaka Policy Brief, July 2014. http://al-shabaka.org/node/784

Sayigh, Yezid. “Policing the People, Building the State: Authoritarian Transformation in

the West Bank and Gaza”. Carnegie Papers, February 2011. Accessed February

2, 2015. http://carnegieendowment.org/files/gaza_west_bank_security.pdf

Scott, James C. Domination and the Arts of Resistance. New Haven: Yale University

Press, 1990.

Scott, James C. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Peasant Resistance. New Haven: Yale

University Press, 1985.

Sharp, Gene. Politics of Non-Violent Action. Boston: Porter Sargent, 1973.

Smith, Ben. “Hamas, Fatah and the Middle East Quartet principles”. Parliament briefing

paper. London: House of Commons, 17 May 2011. Accessed February 27, 2015.

24

http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/briefing-

papers/SN05968/hamas-fatah-and-the-middle-east-quartet-principles

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?”. In Marxism and the

Interpretation of Culture edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, 271–

316. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988.

Strange, Susan. States and Markets. London: Pinter Publishers, 1988.

Tawil-Souri, Helga. “Digital Occupation: Gaza's High-Tech Enclosure”. Journal of

Palestine Studies 41, issue 2 (2014): 27-43.

Tilly, Charles. "War Making and State Making as Organized Crime." In Bringing the

State Back In, I69-I9I. Edited by Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and

Theda Skocpol. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, I985.

Turner, Mandy. “Completing the Circle: Peacebuilding as Colonial Practice in the

occupied Palestinian territory”. International Peacekeeping 19, issue 4 (2012):

492-507. DOI:10.1080/13533312.2012.709774.

Vaneigem, Raoul. The Revolution of Everyday Life. London: Rebel Press, 1994 [1967].

Walker, Robert B.J. One World, Many Worlds. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1988.

Weizman, Eyal. Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation. London: Verso,

2007.

1 Corresponding author: Sandra Pogodda, Lecturer at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response 2 See PCPSR surveys, online at http://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/154 3 The notion of a two-state solution has lost appeal with the fragmentation of the territory by Israeli settlements. However, this scenario remains supported by a slim majority of Palestinians according to the latest surveys, see PCPSR index http://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/154. 4 Arendt, “Rights of Men”. 5 Pogodda, “Everyday State Formation”. 6 Between 2011 and 2012, the authors conducted semi-structured interviews in different parts of the West Bank. Interviewees were selected by their occupation or party affiliation with the aim of covering a wide range of grassroots organisations as well as individuals working for ministries,

25

refugee camps, NGOs, electoral bodies and Palestine’s aid industry. Among the 18 interviews used for this article four were conducted in Arabic, the others in English. 7 For a framework on the relationship between peace and power see Richmond, Failed Statebuilding. 8 See for example, Strange, States and Markets; Barnett and Duvall, “Power in International Politics”. 9 On the divergence of the state formation debate in History and Politics from sociological and anthropological approaches: see Richmond, “Legacy of State Formation”. 10 Donald Kurtz identifies the ‘voluntaristic’ approaches of early hydraulic societies as an exception to the coercive character of state formation processes (Kurtz, Political Anthropology, 170/171). In a more detailed analysis of hydraulic societies in the Arab region, Ayubi concludes that these societies were governed by systems of total (despotic) power though (Ayubi, Over-Stating the Arab State, 42-85). 11 Nye, Soft Power; Manners, “Normative Power Europe”. 12 Foucault, “Governmentality”. 13 Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”; Scott, Weapons of the Weak; Richmond, “Critical Agency”. 14 Scott, Weapons of the Weak. 15 By deliberately ignoring the resistance of Palestinian society against the reconstitution of a homeland for the Jews on Palestinian territory, the British government violated the principle of self-determination as the cornerstone of the mandate-giving League of Nations (Gilmour, “The Unregarded Prophet”).  16 On different aspects of Israel’s coercive, structural and bio-power see Weizman, Hollow Land; Gordon, Israel’s Occupation; Parsons and Salter, “Israeli Biopolitics”. 17 Richmond, Failed Statebuilding. 18 Richmond and Franks, Liberal Peace Transitions, 149-180. 19 Pogodda, “Inconsistent Interventionism”. 20 Halper, “The 94 Percent Solution”. 21 Turner, “Completing the Circle”. 22 On the all-pervasive nature of resistance in Palestine: see Qumsiyeh, Popular Resistance in Palestine. 23 Krohn-Hansen and Nustad, State Formation. 24 Das and Poole, Margins of the State. 25 Krohn-Hansen and Nustad, State Formation, 12/13. 26 Esposito, “Diplomatic Update”, 145. 27 Torture of Palestinians in Fatah-administered prisons was already rife under President Arafat (Rubenberg, The Palestinians). After Hamas’ take-over of the Gaza Strip, Hamas mirrored those practices in its prisons (see consecutive reports of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights since 2007). 28 Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Annual Report 2013, 63 – 94. 29 On the effects of structural violence see Boege et al., States emerging; Richmond, A Post- Liberal Peace, 44-65. 30 This agreement comes in the wake of the Mecca Accords of 2007, and the Cairo Agreements of 2009 and 2013. For more details see: International Crisis Group, “Palestinian Reconciliation”. 31 Miller. 2014. “Abbas: No reconciliation with Hamas before elections”. Times of Israel, October 13. http://www.timesofisrael.com/abbas-no-reconciliation-with-hamas-before-elections/ 32 Tilly, "War Making and State Making".

26

33 PCHR, Annual Report 2010, 74-76. The director of a human rights monitoring agency in the West Bank reported that his organization’s report on the inter-factional killings of 2007 was politically exploited by both parties (interview 7 July 2011). 34 PCHR, Annual Report 2010, 79-87. 35 Ibid, 91/92. 36 Ibid, 95-98. 37 On the tunnel economy and its demise see Pelham, “Gaza's Tunnel Phenomenon”. 38 Horovitz. 2014. “Netanyahu finally speaks his mind”. The Times of Israel, 13 June. http://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-finally-speaks-his-mind/ 39 Beaumont. 2014. “Israeli intelligence veterans refuse to serve in Palestinian territories”. The Guardian, 12 September. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/12/israeli-intelligence-reservists-refuse-serve-palestinian-territories 40 Tawil-Souri, “Digital Occupation”.  41 For an insider account of these practices: see The Guardian, 2014. “Any Palestinian is exposed to monitoring by the Israeli Big Brother”, 12 September. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/12/israeli-intelligence-unit-testimonies 42 For an illustration of the geographical fragmentation of Palestine since 1946 see Littlewood, 2013. “Richard Falk Interview”. Counter Currents. http://www.countercurrents.org/littlewood201213.htm 43 see PCPSR, “Palestinian Public Opinion Poll No. 52”. 44 According to a Palestinian economist, over the past 15 years 50 percent of the PA budget have been financed by foreign aid (Donnison, 2011. “Fragile stability of aid-dependent Palestinian economy”. BBC News, 27 May. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13567213) 45 Cronin, Europe’s Alliance with Israel; Khalidi, Brokers of Deceit. 46 de Vasconcelos, “A Strategy”, 8; Smith, “Hamas, Fatah”, 6. The EU’s blacklisting of Hamas is currently under appeal. 47 The three conditions imposed by the Middle East Quartet oblige Hamas to adhere to standards, which the government of Israel continues to violate without facing financial sanctions from the US or the EU, i.e. non-violence and honouring their obligations under previous agreements. 48 Ramzy. 2014. “Defining Palestinian Unity”, International Policy Digest, 10 June. http://www.internationalpolicydigest.org/2014/06/10/defining-palestinian-unity/ 49 The NGO sector in Palestine stands accused of being co-opted by donor agendas, dominated by local elites and removed from its social basis, see Hammami, “Palestinian NGOs Since Oslo”; Dana, “Palestinian Civil Society”. 50 This typology could be expanded to other roles traditionally assumed by the state such as providing protection, shelter or promoting food independence of communities. 51 Butler, “Subjection, Resistance, Resignification”. 52 Foucault, The History of Sexuality; Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 374-375; Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life, 170; Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed; Sharp, Politics of Non-Violent Action; Walker, One World, Many Worlds; Randle, Civil Resistance; Scott, Domination. 53 Klein. 2011. “A New Palestinian Movement: Young, Networked, Nonviolent”. TIME, 31 March 2011. 54 Vick. 2011. “On the Run, the Palestinian Youth Movement May Yet Get Its Way”. TIME, March 27. 55 When asked about Fatah’s two-year statebuilding plan one activist responded ‘It is hard to talk about something that doesn’t exist’ (interview, Birzeit, 6 July 2011). 56 Interview, youth activist, Birzeit, 6 July 2011. This argument is in line with Edward Said’s early observations on the terms of the Oslo accords: see Said, “The Morning After”, 3-5.

27

57 Indeed, accusations of growing authoritarianism within the PA are as old as the PA itself, see Robinson, “The Growing Authoritarianism”. 58 Interview, youth activist, Birzeit, 6 July 2011. On Palestine’s economic dependency on Israel after the Paris Protocol see Gross, "Mending Walls". 59 Currently, Israel’s military occupation operates mainly through the control of checkpoints, policing the expanding settlements and surveillance. 60 Interview, Budrus, 6 July 2011. 61 For an account on the interplay between US interests and the interests of PA politicians in overthrowing Hamas after the 2006 election see Rose, “Gaza Bombshell”. 62 See Sayigh, “Policing the People”. 63 On anti-Hamas campaigns under Fayyad see Harel. 2013. “Farewell to Palestinian PM Fayyad, the only Mideast politician truly admired by IDF officials”. Haaretz, June 3. http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/.premium-1.527569 64 On how conditional aid affects not only Palestinian politics, but even politics in the humanitarian sector, see Qarmout and Beland, “The Politics of International Aid”. 65 Currently, the movement is caught up in its internal struggles and has achieved very little coherence between its different branches (Interview, youth activist, Birzeit, 6 July 2011). 66 Interview, coordinator of unarmed resistance for the Northern West Bank, 6 July 2011. 67 Interview, coordinator of unarmed resistance for the Northern West Bank, 6 July 2011. 68 For a more detailed account on those campaigns see Qumsiyeh, Popular Resistance in Palestine. 69 Cheslow. 2010. “Palestinian Nonviolence: Is the Budrus model still viable?”. Christian Science Monitor, December 10. http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/1210/Palestinian-nonviolence-Is-the-Budrus-model-still-viable 70 A coordinator of unarmed resistance in the Ramallah area complained that non-violent resistance was suppressed by the IDF, but also undermined by the PA (interview, 6 July 2011): In contrast to the PA’s rhetoric of supporting unarmed resistance, Palestinian politicians were ‘so concerned about images of stone-throwing kids that they tend to prohibit resistance initiatives’. 71 Interview, coordinator of unarmed resistance for the Northern West Bank, 6 July 2011. 72 The EU has for instance been sponsoring a €3.3 million project to improve sustainable livelihoods of livestock holders in 30 communities in Area C, see: PARC, “List of Ongoing Projects” http://www.parc.ps/ourprojects.html#Strengthening_Livestock_Holders%92_Livelihoods_in_Area_C_(Rawasi) 73 World Bank 2013, "Palestinians Access to Area C Key to Economic Recovery and Sustainable Growth”, 8 October. http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2013/10/07/palestinians-access-area-c-economic-recovery-sustainable-growth 74 Sansour and Tartir, “Palestinian Farmers”. 75 Social conflicts can range from landownership to sexual or verbal harassment, employment issues, family feuds, inheritance matters, tenancy issues etc (interview with employee of a local conflict resolution initiative, 15 March 2012, West Bank). 76 According to the director of one such organization, most conflicts that play out in Palestinian society are a side-effect of the oppressive conditions created by the occupation (interview, 15 March 2012, West Bank). 77 Rogan and Shlaim, The War for Palestine, 2. 78 Hazkani and Gratien,"The Politics of 1948”. 79 Doumani and Gratien, "Writing the History". 80 Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” 81 Daniel, “US Media Coverage”, 62 -72.

28

82 Moughrabi, “American Public Opinion”; Richman, “American Attitudes”. 83 Pickett, “Politics of Resistance”, 457-458. 84 Foucault, “The Thought from Outside”, 38. 85 Foucault, “The Ethics”. 86 Ibid, 463.