12 - Control, Responsibility, and the Israeli-Palestinian Decentralization Debacle

Summary

This chapter examines governance within the framework of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory – the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. It describes how Israeli delegation of authority over service provision, civilian affairs, and the daily running of the territory to the Palestinian Authority created a situation in which 4.5 million Palestinians are controlled by an authority that disavows responsibility for governance and are governed by authorities that lack the control needed to create decent living conditions. While delegation of responsibility to local authorities, in the context of a belligerent military occupation, was perceived by some as part of a transition to national liberation, a central flaw in that process was the willingness to temporarily bend a cardinal principle of international humanitarian law: aligning responsibility with control. The transfer of responsibility from Israel to Palestinian authorities, without ceding the control needed to exercise that responsibility, created a crisis of accountability, in which both the Israeli and Palestinian authorities abdicate responsibility for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. That delegation is also helping to perpetuate the occupation by significantly reducing the cost to Israel of maintaining it.