This paper questions whether the repeated failure of the Israelis and Palestinians to reach a final settlement after twenty years of negotiations implicates their commitment to peace or the interim power-sharing formula they committed to? Using news reports and narratives from the height of Oslo’s implementation period, this paper will link the well known refrain of mutual recriminations over violence and the scope of withdrawals to the quid-pro-quo sequencing stipulated by the original 1993 framework agreement. Drawing on established theories of the durable settlement of internal armed conflict, I will show that this cycle of distrust, which became the hallmark of the Oslo proccess, was utterly predictable. Absent third party security guarantees, studies of the termination of internal armed conflict have consistently shown that the only method of getting nervous parties to implement their commitments and make further concessions for peace is by binding them into power-sharing schemes based on the mutual assumption of risk. As this paper will show, Oslo’s power sharing provisions lacked this essential element of simaltaneous, mutual risk. On the contrary, the transitional framework is designed to mitigate the risks associated with Israel’s initial concessions by qualifying troop redeployments on the ability of the Palestinians to assume security control. While this formula is easily explained in terms of Israel’s perception of the risks associated with the interim period and the imbalance of power during the negotiations, the quid-pro-quo sequencing of the concessions failed to reassure either party. Instead, the reliance on partial measures only served to increase mutual skepticism, embolden spoiler factions and bog the process down in endless haggling over whether the conditions of the previous concession had actually been met. Despite this dismal record, the same framework has been recycled in each subsequent initiative from the 2002 “Road Map” to President Obama’s May 2011 Middle East policy speech. The danger in conditioning the realization of a viable Palestine and a secure Israel on another round of interim benchmarks, which have been consistently shown to fail, is that it will cast the entire premise of the two-state solution into irretrievable doubt. This paper will conclude with the recommendation that during the current impasse scholars and policy makers should work to encourage the adoption of a new interim framework which includes either external security guarantees or an exchange of mutual reinforcing reciprocal risks.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) - established in 1994 as a product of a Joint Declaration of Principles (1993) between the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Israel - was intended to be an interim body to govern Palestinians in the occupied territories until the institution of a ‘two-state solution’. However, while the ‘peace process’ stalled the PA continued to operate as de facto government, responsible for Palestinians under occupation but lacking sovereignty. From its inception the PA acted as a ‘Bully Pretorian Republic’ (Henry and Springborg 2010), providing rents and services in exchange for support from its constituents. However, this led to the accumulation of power and wealth by a small group of already influential elites (Hanieh 2011) while at the same time, and in the context of the occupation and of economic de-development (Roy 2006), the general population grew ever more disenfranchised and disenchanted by this arrangement (Bouillon 2004). Hamas' actions as spoiler, combined with increasing Israeli obduracy, added to the PA’s problems and, by 2000, it was unable to maintain control. Al-Aqsa intifada followed (2000-c.2007) and, in the context of extreme violence, the PA’s institutions were exposed as weak. In 2006, Hamas won legislative elections, partly by capitalising on a record of coping better under those conditions (Gordon and Flic 2009). A factional schism followed and the PA’s establishment returned to power in the West Bank with the support of western intelligence agencies (Rose 2008; Black and Milne 2011). Yet despite overturning the democratic will of the population the PA’s imposition of order after al-Aqsa intifada has been interpreted generally as a success. Not only did the PA consolidate its power in the West Bank and restore good relations with Israel and the West, it also appeared to obtain popular legitimacy by cracking down on its political opponents. This paper discusses the impact of events in Nablus, which had endured lawlessness and disorder under an Israeli siege (2001-7) and was then the focus of the PA’s security agenda. It argues that, though the PA’s security agenda initially enjoyed popular consent, it did not demonstrate public endorsement of the PA’s legitimacy. Rather it is more likely that such consent was a product of extreme violence in recent history and the restoration of some basic services. This conclusion has profound implications for the understanding of legitimacy in relation to authoritarian and democratic governance in Palestine.

While the Arab populations of surrounding states erupted in protest, demanding ‘freedom, dignity and social justice,’ Palestinians living in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt), have remained quiescent. This is all the more puzzling as historically, Palestinians have proven that they have a formidable capacity for popular mobilization and resistance. However, resistance is neither produced nor played out in a vacuum. It is the product of a dialectic relationship that sees power producing its own vulnerabilities. In order to explain why grievances can be channelled into forceful and purposeful collective action, it is important to analyse its interaction with the surrounding mechanisms of control and how these create and structure opportunities for resistance. Scrutinising the way authoritarianism functions in the oPt provides a more fruitful line of enquiry into understanding why Palestinians, trapped between direct occupation and an oppressive authority, have failed to play a dramatic part in the Arab Spring. Three factors within this framework – the Israeli occupation, divisive intra-Palestinian politics with its significant dependence on coercive apparatuses of control, and the unaltered core tenets governing the dynamics of geopolitics in the region – will be the foci of analysis. They will be used to illuminate the structural/institutional impediments that have effectively crippled domestic space as a sphere in which alternative discourses could be promulgated and the means for the general population to challenge the dominance of or hold to account the elite group created by the new post-Oslo Palestinian political structures. This does not imply that resistance today in the oPt is defunct. There are many cases of “ordinary Palestinians committed to the cause of their own liberation” (Leech 2012:18) through activism in various civic forms all over the West Bank and in Gaza. This paper seeks to explain why despite this history of defiance, the oPt has not witnessed the same level of mass mobilisation experienced in surrounding states. In large part this failure is attributable to the structural impediments Palestinians now face. Grievances are ubiquitous, but rebellion has become more difficult. This paper seeks to offer a comprehensive explanation of the structural impediments that have undermined the chances of a “Palestinian Spring” among a population whose very identity has been shaped by a history of defiance. The Arab Spring has thus far failed to deliver the circumstances that could undermine these factors.

Since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority two decades ago after signing the Oslo Peace Accords, the nascent Palestinian governing body adopted a neoliberal economic agenda and aimed to transform Palestine into Singapore according to the official narrative. The adoption of the post-Washington Consensus prescriptions was part of the peace package, international aid conditionality and the hegemony paradigm. However, in the post-Arafat era, dramatic changes took place in the Palestinian polity and systems of governance. These transformations have created a new style of governance and state-building in the West Bank that came to be known as Fayyadism. This home-grown even though externally sponsored style of governance has been deeply influenced by donor’s prescriptions and funds and became the magical paradigm (Khalidi and Samour 2011). It is aimed at establishing a Weberian style of monopoly of violence and a neo-liberal economic agenda; as two fundamental pillars for the Palestinian state despite the existence of the Israeli military occupation and the intra-Palestinian fragmentation (Leech 2012). The last five years witnessed an entrancement and an aggressive expansion of the neo-liberal economic agenda with their Palestinian flavour (Bisan 2013), and consequently they were accused of triggering activism in the streets-despite limited-, deepening the crisis of legitimacy, sustaining the de-development process and directly and indirectly entrenching the Israeli military occupation and the colonial condition. This paper aims to analyse the consequences of these policies utilizing primary empirical evidence gathered from different localities in the West Bank. This paper also aims to provide an alternative framework that proposes the resistance and steadfastness economy as an alternative and viable option and strategy for the economy of the ‘state of Palestine’. The contribution of this paper will build on the existing attempts (Al-Shabaka 2012; Abdelnour et at. 2012); however it will differ through employing a political economy theoretical framework and analyse the economic governance in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) through a hybridity lenses and conceptual framework (Boege et al. 2009; Börzel and Risse 2010; IDS 2010; Luckham et al. 2011). The paper, through this hybridity perspective, will illustrate various dynamics and trajectories of economic governance particularly under the Fayyadism era and argues for an alternative development thinking in an attempt to move the debate beyond its current limitations.

This year marks 20 years’ since the signing of the Oslo Peace Accord which was supposed to bring an end to the Israel-Palestine conflict. But the ‘Oslo paradigm’ (of a track one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution) is in crisis, if not completely at an end, despite the fact that donors appear reluctant to accept this. Occupation, colonisation and repression continue, and the political and geographical fragmentation of the Palestinian people is proceeding apace. In this context, and in the absence of a diplomatic solution, alternative visions will take on increased urgency, and these are more important when identified with ‘peace agency’ ‘or ‘agents of peace’ (activists). This paper thus utilises a conceptual framework that emphasises praxis. There have been many studies of ‘civil society activism’ and resistance in Palestine and Israel (Challand, 2009, Hermann, 2009; Payes, 2005; Jad, 2007). However, this paper will focus on groups that critique and reject the dominant ‘Oslo paradigm’ – such as the Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions movement, Stop the Wall, Boycott from Within and Anarchists against the Wall. While these groups describe their discourse and activities as more accurately ‘resistance’, it is still necessary to explore their proposed alternative ontologies of, and routes to, peace. This paper, however, takes as its starting point a critical approach to the concept of ‘peace’ – largely because the concept itself has been denigrated in the Israel-Palestine context. Four main reasons are identified: i) the Oslo paradigm has facilitated a ‘victor’s peace’ (Turner, 2011), ii) the Israeli peace movement failed and has shrunk (Hermann, 2009), iii) Palestinian civil society has been depoliticised and ‘bought off’ (Hanafi and Tabar, 2005), and iv) peace activities funded by western donors have been criticised as promoting reconciliation (‘normalisation’) before a solution to the conflict (Tartir and Wildman, 2012). This paper therefore: i) critically engages with different theories of what constitutes ‘peace’, ‘peace activism/agency’ and ‘resistance’; ii) critically assesses these in the context of Palestine and Israel; and iii) analyses how oppositional ideas form, gain support and are transmitted through praxis.