Damming the Palestinian Spring: Security Sector Reform and Entrenched Repression

As a wave of protests swept through the Arab world in 2010–11—toppling regimes that had long seemed invulnerable to popular mobilization—the relative stability of the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) largely escaped international attention. In a marked break with the unrest and massive, sustained popular mobilizations of the past, no significant opposition surfaced to challenge the status quo in the oPt even though dissatisfaction with the status quo runs high in the territories. To explain this marked break with very recent history, it is necessary to examine how the Oslo process has produced an internationally backed authoritarian regime in the West Bank. This article uses the dynamics of Security Sector Reform (SSR) in the oPt to explore the conceptual and theoretical parameters of SSR and how programmes of international development and security assistance function to perpetuate rather than weaken authoritarian retrenchment in recipient states. It examines how SSR in the oPt created a socio-political paradox on the ground that diverges substantially from conventional understandings of security and statehood, producing a conflicted authoritarian system of governance in the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority and entrenching rather than challenging or tempering the paradigm of Israeli occupation.