Indigenous Local Governments for Palestine: A Roadmap for Replacing Imposed Institutions to Build Stability and Confidence

Abstract

Occupying empires and states and expatriates have imposed structures of local government in the West Bank and Gaza. As a result, Palestinians have little confidence in the existing units of local government. That lack of confidence inhibits the development of a civil society. Proposed reforms must understand the history and actions that minimized opportunities for participation and the professionalism of bureaucracies that could produce and deliver the public services needed to sustain economic and social development. Establishing a stable civil state will require bureaucratic reforms anchored in theory and an understanding of the unique past that has left more than four million residents of Palestine without the public services needed for economic and social development. All parties to a resolution of the conflicts between Israel and Palestine and between Palestinians must help build new local structures of local government; the recommended steps presented here are grounded in theroy and histroy and also based on empirical research.

Keywords:

• governance
• local governments
• social stability
• indigenous rule

Notes

¹The name Istanbul has been in common usage for the city since the conquest by the Turks in 1453. Western sources used the name Constantinople through the end of the 19^th century even though the Ottoman Empire used the name Istanbul for the seat of their empire from the later part of the 15^th century.

²The “walls of the Old City” were built in the 15^th and 16^th centuries. Jerusalem's expansion at that time extended the boundaries of the city past previous sets of walls and placed areas that in centuries past were outside the city's gate within the new “old” walls. The ancient city of Jerusalem, referred to as the “City of David,” lies a considerable distance beyond and below the current old walls of the city of Jerusalem.