Effective? Locally owned? Beyond the technocratic perspective on the European Union Police Mission for the Palestinian Territories

ABSTRACT

The European Union Police Mission for the Palestinian Territories (EUPOL COPPS) was established in 2006 to contribute to the establishment of effective policing in support of an independent and democratic Palestinian state. EUPOL COPPS is often commended for its contribution to the professionalization of the Palestinian security sector under local ownership. Drawing on 40 interviews, we argue that the mission can be considered effective and locally owned only from a narrow technocratic perspective, which denies the political reality of continued occupation and absence of democracy. A broader analysis, which includes the voices of ordinary Palestinians, reveals that EUPOL COPPS contributed to the professionalization of authoritarian policing under continued Israeli occupation. Our findings show the limits of technocratic approaches to peacebuilding interventions and call for a stronger engagement with the ultimate beneficiaries of peacebuilding missions.

KEYWORDS:

• Ownership
• effectiveness
• security sector reform
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• European Union
• Palestinian Authority

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the anonymous peer reviewers, Ana E. Juncos Garcia, Hylke Dijkstra, and the participants at the Belgrade Security Forum (2017), for useful comments made on an earlier draft. Very special thanks go to all interviewees; without them it would not have been possible to write this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Alaa Tartir is a research associate at the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP), The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID), Geneva, Switzerland, and the program director of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. Tartir served as 2016–2017 post-doctoral fellow at The Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP), and a researcher in international development studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) between 2010 and 2015, where he earned his PhD. Follow Alaa Tartir on Twitter @alaatartir and read his publications at http://www.alaatartir.com

Filip Ejdus is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Belgrade. While working on this article, Filip Ejdus was a Marie Curie Fellow at the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies, University of Bristol. His main research interest is the governance of (in)security during crises and beyond borders. Follow Filip Ejdus on Twitter @filipejdus and read his publications at http://www.filipejdus.com

ORCID

Alaa Tartir http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3383-0356

Filip Ejdus http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7443-1661

Notes

1. For a comprehensive contextual, chronological, and thematical analysis of the evolution of phases and trajectories since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, including the second Intifada, see Tartir and Challand (2016).

2. All interviews were anonymized and coded with a number to protect the identity of the interviewees.

3. At this stage, the United States in turn created the United States Security Coordinator (USSC). From that moment onward, the EU and the United States became the key donors of the Palestinian SSR. While the EU has been focusing on the civilian part of the security sector, most importantly PCP, and justice system, the United States (with a substantially bigger budget) has been supporting the military part of the Palestinian security sector such as the Palestinian National Security Forces and the Presidential Guard.

4. As Müller and Zahda (2018) show in their contribution to this special issue, there is a growing sense also among some PA officials and activists of Ramallah-based civil society organizations, that the EU-sponsored SSR in the West Bank have failed to address the political challenges.

Additional information

Funding

This work was partly supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie [grant agreement no. 656971]. It was also partly supported by the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP) under the Global Fellowship Initiative. The content reflects only the authors’ views, and the European Commission and GCSP are not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.