Police Encounters: Security and Surveillance in Gaza Under Egyptian Rule (Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures) - Softcover

Feldman, Ilana

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804795347 ISBN 13: 9780804795340

Verlag: STANFORD UNIV PR, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

Egypt came to govern Gaza as a result of a war, a failed effort to maintain Arab Palestine. Throughout the twenty years of its administration (1948-1967), Egyptian policing of Gaza concerned itself not only with crime and politics, but also with control of social and moral order. Through surveillance, interrogation, and a network of local informants, the police extended their reach across the public domain and into private life, seeing Palestinians as both security threats and vulnerable subjects who needed protection. Security practices produced suspicion and safety simultaneously.

Police Encounters explores the paradox of Egyptian rule. Drawing on a rich and detailed archive of daily police records, the book describes an extensive security apparatus guided by intersecting concerns about national interest, social propriety, and everyday illegality. In pursuit of security, Egyptian policing established a relatively safe society, but also one that blocked independent political activity. The repressive aspects of the security society that developed in Gaza under Egyptian rule are beyond dispute. But repression does not tell the entire story about its impact on Gaza. Policing also provided opportunities for people to make claims of government, influence their neighbors, and protect their families.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Ilana Feldman is Associate Professor of Anthropology, History, and International Affairs at The George Washington University. She is the author of Governing Gaza: Bureaucracy, Authority, and the Work of Rule, 1917–1967 (2008).

Ilana Feldman is Associate Professor of Anthropology, History, and International Affairs at The George Washington University. She is the author of Governing Gaza: Bureaucracy, Authority, and the Work of Rule, 1917–1967 (2008).

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Police Encounters

Security and Surveillance in Gaza under Egyptian Rule

By Ilana Feldman

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2015 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8047-9534-0

Contents

List of Illustrations, 
Note on Transliteration, 
Acknowledgments, 
Introduction: Security Society in Gaza, 
1. Cultivating Suspicion and Participation, 
2. Uses of Surveillance and Informing, 
3. Reputation, Investigation, and Criminal Interdiction, 
4. Managing Protest and Public Life, 
5. Peacekeeping and International Community, 
Conclusion: The Policing Imperative, 
Notes, 
Bibliography, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Cultivating Suspicion and Participation

NOT LONG AFTER EGYPTIAN AUTHORITIES acquired formal control of Gaza, Egyptian military and administrative officers met in Khan Yunis with a group of mukhtars (village leaders). The purpose of this meeting, held in October 1949, was to enlist the cooperation of the mukhtars in controlling the population, particularly in keeping people from crossing the armistice line that marked the boundary between the new Gaza Strip and the new State of Israel. In his opening statement, Egyptian army officer Abdullah Sharqawi laid out the situation as a simple quid pro quo: "The Egyptian army," he said,

came to Palestine specifically to help the people of Palestine and to defend against their enemies. In this effort it sacrificed money and men, and it is still ready to sacrifice whatever is asked of it. This is from our side, but from your side we ask that you help us to fulfill our mission with honor and security. The Egyptian army intends to respect that to which it has agreed, in regards armistice conditions.

The armistice agreement between Egypt and Israel was signed on February 24, 1949. It brought an end to active hostilities, defined the provisional boundaries of the Gaza Strip, and identified Egypt as the responsible authority in that territory. According to the agreement, Palestinians were supposed to remain at a distance from the armistice line: the territory abutting the border was defined as a no-man's-land. But, suggesting that the Egyptian army was willing to be flexible and to take risks on behalf of the Palestinian people, if it received their full cooperation, Sharqawi indicated the following: "If we violate the letter of this condition and allow people to cross [into the no-man's-land] to the armistice line itself, in order to help them earn a livelihood, then we expect from the people that they will appreciate this sympathy from us and will not cross the armistice line under any circumstances. And the line is known to you also."

This meeting was an early instance in the process of establishing the expansive and wide police presence that the Egyptian Administration deemed necessary in Gaza. This broad presence required the cultivation of significant public participation in policing. It also required, and equally was required by, a condition of suspicion. That is, police needed to be everywhere because they viewed everybody with suspicion, and their ability to engage the public sufficiently in order to make it possible for them to be everywhere depended on ensuring that this suspicion was widely shared. The work of cultivating both participation and suspicion involved coercion and consent, the threat of force and the promise of support. These efforts to establish the conditions for policing not only show the complexity of police power and the population's response to it; they illuminate the multiplicity of attributes ascribed to both police and public. The people were identified as at once a source of threat and an object of protection. The police appeared as both part of the local community and apart from it. Trust among all these parties was tenuous, but mutual reliance was nonetheless necessary.

The demand for significant public participation in policing work was one prong of the Egyptian security strategy. The consolidation of a professional police force was another. Building up the force and its structure took time, and the first personnel were often people who had served in the Palestine Police during the British Mandate. They brought their training and prior experience to the job. Like police everywhere, they regularly confronted questions about their proper relationship with the public. Learning to create a degree of professional distance, even as one works to cultivate trust, is a central part of most police training. The experience of the Mandate had confirmed that these questions were particularly acute, and sometimes unsolvable, in circumstances of conflict where the police were also party to the struggle. During the Egyptian Administration "conflict" lay across the new border, but there were numerous tensions within Gaza that sometimes presented themselves as clashes of loyalty for police personnel.

The Gaza Strip was a brand-new space, in a difficult condition and with an unknown future. Its boundaries were a product of war. Its population was the result of the massive displacement of Palestinians. The approximately 250,000 refugees nearly overwhelmed the 80,000 natives of the area. Refugees lived everywhere: about half of the displaced in the eight refugee camps established throughout the Strip and the remainder in its towns and villages. Whether the refugees would ever be able to return home or whether the dispossessed natives would ever gain access to their property was unknown (and seemed increasingly unlikely as time went on). Quaker aid workers who arrived in Gaza in the midst of the emerging refugee crisis recorded the suffering and the demands of the displaced. In a typical statement, a refugee from Lydda insisted: "I want to return to my lands, my house and my friends.... This is a very bad life. All we ask is to be home and safe." The Quakers also described the ways refugee needs could create security challenges in the camps. Refugees were sometimes injured in the crush of people around ration distribution; agitated crowds demanding improvements in their conditions sometimes surrounded aid workers. The desire of refugees to return home, and their need for the food and goods they had left behind, led many to undertake the very dangerous journey across the armistice line. These facts were fundamental in shaping police practice and police relations. Such crossings in violation of the armistice agreement no doubt prompted the Khan Yunis meeting.

Refugees were the new majority in Gaza, but the area's native population also suffered the losses of 1948. The vast majority were dispossessed of property, which lay in territory thereafter occupied by Israel. Their homes, towns, and remaining agricultural land were crowded with displaced people from other parts of Palestine. They found themselves in the position of at the same time offering hospitality and assistance to refugees—people who were sometimes their relatives and friends with claims of kin and community—and being in need themselves. In his memoirs, Abu Iyad (one of the founders of Fatah) describes a common scenario. His family came to Gaza from Jaffa and took shelter with an uncle "of humble circumstances" where his family of seven crammed into a small room. Both hoping to return and lacking funds to move elsewhere, they stayed this way for two years, "until my uncle told my father that he was unfortunately unable to keep us any longer." Stories I heard from people in Gaza about the early days after the nakba make clear that even as hospitality was...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: STANFORD UNIV PR
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0804795347
• ISBN 13: 9780804795340
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 224
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Mare Nostrum Group B.V.; gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk; ; Doelen 72; Breda; 4831 GR; Niederlande