Monopolization of Violence in the Palestinian Struggle

Palestinians currently find themselves involved in two conflicts: an external one with the state of Israel, and an internal one with the leadership of the Palestinian national movement itself. In this essay, we argue that violence is overly monopolized in both conflicts. Firstly, Israel can safely ignore the peace process and renege on political concessions as long as Palestinians lack a credible militant threat. This threat, in turn, has been neutralized in large part by the Palestinian Authority (PA) itself, which has offered Israel increasingly effective security cooperation over the past decade. We argue that the PA’s decision to deepen security cooperation with Israel – in spite of its unpopularity among Palestinians – results from its own territorial monopolies on violence, which render it unaccountable to its constituents. Only by reintroducing a credible, latent threat of political-militant competitors to the PA will Palestinians be able to regain bargaining leverage over their own leadership, restore conditionality to their security cooperation with Israel, and put the peace process back on course.