International and Local Visions of the Justice and Security Sector in the West Bank

Abstract

Considerable efforts by leading experts and funds from around the world are put into restructuring the West Bank justice and security sector (JSS). This is an effort done in a highly contested environment, with an ongoing Israeli occupation and weak local trust in the Palestine Authority (PA). This article analyzes the understandings by local Palestinian non-government organizations and international bodies aiding in building the JSS of what a legitimate development of the JSS is and should be, and whose voices become dominant in the discussions and implementations of it. The argument made is that Western legal knowledge, with its focus on security and technocratic solutions, have been dominant at the expense of core political solutions in regard to the Israeli occupation and the workings of the PA, and that it has downplayed the local context, local voices and their understandings of a legitimate JSS.