Both British rule (1917–48) and the Egyptian administration (1949–67) in Gaza were temporary by nature and definition: the British received a mandate to provisionally govern Palestine from the international community; Egypt occupied Gaza in 1948 but never annexed it, deciding, rather, to hold Gaza “for the Palestinians.” Yet, both regimes had to govern, maintain law and order, and take care of the population. The important question discussed in Governing Gaza is how the British and the Egyptian regimes ruled Gaza under difficult conditions and without local legitimacy.
In order to answer this question, Feldman suggests a convincing theoretical framework that distinguishes between legitimacy and authority. Though both regimes lacked the former, they achieved the latter. Their authority was the product not only of coercion but also of mundane, daily work. As Feldman persuasively argues, their authority “derived not so much from legitimacy, authenticity, or even ‘good policy’ but from the form, shape, and habits of its daily practice” (p. 13). In other words, the routine work of the civil service enabled the British and the Egyptians to rule Gaza without legitimacy. On the basis of this insight, Feldman undertook extensive archival and ethnographic research focusing on the daily work of the relevant bureaucracies: the local and central government, the United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA), and local civil institutions.
The link between authority and bureaucratic practice is well illustrated in Feldman's splendid analysis of the production and filing of official documents in the second chapter of the book. Although the files of governmental agencies contain administrative information rather than canonical texts, this is exactly their source of power: “files are authoritative by virtue of their compilation. . .. The accumulation and reiteration of mundane detail in files help produce facticity and potency” (p. 35). Files in the tabu, the land registry offices, for example, are authoritative because they provide the necessary factual basis for daily life to continue. Thus, they provide a connection between consecutive regimes and maintain a sense of continuity for a population that experiences political change.
This is true, to a certain degree, for locally engaged civil servants (who are at the center of the third and fourth chapters) as well. Their employment by the new regime can create a certain sense of stability. However, in the case of Gaza during the period under discussion, civil servants did not serve their own nation–state and therefore developed the concept of serving their society, rather than the government, to feel better about abetting a foreign regime (p. 84). Their regular work in the health, education, or public-work departments made this claim sound reasonable. The demand by the British and Egyptian authorities and the UNRWA that employees avoid any political activity was bypassed by a minority that was eager to participate in political life but was internalized by most civil servants. They considered avoidance of political activity another symbol of their unique, privileged status in Gazan society. As a byproduct, this approach contributed to the preservation of their own authority and the authority of the bureaucracy to which they belonged. The self-image of Gazan civil servants is captured vividly in quotations from interviews conducted by Feldman, which this reader found of great interest. For readers accustomed to current Palestinian national and religious discourses, the foregrounding of this neglected, old-fashioned discourse of social responsibility and personal respectability is invaluable.
An important additional contribution by Feldman to the understanding of the “work of rule” in Gaza is her definition of both British and Egyptian governments as “tactical government” (p. 3). “Tactical government” is characterized by the reluctance of the central government to plan for the future, strategic noninvolvement, limited resources, and a dynamic of abeyance. Although it seems contradictory to the reiterative authority expressed by the bureaucracy's daily work, both features were inherent to the regimes under discussion, not necessarily as a result of a political decision but rather due to the unique circumstances in the Gaza Strip (pp. 221–22).
The combined temporary but reiterative nature of the Egyptian administration is manifested in the relations it developed with the refugees in Gaza after 1948. The Egyptians took the responsibility of providing Gazans with more services than Cairo had wished. However, even when food distribution became highly organized, it was still considered a tactical, provisional service, if only because the refugees believed that “a strategic response demanded reversal of dispossession” (p. 138).
Feldman highlights the significance of everyday service (discussed in Chapter 6) in “shaping the relation between Gazans and government and between the population and place” (p. 173) and its role in producing the authority of the administration; Gazans knew to whom to apply for the services they needed, and hence the relationship between governed and government was created and maintained. Yet, this has very little to do with legitimacy.
By analyzing these mundane practices (in areas such as educational and religious affairs, which are discussed in Chapter 7), Feldman eloquently establishes her fundamental point that governing techniques “could not be distinctly seen simply in ideology, prescriptive discourse, or policy. An understanding of their operations has to be teased out of the daily work of governing” (p. 223). Though this important book deals with the Gaza Strip, an overpopulated area that has been on the verge of a humanitarian crisis for years and has experienced both fierce occupation and internal struggle, its insights are relevant to anyone who studies governance.
