Governing Gaza by Feldman Ilana

Author:Feldman, Ilana [Feldman, Ilana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 2008-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

POLITICS OF SERVICE: PROVIDING WATER AND PROTECTING THE LOCAL

The tactical conditions of Gaza’s water services were brought to the surface by conflicts engendered by the 1936 general strike, which was supposed to include a cessation of local government services. This strike highlighted the mutual obligation and dependence of Gazans, the municipality, and the Mandate government, and the problems sometimes engendered therein. Although the transfer of water provision to public responsibility, a transfer which provoked both obligation and entitlement, seems to have been largely complete by this point, tension and conflict over the contours of this responsibility had not ceased, nor would they. Debates in the Gaza City Council over its participation in the strike evidence these tensions. While the municipality had provisionally halted all service provision at the start of the strike, as recorded in the Registers of Council Decisions, the council was divided about whether this was an appropriate course of action. The mayor expressed concern about both the harm to the public and the danger from government that continued participation in these strike activities might cause. He argued that ongoing municipal stoppage of “cleaning, lighting, and water provision for city residents will lead to sickness as a result.” In the mayor’s view, ceding governmental responsibility for these services would create numerous problems.

“There will be a danger,” he suggested, “of residents leaving their cities or of the government—per its authority according to the Municipalities Law-taking over the administration of the municipalities.” 30 The threat was that the central government might be provoked out of its usual oversight approach to municipal management and into an active position as surrogate local authority. For the mayor, this threat was itself sufficient reason to ease the strike. 31 His concern about government interference reflected more than an ordinary interest in local autonomy; it suggested a conviction that this government was incapable, above all during such stressful times, of properly providing for local needs, both practical and political. Municipal autonomy was always extremely limited during the Mandate, but the political conflicts between foreign policy and local demands, heightened during periods of outright rebellion as in 1936–39, made preservation of even that limited autonomy appear highly important.

At the same time, the tension between government and municipality was not the only form of national-local conflict. There was also an inherent conflict between national(ist) political demands and the local needs which the mayor articulated. In the council debates, other members argued on behalf of nationalism that the council had to promote national unity and support the cause and therefore the strike. Ultimately, the mayor’s position prevailed, and the council decided that because “the people of Gaza are dying of thirst and are suffering from illnesses,” 32 the municipality was obliged to resume its provision of basic services. This instance not only showcases an instance of the disassociation that civil servants often used to make sense of their work, but also highlights the work involved in arriving at such compart-mentalization. While the Gaza City Council, and civil servants

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.