Governing Gaza: Bureaucracy, Authority, and the Work of Rule, 1917–1969 (review)

Anyone who has navigated the channels of bureaucratic life in the Middle East will appreciate the degree to which Ilana Feld-man has deepened our understanding of this complex institutional structure and its processes. Feldman’s book is an intellectually rich tapestry of seemingly disparate themes woven together to produce a sublime work. It reaches beyond the confines of Gaza’s physical space to capture a range of political, economic, and cultural expressions of the time period under investigation alongside more recent events. While her research seemingly examines the perennial questions — “how is governing authority produced and reproduced? How does government persist, particularly under conditions that seem untenable? And what does government do?” (p. 12) — the significance of this work is both the entity under study (Gaza) and the time period under investigation. Feldman provides answers to these questions by examining civil service in Gaza during the period of the British Mandate (1917–1948) and the Egyptian administration (1948–1967), which also had to function alongside the United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA).

In preparing the book, Feldman conducted both ethnographic and archival research. Her archival research spanned several years, taking her to Cairo, Jerusalem, London, the United States, and Palestine. As an ethnographer, she spent considerable time interviewing retired civil servants in settings ranging from government offices to refugee camps. Feldman’s work also reminds us of the importance of oral histories as an invaluable source of data in reconstructing the past.

Feldman takes us from the bureaucratic ordinary by adding depth to the minutiae of bureaucratic life amidst change. To accomplish this task, the author formulates the concept of “tactical government” as a coping mechanism to solve the “contradictory impulses” of governing Gaza under the British Mandate and Egyptian administration (p. 149). In the first part of the book, the author tackles questions of ethical behavior, hiring practices, and promotion, pensions, education, and housing. She also addresses the configuration of the physical space for providing a government service alongside the measures by which civil servants were punished for “incompetence or willful disobedience” (p. 112). In the second half of the book, Feldman explores the tactical side of government through both its provision of services in crisis and the provisions of servicing everyday life. In services in crisis, Feldman examines issues, such as shelter and food distribution, which were exacerbated by the influx of Palestinians into Gaza who became refugees as a result of the Nakba. She also analyzes how tactical government under the Egyptian administration not only had to cope with the sudden arrival of Palestinian refugees in need of services but also the native Gazan population, many of whom were equally in need.

On the matter of servicing everyday life, Feldman examines the issue of water provision and how the transformation of this commodity from a private good to a public good altered the dynamics between governed and government, which in turn altered the society’s relationship to this resource.

Feldman’s conclusion is powerful not just for her exploration of Gaza during these two important periods in its history, but for her keen insights about current conditions in the region relative to bureaucracy. Drawing on Max Weber, she adroitly reminds us of his dictum on the “importance of keeping bureaucracies intact after changes of regime”— something that was lost on the United States following its invasion and occupation in Iraq, but not to the Israelis in the early days of their occupation of Gaza (p. 226). Lastly, this book contributes to our understanding of Gaza from an under-explored level of analysis, and is also significant because it furthers our understanding of what it means to be a Palestinian from Gaza.