Mayors in the Middle: Indirect Rule and Local Government in Occupied Palestine

Winner, 2025 Best First Book Award, Middle East and North Africa Section, American Political Science Association

What does local self-government look like in the absence of sovereignty? From the beginning of its occupation of the West Bank in 1967, Israel has experimented with different forms of rule. Since the 1990s, it has delegated certain governing responsibilities to the Palestinian Authority (PA), an organization that, Israel hoped, would act as a buffer between the military occupation...