This chapter examines governance within the framework of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory – the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. It describes how Israeli delegation of authority over service provision, civilian affairs, and the daily running of the territory to the Palestinian Authority created a situation in which 4.5 million Palestinians are controlled by an authority that disavows responsibility for governance and are governed by authorities that lack the control needed to create decent living conditions. While delegation of responsibility to local authorities, in the context of a belligerent military occupation, was perceived by some as part of a transition to national liberation, a central flaw in that process was the willingness to temporarily bend a cardinal principle of international humanitarian law: aligning responsibility with control. The transfer of responsibility from Israel to Palestinian authorities, without ceding the control needed to exercise that responsibility, created a crisis of accountability, in which both the Israeli and Palestinian authorities abdicate responsibility for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. That delegation is also helping to perpetuate the occupation by significantly reducing the cost to Israel of maintaining it.

In the 1990s, a cultural movement of Israeli Jews began questioning the basic truisms of Zionism and revisited Israel’s history. The narrative they spun was very close to the Palestinian one. But the shift of the Israeli society to the right and the outbreak of the second Intifada have marginalized this critical impulse.

Demographic changes inside the Jewish society produced a new political force in Israel, defeating any chance of a liberal Zionist approach towards the Palestine Question. The last liberal Zionist bid was the Oslo Accord that dismally failed. The occupation after Oslo became much harsher as were the discriminatory policies towards the Palestinian minority inside Israel.

The Oslo Accords were signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) granting the Palestinians elements of self-government for an interim period leading to negotiations on the final status of the West bank and Gaza. The Accords have been subject to intense criticism. However, for the first time the Arab Palestinians had their own, freely elected, administration, albeit subject to restrictions. The word autonomy, implying that the area is part of an existing State, was used in the 1978 Camp David Accords but was omitted from the Oslo Accords. Jerusalem and Israel settlements were excluded from the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority but it was agreed that their status would be part of the negotiations on the final status of the West Bank. The Accords had very broad international support and, although there are mutual claims that the Accords have been violated, neither part has formally abrogated them.