This talk tackles the consequences of the PA’s security campaigns in both camps from the people’s perspective through a bottom-up ethnographic methodological approach based on sixty in-depth interviews. This talk will conclude by arguing that conducting security reform within a context of colonial occupation and without addressing the imbalances of power can only ever have two outcomes: ‘better’ collaboration with the occupying power, and a violation of the security and (national) rights of the Palestinian people by their own government and (national) security forces.

A talk at the Graduate Institute’s Department of Anthropology and Sociology of Development, ANSO Colloquium Series, Spring Semester, Geneva, 8 March 2016.