Report No.277:Policy Challenges to Democratization in the Occupied Palestinian Territory

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This paper contends that the future of Palestinian governance requires more than technocratic fixes. Palestine is increasingly besieged, externally by the genocidal campaign in Gaza and the enduring Israeli colonial control over the Occupied Palestinian Territory (oPt), and internally by authoritarian fragmentation within the Palestinian political system. The current configuration of governance operates through elite consensus, donor patronage, and institutional paralysis. This paper calls for the articulation of a new social contract and concludes with recommendations for the construction of new institutions that embody popular sovereignty under conditions of ongoing colonial fragmentation.