Anthropologist Ilana Feldman's Police Encounters: Security and Surveillance in Gaza under Egyptian Rule examines Egypt's brief yet critical administration of Gaza between 1948 and 1967. In this thoughtful book, Feldman analyzes how the uncertainty produced by Egypt's policing and surveillance over Gaza shaped notions of community and politics. Her inquiry centers around the question of whether tactics of surveillance, informing, and other security processes paradoxically created opportunities for agential action on the part of those subject to Egyptian authorities. This accessible and interdisciplinary work draws from both archival sources and interviews with key interlocutors, former policemen, and Palestinians who remember this period to show how the uncertainty produced by the Egyptian security apparatus was not only, or not merely, repressive. Further, the book addresses the historical development of policing in Gaza, the British mandate period preceding it, and the role of early international peacekeeping. Police Encounters provides a necessary historical narrative for often presentist approaches to security studies in the Middle East, and orients the reader toward the region's internal relations rather than its place in the foreign relations of other countries.
In the introduction, Feldman draws from Michel Foucault's theories of “security” as a practice of government that allows certain things to happen in order to mitigate what are perceived as greater risks (13). Feldman thus shows that the Egyptian security regime was part of the way that Gazans were sometimes able to challenge Egyptian policies and to “shape the behavior of others in their community” (19). Efforts to challenge the system were part of how the security regime endured. And yet, without understating or minimizing the impacts of repressive policing practices, each chapter describes circumstances in which Gazans had some agency to make various interventions within the Egyptian security regime.
Chapter 1 outlines how the production and circulation of both support and suspicion served to distinguish the categories of the Palestinian “population,” define the nature of a “secure” Gaza, and delineate the relationship between Gazans and Egyptian authority. Palestinians were encouraged to participate in the security apparatus in various ways, from the recruitment of local professional police (many of whom had served in British Mandate Palestine) to ordinary people complaining to police about others in their community. The latter became a theme of “participation” throughout the history of Egypt's administration of Gaza.
In Chapter 2, Feldman demonstrates how ordinary peoples’ participation in surveillance, by informing on others or revealing information during interrogations, had a multiplicity of motivations and outcomes. Choosing to come forward after finding a political leaflet, for example, could be a way for that person to distance themselves from affiliation with other “security problems” (63), and therefore safeguard their own reputation and relationship with the police. But surveillance also made Egyptian authorities more aware of public sentiment and raised its prominence as a platform for the public to challenge or shape Egyptian administrative policies in Gaza. While public sentiments were not always articulated directly as demands, they did function as a mode to challenge Egyptian authorities through the perhaps unlikely conduit of surveillance.
Chapter 3 focuses on how Egyptian authorities selectively addressed “ordinary” crimes, how and when they decided to go after these infractions, and the extent to which Gazans participated in the process. Feldman connected the behavior of Egyptian authorities with their own self-perceived “responsibility” over Gaza, as articulated in a report by an Egyptian governor-general to authorities in Egypt. In one case, the governor-general argued to excuse five Gazans from punishment for smuggling currency above the legal limit because the dire necessity of their families proved that there was no “criminal intent” and warranted their release (79-80). Feldman also shows how the Egyptian administration of the border demonstrates an “entangled security relation” (153) with Palestinians in Gaza and created notions of jurisdiction and “deep entrenchment” (81) between administration and citizen.
Chapters 4 and 5 focus on the Egyptian attempt to manage Palestinian formal demands, including political demonstrations and the demands for military action, culminating in the brief four-month Israeli occupation of Gaza in 1956 and the creation of the UNEF (UN Emergency Force). While Chapter 4 articulates the limits of policing to control outcomes, Chapter 5 describes the challenges of a new and novel set of actors, international peacekeepers, who were also participating in the “security society” of Gaza at the time (120). While the international community was always a third actor in the relationship between Egypt and Gaza, UNEF represented its materialization on the ground, as “an actor and an audience” (143). Feldman's discussions about Gazan encounters with the emergence of UNEF are a critical historical connection to the development of international peacekeeping.
In conclusion, Feldman's book is an insightful history of the ways in which Palestinians and Gazans in particular “were identified as, at once, security threats and vulnerable subjects who needed protection” (144). Police Encounters is an invaluable contribution to studies of security regimes and the role of surveillance, particularly the unexpected outcomes of state tactics. Feldman's account opens the possibility for other scholars to continue to tackle uncertainty in totalitarian or authoritarian regimes. The book is highly recommended for both area specialists and generalists interested in surveillance, policing and security.
