Policing divided cities: stabilization and law enforcement in Palestinian East Jerusalem

In: International affairs, Band 89, Heft 5, S. 1247-1264

Abstract

The study of conflict in cities has emerged as a significant subfield in a number of disciplines. For policy-makers and analysts concerned with humanitarian interventions in cities emerging from conflict, the city as a form of human organization and its impact upon the establishment of security is of particular importance. Less academic attention has been given to divided cities where the legitimacy of the state authority controlling the city is, itself, in question and where stabilization and the establishment of security is protracted. The adoption of integrative and inclusive approaches to policing becomes a key component in security regimes in divided cities. In these cases, however, to what extent should the stabilization phase be recast? Is the law enforcement phase subsumed and over-ridden by national security concerns? This article examines these questions by suggesting a number of security models which have been used in a range of divided cities. It focuses in more detail on a study of Israeli policing in the Palestinian areas of East Jerusalem occupied by Israel after 1967 to draw some broader conclusions about the nature of the security regime in Jerusalem and other divided cities inside contested states. (International Affairs (Oxford) / SWP)