Palestine 1: Whose Cyber Security without Cyber Sovereignty?

Different elements contribute to the absence of a centralized governance and coherent strategy for national cybersecurity across the Palestinian territory. The Palestinian governance of cybersecurity unavoidably echoes those territorial and political fractures that set apart the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank from the Hamas-led government in Gaza. Different in their approaches vis-a-vis Israel, the PA and Hamas implement internet policies that analogously violate digital rights for their citizenries. In the West Bank, Oslo’s governance fragmentation and Israeli occupation – with their complex regimes of access/mobility and regime of permits – are mirrored in PA’s reduced sovereignty on its fragmented cyberspace. The Palestinian case evokes the importance of including network endpoints into the compass of a long-sighted national strategy. As nodes where sovereignty modulates dynamically, their safeguard and liberties, in the form of digital rights, become questions of security.