The United States and Israel’s “Transformative Occupation”: Settlements, Autonomy, and the Lingering Question of Sovereignty

Drawing on the conceptual history of “transformative occupation” in the modern Middle East, my paper looks at the contestation between the United States and Israel over the fate of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the post-1967 era. The status of these territories, subject to prolonged negotiations before and after the 1978 Camp David Accords, was linked to the physical encroachment of Israeli settlements on the ground and the political rights of the Palestinian inhabitants who lived there. I look at how shifting US views of settlement legality both inhibited and enabled the expansion of the Begin government (1977-1983), and how the preferring of local autonomy for Palestinians—either as a preparatory phase of self-determination or a solution to the Palestinian question in non-national terms—circumscribed the possibility of meaningful sovereignty by dislocating territory from population.

Rather than focusing on origin points of the conflict or the maligned “peace process,” my paper suggests that the substantive discussions between Israeli and American officials in the late 1970s and early 1980s was constitutive in producing the contemporary condition of Palestinian statelessness. The enduring effects of intervention across time and space, from the mandate era to the present day, situates the United States—and its unique relationship with Israel—in a much longer history of external powers mediating local forms of sovereignty through a range of diplomatic and military practices.