A number of elements contributes to the absence of a centralized internet governance and coherent strategy for national cyber security across the Palestinian territory. With Israel in full control of network infrastructures, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Hamas administration retain limited sovereign functions with regards to cyberspace. Furthermore, the Palestinian governance of cyber security unavoidably echoes those territorial and political fractures that set apart the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank from Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem as well as from the Hamas administration in Gaza. These divergences are strikingly revealed in their dissimilar ways to engage with Israel: whereas the PA’s approach takes the connotations of a cyber security cooperation, Hamas extensively recurs to its cyber-wings to launch attacks aimed at breaking the Israeli cyber-blockade. As a peculiar case of fragmented governance and limited sovereignty, Palestine provides a unique perspective to situate the concept of cyber sovereignty outside its traditional authoritarian narratives and to reveal its emancipatory potential.

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