ABSTRACT
This chapter deliberates the manner in which paid employees of the Palestinian Authority (PA) contend with its stylized statecraft while well-aware of their own statelessness and the futility of their professional duties. It begins by outlining the manner in which the PA assumed the role of the largest (single) employer in the occupied Palestinian territories and, in doing so, acquired a dominant material presence in the lives of its employees and their dependents. Expectedly then, many of our interviewees, were insistent in the way in which they touted their professional commitments as employees of the PA. Yet, they also revealed a performance of statecraft that was anxiety-ridden as they acknowledged that they were aware that, despite acting as functionaries of a state, they will remain stateless and their stylized performative acts will not lead to the arrival of a Palestinian state.
