Summary
Feldman’s term for services such as food and shelter that were understood to be temporary, brought on by extraordinary need and destined to be removed from the service domain at some future time — even if that time has never yet come (Governing Gaza, PDF p.141 / printed p.124).
Details
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Crisis services lay at the heart of government’s relation with the population and were at the same time an obligation both the Mandate and the Administration were anxious to avoid extending; they were the most ubiquitous site of encounter between civil servants and the public and an obligation to be avoided when possible (PDF p.140-141 / printed p.123-124).
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Because they were defined as exceptional, beyond the “proper” service domain, they produced acute anxieties about extending the domains of governmental obligation; the crises that made them necessary also marked the population as unsettled and a possible threat, so security concerns as much as compassion kept governments involved (PDF p.141 / printed p.124).
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They sat on the cusp of formal government, traversing the boundary between state and society, and their tactical focus on averting threat kept their claims limited, so recipients’ attention stayed on immediate needs — the working of Abeyance in the details of provision (PDF p.141-142 / printed p.124-125).
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Food: Mandate intervention was exceptional and self-consciously temporary, while after 1948 food provision expanded into a rationalised bureaucratic system — the flour distribution bureau processing 600 ration cards before 12 p.m. where it had taken until 3 p.m. for 400 (PDF p.150-152, p.157-158 / printed p.133-135, p.140-141).
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Housing: the Mandate’s Gaza Development Scheme slid from service into regulation, while after 1948 UNRWA camps and the Administration’s land sales to civil servants made a crisis service an instrument of social policy shaping Gaza’s social landscape (PDF p.159-169 / printed p.142-152).
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Chapter 5’s conclusion, completed in part 4, restates the distinction: crisis services were persistent but not permanent, their presumed exceptionality keeping legitimacy in abeyance while their effects on place and people always exceeded their intentions; the two aspects of Egyptian rule nearly all Gazans praise were free university education and the low-cost sale of land to government employees (PDF p.170-171 / printed p.153-154).
Related pages
Governing Gaza, Ethic of care, Tactical government, Abeyance, Gaza