While the Israeli courts were generally seen as being strong and efficient, most of the residents of Bayt Hajjar would laugh when I asked them about the PNA courts in Ramallah. Very few, if any, had had experience with cases in the Ramallah courts, and those who did would dismiss them as ineffective, weak and corrupt. When they had problems with their Palestinian employers, landlords or neighbours, the villagers would seldom turn to the PNA courts. Instead they would take their claims to one of the different branches of the PNA security forces, or local political factions. This process intensified following the start of the second intifada, as the formal court system became increasingly paralysed and discredited in the eyes of many people in the village. Judges, witnesses and lawyers were often unable to reach the courts due to Israeli checkpoints, cases were extended indefinitely and armed Palestinian groups increasingly imposed their own visions of justice, without reference to the formal court system. In the face of the seeming rise of the fawdat as-silah (chaos of weapons), alternative power structures appeared to be filling the vacuum left by the apparent collapse of the PNA (PHRMG 2004). In this context, several commentators have argued that the history of attempts at Palestinian state building have meant that Palestinian institutions are marked by ‘neo-patrimonialism’ rather than law, where personal relationships take priority over institutional interests (Botiveau 1999; Brynen 1995; Frisch 1997; Robinson 1997).