JPS “Hidden Gems” and “Greatest Hits”: The Political Economy of Palestine and the Palestinians

Abstract

Examining the Journal’s fifty-year trajectory documenting the political economy of Palestine and of the Palestinians (not one and the same), author Leila Farsakh highlights contributions by a rich mix of economists, anthropologists, and other scholars: from Yusif and Rosemary Sayigh, Sara Roy, George Abed, Raja Khalidi, and Linda Tabar to Darryl Li, Judith Gabriel, Nicholas Pelham, Sobhi Samour, Omar Jabari Salamanca, and Helga Tawil-Souri (to name only some). Taken together, Farsakh argues, their writings expose “the diversity of Palestinian economic realities,” and highlight the continuing relevance of the settler-colonial paradigm as “the most useful analytic for understanding the Palestinian economic predicament.” Far from being a neutral technocratic process, economic development is “embedded in power structures that need to be dissected and understood at both macro and micro levels.”

Keywords:

• Economic development
• settler colonialism
• occupation
• pauperization
• Palestinian economy
• de-development

Notes

1 World Bank, “Palestinian Economy Struggles as Coronavirus Inflicts Losses,” press release, 1 June 2020, https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2020/06/01/palestinian-economy-struggles-as-coronavirus-inflicts-losses.

2 “Peace to Prosperity,” the economic tranche of the “peace plan,” was unveiled in June 2019. In January

2020, U.S. president Donald Trump announced the political plan, comprised of a Swiss cheese arrangement of Palestinian areas, with Benjamin Netanyahu at his side. At the same press conference, the Israeli prime minister announced that Israel would be annexing the Jordan Valley and all the (illegal) settlements of the West Bank.

3 In 2012, the State of Palestine was admitted to the United Nations as a non-member observer state and recognized by 138 states.

4 World Bank, “Palestinian Economy Struggles.”

5 Yusif A. Sayigh, “The Palestinian Economy under Occupation: Dependency and Pauperization,” JPS 15, no. 4 (Summer 1986): pp. 46–67, https://doi.org/10.2307/2536611.

6 Rosemary Sayigh, “The Struggle for Survival: The Economic Conditions of Palestinian Camp Residents in Lebanon,” JPS 7, no. 2 (Winter 1978): pp. 101–19, https://doi.org/10.2307/2536441; Elia T. Zureik, “Transformation of Class Structure among the Arabs in Israel: From Peasantry to Proletariat,” JPS 6, no. 1 (Autumn 1976): pp. 39–66, https://doi.org/10.2307/2535718; Salim Tamari, “Building Other People’s Homes: The Palestinian Peasant’s Household and Work in Israel,” JPS 11, no. 1 (Autumn 1981): pp. 31–66, https://doi.org/10.2307/2536046.

7 Yusif A. Sayigh, “The Palestinian Economy under Occupation,” p. 53.

8 Patrick Wolfe’s famed phrase. See Patrick Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 4 (2006): pp. 387–409, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623520601056240.

9 Sara Roy, “The Gaza Strip: A Case of Economic De-Development,” JPS 17, no. 1 (Autumn 1987), pp. 56–88, https://doi.org/10.2307/2536651.

10 Sara Roy, “De-development Revisited: Palestinian Economy and Society since Oslo,” JPS 28, no. 3 (Spring 1999): pp. 64–82, https://doi.org/10.2307/2538308.

11 Darryl Li, “The Gaza Strip as Laboratory: Notes in the Wake of Disengagement,” JPS 35, no. 2 (Winter 2006): pp. 38–55, https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.2006.35.2.38.

12 Judith Gabriel, “The Economic Side of the Intifadah,” JPS 18, no. 1 (Autumn 1988): pp. 198–213, https://doi.org/10.2307/2537606.

13 Nicolas Pelham, “Gaza’s Tunnel Phenomenon: The Unintended Dynamics of Israel’s Siege,” JPS 41, no. 4 (Summer 2012), pp. 6–31, https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.2012.XLI.4.6.

14 James Verini, “Gaza’s Tunnels, Now Used to Attack Israel, Began as Economic Lifelines,” National Geographic, 21 July 2014, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/7/140721-gaza-strip-tunnels-israel-hamas-palestinians/.

15 George T. Abed, “The Economic Viability of a Palestinian State,” JPS 19, no. 2 (Winter 1990): pp. 3–28, https://doi.org/10.2307/2537410; “‘A Palestinian State in Two Years’: Interview with Salam Fayyad, Palestinian Prime Minister,” JPS 39, no. 1 (Autumn 2009): pp. 58–74, https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.2010.XXXIX.1.58.

16 For an excellent critique of the Paris Protocol, see Sharif S. Elmusa and Mahmud El-Jaafari, “Power and Trade: The Israeli-Palestinian Economic Protocol,” JPS 24, no. 2 (Winter 1995): pp. 14–32, https://doi.org/10.2307/2537730.

17 Raja Khalidi and Sobhi Samour, “Neoliberalism as Liberation: The Statehood Program and the Remaking of the Palestinian National Movement,” JPS 40, no. 2 (Winter 2011): pp. 6–25, https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.2011.XL.2.6.

18 Khalidi and Samour, “Neoliberalism as Liberation,” pp. 15–16 (italics in the original).

19 See Adam Hanieh “Development as Struggle: Confronting the Reality of Power in Palestine,” JPS 45, no. 4 (Summer 2016): pp. 32–47, https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.2016.45.4.32; and Leila Farsakh, “Undermining Democracy in Palestine: The Politics of International Aid since Oslo,” JPS 45, no. 4 (Summer 2016): pp. 48–63, https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.2016.45.4.48.

20 Linda Tabar, “Disrupting Development, Reclaiming Solidarity: The Anti-politics of Humanitarianism,” JPS 45, no. 4 (Summer 2016): pp. 16–31, https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.2016.45.4.16.

21 Omar Jabary Salamanca, “Assembling the Fabric of Life: When Settler Colonialism Becomes Development,” JPS 45, no. 4 (Summer 2016): pp. 64–80, https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.2016.45.4.64.

22 World Bank, “The Palestinian Economy Struggles as Coronavirus Inflicts Losses.”

23 Helga Tawil-Souri, “Digital Occupation: Gaza’s High-Tech Enclosure,” JPS 41, no. 2 (Winter 2012): pp. 27–43, https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.2012.XLI.2.27.

24 To understand the paradigm’s genealogy, its obfuscation during the Oslo years, and its revival after 2008, see Leila Farsakh, “Palestinian Economic Development: Paradigm Shift since the First Intifada,” JPS 45, no. 2 (Winter 2016): pp. 55–71, https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.2016.45.2.55. The article traces the paradigm shifts between the two most commonly used theoretical frameworks—neoliberalism and colonialism—to explain the determinants of Palestinian economic growth; it also demonstrates the limitations of nationalist discourse in articulating the means for economic and political liberation in the twenty-first century.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Leila Farsakh

Leila Farsakh is associate professor and chair of the Political Science Department at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She is the author of Palestinian Labour Migration to Israel: Labour, Land and Occupation (London: Routledge, second edition, 2012) and coeditor of The Arab and Jewish Questions: Geographies of Engagement in Palestine and Beyond (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020).