Contentious Economics in Occupied Palestine

Localising the Economy as a Resistance Response: A Contribution to the “Resistance Economy” Debate in the Occupied Palestinian Territories

“…Tartir (2015), for example, conceives RE as the ultimate expression of contentious economics. He identifies RE as a socially inclusive model that rejects economic integration with the colonial economy, and resists attempts to institutionalise the status of asymmetric containment.…”

“…Philosophically, the concept of a “resistance economy” is a process that sets out to emancipate human beings by freeing them from poverty, inequality, fear, and oppression, empowering them to cultivate their lands, and expanding their options, capabilities, and potentials to ensure their happiness. (Tartir, 2015, p. 489)Such an understanding reflects the national liberation trend that dominated the pre-Oslo Palestinian economic thought. Tartir acknowledges that the definition is based on a rich legacy of a revolution-based research and knowledge production.…”

Enclosures from Below: TheMushaa’in Contemporary Palestine

“…With the signing of the Oslo Accords and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the early 1990s, their fortunes shifted again. Excluded from the Israeli labour market, left to provide for themselves in a Palestinian economy undergoing a distorted form of neoliberal development under occupation (Tartir :478), some refugees have become expert contractors. How do they conceive of the land culture nowadays?…”

“…Organized, collective efforts to advance the rights of the refugees—as in the 1980s—have given way to security coordination with the Israeli armed forces. Within the narrow constraints set up by the Oslo Accords, the PA has been banking on neoliberal development as the path to better lives for Palestinians (Hanieh ; Tartir ). This neoliberal project has furthered processes of atomization and weakened the collective political culture of the Palestinian people by opening up for market‐based relations (Hanieh :121), it has secured privileges for the elites and investors and “national impoverishment” for the rest (Tartir :479; see also Khalidi and Samour :6).…”

“…When establishing its quasi‐state in the West Bank, the PA de facto accepted an urban apartheid of fragmented enclaves under different jurisdictions . This acceptance of the primacy of the colonizer's security and the pursuit of economic growth for the colonized meant that both the military and the economic dominance of Israel became deeper entrenched—as did the authoritarianism of the PA, required to fulfil the Israeli security demands (Tartir :483).…”