Upstream - Palestine Pt. 5: The Political Economy of Palestine with Adam Hanieh

Starting point is 00:00:27 Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, it played a really key part, I think, in pushing forward this kind of neoliberal economic strategy that was implemented in around about first 2007-2008 tied to the kinds of flows of foreign aid, determining what kind of economy was in place under the Palestinian Authority. So now, I think the main way that the US is involved in these kinds of processes is through international financial institutions like the World Bank and the IMF, which have a really outsized role in structuring the PAs economic policies and economic strategies. So it's different little from the kind of fiscal austerity, high levels of indebtedness, the promotion of market economies, with the twist in the Palestinian context that there's heavy spending on security, a heavy spending on the Palestinian authorities' security

Starting point is 00:01:19 arm, which as I mentioned is about controlling the politics of Palestine. You are listening to upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. A podcast of documentaries and conversations that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about economics. I'm Dela Duncan. And I'm Robert Raymond. The ongoing bombardment of the Gaza Strip has been front and center in the world's attention for the last couple of months, and it's important that we keep it there. But it's also important to remember that this latest escalation in violence is just that, an escalation, an increase in violence in a region where violence is the norm.

Starting point is 00:02:01 Not just militarily, but also politically and economically, what we might call structural violence. The suffering in Palestine has been seen primarily as a humanitarian issue for decades now, but the reality is that reducing Palestine to a matter of humanitarian concern obscures issues of geopolitics and the political economy of the region, in a way that decontextualizes much of what is taking place in Palestine, and importantly, the material conditions and incentives driving the occupation. In this conversation, part five of our ongoing series on Palestine, we're going to explore

Starting point is 00:02:42 the political economies of Palestine and Israel with a guest who is deeply immersed in these questions. Adam Hania is a Palestinian professor at the Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter and author of Lineages of Revolt, Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East, published by Haymarket Books. In this conversation, Adam helps us understand the relationships between the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and Israel, how class manifests in these different regions, what the political

Starting point is 00:03:19 economies of these regions are, and how they shape Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign. And in general, the importance of understanding the geopolitical dynamics of the broader region and neighboring Arab states when trying to understand what is happening in Palestine and Israel. And we just want to say a quick thank you to upstream listener Lewis Mercer for introducing us to Adam's work and suggesting that we speak with him. And finally, before we get started, upstream is entirely listener-funded. We couldn't do this without the support of you, our listeners and fans.

Starting point is 00:04:01 So if you haven't already and if you're in a place where you can afford to do so and if it's important for you to help keep upstream sustainable, please consider going to upstreampodcast.org forward slash support to make a recurring monthly or one-time donation. Also, if you can, please go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify and rate, subscribe, and leave us a review there. This really helps get upstream in front of more eyes and into more ears. We don't have a marketing budget or anything like that for upstream, so we really do rely on listeners like you to help grow our audience and spread the word. Thank you. And now, here's Robert in Conversation with Adam

Starting point is 00:04:46 Hania. Hi Adam, it's great to have you on the show and I'm wondering to start if you could introduce yourself for listeners and maybe tell us a little bit about how you came to do the work that you've done. Thanks Robert, it's a real pleasure to join you today. Yes, I'm of Palestinian origin. I lived and worked in Palestine for about seven years at the time of the second inter father. Currently I'm based in the UK. I'm a professor in the Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies at the time of the second interfather. Currently, I'm based in the UK. I'm a professor in the Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. I work on political economy and global development issues there.

Starting point is 00:05:33 My academic work has focused on the Middle East and issues of political economy in the Middle East, especially the Gulf Arab Sets. Currently finishing a book on oil and capitalism that should be out with Versa in 2024. So one thing I try to do with my work is to place the question of Palestine, as I think we'll hopefully get on to today a little bit, within the wider regional political economy of the Middle East, and that's essentially where my focus on the Gulf spates and oil come from. Great, yeah, thank you so much for that. And I'm gonna ask you a little bit about that broader regional context near the end

Starting point is 00:06:12 of the interview, but I think we're gonna focus a lot here on the political economy within Palestine today. And also very exciting to hear about your upcoming book with Versa, we'll keep an eye on that, and maybe we can have you on when that comes out to talk about that more. So we're all, of course, currently witnessing the horrifying massacre of the Palestinian people. And it's focused, but not limited in the Gaza Strip. And there's a lot of Israeli aggression taking place in the West Bank as well, and we're going to focus a little bit more, I think, today in the West Bank as well. And we're going to focus a little bit more I think today on the West Bank. And yeah, I mean, especially with the recent raid on the Janine Refugee camp, and you know, it would be sort of outrageous to talk about Palestine right now without

Starting point is 00:06:55 acknowledging the ongoing mass slaughter. But we also today are going to zoom out a little bit more and talk deeply about the political economy of Palestine. So maybe first for anybody who might not be super familiar or who might just need a refresher, can you talk a little bit about the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem in the context of the Israeli occupation and maybe just sketch a picture of how these political entities came to be, how they operate in the context of the Israeli occupation, and how they relate to each other. So just an overview, to help maybe orient us and give us a sense of where these places are,

Starting point is 00:07:34 how they relate to each other, before we get more deeply into questions of political economy. Sure, yeah. I think really the place to start here is taking that longer view, and particularly to think about the place to start here is taking that longer view and particularly to think about the core of the Palestinian experience over the last eight decades has really been this ongoing process of dispossession and fragmentation at the hands of the Israeli state. Back in 1947, 1948, this dispossession began initially with the expulsion of around 80% of the Palestinian

Starting point is 00:08:09 population. And these Palestinian refugees became scattered around the region, around the world, and remained today one of the largest and longest lasting refugee populations in the world. So this is the kind of foundational moment, this 1947-1948 expulsion of the large majority of the population living in Palestine. Now, Palestinians described this as the Nakba or Catastrophe, and some of these refugees from 48 actually settled in Gaza in the Gaza Strip, which is why around 80% or so of the Gaza population before the current war were refugees descended from this initial displacement in 48. So this is kind of the foundational moment, as I said, and what happened here is that the Palestinians who remained in what

Starting point is 00:09:01 became Israel came to hold Israeli citizenship and were treated very much as second-class citizens in the Israeli state. Today, Palestinian citizens of Israel make up around 20% of the Israeli population. 1967, I'm sure we're going to speak a lot about this. There's a war. Israel occupies the West Bank and Gaza Strip, further occupation of Palestinian land. And Palestinians living in those areas, some of whom again, were initially displaced in 48

Starting point is 00:09:32 or a descendents of those displaced in 48. The Palestinians living in the West Bank in Gaza Strip were not given citizenship, but instead came under Israeli military occupation, controlled by a system of restrictions on movement, control of a territory. And again, I think we can look at these things in more detail.

Starting point is 00:09:52 But what we see here is that through the 1990s, Israel increasingly moved to control movement both within the West Bank and also between Gaza and the West Bank. And to separate Jerusalem also from the West Bank and also between Gaza and the West Bank and to separate Jerusalem also from the West Bank. It's way to hinterland in the West Bank. So to sum up we have this kind of highly fragmented population. We have Palestinian refugees who make up the bulk of the Palestinian population. We have Palestinian citizens of Israel. We have Palestinians living in the

Starting point is 00:10:23 West Bank and Palestinians living in the Gaza strip. And we have Palestinians in Jerusalem. All of these different fragments of the Palestinian population. They live under different legal systems, different regimes of movement, different political economies, different forms of political control. And that's why you will often hear Palestinians speak about this ongoing process of fragmentation, displacement, the ongoing in Akbar. And I think this is really, it's good for your listeners to kind of get your heads around the depths of this process of fragmentation because it does help to explain really the visceral reaction that we see among Palestinians today against

Starting point is 00:11:07 Israeli plans to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza. This memory of displacement, ongoing displacement, is really very vivid. However, despite this fragmentation, it's also important to point out that Palestinians remain a single people, a united people, no matter where they may be, no matter which part of the population and which territory they may be living in. So those two points, this kind of visceral reaction against being made refugees again, but also the fact that Palestinians remain single united and are united people. Absolutely, yeah, thank you so much for that context. That's really important and good sort of table-setting before we sort of dive in here to the questions of political economy. I

Starting point is 00:11:51 want to start with a passage from your book, Lineages of Revolt. I'll just go ahead and read that quote and then I have a question, a follow-up question, but just to start here, the quote goes, question, a follow-up question, but just to start here, the quote goes, given the preponderant weight of the question of Palestine to Middle East politics, it's striking how little substantive discussion there has been around issues of its political economy. In stark contrast to other parts of the region, where sharp analyses of capitalist development and the strategies adopted by states and ruling elites are regularly dissected and debated. Palestine remains largely viewed as a, quote,

Starting point is 00:12:32 humanitarian issue, end quote. And so, before we get into the West Bank more in a more focused way, I'm wondering if you could paint us a picture of what life in the Gaza Strip was like, of course, prior to the most recent Israeli onslaught. We hear about the blockade and the control of what comes in and out the high unemployment rate. I'm wondering if you can give us a one-on-one on Gaza and political economy.

Starting point is 00:13:02 Some might say that this is now a thing in the past, right? There might not even be a Gaza strip as we know it anymore and The UN recently reported that something like 40,000 buildings or almost 20% of the structures in the Gaza strip have been destroyed I don't know if that's the latest figure but a recent figure and from what I understand Israel has now begun flooding the tunnel networks under Gaza with seawater which is basically, you know, they're salting the earth. And of course, we know that Israel's intentions are to ethnically cleanse the Gaza strip of Palestinians. But still, I think it's important to understand the political economy of the Gaza strip before October 7th to give more context, maybe to the Al-Aqsa raid. And, you know, before we get more deeply into the West Bank. Yes well I think the key place to start here is the captive nature of the

Starting point is 00:13:53 Gaza economy and there is a misconception out there I think that the siege on Gaza has been going on just since 2007. It's really important to realize that that Israel's control over the gas and territory as part of this process of fragmentation that I spoke to actually dates back to the mid-1990s. It was then where this control over the sea, the control over borders around Gaza, the control over airspace, the Gaza airspace, the movement of people and goods in and out, the permit system, all of this actually dates back to the mid-1990s. So in effect, no Gaza who is younger than the age of 30 or so has ever really known freedom of movement.

Starting point is 00:14:42 It's not something that just began in 2007. Now, the blockade in its current form certainly began at that moment and it's been a 16 year siege on Gaza that has controlled in particular the movement of goods and people in and out of the territory, in and out of Gaza. But also during that time,

Starting point is 00:15:03 there has now been, including the current war, five wars launched by Israel against the Gaza Strip since 2007. So we're talking about 2.2 million people in Gaza, one of the most densely populated places on the planet that has been bombarded by Israel five times now. Each of those wars has led to massive destruction, destruction of infrastructure, basically every few years, destruction of hospitals, schools, roads, water, power plants, it's created in its wake,

Starting point is 00:15:37 this ongoing destruction, an economic disaster. So you mentioned unemployment, for example. Unemployment over the last decade in Gaza has stood at around 45%, which is by far the worst in the world in terms of unemployment. Now, of course, today we're talking about basically 100% unemployment. But even the last decade, we saw these astronomical levels of joblessness. And even though living in Gaza prior to this current war, who did have a job, found it very, very difficult, I think, to make ends meet.

Starting point is 00:16:13 One of the indications of this that, again, doesn't get spoken about enough in my opinion, is the high numbers of what are called working poor in Gaza. So these are people who have a job, but they are not able to afford basic household needs such as food or clothing or shelter. These people are called working poor and the number of these levels of working poor

Starting point is 00:16:39 people living in what's called deep poverty before the war in Gaza was one in three households. So we basically saw one in three households of people who had a job were unable to basically meet these basic needs of food, clothing and shelter. So what this meant, because of this captive economy, because of this repeated wars every three years, the destruction of infrastructure and so forth, the population in Gaza became extremely dependent on international aid. About four out of every five garrisons, that's about 80% of the population were dependent on international aid, again prior to the current

Starting point is 00:17:20 war. So I think trying to set this up in its longer term context, the fact that Gaza faced this isolation since the mid-1990s, is tightening blockade since 2007, this repeated bombardment leading to a territory, which, as I said, one of the most densely populated spaces in the world, lacking, if you look at electricity, for example, about 50% of the time, no regular electricity, without adequate access to clean water, without adequate sewage system,

Starting point is 00:17:53 all of these factors produced the current situation we're in. And remember, you know, Israel's economy, again, prior to the current war, was about 150 times larger than the Guards in the Economy if you look at GDP. So this is certainly not a match between two equal players. Let's talk about the West Bank. You know, it hasn't been in the news quite as much, probably as it definitely should be. And I'm wondering if you can talk about maybe a little bit of the history just to give a little bit of the history, just to give a little bit of context,

Starting point is 00:18:25 you're talking the book about how the West Bank went from quote, a predominantly rural existence with social reproduction centered around agriculture and the traditional authority structures of village life to an incorporated, dependent, and subordinated appendage of Israeli capitalism. Or in other words, you know, you talk about how Palestinians and the West Bank were proletarianized over several decades. And I'm wondering if you can maybe unpack that a little bit

Starting point is 00:18:56 for us. Yeah, I had mentioned earlier the occupation of the West Bank in 1967. At that moment, the West Bank was largely rural and agricultural. It had come after 1948 under Jordanian control and was basically a food basket for Jordan. It was an area where a lot of fruit and vegetables, grains, livestock, etc. Consumed in Jordan were produced in the West Bank, largely rural, largely agricultural. But what happened after the Israeli military occupation of the area in 67 and through the 1970s is that Palestinians, both in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, were incorporated into Israel as essentially a cheap labor force. This was a very convenient and profitable solution for the Israeli economy. Palestinians were a classic form of cheap labor and they returned to their

Starting point is 00:19:54 homes at night after work. They were akin in many ways to a migrant labor force even though they are only traveling a few hours from their home. So, you know, in the kind of literature, this moment is referred to as the Palestinian boom, economic boom, because Palestinians became the dominant labor in key economic sectors inside Israel, particularly construction and agriculture. Palestinian workers filled these sectors and really allowed this kind of economic boom

Starting point is 00:20:25 to take place. So, to give you an idea of the scale of this, in the mid-80s, Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza made up around 7% of the Israeli labor force, and about one in three of the West Bank labor force worked inside Israel at that time in the mid the mid 1980s. And most of them in the construction industry. So construction is really, if you look at the early emergence of the Israeli economy, the construction sector was a key kind of part of the large business conglomerates that emerged in Israel in the first few decades after the state was founded. And it was Palestinian labor, cheap Palestinian labor,

Starting point is 00:21:06 that really made that possible through this incorporation into Israeli capitalism. But the twin side of this, or the other effect this had, was it transformed social structures in the West Bank. For the first time, Palestinian youth were incorporated into labor markets,

Starting point is 00:21:26 proletarianized with independent sources of income. So it really was part of the undermining of the old traditional family structures and the old kind of rural patterns of living. And alongside the kind of wider political shifts of the 1970s, regional political shifts, the movements of the left, the resurgence of the PLO, this kind of helped to lay the ground for a real renewal of Palestinian politics that eventually culminated in 1987 with what's called the first interfarvel,

Starting point is 00:21:59 the first Palestinian uprising. So this kind of process of how Palestinian workers, Palestinian labor from the occupied territories were incorporated into Israeli labor markets is really an important one to kind of track. And it remains extremely important through to today. Another quote from your book that sort of I thought gave a really good vantage into this process of proletarianization that you're describing. So you write, quote, the expropriation of land in the Jordan Valley by Israeli settlers

Starting point is 00:22:32 meant that 87% of all irrigated land in the West Bank was removed from Palestinian use. Military orders forbade the drilling of new wells for agricultural purposes and restricted overall water used by Palestinians, while Israeli settlers were encouraged to use as much water as needed. With this deliberate destruction of the agricultural sector, poorer Palestinians, particularly youth, were displaced from rural areas and gravitated towards working in the construction and agriculture sectors inside Israel. In 1970, the agricultural sector represented over 40% of the Palestinian labor force in the West Bank.

Starting point is 00:23:10 By 1987, this figure went down to only 26%. Agriculture's share in the Palestinian GDP fell from 35% to 16% between 1970 and 1991. So I think that's just a really pretty intense view into this process of parallel tearingization and the transformation of the labor force in the Occupied West Bank. I'm wondering, we've had Suméa Awad and Nora Erichat

Starting point is 00:23:39 on the show recently and they talked about, they both talked about the Oslo court. So our listeners should have a fairly familiar perspective on what took place with Oslo, but I'm wondering if you can maybe dig a little bit into the Oslo courts and how they impacted the political economies of Israel and Palestine and maybe even the rest of the region. Yes, this is a really important question, particularly because we're seeing so much discussion at the moment calls to return to the kind of Oslo framework of negotiations

Starting point is 00:24:13 and a two-state solution and so forth. And I think there is a problem with the way that Oslo is thought about and perceived more widely. For many people, it's often presented as a failure. But I think this is actually completely wrong. The problem is that people who call Oslo a failure confuse what the stated goals of Oslo were, establishing a two-state solution,

Starting point is 00:24:40 and it's an independent policy and a state and so forth, with actually what it's real aims were. and I'm sure your guests spoke to this because from the perspective of the Israeli government, the aim of Oslo wasn't to end the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza or to create a Palestinian state, but actually something much more functional. What it did was it allowed Israel to portray itself as a partner in negotiations, as helping this process of state building rather than actually an enemy of Palestinian sovereignty. So what this meant was that the Israeli government could use Oslo as a fig leaf, and this is precisely what happened through the 1990s and 2000s, to actually extend

Starting point is 00:25:27 and consolidate its control over Palestinian life in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, basically continuing the same strategic mechanisms that they had since 1967. So things like settlement construction grew enormously after the signing of the Oslo Accords. The restrictions, all of the restrictions that we talk about today in terms of carrying permits, the checkpoints, closures of territories and not being able to enter here and there. All of this emerged under Oslo. It was part of what this command over borders economic life Palestinian movements took place through the Oslo process.

Starting point is 00:26:08 The use of mass imprisonment in incarceration of thousands of Palestinians again was a feature of how this complex system of control emerged through the Oslo process. And basically what this meant is that it allowed to Israel to present itself as this kind of a negotiating partner. It brought in the Palestinian Authority that put a Palestinian face over the day-to-day administration of Palestinians in the West Banking Gaza Strip, but ultimate power remained in the hands of Israel. So that's I think one side of how we can assess the Oslo process. The other side which is I think really critical to understand is what the regional context

Starting point is 00:26:52 of Oslo was and what Oslo did for Israel's place in the Middle East. This is really crucial I think to understand. Often again I think missed out in the discussion of this moment. At that time, in the mid-1990s, both the United States, other Western governments, and Israel, were pushing this idea of a new Middle East they described it as. And what this meant was they saw the Middle East as basically trying to unify economically, the Middle East region, allow free flows of goods

Starting point is 00:27:24 and investment through the Middle East region, allow free flows of goods and investment through the Middle East, and anchoring this on one side by Israel, and on the other side by the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and these big oil states. So Oslo was part of this process. It was trying to normalize Israel's place in the regional economy. So Israel was able to free itself from Arab boycotts through the Oslo process. It meant that international firms could invest openly in the Israeli economy at this moment without fear of attracting secondary boycotts from other Arab states, for example. It meant shortly after the signing of Oslo that Jordan and Egypt normalized their relations with Israel. They signed deals that set up joint industrial zones in both Jordan and Egypt, which involved Israeli investment and were given

Starting point is 00:28:22 preferential access to the US markets. Goods produced in these industrial zones were given preferential access to the US if they contained a certain proportion of Israeli investment. So this kind of knitting together of Israel with Jordan and Egypt as part of this wider regional realignment was really a key goal of the Oslo process. And it, again, it continued, even despite the so-called failure of Oslo. We can see in 2019, you know, the Abraham Accords that were signed between Israel and the Gulf States was really, I think, the apex of this normalization process. So again, we really need to understand what the function of Oslo was for Israel's place in the region and also what it meant for how Israel's control over the Palestinian population became ever more sophisticated through the 1990s and 2000s.

Starting point is 00:29:17 We're really living with the fruits of this today. Your listening to an upstream conversation with Adam Hania, author of Lineages of Revolt, Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East, will be right back. Keep going, it's nonsense in a way to find shadows When you can't bear it anymore, keep going Till you're there, anywhere أدعنا ماذا إذا أدعنا ماذا إذا أدع كله إذا أدع كله إذا أدع كله إذا

Starting point is 00:30:23 أدع كله إذا أدع كله إذا तो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो लो That was Keep Going by Roger Fakra, now back to our conversation with Adam Hania. You talked about how the Israeli government expanded settlements during and after Oslo, despite the fact that they were still supposed to be under negotiation. In fact, they began to offer, I believe, large economic incentives to settlers to relocate to the West Bank, doubling, I think, the number of settlers between 1994 and the beginning of the 2000s, which is, you know, right, maps right over the Oslo process, the time frame for that. I watched a documentary recently, I believe it was the Iron Wall that documented the West Bank settlements a little bit, and they interviewed this Israeli woman

Starting point is 00:31:45 who was talking about how she didn't even know that she was living in an illegal settlement. I think sometimes those borders have just become so, I guess, invisibleized to maybe regular working people in Israel as well. And she mentioned the only reason that she was there was because she couldn't afford to live in Tel Aviv and this feels like sort of a classic settler colonialism move from the United States, all the way to

Starting point is 00:32:11 Israel, the way that these settlements are kind of incentivized by the ruling structures and then filled by working people. We hear a lot too about the fundamentalist extremist Jewish people who are in the West Bank and who drive a lot of the settlements there. I don't think that's the majority as far as I know of the population that has been settling the West Bank, but definitely allowed vocal and incredibly aggressive and violent portion of them. But I'm wondering, yeah, can you talk a little bit about that whole process and what the material benefit to the state of Israel also is to these settlements?

Starting point is 00:32:50 Yes, as you pointed out, the settlement project, particularly in the West Bank, it's really been a crucial element of Israeli settler colonialism since 1967, since the occupation of the area. It's really important, I think, to see this as a part of the Israeli state strategy. It's not an accidental thing. It's not driven by religious zealots or crazy militias. It actually is part of the Israeli state policy and it has been from the very inception of the occupation.

Starting point is 00:33:27 So what these settlements do is they are large population areas, large neighborhoods, large towns essentially that divide Palestinian population centres in the West Bank from one another. They are these militarized spaces that encircle Palestinian towns and villages, and in that way they break up any kind of continuous territory or territorial contiguity between the different Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank. To kind of see where this, how this came to be, it's again necessary to go back to what happened in 1967 with the occupation of the West Bank because at that time Israel actually expelled or drove off the land around one fifth

Starting point is 00:34:14 of the Palestinian population. In particular you mentioned earlier the Palestinians who were living in the Jordan Valley which was the main kind of agricultural area in the West Bank, and it remains today the main agricultural area, as well as a ring of Palestinian villages in and around Jerusalem. So these areas were emptied of their Palestinian inhabitants, and after that process of depopulation, they became the backbone of these settlement spaces that today divide towns and villages in the West Bank from one another. So I think thinking about this process again as a way of controlling territory, controlling movement, controlling people, and at the same time as settlers now living in these areas, they see themselves because they're connected by, you know, Israeli-only roads to towns inside Israel, to Tel Aviv, work locations inside Israel.

Starting point is 00:35:16 They see themselves basically, they don't necessarily see themselves as being on this kind of colonized occupied land. They see themselves as kind of leafy suburban middle-class neighborhoods, as I think you're referring to with the film that you mentioned. So it's really, I think, yes, there is certainly, and we can see today, the kind of militia element, the violent element of the settler population,

Starting point is 00:35:41 but also to understand the way that the settlement project is part of this broader strategy of control. And I think it's just so important just in case any listeners forget or forget the context of the fact that the West Bank is like it's Palestine, it's not Israel, it's occupied. And I mean, there's a lot of dispossession, and I know in historic Palestine, in like so-called Israel proper, there is of course a partied and the Palestinians who are in those borders don't have the same rights, etc.

Starting point is 00:36:16 But we're talking about the West Bank here, which is legally supposed to be Palestine, and yet we have this occupation which, you know, the land dispossession, the settler violence, the patchwork nature of the settlement blocks, water rights, the so-called bypass roads or restricted access highways at the apartheid wall. Like, it's just really hard to wrap your head around the fact that this is such a brutal occupation, even though so much focus is on the Gaza Strip, the West Bank is really in dire straits as well. And I don't think that people understand that as much as maybe they should.

Starting point is 00:36:56 And I would like to talk a little bit more about the apartheid nature of the West Bank, like even just maybe focusing on something like, you know, the roads and the highways or the water rights, like just to give people a little bit of a sense of how segregated and yeah, how dispossessed the Palestinians in the West Bank are. Yes, I mean, again, to come back to this moment, 1967, when the West Bank was occupied. There was a very heavy debate in the Israeli government and military about actually what to do with the Palestinian population in the West Bank after this military occupation. They weren't able to expel the population. Palestinians in the same way that had happened in 1948.

Starting point is 00:37:45 It was a different time, it was a different moment in terms of attention of the world. So that wasn't an option, this kind of expulsion of the majority of the population outside of historic Palestine. It wasn't an option in 1967. And at the same time, they didn't want to absorb Palestinians into the Israeli state and make them citizens as had happened to the minority of Palestinians that remained after 48. Because that would have upset the demographic balance. It would have made Palestinians a clear majority and would have illustrated very clearly the apartheid nature of Israel, this kind of second-class

Starting point is 00:38:26 citizenship that Palestinians hold. So what the eventual solution they settled upon, and it was part of something called the Alon plan, the Guadalon, who was an Israeli general, they decided that the West Bank and Gaza Strip would come under Israeli military occupation, Palestinians would not be granted Israeli citizenship. And instead, they would be governed under Israeli military law in those areas. So there was a large kind of over time, this apparatus of the occupation developed, by involving both the Israeli army, Israeli military, as well as things like the prison system, ID cards,

Starting point is 00:39:07 different colored ID cards that identified Palestinians and where they were from, if they'd ever been arrested and so forth. And alongside of this land confiscation and the building of settlements that we spoke about earlier. So what this has meant since 67 is that with this growth in the settler population today settlers make up about 600,000 people, Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Palestinian population in the West Bank is just under 3 million. So Israeli settlers are a

Starting point is 00:39:41 significant minority of the population living there, but they, citizens, obviously are Israeli citizens, they are governed by Israeli civil law, not military law. So we have two different legal systems in place in the West Bank, based upon this kind of process of dispossession and the functions that settlements play that I spoke about earlier. Then there's a whole variety of other things such as you mentioned, the road network, there, you know, Israeli-only roads that connect the settlements to one another and allow Israel to kind of cut movement between Palestinian and heavily populated towns and villages, quite easily. The settler population is armed, it's heavily militarized. So, you know, the last, I think, since October 7, there's been 280 Palestinians in

Starting point is 00:40:34 the West Bank killed by settlers and soldiers. Also mass arrests, 4,000 Palestinians arrested since October. So, you know, we see this kind of the way this apparatus of control can easily quickly fall into place to shut down the territory, to control the territory through this apartheid system. You also pointed out in lineages of revolt that the Alon plan placed Israeli settlements directly over major Palestinian population centers and on top of water aquifers and fertile agricultural land, which I thought was especially sinister. I think it's also just as an aside you were mentioning the violence in the West Bank. I believe prior to October 7th and in the months prior there

Starting point is 00:41:20 was something like a 40 children who were murdered by Israeli settlers or the IDF in the West Bank. And just in the context of the hoax around the 40 beheaded babies that was a thing for a while earlier on after October 7th, which we never saw any evidence of that. And I think they've dropped that at this point. But just this idea of how much violence actually does take place in the West Bank, not just by official idea forces, but also these radical settlers as well, I think is something that at least I didn't really know about or hear about as much. And so I think that's really important context as well.

Starting point is 00:42:01 I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about the Palestinian economy after Oslo. Some points that you bring up in lineages of revolt are this idea that Palestinians became a reserve army of labor for Israel, which you touched on a little bit earlier. This idea of dependence on external capital, which is controlled by Israel. Of course, the Palestinian Authority and the public sector, and how NGOs formed a central component of the economy. I know there's a lot there, so just feel free to tackle that, however you feel fit. Yes, so we've talked about how Israel managed to kind of set up this complex network of control after 1967, the control over territory,

Starting point is 00:42:47 control over movement, resources such as water, land and the economy. It was a system of control that relied upon the settlements, relied upon military orders and the Israeli army, permit systems, checkpoints and so forth. So after Oslo, there was this expansion in the settlement construction and this kind of much tighter control over Palestinian movement. And it basically meant that about 90% of the Palestinian population in the West Bank were confined to this kind of patchwork of isolated enclaves in the north and in center and southern parts of the West Bank divided from one another

Starting point is 00:43:29 by these settlement blocks. So it meant that Israel could control the movement to and from these areas. It meant that Israel controlled the resources, the airspace, underground resources, Palestinian population centers were reliant upon Israel for water and energy supplies. In Gaza, to take Gaza, you know, permits were even required for Fisherfolk to use the sea at this time.

Starting point is 00:43:55 So alongside these changes, Palestinian society also shifted. And we had talked about the kind of important role that cheap Palestinian labor played in the Israeli economy but after Oslo, Israel moved to replace a large proportion of those Palestinian workers who commuted daily from the West Bank with foreign workers from Eastern Europe and from further afield. This was partly enabled because you because construction and agriculture, the sectors that Palestinian workers really were key to, Israeli economy was shifting more towards high-tech industries and finance and so forth in the 1990s. Instead, rather than becoming such a central

Starting point is 00:44:41 part of the Israeli labor market, Palestinians became, if you like, a tap that could be turned on and off. Palestinian workers were this flexible reserve army of labour, depending on what was going on economically, politically, and the needs of the Israeli economy, they could be turned on and off. So that's one thing that happened in the wake of Oslo in terms of Palestinian labor. At the same time, a lot of Palestinians living in the West Bank became increasingly dependent upon the Palestinian Authority,

Starting point is 00:45:15 the institution that was established to govern Palestinians after Oslo, they became increasingly dependent upon this Palestinian Authority for work and for livelihood. So in the 2000s, about a quarter of Palestinians were working in the public sector in some kind of way, in the education sector or other parts of the public sector and relying, therefore, upon the Palestinian authority for their livelihood. That remains the case today, very significant proportion of working in the public sector. So the broader Palestinian economy though, however, remained fully under the control of Israel. In the sense that Israel could control what Palestinians could import

Starting point is 00:45:59 or export. There was a kind of another agreement associated with the Oslo Accords called the Paris Protocol, which actually codified Israel's control over imports and exports. So that meant that basically what was going in and what was going out was controlled by Israel. There was no independent relations with other states. And the PA became, passing, became fully dependent upon loans and international aid, and also really importantly, the receipt of indirect taxes that Israel collected on goods that were coming in or imports and exports. So basically Israel was collecting these indirect taxes and was supposed to then give that money to the Palestinian Authority, but they could decide and they do this very frequently not to distribute these funds if they want to pressure the PA in any kind of way.

Starting point is 00:46:58 So there was basically no economic sovereignty. The economy as a whole depended upon Israel's control over movement of goods, control over labor and people, and so no economic sovereignty basically needs no political sovereignty either, and that's precisely the situation that emerged through the Oslo years. I'm wondering, you know, one of the most important frames that I think Fanon wrote about in the context of colonization is this idea of class interests within the colonized and this idea of colonized elites and those indigenous elements who serve the interests of the colonizer. And I'm wondering if you think this is a helpful frame to look at the Palestinian Authority through. And maybe we've been talking so much about history. Right now, I know that the Palestinian Authority is incredibly unpopular in Palestine.

Starting point is 00:47:48 And I'm wondering if you could maybe just give us a little bit of a context of the Palestinian Authority through that lens that I mentioned, Phanon gave us, and then also maybe talk about what they're doing right now. Yeah, I mean, that's right. The Palestinian Authority was a key product of the Oslo process. It was basically made up of Palestinians who, many have, who returned with the PLO in the 1990s. Now, it's again important, I think, to kind of situate this in the longer

Starting point is 00:48:21 jury of Israel's settler colonial project in the West Bank. Basically what Israel has been trying to do since that 1967 moment is find a way to put a Palestinian face on the occupation. And you know from the perspective of Israel the specs total sense because you can't permanently locate soldiers in major Palestinian areas. You know, we talk three million people, quite densely populated. You need to find a way to administer basic social functions to the Palestinian population, health and education and all the kinds of basic needs. So Israel has always been trying to find a way to put this Palestinian face between themselves

Starting point is 00:49:06 and the wider broader population. And they've tried various strategies. In the 70s and 80s, they created something called the village leagues. Now, these were Palestinians that were permitted by the military occupation to carry weapons, to arrest and even interrogate people. These village leagues, they gave out permits. If you want to travel, if you want to have family reunions, they held the power to kind of license buildings

Starting point is 00:49:34 and business licenses. So basically, the village leagues were Palestinians who had these significant powers. And it was very difficult to accomplish anything without the consent as a average Palestinian without the consent of the village league which ultimately meant the Israeli military. Now Israel did this this strategy in the 70s and 80s basically to try to build up an alternative to the PLO which at that time was illegal.

Starting point is 00:50:05 But they were widely rejected by Palestinians. The village league representatives were assassinated by activists, and it basically collapsed with the outbreak of the First Intifada in 1987. So in many ways, I mean, we can't just draw a straight parallel with the village leagues, but we can see the way that the similar strategy of putting a Palestinian body in between Israel and the population as a whole has remained a constant element of Israel's strategy since 67. Today, the PA does all of the kind of basic services, education and health, but is shut down any kind of political mobilization in the West Bank and that's been very clear over the last few months.

Starting point is 00:51:11 So it is, I think, very reminiscent of Phanon and this kind of classic colonial setup, where Palestinians are given the appearance of autonomy, limited self-government, but it takes place in the context of this ongoing control and domination of Israel. I also wanted to ask you a bit about how neoliberalism was brought to the West Bank, but we actually talked about that recently with Sumea Awad in our last episode, part four of our ongoing series on Palestine, so we probably don't need to get too deep into that, but maybe I'll just lump that question in in case you want to touch at all on the PRDP or this idea of public sector, fiscal reform, private sector, led development and security, the IMF or the World Bank. So any of that feel free to just pepper that in however you want. But I also wanted to explore the role of the United States.

Starting point is 00:52:04 We talked about the role the US plays a little bit throughout our conversation, touched on the special industrial zones as well. But I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit more broadly about the role that the US has in managing the Palestinian economy, they're directly or indirectly? Yes. Well, I think the first thing to note is that it's the US basically that's funding the current destruction of Gaza as the main military weapons supplier to Israel coming from the US. I think the current agreement is something like $3.8 billion worth of military aid, US military aid to Israel, that is the

Starting point is 00:52:38 current arrangement. So, you know, we can see that I think is the first point to make. But you are right to come to your question about the US role in managing the Palestinian economy. It played a really key part, I think, in pushing forward the reform and development plan that you talked about with your earlier guests, this kind of neoliberal economic strategy that was implemented in around about first 2007, 2008 tied to the kinds of flows of foreign aid, determining what kind of economy was in place under the Palestinian authority. So now, I think the main way that the U.S. is involved in these kinds of processes is through international financial institutions like the World Bank and the IMF, which have a really outsized role in structuring the PAs economic policies

Starting point is 00:53:30 and economic strategies. So it's differs little from the kind of fiscal austerity, high levels of indebtedness, the promotion of market economies, with the twist in the Palestinian context that there's heavy spending on security, a heavy spending on the Palestinian authorities' security arm, which as I mentioned is about controlling the politics of Palestine. So I'd like to summarize our conversation by reading a fairly lengthy passage from your book, Lineages of Revolt, particularly,

Starting point is 00:54:05 you close out your chapter on Palestine with this quote. So I'd like to read that quote, and then I'm gonna ask you maybe just to close out with the final question bringing us to the present, but I just really liked this whole passage, and so I wanna make sure to read it here. So it goes, the specificity of the neoliberal experience in Palestine lies in the total subjugation of the population by an occupying force and the attempts of more than

Starting point is 00:54:31 six decades to fragment and disperse a nation of people from their homeland. Neoliberalism works to reinforce this atomization, turning people away from collective struggle and towards individualized consumption as mediated through finance. It has produced mass impoverishment alongside the enrichment of a tiny layer of Palestinians that acts as the interlocutor with Israeli and foreign capital. A society constructed along these principles weakens the capacity of the Palestinian people to resist.

Starting point is 00:55:04 Most importantly, it means that the question of Palestine cannot be reduced to a purely humanitarian and humanitarian as in quotes, to a purely humanitarian issue, or simply an issue of national liberation. It's an essential component of the broader struggle against the uneven development and control of wealth across the Middle East. Capitalist development has always acted to consolidate and deepen Israel's power over Palestine, generating a layer of Palestinian society that stands against the interests of most of the population.

Starting point is 00:55:37 In this sense, understanding and confronting the political economy of Palestinian capitalism is very much entwined with a struggle of national liberation and return. The success of one fully depends upon the success of the other. So just a really powerful ending quote there, and yeah, thank you for waiting as I read your own words back to you. I'd like to wrap up our conversation. Maybe if you want to reflect on anything that you

Starting point is 00:56:06 want to pull anything out of that quote that stood out to you that you want to reflect on, but also, you know, coming back to the Gaza Strip right now, and I'm wondering if you have any thoughts that you'd like to share on what you think Israel's end game is with the Gaza Strip and what the role material and economic incentives play in their all too obvious goal of ethnically cleansing the Gaza Strip. Yes, I mean, I think in terms of adding another point to the discussion, which I think really needs to be emphasized, is that, and it comes back to the point I was trying to make in that paragraph about the way that Palestine is often viewed as simply a

Starting point is 00:56:45 humanitarian issue as an issue of the violation of human rights. Which obviously it is, I mean, we can see that today, but it's really important, I think, to place Palestine and the Israeli settler colonial project in the context of the wider Middle East region, and particularly the role that Israel has played with the architecture of US power in the Middle East. We can't understand the Palestinian experience, we can't understand Israel the role that it plays in the region without placing it in the context of US foreign policy towards the region without placing it in the context of the region's massive oil supplies and the place of the Gulf. So this is why I think another problem with Oslo is that it's narrowed the terms of the

Starting point is 00:57:35 debate down to these tiny slivers of territory in the West Bank and Gaza and ignores this broader regional context of US imperialism, of oil, and of the Middle East more broadly. So I really do think that if we are to stand with Palestine, then we do need to center those questions in our analysis. We can't just talk about the massive human rights violations that we've seen for many, many decades. So coming to the current moment and where might things lead

Starting point is 00:58:09 after this, it's obviously an incredibly brutal moment. But we must remember that even with a permanent cease fire, this does not represent the cessation of Israeli violence, that when the bomb stop falling on Gaza and they eventually will, that a return to kind of like an Oslo-type framework, I return to this kind of idea of the two-state solution that we now see Biden and Western government speaking about. This does not represent any lessening of Israel's settler colonial project.

Starting point is 00:58:45 I think it's really important to understand that over the last few decades, there's this twinning of extreme violence on one hand, extreme violence by the Israeli state on one hand, alongside this illusion of kind of peaceful, negotiated two-state solutions. These two poles are part of the same process, and I do think

Starting point is 00:59:06 that thinking about what comes next means also understanding the nature of Oslo, the nature of the way that the two-state solution is discussed and framed by Western governments, by the PA, and really unpacking the reality of the history of the last few decades. You've been listening to an upstream conversation with Adam Hania, professor at the Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter, an author of Lineages of Revolt, Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East, published by Haymarket Books.

Starting point is 00:59:50 Please check the show notes for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode, including ways that you can support Palestine. Thank you to Carolyn Raider for this episode's cover art, and to Roger Falker for the Intermission Music. Raider for this episode's cover art and to Rajra Fakra for the intermission music. Upstream Thee Music was composed by Robert. Upstream is a labor of love. We distribute all of our content for free and couldn't keep things going without the support of you, our listeners and fans. Please visit upstreampodcast.org

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Upstream - Palestine Pt. 5: The Political Economy of Palestine with Adam Hanieh

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