Thread by @yungneocon

Palestine’s constitution is close to unique among the worlds in that it is one of the only that specifies explicitly that Palestine has to be a free market capitalist economy.

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jacobinmag.com/2014/02/palest…

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tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

Dana’s articles are good descriptively, but normatively they’re quite silly. He seems to genuinely expect that the Palestinian bourgeois, & rentiers will put the national struggle ahead of their class interests, in the service of preventing ‘denormalization’.

his definition of denormalization/anti normalization, would require Palestine’s capitalists & state authorities to not only not engage in trade or commerce beyond what is necessary but to effectively give up those functions necessary for people to live & for development at all

I understand the basis of this critique—I think the expectation is that it will not be pursued to its logical conclusion because it can’t be, so taking the most extreme uncompromising position forces them into a middle ground they prefer

Dana locates the failure of the Palestinian national movement in its transition from national liberation (which included overthrowing all the states of former mandatory Palestine including Jordan) to one of statehood tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…

Again, descriptively the piece is quite good. Normatively it runs into problems similar to the calls for the PA to dissolve itself so the burden falls squarely on Israel—something no political actor or state has ever done. Ditto for Hamas in Gaza.

For on the ground social movements, this is a different story. A mass movement in Palestine dedicated to overthrowing and dissolving the PA & Hamas, while pressuring Israel simultaneously could be quite effective. But calling for or organizing this could be quite dangerous.

amnesty.org/en/latest/news…

electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abun…

The balance between the competition & collaboration between class interests & the national struggle go back a long time:
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sup.org/books/title/?i…

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tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…

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jstor.org/stable/41308744

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cambridge.org/core/books/bei…

Palestinian capitalists & landlords both funded & spearheaded the national movement, at the same time that, on the ground, they often acted in tension with it.

Similarly the Jewish bourgeois globally had a fraught relationship with Zionism & Palestine. They often funded philanthropy but usually the bourgeois were liberal assimilationists & opposed to Zionism until WWII, the Holocaust, Biltmore & 47-49.

Capitalists on the ground in Palestine tried to forge a kind of binationalism, both indirectly & implicitly through their interactions together, but also through direct lobbying. Capitalists drove the post Zionist movement of the 90s routledge.com/The-Globalizat…

There were also labor & communist attempts at binationalism, but these mostly failed. The PCP only became Arab led after 48.
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ucpress.edu/book/978052020…
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ucpress.edu/book/978052007…

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haymarketbooks.org/books/328-the-…
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jstor.org/stable/10.1525…

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routledge.com/Communism-and-…

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Stein’s book on the land question, bringing together League of Nations, Mandate, Ottoman, Palestinian, Zionist, Hashemite & British documents in quite the tour de force on the question
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uncpress.org/book/978080784…
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ismi.emory.edu/home/documents…
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zero.sci-hub.se/3827/e39259ef8…

I read the Metzer, & Zureik very recently. The Nir/Wainwright a few months ago, and the Nitzan/Bichler several years ago.
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cambridge.org/core/books/div…
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palestine-studies.org/en/node/429769
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tandfonline.com/toc/rrmx20/30/3
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bnarchives.yorku.ca/8/

This whole book is worth reading but the Shafir article is of note because it’s an alternative to reading his whole book:

sunypress.edu/p-2299-israel-…
Migdal has written a lot but this short book is a very nice down & pat introduction
sunypress.edu/p-3375-through…

Between these two and the aforementioned pieces we have a wide swath of political economy, Marxian, historicist, comparative politics, geopolitical, & sociological analyses of Israel, Palestine, etc.

Long and the short of it is:
1. Dual economy in Palestine during mandate.
2. Jewish economy based on immigration, capital import, philanthropy, land acquisition , the mandate & diaspora
3. Palestinian economy based on trade, agriculture, land, pilgrimage & the region

4. Growth in both economies was massive, in terms of GDP, NDP, output, exports, population growth, life expectancy, capital accumulation, etc
5. This is true in per capita terms & thus especially in absolute terms

6. Main concern for Yishuv was getting int’l bourgeois to fund labor & communal production. This was tied to ideology, to class & cultural composition, but also to political economy—the use of ‘Hebrew’ labor & ‘normalization’ of Jewish economic structure.

7. Political threats to land acquisition, the nature of land law, the structure of the mandate, bans on land purchases in Transjordan, Lebanon & the Sinai (to which many in these places were open but were pressured) caused Yishuv to concentrate land geostrategically

8. The British dual obligation, their reliance on landlords & elites, and their refusal to spend from British purse on development, converged with the interests of Palestinian capitalists who benefitted from land purchases but politically resisted immigration

9. Thus Palestinian capitalists, rentiers, landlords, professionals & elites had a diverse movement, fractured along family, religion, geographic, & class lines, that balanced advocacy, national movement support, mandate collaboration, sales to Yishuv & resistance to immigration

10. The Zionist Yishuv was in some ways the mirror image. Divided along ideological, class, & other lines (to the point of including anti Zionist, indigenous Arab Jews, religious Jews, communists etc), but it was organizationally, structurally & tactically United.

11. Rapid economic growth went through wages as did immigration. The British & surrounding powers purposefully fostered a dual economy. This laid the basis for British proposed & then later UN proposed & British opposed partition, which lead to the war of 47-49 & Nakba.

12. dual economy structure was maintained. Prior to 47, Jews went from 6-8% of pop on 2-3% of land, to 33-40% of pop on 7% of land. In 48 mass immigretion of Jewish Holocaust refugees & Jewish refugees expelled from Africa & Asia, combined w Palestinian refugees & expulsions

to render the state of Israel majority Jewish, and most Palestinians ended up stateless in West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon & Jordan. West Bank & Gaza were annexed. Only Jordan offered citizenship. Assassinations of leaders of Jordan & Egypt cratered peace negotiations & refugee return

13. This set the next stage—combined with conflict with region, and previously existing Arab League & then 2nd/3rd world boycotts, Israel was isolated from region & ties to West, and its economy militarized. Capital inflows continued from diaspora,then German reparations, then US

At the same time, Israel & the USSR went from allies to enemies, & Israel was forced out of its attempts to form alliances with 2nd & 3rd world. Due to structure of state & conflict, Israel denied refugee return & expropriated their property & nationalized it.

14. Palestinians became proletarianized, rent from land, more urban, in an ethnic divisions of labor wrt Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Gulf states & Israel. UNRWA, int’l & Israeli systems lead to rising education & professional class services in composition.

15. Internal ethnic division of labor occurred with Jews from Africa & Asia & Palestinians in Israel, tho much smaller than say US divisions. After 67, occupation of territories reintegrated their economies & created massive cheap labor supply for Israel.

16. Immigration & capital imports from diaspora & reparations eventually slowed, as did internal expropriations. Combined with war economy, regional isolation & global economy, Israel faced economic crisis which cheap labor from OPT solved.

Ironically Arab Jews & Palestinians in IL economically benefited. This also forced Israel to switch to what it could export, which was arms & military tech, plus some tech, agriculture, refined petroleum, cut diamonds, & finance. Israeli growth slowed but OPT growth skyrocketed.

17. As during the mandate, trade between Jewish & Palestinian, and then Israeli & OPT sectors, was small for IL (about 7% of GDP) but massive for OPT. At one point, up to 40% of Palestinians in OPT were employed in Israel. Education continued to rise.

18. Econ crisis lead to the discipline of labor, arms export & OPT cheap labor. At the same time, regional conflict, plus Arab, African, Asian & religious Jewish resentment at Ashkenazi socialist establishment, lead to rise of the right & decline of Histradut, Labor & Kibbutzim.

19. As the two economies became United, Cold War wound down, neoliberalism ascended & Israel made regional peace, the Israeli capitalist elite wanted to normalize & post Zionise, & thus Oslo etc. but the left & 2nd world died globally & right rose domestically

Then there was the first intifada, failure of peace negotiation, second intifada, accompanied by large scale Russian Jewish refugee immigration (who were now right wing ), rise of Hamas, the war on terror & shift to the right in the US, so Netanyahu broke the peace coalition.

20. Security concerns , rise of the right, newfound US support, fall of the USSR, war on terror and the intifadas lead Israel to begin cutting off economic & social ties to OPT, use of foreign migrant labor, the security wall & unilateral withdrawal from Gaza

21. At the same time the PA was formed & granted nominal independence, and with Hamas winning the election & the internal civil war Israel blockaded Gaza. Israel offloaded costs of occupation & security to OPT, & both pursued economic independence.

22. The fundamental economic, geographic, social & other unity of the area means that attempts to cut off ties can only go so far. OPT still depends on Israel, & though IL use of OPT labor & capital is much lower, it still exists. IL has transitioned to tech & finance from arms.

23. A class of Palestinian bourgeois, rentiers, professionals & elites existed outside Palestine or fled early on with capital formed (25% of capital was exported during the mandate to about 5% of pop). Palestinian petty bourgeois & peasantry were expropriated as part of Nakba

Alongside this, due to the above, to diaspora in Europe & Americas, among Palestinian Israelis, among certain Palestinian Jordanians, & Palestinian refugees educated by UNRWA a new professional, political, rentier & bourgeois class formed in IL, Jordan, Gulf, US, EU & diaspora

These are further articles & books on class formation, capitalism, SetCol paradigm etc in Palestine. 2 are about formation of capitalism by expropriation of petty bourgeois. 2 are Marxian analyses of settler colonial frame.

2 advocate the setcol frame tho one not exclusively about class I just have nowhere else to put it. Several are on the Arab & peasant revolts, one is on gulf capital, and I also linked to Khalidis oeuvre which is relevant.

While Dana, Khalidi, Massad, Barghouti, Said, Bhandar, Ziadah, Darwish, Seikally, the Palestinian left & Palestinian diaspora orgs criticize the PA for corruption & class formation, & somewhat less frequently Hamas for the same, it is unfortunate that discussions of role of

Diaspora, Gulf/Jordan, UNRWA/UN, intl capital/aid/NGOs in class formation is somewhat less common, except among Israeli critics w/ different motives. Discussions of role of Ottoman, British, regional capitalists, are more common. Role of USSR etc is only obliquely acknowledged.

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jstor.org/stable/4149849…
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jstor.org/stable/2536992…
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journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117…
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docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewconten…
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tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…
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dukeupress.edu/colonial-lives…
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jadaliyya.com/Details/32857
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researchgate.net/publication/31…
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ismi.emory.edu/home/documents…
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history.columbia.edu/person/khalidi…

The Palestinian national movement has had the unfortunate historical problem of relying on material & political support from agents & elites on the ground & abroad whose interests are otherwise often in practice in conflict with their own, combined with internal factional issues

This actually ties directly to the issue of class formation, and to the history of Palestinian society prior to & then along with the Yishuv/Zionist movement in Ottoman Empire, Mandate, state of Israel and now the PA. (I’ll return to this later)

Some books & sources on one state, two state etc. the problem is that Tilley, Abuminah, Judt, Butler & others books on the subject aren’t very good. Lustick’s book linked below is weak, except for the intro & conclusion, which are good

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yalebooks.yale.edu/book/978030016…
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press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book…
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routledge.com/Israel-and-the…
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bakerinstitute.org/media/files/fi…
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carnegieendowment.org/2018/09/18/two…
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upenn.edu/pennpress/book…
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hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?is…
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onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.111…
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plutobooks.com/9780745343396/…

The story of class formation, of the dual economy, of the competing movements & their contradictory relationships at home & abroad, the contingencies of history, and the 1ss vs. 2ss vs. 3ss vs. 0ss vs. other solutions are thus all directly tied together

One major problem I see is that most advocates of the one state solution still think in 2 state solution terms and don’t even realize it, and then add a moral & optimistic gloss to this. While 2SSers require 1SS style strategy!

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