Palestine Ltd.

Palestine Ltd.
Author: Toufic Haddad
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2016-07-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 1786730979

Since the 1993 Oslo Accords, the Occupied Palestinian Territory has been the subject of extensive international peacebuilding and statebuilding efforts coordinated by Western donor states and international finance institutions. Despite their failure to yield peace or Palestinian statehood, the role of these organisations in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is generally overlooked owing to their depiction as tertiary actors engaged in technical missions. In Palestine Ltd., Toufic Haddad explores how neoliberal frameworks have shaped and informed the common understandings of international, Israeli and Palestinian interactions throughout the Oslo peace process. Drawing upon more than 20 years of policy literature, field-based interviews and recently declassified or leaked documents, he details how these frameworks have led to struggles over influencing Palestinian political and economic behaviour, and attempts to mould the class character of Palestinian society and its leadership. A dystopian vision of Palestine emerges as the by-product of this complex asymmetrical interaction, where nationalism, neo-colonialism and `disaster capitalism' both intersect and diverge. This book is essential for students and scholars interested in Middle East Studies, Arab-Israeli politics and international development.

Political Economy of Palestine

Political Economy of Palestine
Author: Alaa Tartir
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2021-05-18
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3030686434

This book explores the political economy of Palestine through critical, interdisciplinary, and decolonial perspectives, underscoring that an approach to economics that does not consider the political—a de-politicized economics—is inadequate to understanding the situation in occupied Palestine. A critical interdisciplinary approach to political economy challenges prevailing neoliberal logics and structures that reproduce racial capitalism, and explores how the political economy of occupied Palestine is shaped by processes of accumulation by exploitation and dispossession from both Israel and global business, as well as from Palestinian elites. A decolonial approach to Palestinian political economy foregrounds struggles against neoliberal and settler colonial policies and institutions, and aids in the de-fragmentation of Palestinian life, land, and political economy that the Oslo Accords perpetuated, but whose histories of de-development over all of Palestine can be traced back for over a century. The chapters in this book offer an in-depth contextualization of the Palestinian political economy, analyze the political economy of integration, fragmentation, and inequality, and explore and problematize multiple sectors and themes of political economy in the absence of sovereignty.

Development Under Adversity

Development Under Adversity
Author: Ishac Diwan
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 260
Release: 1999-01-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780821344187

"War, border closures, violence, and unemployment have hampered the Palestinian economy for over a decade. Despite these obstacles and setbacks, the future outlook is optimistic." Based on the research of the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS), the World Bank, and other organizations, 'Development Under Adversity' reviews the development of the Palestinian economy since the 1993 Declaration of Principles. The Palestinian economy has enormous potential. Its general development indicators, including life expectancy, literacy, and child mortality rates, are among the best in the Middle East and North Africa. The book identifies the conditions under which the Palestinian economy can grow. They include trade channels that reduce the economy's reliance on Israel; the creation of a more efficient civil service; more investment-oriented public expenditure; and more resourceful support from NGOs in the delivery of health, education, welfare, and infrastructure services. 'Development Under Adversity' provides historical background, an objective examination of recent economic and political developments, and a comprehensive analysis of the contribution that the donor community can make toward alleviating poverty. Throughout its analysis, the book focuses on the human consequences of economic uncertainty. It studies the social and household costs of border closures, and includes complete chapters about the education and health sectors. The result is a book that will be relevant to a wide range of institutional and private lenders, as well as to anyone with a general interest in the well-being and future of the Palestinian economy.

The Struggle for Sovereignty

The Struggle for Sovereignty
Author: Joel Beinin
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2006
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780804753654

This book examines political, social, and cultural changes in Palestine and Israel from the 1993 Oslo Accords through the second Palestinian uprising and the death of Yasser Arafat. It also explains the failures of the Oslo process and considers the prospects for a just and lasting peace in the region.

The Palestinian Economy and the Oslo Process

The Palestinian Economy and the Oslo Process
Author: Sara Roy
Publisher: Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research
Total Pages: 17
Release: 1998-09-29
Genre: Antiques & Collectibles
ISBN:

The foundations for a viable, self-sustaining Palestinian economy have not emerged since the start of the Oslo peace process. Economic conditions in the Gaza Strip and West Bank have deteriorated markedly, leaving the Palestinian economy weaker now than it was in 1967 when measured against the advances made by other states in the region.The reasons for Palestinian economic decline are many but turn on one key issue: Israeli closure policy. Closure restricts the movement of labor and goods and distorts rational economic activity. Now a permanent feature of the local economy, closure has resulted in the physical and economic separation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and their separation from Israel, high unemployment, permanent unemployment for a growing segment of the labor force, a doubling of poverty levels, increasing child labor, constrained trade relations, and a growing need for relief and social assistance among Palestinians. Closure has devastated Palestinian economic growth and reform and has made it increasingly difficult for people to meet their basic needs. If closure continues to be enforced, the economic and political changes promised by the Oslo agreements and now so desperately needed in the West Bank and Gaza will not be possible

The Politics of the Palestinian Authority

The Politics of the Palestinian Authority
Author: Nigel Parsons
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 440
Release: 2005-06-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1135945233

This book explores the development of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) from a liberation movement to a national authority, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). Based on intensive fieldwork in the West Bank, Gaza and Cairo, Nigel Parsons analyzes Palestinian internal politics and their institutional-building by looking at the development of the PLO. Drawing on interviews with leading figures in the PLO and the Palestinian Authority, delegates to the negotiations with Israel, and the Palestinian political opposition, it is a timely account of the Israel/Palestine conflict from a Palestinian political perspective.

A Very Political Economy

A Very Political Economy
Author: Rex Brynen
Publisher: US Institute of Peace Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2000
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781929223046

A Very Political Economy spares no political sensitivities in its dissection of the aid process, but also argues persuasively that without international assistance there would have been no Palestinian Authority left to negotiate with, and no peace process to revive.".

The Middle East and the Peace Process

The Middle East and the Peace Process
Author: Robert Owen Freedman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 435
Release: 1998
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780813015545

"A comprehensive and fresh review of relatively recent political events in the Middle East."--Jerrold D. Green, director, Greater Middle East Studies Center at Rand These essays analyze the impact of the Middle East peace process since 1993 on the countries most affected by it--Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Egypt, and Syria--and on the domestic politics and foreign policies of Turkey and the countries of the Persian Gulf and North Africa. The contributors, all international experts in their fields, also examine policies of the United States and Russia both as they affect the peace process and as the two countries pursue other interests in the Middle East. Part I. The Arab-Israeli Core Area Domestic Determinants of Israeli Foreign Policy: The Peace Process from the Declaration of Principles to the Oslo II Interim Agreement, by Myron J. Aronoff and Yael S. Aronoff Netanyahu and Peace: From Sound Bites to Sound Policies? by Mark Rosenblum Palestinian and Other Arab Perspectives on the Peace Process, by Muhammad Muslih The Transformation of Jordan, 19911995, by Adam Garfinkle Syria and the Transition to Peace, by Raymond A. Hinnebusch Egypt at the Crossroads: Domestic, Economic, and Political Stagnation and Foreign Policy Constraints, by Louis J. Cantori Part II. Turkey and the Gulf States Turkey and the Middle East after Oslo I, by George E. Gruen Iraq after the Gulf War: The Fallen Idol, by Phoebe Marr Iran since the Gulf War, by Shaul Bakhash The Arabian Peninsula, by F. Gregory Gause III Part III. North Africa North Africa in the Nineties: Moving toward Stability? by Mary Jane Deeb The Sudan: Militancy and Isolation, by Ann Mosely Lesch Part IV. The Role of External Powers U.S. Middle East Policy in the 1990s, by Don Peretz Russia and the Middle East under Yeltsin, by Robert O. Freedman Robert O. Freedman is president and Peggy Meyerhoff Pearlstone Professor of Political Science at Baltimore Hebrew University. He is the author or editor of numerous books on the Middle East, among them The Middle East after the Iraqi Invasion (UPF, 1991) and Israel under Rabin.

Blind Spot

Blind Spot
Author: Khaled Elgindy
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2019-04-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 0815731566

A critical examination of the history of US-Palestinian relations The United States has invested billions of dollars and countless diplomatic hours in the pursuit of Israeli-Palestinian peace and a two-state solution. Yet American attempts to broker an end to the conflict have repeatedly come up short. At the center of these failures lay two critical factors: Israeli power and Palestinian politics. While both Israelis and Palestinians undoubtedly share much of the blame, one also cannot escape the role of the United States, as the sole mediator in the process, in these repeated failures. American peacemaking efforts ultimately ran aground as a result of Washington’s unwillingness to confront Israel’s ever-deepening occupation or to come to grips with the realities of internal Palestinian politics. In particular, the book looks at the interplay between the U.S.-led peace process and internal Palestinian politics—namely, how a badly flawed peace process helped to weaken Palestinian leaders and institutions and how an increasingly dysfunctional Palestinian leadership, in turn, hindered prospects for a diplomatic resolution. Thus, while the peace process was not necessarily doomed to fail, Washington’s management of the process, with its built-in blind spot to Israeli power and Palestinian politics, made failure far more likely than a negotiated breakthrough. Shaped by the pressures of American domestic politics and the special relationship with Israel, Washington’s distinctive “blind spot” to Israeli power and Palestinian politics has deep historical roots, dating back to the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate. The size of the blind spot has varied over the years and from one administration to another, but it is always present.