Decolonizing Palestinian Political Economy ― De-development and Beyond

This volume provides cutting-edge political economy analyses of the Palestinian people as a whole – those living in the occupied territory of the West Bank and Gaza Strip (including annexed East Jerusalem), those living within Israel and refugees in neighbouring Arab states. It rejects the dominant, conventional approach that has fragmented the Palestinians into separate and distinct groups (some thereafter named as 'Arab-Israeli', 'Bedouin', etc.), and which has reduced those regarded as 'the Palestinian people' to only those who reside within the occupied territory. The book challenges this intellectual fragmentation by reuniting Palestinians in one historical political-economy narrative of a people experiencing a common process of dispossession, disenfranchisement and disarticulation. It is a must-read for scholars, students and activists who wish to understand the historical origins and contemporary realities that face Palestinians.

Mandy Turner is Director of the Kenyon Institute (Council for British Research in the Levant) in East Jerusalem. She writes on the political economy of development in war-torn societies with a country focus on the occupied Palestinian territory and has published widely on this in various journals and books.

Omar Shweiki is a DPhil candidate in International Relations at Balliol College, University of Oxford, UK and holds an ESRC Doctoral Studentship. In 2009, he was appointed 'Jerusalem Scholar' by the Council for British Research in the Levant, based at the Kenyon Institute in East Jerusalem, where he also served for a period as Acting Director.