Palestine Is Throwing a Party and the Whole World Is Invited: Capital and State Building in the West Bank

In 2008, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad invited international investors to the first-ever Palestine Investment Conference, which was designed to jump-start the process of integrating Palestine into the global economy. As Fayyad described the conference, Palestine is "throwing a party, and the whole world is invited." In this book Kareem Rabie examines how the conference and Fayyad's rhetoric represented a wider shift in economic and political practice in ways that oriented state-scale Palestinian politics toward neoliberal globalization rather than a diplomatic two-state solution. Rabie demonstrates that private firms, international aid organizations, and the Palestinian government in the West Bank focused on large-scale private housing development in an effort toward state-scale economic stability and market building. This approach reflected the belief that a thriving private economy would lead to a free and functioning Palestinian state. Yet, as Rabie contends, these investment-based policies have maintained the status quo of occupation and Palestine's subordinate and suspended political and economic relationship with Israel.

Author: Kareem Rabie
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 05/07/2021
Pages: 272
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.80lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.57d
ISBN13: 9781478014096
ISBN10: 1478014091
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Anthropology | Cultural & Social
- History | Middle East | Israel & Palestine
- Social Science | Human Geography

About the Author
Kareem Rabie is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois, Chicago.