An Introduction to the Political Economy of the Occupied Palestinian Territory

Abstract

This paper introduces the the political economy perspective of the conditions and transformations of the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. It focuses on the strategies and mechanisms adopted by the occupying forces to re-engineer the interaction between politics and economics in order to subjugate the population and enforce colonial control over the territories. This paper encourages graduate students and emerging researchers, especially in the field of Palestinian studies, to adopt the political economy as an inter-disciplinary method to understand and analyse complex phenomena. The ability of the political economy to provide a critical deconstructive reading of colonial realities is instrumental in efforts to rebuild the Palestinian national movement on new political-economic grounds to counter Israeli colonial strategies.