Description
Book SynopsisKareem Rabie examines how Palestine's desire to fully integrate its economy into global markets through large-scale investment projects represented a shift away from political state building with the hope that a thriving economy would lead to a free and functioning Palestinian state.
Trade Review“
Palestine Is Throwing a Party is a brilliant, carefully researched, and thoughtful book. Kareem Rabie uses the lens of urban planning and development to show us how global processes of unequal capital accumulation, racialized labor and property regimes within Israel/Palestine, and the managerial rule of Palestinian technocrats and capitalists collaborating with Israel all persistently reproduce the violent systems of settler-colonial expropriation in Israel/Palestine since 1948.” -- Laleh Khalili, author of * Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula *
“Drawing on his exceptional knowledge and understanding of Palestine, along with a considerable amount of original, innovative, and detailed fieldwork, Kareem Rabie presents thought-provoking insights on the question of urbanism in Palestine. This extremely interesting study makes an important contribution.” -- Adam Hanieh, author of * Money, Markets, and Monarchies: The Gulf Cooperation Council and the Political Economy of the Contemporary Middle East *
"[A] detailed, often dense but intellectually penetrating look at how that conference heralded a significant change in both economic and political strategy." -- Ian Black * Tel Aviv Review of Books *
"The capitalist concept of Palestine, despite its exclusion, is part of the normalised state-building process, which in turn normalises dealings with Israel. Rabie's book is a pragmatic approach that does not necessarily condone the alteration of Palestinian territory, but takes a dispassionate look at the facts." -- Ramona Wadi * Middle East Monitor *
"By applying the analytic of settler colonialism without essentializing indigenous identity, and by theorizing the effects of global capitalism on Palestinian class formation,
Palestine is Throwing a Party shows the way forward. Though there is nothing optimistic about its portrayal of relations between Palestinians and Israelis as a dark, distorting mirror, its reminder that the two groups are forever shaping one another against a backdrop of steep global inequalities will be crucial for any politics of democratic decolonization." -- Matan Kaminer * +972 Magazine *
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Palestine Is Throwing a Party exemplifies the best of what ethnography can do: theoretically nuanced analysis derived from the specificities of social life rather than imposed on them. One of the many strengths of this ethnography is the way Rabie eschews easy invocations of a universal version of capitalism, instead making 'universalism' into an ethnographic object: first, by examining how capitalist investors in the West Bank invoke it to make their profit-seeking projects appear desirable, cosmopolitan, and inevitable, even as these projects are contingent and uncertain; and second, to illuminate how the liberalism of the Israeli legal system works to enhance Israel’s domination." -- Lisa Rofel * Journal of Palestine Studies *
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Palestine is Throwing a Party can contribute to a wide range of literatures. . . . It should prove crucial reading to all those interested in the future of Palestine . . . as well as political economy approaches more broadly." -- Dana El Kurd * International Journal of Middle East Studies *
"Brilliant . . . . Rabie’s book forces scholars to more deeply reflect upon and analyze contemporary forms of settler colonialism and the partial, constrained sovereignties under which indigenous peoples all over the world currently live and struggle." -- Les W. Field * Journal of Anthropological Research *
"Rabie carefully disentangles the claims and political-economic goals of stability and freedom. This complicates the picture but is essential because it helps us understand what is going on in Palestine today and contributes to a discussion on the contours of a political future not confined to the nation-state form. In doing so, Rabie offers ways to think otherwise and imagine emancipatory futures." -- Timothy Seidel * American Anthropologist *
Table of ContentsIntroduction 1
1. The Site 37
2. Developers and Designers 54
3. Image, Process, and Precedent 67
4. Public Urban Planning 81
5. Housing Shortage and National Priority 93
6. Public-Private Partnership 105
7. Buyers and Villagers 131
8. Critique, Capital, and the Landscape 149
9. Settlers and the Land 163
10. The Law, Mirroring, and the State 183
Conclusion 199
Acknowledgments 213
Notes 217
References 235
Index 255
