Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice

SPEAKER 1
Okay. Hello, everybody. Welcome. Welcome to the last of this term's cutting edge issues in development thinking and practice. Um, I'm really glad that so many people could come out on a Friday, late Friday before delaying your departure from the LSE. So I'm going to really give very brief introduction of our speakers, and we will ensure that there's plenty of time for Q&A, as we usually do. Um. I'm not going to say too much to introduce this event, except that, you know, we're living through a period of extreme violence happening in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank. You know, we understand how it emerged after quite an horrific attack, the worst attack within Israeli soil since the Israeli state was established back in October. But then we've seen the exercise now of the most horrific asymmetric power, um, in this situation. And of course, as the UN secretary general said, you know, this did not start on October the 7th. Uh, this started decades and decades ago. Um, and the Palestinian people are among those people who have been the subject of constant exodus. Um, and what's going on right now? I was reading the Ft yesterday, a special report, um, where the amount of bombs dropped on Gaza since October the seventh is already surpassed the bombs dropped on German cities throughout all of World War Two. I mean, just to the size of this, which is really quite extraordinary, but our speakers are the experts. And let me introduce them. So we're we're really happy that both of them have taken time out in this very distraught time to come and speak to us about what's going on. Um, but they're going to speak to us about, as I said, very early in the term, um, an approach to the, to to this, um, situation that's taken from the point of view of academic research, what we can learn from it, what it has, what what light it has to shed on what's going on in these circumstances. And so Rafeef's talk is rethinking development in the context of Palestine. And I think this is a really good way to approach this, and very appropriate for our department and all the students who are here. Doctor Rafeef Ziadah is senior lecturer in politics and public policy for emerging in emerging economies at King's College London and across the road. Her research focuses broadly on political economy, gender and race, with a particular focus on the Middle East and East Africa. She has, um, very recently, um, uh, published. Yeah. In an article Vernacular Rights Cultures The Political Origins of Human Rights and Gendered Struggles for justice. Another recent piece is the logistics of the neoliberal food regime circulation, corporate food security, um, and the United Arab Emirates and, um, revolutionary feminism's conversations on collective action and radical thought. Um, so there's a whole list of publications. I'm not going to to go through them now, but I do encourage you to check out this work. We're also really happy to have Doctor Mai Taha from our own sociology department here at the LSC, who's assistant professor in human rights. Maya has written on international law and empire, human rights, labour movements, class and gender relations and care, work and social reproduction. Uh, recently she published, um, a journal article, Thinking Through the Home Work, Rent and Reproduction of Society. And I also wanted to mention she also has a whole list of publication, but one from last year, because I love the title so much. The comic and the absurd on colonial law and revolutionary Palestine. Uh, so it's really our pleasure to welcome Rafeef Ziadah. Thank you.

SPEAKER 3
And thank you very much to the organisers of the series for inviting me. It is always a pleasure to be here with the students in your program. Um, and thank you all for being here on the last Friday of term. I know everybody is eager to go to the pub and celebrate the end of the term, so I'll try to be as brief as I can. When we scheduled this event last year. It was scheduled for earlier in the term. I certainly did not anticipate that I would be discussing Palestine amid an intense and publicly televised military assault. The reality, however, is that this violence is not new and the violence against Palestinians has been prevalent well before this latest military assault. But in moments like these, it's very important and it's very crucial to really reflect on what matters. And as students of development, I really want to I want you to consider this and to think through this, beyond just this immediate moment, to try and understand what is really happening and what we can really do if we do want peace and justice. This series, for example, encourages us to explore cutting edge issues in development thinking and practice. And in times that are marked by seemingly perpetual lurch from one crisis to the next. Where all we hear about is climate crisis, Covid 19, inequality and poverty. There is really an urgency to think about what is development. Why are you studying it? Why does it matter? We need to be probing and challenging ourselves to think outside what has become development, practice and discourse. And I hope that you can follow me today. And having this conversation and thinking through not just around Palestine, but thinking through what development has become generally. Walter Rodney insightfully said development and underdevelopment are not comparative terms, but they have a dialectical relationship. Some places develop because others get developed. Some populations can thrive, not because they are inherently better, stronger, more democratic, but because there are historical relations of power, of colonialism, of plunder. And for me, that is the starting point of thinking about development. It is that history and centring that history. Unfortunately, the prevailing perspective on development often divorces itself from pervasive power dynamics and histories of colonialism. Advocates see development as a neutral, technocratic process, relying on financial aid and state building policies, good governance, and all the buzzwords that we become familiar as we study development. However, this viewpoint tends to perceive development as a positive sum game seemingly unaffected by power relations. So what I want to invite you to do today is to reinsert power into how you think about development, to think beyond the language of good governance and empowerment, and the buzzwords to rethink what happens when we think about history and power when we discuss development. This is why an understanding of history is crucial in discussing development. Because if we abstract development from power and historical injustice, what we are truly doing is actually perpetuating violence by other means. When development is reduced to technocratic jargon about empowerment and enabling entrepreneurship. For example, it is us who fall short as students and scholars of development. We must think beyond conventional boxes, frameworks, and the next available internship, I must say, to truly address the world that we live in. To address the multiple crises that we face. It is striking how issues of underdevelopment, militarism and human rights crystallise in a place like Gaza under siege for years. People living on the brink of life. Calories being calculated against a population of 2.2 million people who are not allowed to leave. The world, however, takes notice when the bombs drop. Naming this a crisis but the slow violence. The slow violence is persistent and it is normalised when we normalise it in our development speak. And this kind of slow violence may be very intense in the situation of Gaza. But it is no different in places like Yemen and places like Congo and all of the places that we want to go out there and work as development practitioners. So we have to keep the slow violence always at hand as we abstract it in this technocratic jargon. So the world of mainstream development in the case of Palestine has given us key paradigms. If you study development textbooks, mainstream ones, most of them have really focussed on two types of development paradigms. One of them was conflict resolution. That we need this. There's a conflict. There's an intractable conflict. We need it to be resolved. And the other one is very much focussed on market driven development and state building. If the Palestinians could just build a state and develop a free market, then everything will be okay. I'm going to discuss how those two paradigms have panned out. Although I'm going to spare you the surprise, it hasn't been good. As you can see on your television screens, the results have not been good. But let's take a step back first. I know that some of you know a lot about Palestine. I know others are only interested because in the past couple of months it's been in the news. So let's take a step back and discuss the reality. What is it actually like on the ground for Palestinians, both in the West Bank and Gaza and many in the diaspora as well? The infamous Oslo Accords, signed by Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, divided the West Bank, the occupied West Bank into areas A, B and C. The PA was given autonomy in area A. At that stage constituting around 3% of the West Bank and 20% of the 20% of the Palestinian population lived. Another 70% of the Palestinian population lived in area B, comprising 24% of the West Bank over which the PA had shared authority. Israel fully controlled area C with more than 70% of the territory. So when we speak about the West Bank and we speak about the Oslo Accords, it's important to remember that 70% of that territory remained under Israeli control. Through this division of areas A, B and C, the Oslo Accords and subsequent agreements essentially transferred the front line responsibility for Israeli security to a Palestinian face, and this was the Palestinian Authority. While all strategic levers, particularly economic ones, remained in Israeli hands. This is why I say always centre the question of power. Where has power remained? The means of this control has been largely set out in the preceding decades. While illegal Israeli settlements were designed as a final status issue under the accords. These illegal settlements doubled in that period. The Israeli government launched a massive settlement expansion immediately after signing the Oslo Accords, by offering large economic incentives for settlers to relocate to the West Bank and Gaza. The number of settlers doubled between 1994 and the beginning of the 2000, and remember, between 94 and the 2000, this was supposed to be the period of peace. This was supposed to be the period of building a Palestinian state, having two states that live alongside each other. Focusing on strategic locations. The settlers were largely. Settlements were largely installed on top of hilltops and water aquifers. Large settlement blocks cut across the west bank, preventing the natural growth of Palestinian population centres. The settlements were to be connected by another Oslo era innovation, the so-called bypass roads, where restricted access highways that connect settlement blocks with one another with Israeli cities. The net effect of this. The net effect of these measures meant that 90% of the Palestinian population living in areas A and B were confined to a patchwork of isolated enclaves, with three main clusters in the north, central and south sections of the West Bank, separated from one another by settlement blocks and bypass bypass roads. Travel between these areas could be shut down at any time by the Israeli military. All entry and exit from areas A and B, as well as the determination of residency rights in these areas, was under Israeli authority. Israel also controlled the vast majority of water aquifers, all underground resources and all airspace in the West Bank, whereas Israel used close up to 500,000,000m³ of water annually. By the 1990s, Palestinians in the West Bank were using 105,000,000 in 2002. The Israeli authorities initiated the construction of a wall that would encircle the West Bank. This was after the Palestinian uprising, the second Palestinian uprising. This was after negotiations had broken down. There was a refusal to accept this kind of final settlements of fragmentation. As the intifada proceeded, Israel also initiated this wall with the stated aim of preventing violent attacks inside Israel by Palestinians from the West Bank. In 2004, the International Court of Justice found that the route of this wall was illegal. It is now yet another key component of a range of restrictions imposed by the Israeli authorities on the movement of Palestinians. So there is the implementation of physical obstacles, permit requirements and the designation of areas as restricted or closed for military use only. The wall transformed the geography, economy and social life of Palestinians living in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. The geographic and administrative fragmentation of the West Bank isolated families and communities from each other. Isolated farmers from their land. None of these services could get to certain areas of the West Bank, so it was a physical, psychological fragmentation of the Palestinian people and a very geographic one as well. A similar structure existed in the Gaza Strip. With the PA given autonomy. Israel retained control over the settlements and military bases. Permits were given. Even permits were even required for Gazan fisherfolk to use the sea. Likewise, the entry and exit of goods and people from the Gaza Strip came under Israeli control. Movement between Gaza and the West Bank was made virtually impossible, with Israel rendering the two areas separate entities. And again, I want to stress these mechanisms were implemented during an accord that was supposed to be for building peace and a building two states living side by side, because you will hear this mantra a lot, that what we need is to go back to a two state solution of two states living side by side. But the reality that we witnessed was that even as those accords were signed, facts on the ground were making it impossible for this to happen. The West Bank was becoming fragmented. More Israeli settlers were settling in, and there was absolute control of Palestinian life. And although we are speaking about settlement blocks and roads, we have to remember that this is even the most basic of life being controlled by a foreign military, a checkpoint that decides whether you can go to your school or not, a soldier at a checkpoint that can decide whether your day is going to go one way or another. In June 2007, after the 2006 legislative elections and following the takeover of Gaza by Hamas after they won the elections, the Israeli authorities implemented a siege, citing security concerns, virtually isolating Palestinians in Gaza, 2.2. 2.2 million people in an act of collective punishment from the rest of the occupied territories and the world more broadly. Broadly, this land, sea and air siege on Gaza intensified previous restrictions, imposing strict limits on the number and specified categories of people and goods allowed. And here I want to stress that we often say that Gaza has been under siege for 16 years, and that is true. But the restrictions on Gaza had existed before then. There were already restrictions on what can pass. How many people can go into the sea, what kinds of products. The siege was actually just an intensification of these restrictions. And here, of course, is very important to remember that this siege has been absolutely brutal and destructive for the people of Gaza. Again, it controls every aspect of their life down to the goods that can be imported. At one point, coriander was banned from entering Gaza. I'm not sure how much of a weapon coriander can be, but it was on that list. Of course, this has resulted in the absolute deterioration of living standards and any development prospects in Gaza, in addition to multiple military assaults. Of course, we had 2008, 2014, 2021 which have devastated the infrastructure and it has not been allowed to rebuild. So what has occurred in both the West Bank and Gaza is a systematic development where, as Sarah Roy has written, the development is defined as a process which undermines or weakens the ability of an economy to grow and expand by preventing it from accessing land and utilising critical inputs needed to promote internal growth beyond a specific structural level in Gaza. The development of the economic sector has over decades has happened. Over decades of Israeli rule transformed that economy essentially into an auxiliary of the State of Israel. And I will speak shortly about what it is to be a captive economy, because one of the most important forms of control and power over the Palestinian people, which is not often mentioned, is the economic structure. So you will often hear about human rights abuses and international law and how international law is not applied. But you will rarely hear about the economic system and how that has devastated Palestinian society. The economic system has developed under the auspices of the Oslo Accords, where the Palestinian economy has been bound tightly with the Israeli state, fundamentally structured by a dependency on Israel. Through the 1970s and 80s, this dependency grew as a result of military orders that prevented Palestinian industrial and agricultural development, and yoked a pool of cheap Palestinian labour to the Israeli economy. So this was very much an act of developing and purposeful deindustrialisation and purposeful attack on agriculture through military orders to ensure that the West Bank does not develop a coherent, separate economy. Today, the system of controls essentially controls all goods that are entering the occupied territories, and this tends to multiply the profits of Israel's largest companies in multiple ways. First, with inside the Israeli occupied territories, is the market. The key market for Israel is actually the occupied territories. Israeli goods are mostly marketed in the occupied territories, and Palestinian consumption is largely funded through external capital flows from aid. So in one way, the international community is actually not helping to fund Palestinians, but it is helping to fund the Israeli economy because all of the goods transfers end up happening to that side. Second, there is a very prevalent form of development across the West Bank today in which we see in terms of buildings, cafes and some houses in areas, concentrated areas like Ramallah. Again, most of the profits from these sectors, including the industrial zones, end up going to Israeli businesses and a meagre proportion of that actually going to Palestinian society. Additional aspects of this economic control include the absence of a Palestinian currency, which leaves the monetary system, and the Opt beholden to Israel's central bank and results in severe inflation and again benefits Israeli companies by by draining wealth from the Palestinian population. Any analysis of development in the OpEd must incorporate those structural considerations to speak of development, in particular economic policy making, without starting from the fact that the Palestinian economy essentially operates as dependent adjunct to Israel is to conceal the exploitative relationship at the core of Israel's military occupation. This is precisely why Palestinians insist on discussing power and history and these structural relationships. Puts differently. This means an insistence that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, way back in 47 and 48, that led to the flight of more than three quarters of the Palestinian population, is not simply a painful historical memory that we should forget about what Palestinians call the Nakba. The catastrophe remains very much a lived reality within these economic structures that are continually perpetuated. Israel's project over the entirety of the Palestinian population is seen in its most stark form in Gaza. It is felt in the longing of millions of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes. It is seen in the segregation of Palestinians in the West Bank, from Gaza Strip to scattered population centres, divided from one another by settlements, military checkpoints and Israeli only highways. These open air prisons, surrounded by a wall and its associated infrastructure of settlements, military zones and roads, mean that Palestinians are now confined to approximately 12% of historic Palestine. And this is why history matters. Because when we speak about the situation today, we are essentially speaking about a population that is now only confined to 12%. Even if you consider the Balfour Declaration, which called for a home of two peoples in that area, it was not calling for Palestinians to be confined to 12% of historic Palestine. And of course, the Nakba remains with those Palestinians who have stayed on their lands and became Israeli citizens because parts of the Palestinian population are also Israeli citizens. But they are forced to live as second class citizens on a state that has been built on the destruction of their national identity. So in the face of all of this, in the face of this fragmentation and the two state solution seemingly not happening on the ground, in fact, and in reality, what has the international community offered? What have been the paradigms of development? So I said earlier, one of those paradigms has been a conflict resolution paradigm, but those were particularly prevalent through the 1990s and those presented Palestine as this intractable conflict between two equal sides. Some like to say it's religious and that this has been an age old hatred, but the only way that you would have a solution, that would be that it would come from the paternalistic intervention of the West. This was also called the so-called honest broker paradigm. This framework was the framework upon which the Oslo Accords were built, and the honest broker was supposed to be the United States. The United States, which consistently says that it is Israel's greatest ally. So already you could see that this framework of two equal sides and an honest broker has a lot of holes in it before it has even begun. And the history of it all largely disappeared. This paradigm very much pushed for this idea of a two state, and we are still living within this idea of a two state. What we have seen under this conflict resolution paradigm is continued lip service to negotiations. And this is important because one of the things we learn in development is that it is always important to have negotiations to bring people to the table. It's very important to have sides speak rather than fight, which is absolutely fair. It's much better to have sides speak than fight. But then the question of power must be centred as well. Are these two equal sides? Who has the power in the negotiation? Who is overseeing the negotiation? If we're going to talk about words like honest broker, you cannot bring the most dishonest broker into a relationship and call them an honest broker. Those relations of power must be centred when we speak about conflict resolution. And I'm stressing this because I know many of you are discussing conflict areas, so it's very important to think about this as we discuss any conflict around the world as a paradigm. This kind of ahistorical paradigm of conflict resolution hides the reality that there are rarely ever two equal sides at a negotiating table. And in those negotiations that took place in the Oslo Accords, many of the critical issues were put on the back burner. And those key issues are what we see bubbling up constantly because they have not been dealt with to begin with. And the other consistent paradigm, which I want to speak a bit today in terms of development, was the other paradigm that sort of replaced this conflict resolution paradigm. Once the Oslo Accords began to break down in terms of the intifada and you had the uprising, we had a new developmental paradigm come into being, which was the one about developing state institutions and economic development while the occupation continues. And the idea here, quite frankly, was maybe Palestinians could prove themselves worthy enough of self-determination by building institutions of statehood, and maybe then the international community would agree to give them a state. So under a military occupation with soldiers and military checkpoints and everything I have described and illegal settlements, the Palestinians were to develop an economy and develop institutions of a state. This paradigm runs almost unquestioned in all the major multilateral agencies and reports on Palestinian economic development. The world Bank, for example, devotes thousands of pages of analysis to outlining the necessary steps for Palestinian statehood. It does so by positing policy choices for the Palestinian Authority and Israel as complementary, rather than viewing the power relation between the two. While multilateral agencies encourage Israel to tinker with aspects of its policy as to enable effective PA operations, Israel is conceptualised as actually playing a positive role in Palestinian development. If you shrink Palestinian development to being about creating a few industrial zones where workers can cross the checkpoints and work in an industrial zone that is joint Israeli capital, Palestinian capital and some Turkish capital. That has been the developmental blueprint that was given to the Palestinian people, and it is partly why this blueprint has fallen apart. However, it is within the tenets of this paradigm and the Oslo Accords. The Paris Protocols were the economic side of the Oslo Accords that an economic dependency has actually been forged. The Paris Protocol binds the Palestinian economy with the Israeli one via a customs union, and leaves no space for independent Palestinian economic policies. It connects the Opt trade policies, tariff structure and value added tax rate to Israel. So here, if we're speaking about an independent economy, it's very clear that that cannot happen because the entire economic structure is bound to the Israeli one. Moreover, the authorities in Israel collect tax revenues on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. And in the last two years, we have seen that Israel refuses to pay some of this tax authority. Those are taxes paid by Palestinians that Israel is keeping. These funds have been used to pressure the Palestinian Authority as a negotiating chip. Decades of development policies have destroyed the productive base of the Palestinian economy. Military attacks destroy the infrastructure. Military policies enshrine both geographic and economic fragmentation. Various restrictions on imported inputs and technology make it difficult for industries to even service and function. Israel has a list of dual use goods that are not allowed to enter into the Palestinian economy. This has crippled the Palestinian medical sector, simply having a list that is considered dual use and not allowed to enter much. A lot of medical machinery actually depends on these kinds of items. The barriers to the movement are part of this economic strangulation policy. They divide the West Bank into disconnected islands. How is the Palestinian state supposed to develop and thrive when there is no way of having any kind of economic advancement? As a matter of fact, the Palestinian economy has a lot of Palestinian political economists have said is a captive economy, just as the Palestinian people are a captive people. The Paris protocol gave Israel the final say on what the PA was allowed to import and export, and further increase the dependency of the Palestinian economy on Israeli services such as water and electricity. If you are in Palestine today and you are paying for your water service or your electrical service, you may get a bill with Arabic on it. But actually the money and the service is coming from an Israeli company and that money is being transferred right back. Everything has been bound up in this way to ensure that even the idea of an independent state is not workable. This developmental paradigm offers market driven and technocratic solutions to a political problem. The developmental goal that then the PA tries to pursue is one that advances this model, because the Palestinian Authority is interested in its own survival. In order to achieve this goal. Program after developmental program has talked about empowering the population. We've gone the rampant of all development buzzwords and products you can have, from microfinancing to entrepreneurship to working from home. It has been tried and tested. The problem is, all of this development aid is tinkering at the bottom of a political situation of occupation. And unless we actually deal with the fact that there is a military occupation, unless we deal with the fact that there is a power relationship here, all of these developmental programs just prolong the situation and keep this idea of a two state solution alive. When on the ground, it has largely become impossible. When on the ground, Palestinian life has become impossible. So even before this period, and very purposely, by the way, I went back to the numbers from 2019 to illustrate that history did not begin two months ago. That Palestinian actions are not out of the blue and unprovoked, but that there is actually a history that has occurred here of settler colonialism, military occupation that continues between 2010 and 2019. Overall, unemployment in the OpEd increased from 21% to 25% by 2019. Palestinian unemployment rates ranked as the second highest in the world, just behind South Africa. As bad as these aggregate figures are, they also hide very significant geographical disparities. Unemployment in the Gaza Strip stood at 45.1% in 2019, by far the worst in the world, compared to 14.6% in the West Bank. Within the West Bank, labour market opportunities were much more limited in areas like Jenin and Bethlehem that are outside the centre, where the core of the international aid community tends to send the money. Of course, like any labour market, these impacts are very much gendered and work on the very much gendered unemployment in the optics characterised by sharp inequalities by gender. Between 2010 and 2019, the female unemployment rate in the oppt almost doubled, reaching 41.1% of Palestinian women over the age of 15, the highest level in the world. And of course, youth unemployment, particularly in the West Bank, is horrific. You would have heard in the past few months that Gaza actually has 60% of the population are children, but it's also a very high youth population, and the youth unemployment levels have been horrific. People say that Gaza is one of the most aid dependent places on Earth. But in order to understand what aid, why this aid dependency is, we have to understand this economic situation, this historic context that has brought us to this point. People also say the catch phrases, the most densely populated area on earth. What's hidden behind that number is the fact that the majority of the population are refugees that can still see their original villages, but are not allowed to go back to their original villages. And well before this period came, there was the March of Return, where Palestinians from Gaza went to the wall and went to the sea, went to the fence and tried to walk back, simply walk back. And at that point there was a there was a policy, a systematic policy of trying to decapitate them at the knee. So in this case, international financial institutions have been playing up this paradigm, have been funding this paradigm. And the European Union, of course, consistently speaks about how much aid the Palestinians are receiving. We started to see the tables turn under the Trump administration, where he started to defund the Palestinian aid organisations, particularly the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees. Now, when we say defunding these aid organisations, it is actually defunding very basic services, life saving services. In the case of, for example, children who were hard of hearing were no longer able to get their aids, their hearing aids. Once you start to get to cut this type of funding. So one thing to insist upon is not that we are saying these humanitarian organisations don't offer services, or that these services are not good. What we are saying is that there is a paradigm here of dependency that these aid agencies can continue to perpetuate. If the situation does not change and the situation has to fundamentally change. If we want to see the levels of violence occurring right now stopping. And here I will end on the note because I think it's very important to discuss militarism. We're in a very strange situation right now where the European Union and the United States and even the British government are saying, we don't want to call for a ceasefire, but we really care about human suffering, and we want to help the Palestinian people. And what's really strange about this is that these are the same governments that are sending the weapons, massive weapons sales that are happening to Israel right now. The U.S. government said by a spokesperson yesterday that they are the one nation in the world that is helping the Palestinian population more than anyone else. The U.S. is Israel's main weapons supplier. The US provides Israel regular military aid. The current agreement runs from 2019 to 2028, and it is worth $3.8 billion a year. Since the start of Israel's current attack on Gaza, the US government approved the provision of an extra 14.5 billion in military aid. Now think about this in the context that James was discussing before, around how many bombs have already been dropped on Gaza, and what does this amount of military aid actually do to the situation? Is it actually helping anyone, this amount of extra military aid going into the situation? Does it look to any sane human being that what we are missing in this situation is more arms? If we think that what is needed currently is more arms, then this is the paradigm we are speaking about. And interestingly, most of this aid goes back in kickbacks to US companies that are profiting from it. And just so I don't get accused of being biased. I should say that the UK military also supplies Israel, and in this current war there have been very, very disturbing reports of the ways that the British government has actually intervened directly. While details on UK military supply chains to Israel are more secretive, according to flight trackers, since the 7th of October, more than 70 RAF flights have departed from the UK military base in Cyprus to Israel. The Ministry of Defence confirmed that at least 17 military flights flew to Tel Aviv in this period that weren't taking place before the bombing of Gaza started. These flights include transport aircraft such as A400m, capable of carrying helicopters and extra weapons. And of course there are arms licences with between the Israeli military and the British government. And of course in some of our universities, there are very open military relations and research happening. This narrow focus that we have had in the international development world of fixating on infrastructures of a statelet while ignoring the structural situation, has led us directly to the position we are in now. And I think there's a lot to learn, and there's a lot we need to shift. For anyone interested and actually changing the situation, we have to understand the history. We have to understand the power relations. I just want to end by reading a very short poem. A very dear friend and mentor to many Palestinians was killed yesterday in Gaza. Doctor Refaat, who was a. Professor and academic. And this these were the last words, and this was the last poem that was pinned to his Twitter feed. And I thought it was important to end here before we have our conversation. If I must die, you must live. If I must die, you must live to tell my story, to sell my things, to buy a piece of cloth and some strings. Make it white with a long tail, so that a child somewhere in Gaza, while looking heaven in the eye, awaiting his dad, who left in a blaze and bid no one farewell, not even to his flesh, not even to himself. Sees the kite. My kite you made flying up above. And think for a moment. An angel is there bringing back love. If I must die, let it bring hope. Let it be a tale. We will be marching. Many of us will be marching in London for another weekend to call for a ceasefire, and we will be flying kites for the fight. Thank you.

SPEAKER 4
Um, thank you so much, Rafeef. Uh, and, uh, yeah, I think as as academics and human beings, uh. Just honouring Doctor Refaat is so important. Uh, we are here in our halls. Uh, we can teach, we can think and without being bombarded, uh, by bombs, basically. Uh. So may his soul rest in power and peace. Um. Thank you so much, Rajiv. Uh, and, uh, and thanks, James, also for organising this, but, uh, thank you, because it's really difficult to. To present this very like, uh, you know, well-researched, measured. Uh. Talk in the midst of what's happening, especially for Palestinians who have to literally see their homeland destroyed while they're away and, ah, can't go back. Uh, so really grateful for for you coming here today at the LSC and sharing all this, uh, important, um, all these important questions that help us make sense of what's happening in Palestine today. So, um, I took some notes. Uh, and I apologise in advance of my, uh, comments are not very organised. I'm just writing them in that notebook now. Um, so I guess one of the things that Rafi raised, uh, is the the question of violence and the temporality of violence. Uh, so it's one thing to to think about violence in its spectacular form that we see today, the absolute horror that we, you know, watch on our screens. Um, but there's also the slow violence that's been happening, uh, for many, many years since since the Nakba and even before. Uh, and I think that this talk, uh, shows us, uh, only one side, actually, of the many ways in which the slow violence operates and has been operating for years. Um, and she encourages us to think about time as an essential element to make sense of what's happening in Palestine today. Um, the other main theme, uh, has to do with. Power, uh, in development, uh, which then speaks to the broader, um, economic violence that is implicated within the settler colonial apartheid system that we're talking about. So. This idea that, you know, we all know, uh, especially like in mainstream news around like the humanitarian reading of what's happening in Palestine or the religious reading of what's happening in Palestine. But the importance of the fifth intervention today is to help us make sense of it as something that's indicated within the structures of, of capitalism and the ways in which it operates. Uh, in, uh, in a place like Palestine, which is I mean, there's there's the siege on Gaza, there's the occupation of the West Bank, and there is, you know, the Arab citizens of Israel who live as second class citizens in, um, uh. As basically Israeli citizens who have, uh. Um, have their own kinds of restrictions. And we see this very concretely, even, uh, in the last few weeks around, uh, restrictions on, uh, Palestinian students and academics in, in Israeli universities. Um, so I think it's important for us to think about those questions as we, you know, again, are here in this hall. Um, so I had, uh, maybe like a few questions for Afif, and then we can, you know, start up the conversation with with all of you. Um, the first is maybe if you can speak a little bit about, um, the the military industrial complex. Uh, because here we have the construction of roads that only settlers are allowed. Uh, the construction of settlements. Uh, the construction of the wall, uh, which has this kind of concrete wall in the midst that kind of snaking through the West Bank presents itself. There's a bit of a completeness to to a concrete wall and the kind of status quo normalisation of partition logic. Um, and to speak about the economy, the political economy of, of walling, but also the political economy of construction. Uh, I mean, what's happening in Palestine is, is, I mean, there's a lot of destruction, but there's also a lot of construction. So to think about that political economy and perhaps if you can speak about this in relation to, you know, calls for divestment, uh, and, you know, divestment, not only with like, arms trade but also divestment in this entire apparatus, uh, that relies on the constant dispossession of Palestinians. So maybe if you want to start with that, or I can ask you a few questions and then. Yeah, um, another another thing, maybe if you can, uh, speak to. Is you were speaking about, uh, systematic development. And I'm wondering if you can say more about this in relation to dispossession. Um, I mean, there's a lot of literature, for example, around dispossession and, you know, theft and property and property and theft, this whole debate. Um, and I'm wondering if you have any reflection around the constant dispossession, uh, conversation in the context of Palestine, but even also more broadly. Um, the other thing that's kind of also related, uh, relating to the economic question, is that when you spoke about this idea of the captive economy, which, as you mentioned, uh, many other scholars have, you know, spoken about in relation to Palestine as Palestinians, as captive people, and the economy itself is captive. And there's something I mean, there's something really crazy about the logic that implicates Palestinians in their own dispossession. Uh, but also, um, the, the, the this constant dependency on a colonial power, which we see, I mean, not only in Palestine, uh, but we see in all former colonies. And, you know, the the latest, uh, revolt in, in Niger, for example, against the, the, the old French Empire and France until today, even like, is upset about that, you know, how dare you, uh, revolt against, uh, our continuous colonisation of with other means. Uh, so the ways in which this colonial relationship, uh, like, iterates itself in the context of Palestine. Um, yeah, let's start with that. And. Yeah, mine.

SPEAKER 1
Thank you very much.

SPEAKER 4
Well, I have more stuff.

SPEAKER 1
And then we go to the floor and then might come back again.

SPEAKER 3
Sure. Yeah. Sounds good. Sounds good. Um, I guess one important thing I want to say and why I framed my entire talk around development, is that I don't think we should exceptionalist Palestine. I think some of the same mechanisms and language of development, unfortunately, is very much cut and paste in different places around the world. And that's why I want you to think about interrogating them and how they work. Um, what's what we are seeing today on our televisions is an exceptional form of violence against the captive population, and that has largely to do with an international military industrial complex that profits, um, that profits off of these wars. At the most basic level, if I want to speak as plainly as possible. Um, there are corporations that make money with the more weapons they sell. And in the Israeli case, um, they have a testing ground for that military equipment. So Israel is not the only country with a military industry, but it is an important one in the chain of Internationalised military industrial complex. And it's in each stage and in each war, um, sells those weapons as and you hear the buzzwords battle tested, battle proven. So when we see these rounds of violence and I think as, as humans and people interested in development, we really need to take this to heart, that when we see violence, there's people thinking of this as as a marketing ploy, um, to sell more weapons. And this is why it's also extremely important to think about this through the lens of divestment, and that this has become very normalised in our everyday life. Um, militarism. You know, there's many feminist scholars who wrote about how militarism pervades every aspect of our lives. If you watch the movies that we we watch, there's a glorification of war. Um, if you look at the kinds of toys little children buy, there's a glorification of war, um, in our institutions. Um, there are also research tracks that have to do with militarism. There's joint research projects, and those are all things for us to question this deep militarism and how normalised it has become in our learning institutions and how, again, at a very basic level, such intense violence is used as a means of making more profits. And when when we talk about the US and the UK trade with Israel, these are very specific companies. This past week, there were protests outside arms factories up and down this countries that are producing parts of F-35s that are now bombing Gaza. So we're not distant from this war. It is not something that's happening somewhere else, and we're just watching it on our screens. We are very much implicated when we talk about the weapons and the arms industry in terms of development and dispossession. Of course, the two are interlinked. The first act of dispossession is Palestinians being dispossessed off of their land and then being forced to become workers, selling their labour to the Israeli state. So there is no way to delink consistent dispossession from the development, because every time there's a wave of dispossession hand in hand comes the development people losing their sources of income, having to find new. Sources of income. So there's the relationship. There is one and the same. And finally, in terms of the the captive economy, um, again, I think unfortunately, if we look at a lot of the economies that we would be studying in terms of the least developed countries, in many ways we are speaking about captive economies that are bound to have these solutions. And the diktats by the world Bank and the IMF and the developmental models we've been seeing have been the same. Um, and like I started with where we're at a point where there's a climate crisis, everyone is stressed out about what's happening, and our developmental paradigms are all still the same. So we're counting on you to change things. That's. I'll leave it at that.

SPEAKER 1
Should I go to the floor and do your questions? How about we take three at a time? Yeah. That's great. You can both come back to them. Um. Microphone upstairs. Yes. I'm just looking in. All I see are men raising their hands in the back here. Sorry.

SPEAKER 5
Thank you very much for this, um, amazing talk. And I've been personally to Palestine. So, um, lots of things that you were talking about. Like, I can really resemble them from my personal experience being there. Um, I just want to ask a question which might sound a bit controversial, and I definitely don't mean it to sound like this, but what is your opinion about the role of other countries beyond the one you just listed, such as Egypt or Iran? Uh, in terms of the development in in the context of Palestine?

SPEAKER 1
Thank you.

SPEAKER 0
Okay.

SPEAKER 1
This gentleman here.

SPEAKER 6
Oh, yeah. Thanks a lot for the talk. Um, I was just wondering, as someone with a background where development is a slightly kind of woolly word. Anyway, um, when the Palestinian economy you've described lack so many of these elements of a national economy. Uh, you know, like border control and stuff like that. And there doesn't even appear to be any kind of dependent development occurring, as you might see in, like, Brazil with some of the dependency theory literature. To what extent does it even make sense to talk of development in Palestine, and not just talk in the overtly political terms of like, liberation or something?

SPEAKER 1
Okay. Thank you. And up here. Oh, yeah. Go ahead.

SPEAKER 7
Hi. So I come from Singapore, which has a very deep diplomatic relationship with Israel. The military ties between Singapore and Israel are very covert in nature. Um, both my parents work in the military, so that given that relationship, it's a source of shame for me. Um, of course, Singapore being a very having a very technocratic, um, approach to development. The thinking is, if you have a roof over your head and water and food doesn't matter how you got it, um, you should be grateful. Also, very little kind of resistance and citizen activism given clamping down on political views. What can I do?

SPEAKER 1
Thank you. Do you want to address those three?

SPEAKER 3
Sure. Um. Other countries? Yeah. Very important question. Thank you very much for that question. Uh, I mean, Egypt is the country bordering from the other side, and the the siege is being implemented on that side as well. The border is closed. There are calls to open up the Rafah border. Um, in the current escalation, there has been talk about trying to influence Egypt and, uh, try to displace and dispossess an ethnically cleansed the Palestinians of races into the Sinai desert. And I think that is very scary that that is even something that was on the books. Um, there was talk about trying to use international aid and IMF loans to influence Egypt to accept that kind of solution. Uh, but over, over the long term, of course, Egypt has been central to what happens with Israel. Israel. Egypt has been central to the Palestinian people. Um, the people of Egypt are very much in support of Palestine. The trouble is that since the uprisings, uh, we've had a return to authoritarianism in Egypt. Um, that has hand in hand worked with the Israeli. Leadership in this particular moment. And I think Egyptian and Palestinian activists are all pulling our hair and thinking about how how this can be that we have one of the largest in terms of population supportive populations of Palestine in the region. Yet the siege is being implemented on that side. And I'm actually sorry that I neglected to mention Egypt in my talk, because if we speak about the siege of the we need to speak about the Egyptian role in what's happening there. Um, currently, I should also say there's and it's been building over the years, um, a lot of pressure on the Palestinian population, uh, with increasing fees to be able to leave Rafah with making it even harder to live. Rafah, an entire economy has been built over exploiting Palestinians from Gaza on the Egyptian side. Um, and that needs to be tackled. Um, unfortunately, under the current circumstances, everybody is just trying to survive and not even sure how to survive. We can't reach people on the ground and anymore. Um, there is the larger geopolitics. Um, if you invite me next term, I'm very happy to speak about the larger regional geopolitics in terms of not just Iran, but also China. What's happening with the Houthis and Yemen? Um, again, Palestine is not an exception, and it shouldn't be abstracted from the rest of the region. We have the question of Lebanon and Hezbollah as well. Um, I just don't think I can do justice to all of that geopolitics in a in a quick answer. But just to say that we need to be wary of that regional context and that a lot of the Oslo Accord was about abstracting Palestine, um, from the rest of the region and saying, oh, these are just two countries fighting each other rather than actually putting it in the broader regional context. Um. I agree with you in terms of the question of development, how can we speak about development in the current context? And I think that's why a lot of it has been nonsensical. A lot of it has been how do you survive under a military occupation, and how do you build a market driven economy when you don't even have the basics? Palestinians often speak of a resistance economy, which would be a different kind of economy about self sustenance, which there were lots of examples of that during the first Palestinian intifada, trying to build locally, build independently. Um, sometimes I worry about the romanticism and some of those notions, but I think the notion itself is very, very important. And if we can go back to it, um, it will help us actually address a different type of development. And just to be clear, I'm not saying there's no development needed. Um, I think Palestine has been systematically destroyed for a long time. We are owed reparations and United Nations Resolutions 194, for example, speaks about the right of return and reparations. It's about how we conceive of development, which I think, again, if you invite me next term with other scholars, we should talk about reparations, a very good subject. Um, Singapore military trade. Again, an extremely, very worthy question, because what we are seeing is the collaboration of Israel with other militaries around the world and in many cases, authoritarian locations and authoritarian militaries. Um, one of the groups I work with, workers in Palestine, has just put out a very good fact sheet, for example, about the arms trade between Israel and India, because that is increasing. And as a matter of fact, there's a major increase of production of parts for the Israeli military inside India. And the Modi government has been having closer relationships and closer ties. Um, and when this type of authoritarian violence happens against the particular people, it's never within the borders of that state. It's circulating. Those circuits of the military trade are international. They are not just local. Um, in terms of what we can do, I think we have to do what activists everywhere are trying to do raise awareness, educate, try to protest where we can if we cannot just continue speaking about it. A larger issue is that there's a big silencing around what's happening. And I'm sure a lot of your colleagues here are already involved in a lot of this activism and would have many good hints and tips to give you as well. Thank you all for the great questions, Mike.

SPEAKER 1
Did you want to take some more questions? Okay. Um, I was pointing to somebody before up here. Yeah.

SPEAKER 8
Hi. Um, yeah. My question is a bit more on the long term. I don't want to ignore, obviously, the humanitarian crisis now, but my question is, and I think you sort of touched on it about the fragmentation. And my question is like, as an Arab myself, I'm sometimes confused, as is there a unified political settlement that Palestinians would be comfortable with in the long term, or is this, you know, fragmentation between Gaza and West Bank that has been deliberate and has been preventing this for a long time?

SPEAKER 1
Thank you. Can we come down here right in front?

SPEAKER 9
Hi. Thank you so much for the talk. It was really informative. As a Palestinian myself, I'm actually wondering how do Palestinian refugees fit in to the captive economy and what is their role in it?

SPEAKER 0
Thank you. Did you get that? Yeah.

S11
First of all, you hear amazing talk. Second of all, I want to ask about the farm settlements and the displacement of the Palestinian agrarian society. And as you mentioned, there was a rise of the resistance economy, the self sustaining economy. But. How does that fit in with the fragmentation and the non viability of an agrarian society under the fragmentation and basically the displacement and replacement of Palestinian farmers and area C for the most part and in other areas in area B for example. Thanks.

SPEAKER 1
A very important question I remember seeing at the on the West Bank, farmers cut off from going to their fields and farmers not able to bring their produce to market. Instead, the markets were full with Israeli agricultural produce. Can we come up here? Did I see another hand up here? No. Down here. Okay, how about right here? Okay. Yes, that's who I was pointing.

S12
Thank you very much. I wanted to ask you if you had a normative position on the stance that development studies policymakers, development practitioners writ large, should take regarding the acknowledgement of the conditions or the characteristics of the development from an economic perspective, and then try to have a normative posture about what these conditions are.

SPEAKER 1
Okay. Thank you.

SPEAKER 3
Okay. So many big questions. Long term solution. I think what's actually quite remarkable is, is how Palestinians have survived in the face of the fragmentation. Um, so the fragmentation is not just the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. It's also Palestinian citizens of Israel. It's also Palestinian refugees and the wider state. And the fact that to this day, there remains to be a Palestinian people that says they are Palestinian, despite 75 years of this type of fragmentation, is actually quite a remarkable testament, I think, to the Palestinian people. In terms of long term solutions. I am not one to say this is what magically should happen at the end of in 30 years, because I think these things get worked out in practice, with the starting point being justice and liberation. If we don't start from a perspective that Palestinians deserve to be free and deserve to be free wherever they are, and to live in an entity that is a free entity where they can thrive and survive. We're not even starting at the correct question. So I want to start with the correct question, because we are still trapped in a paradigm that says there can be two states when every power internationally in the international community is effectively working against two states. Today, we are at a point of. Such crucial survival. We don't know what this is going to look like in a month or in two weeks. Is being made uninhabitable. 60% of the buildings have been bombed, and now it's even more. 1.9 million people have been displaced, and they are not sure what they are going to return to. So in this moment, I think we need a reorientation of the Palestinian movement against the fragmentation between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. And I, I think we are getting to that point because the situation is so dire. But for me, the starting point is the question is beginning with what do we want to see? And we want to see people living in freedom and justice. If we're not starting from that question, we're going to end up with the wrong solutions. And this is the perpetual cycle that we are in. Is that the wrong question is leading us to the wrong solutions? Um, in terms of refugee and where they fit in the economy, I was speaking about that dispossession to begin with, and that dispossession created refugee populations. A lot of them are in the West Bank and in Gaza. We forget sometimes that many Palestinian refugees are actually internal to the West Bank and Gaza. Most of these refugees are living in terrible conditions inside refugee camps, and have to sell their labour to either the Palestinian Authority or the Israeli economy externally to that around the region. Of course, there still remains refugees in Lebanon and their conditions are also terrible. Many professions they cannot be in. Um, majority of Jordan are also Palestinian refugees. We saw Palestinian refugees in Iraq and what happened to them during the war, and then Palestinian refugees in Syria, and what happened to them during the war from the from the beginning act of dispossession. What has happened is it makes Palestinian refugees vulnerable no matter where we are, and we fit into these economies in particular ways. But then we also get exploited in very particular ways to various degrees where people will say, oh, but the conditions in Jordan are better than the conditions in Lebanon. Fine. But there is still an exploitation from that initial fact. And then you have the cuts to Unwra, for example, and with the cuts to. And by the way, there was a very racialized language around, um, these people want charity anyway. There was a lot of poverty shaming that was involved as well. And we need to remember that when we when we hear about talks of cutting funding from aid agencies, it's usually also within a racist language around recipients of aid as well. And we have to always bear that in mind. Um, agrarian society, how could a resistance economy happen? I think that's the crux of the issue we are struggling with is under such intense military occupation, it's difficult to breathe. And literally Palestinians are saying we cannot breathe. So there's there's a bit of room for manoeuvre. At least the question is correct that we want to try and build an independent economy. But you have to take into consideration all of the barriers and how they function. But again, I go back to that issue of asking the right question can can we build an economy under a fully militarised state? You would have to change the paradigms altogether, which links me to the question about development, in that I think the development sector would have to ask itself a very different question, too. I mean, currently all the development agencies have come out and said they need a cease fire. They are not able to operate even on that most basic level, the fact that it took them a while to come out and say there's a need for a cease fire, but the situation is so dire that we have had every UN agency call for a cease fire, because the situation is so terrible. After the cease fire, I think the development world really needs to stop and think about what is happening, how it acts in these situations and what it has been enabling. In the case of Gaza in particular. And again, things are still happening. We don't know what that is going to look like in a week. Um, the needs are going to be immense. The destruction has been so brutal and so total. I think the the development world has to shift completely how it's been operating. But this needs to also come from the Palestinians themselves. What we are asking, if you see the discourse at the United Nations has changed a little bit. Some of the Palestinian representatives are speaking differently. I encourage you to go and see some of their discourse, especially the younger ones, are starting to frame things very differently. I'm trying to answer as quick as I can, but these questions are all very big.

SPEAKER 1
A very big question. Okay, who in the back?

S13
Uh, thank you very much for the talk. Uh, I just wanted to say something before I ask my question. Uh, well, like military weapons and financing weapons for Israel, I feel very far for our student. I would invite everyone to look into universities in the UK's investment, including this university. And I think people should know that until very recently, look at investment in Elbit, which directly finances Israeli military and like is still financing company that financed the Israeli military at that point. Uh, so yeah, I thought people should know that maybe start asking the right question as well to the people who lead this university. But, um, my actual question was because you've spoken a lot about how as long as this goes on, like the two state solution seems less and less possible. What do you think an actual solution would look like? Ideally? Is it like a one state solution with like one person, one vote? And then if that's possible. To what extent do you think that's actually possible for people to live together after all the destruction that's happened? Thank you.

SPEAKER 1
Thank you. One from up top.

SPEAKER 9
Hi. Thank you for your discussion. Um, I just wanted to bring in, like, a US context. I know that the US is like, one of the biggest funders of Israel. So, um, with the way that this war has been shown in social media and the way that there's, like kind of a shift in perspective around Israel and Palestine, do you think that US policy might change in the future around. Israel. And their funding. Yeah.

SPEAKER 1
Thank you. You can take one more down here. Yeah.

S14
Hello. Thank you for this very powerful talk. And while I think that it is a as you said, it's not a very good time to talk about politics. But as you said, it is also vital that hopefully next week, next month when we get the cease fire to permanently happen, what will matter will be the politics. And it's clear that on either side, the political actors right now will simply not show the political will to find the solution. And we talked about the Palestinian side, especially in we don't really know what that's going to look like anyway. So I don't know if it really means anything. So ask about what kind of political will can come from Palestine, but especially what kind of realistic political will do you see that can come out of Israel to actually give a proactive solution to this problem rather than just basically senseless violence years and years, and which also affects them negatively. To live in this environment.

SPEAKER 1
Thank you.

SPEAKER 3
So just U.S. policy, Israel policy and one state solution. Easy. Um, let me let me start at the end with the the political will and the Israeli state. Um. We do have one of the most rightwing Israeli states right now. I think Netanyahu in particular. Um, his his political career is in real trouble right now. Um, and he's flailing, and this war is perpetuating his political career. And. Where Israeli politics will end up after this. Um, I don't think will be a very good place for Palestinians. It's not a self-reflective moment about things becoming better or easier. What we are seeing is a lot of calls for violence. Um, if you saw in the Financial Times, Netanyahu was saying, what we need from the US is ammunition, ammunition, ammunition. Um, on the cultural level, the most uh, heard song in Israel right now is basically an anthem for destruction by the military over a drill bit, which I'm quite upset about. But there's a lot to be upset about right now, so I don't. I don't see the political will coming in that direction. Um, unfortunately, in terms of Palestine, I think there's a lot of searching for. What things will look like once this is over. I think it's very hard to go back and to maintain the Oslo discourse and the two state discourse. I think it will be tried and we will see the US probably intervene at some point to say, let's stop this and bring everyone together and let's throw some money at this. The problem is the US has has lost its ability to act as a broker. The European Union has also lost that ability. So I'm hesitant to answer those questions about the future because we still don't know, because the bombing is ongoing and we don't know what things will look like. They're changing by the minute, but the overall contours of the geopolitics are unfortunately still the same, if not worse. That's why we can't even get a cease fire. The contours of the geopolitics is on one hand, you have Israel normalisation with states like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia that is still on the books and ongoing. And by this you have two pillars in the region that are coordinating post the Arab uprisings. We have a rise in authoritarianism again across the region. Economically, we have a dire economic situation, from inflation in Turkey to inflation in Egypt, and the same reasons why people went on the protests and the Arab uprisings to begin with are all still there in terms of a developmental paradigm. So we're not in a state that has changed fundamentally from from what it was. We're going to have to see what comes out of the remnants of the current moment. But I don't want to say that the situation is hopeless. What has been amazing is that around the world, there have been thousands upon thousands of people on the streets and a lot of people learning for the first time about Palestine. And the majority world has actually come out against this senseless destruction. So I think I think there is hope there. I'm just not seeing it in the geopolitics right now, and I hope I'm proven very wrong. Um, and that that kind of answers my question to the US policy. US policy has been consistent. Um, it doesn't really shift all that much. It might, uh, you know, some of the nuances might change. Maybe under Trump they will push a little bit harder with normalisation. But in terms of support for Israel since 1967, that has been steady administration after administration, even when it was the so-called Oslo Accords and Clinton was brokering it, it was still within the realm of what would be acceptable to Israel. There hasn't been a break in that. What is changing, I think very importantly in the US, is that a lot of young Jewish people are saying Israel does not act in our name. I think that's a very important change. I think hopefully it will start to reflect on the policy level, but that has definitely been on the cultural level, a big change. The interaction between the Palestinian movement and the Black Lives Matter movement, and how close those movements are getting that, for me is a source of hope and inspiration until these things can actually impact change at the top. Unfortunately, what we've seen from the Biden administration has been has just been shameful. Shameful. Um, and I that's the kindest word I can find right now, because the Arabic words I want to say would be to to bad. Um, yeah. And one state solution I feel I feel like I've, I've kind of touched on that, on that question. I don't think we can sit here from this moment and say, we think this is what it would look like. I'm not comfortable doing that right now. I think that that comes from the situation on the ground and what people are saying, what people are organising for. I definitely think it's not tenable to say that from the river to the sea, the situation should be what it is right now. Uh, an occupation, uh, one, one entity that's clearly in charge of everything from the river to the sea. I don't think that has worked. And we need something different. If we actually care about people living and thriving and having justice in the region.

SPEAKER 1
I might. Did you want to come in?

SPEAKER 4
I mean, unless there are more questions from the audience, I can come in if there's time. Uh, okay.

SPEAKER 1
Yes. Here in the centre. Thank you.

S15
Um, thank you so much for your talk. Um, you mentioned reparations, and I was wondering, besides, obviously it's going to be very important, but besides reparations, what do you think justice will look like for Palestinian people? Thank you.

SPEAKER 1
Up on top.

S16
Um, hi. Um, not to put responsibility on the oppressed, but just out of curiosity for me that I'm very ignorant on this topic. How does Palestinian leadership look like at the moment?

UNKNOWN
Um. Okay. Thank you.

S17
I have a question about the power, but also like the soft kinds of power, how do you see the persistence and the perseverance of the Palestinian national identity within Palestine, and also within the broader Palestinian refugees, let's say? Playing and diaspora, impacting the current trends of how the shift and the social norms and what other kinds of soft powers, let's say, can also be further used to enable this kind of power. Dynamics change.

SPEAKER 1
Thank you. You want to go for those?

SPEAKER 9
Sure.

SPEAKER 0
Okay.

SPEAKER 3
Um. What does justice look like? Uh, I think in the immediate, it would be a ceasefire right away. Um, to end this, the killing and to end what is happening? Uh. An end to the occupation. No one should be living under a military occupation. Um, Palestinian citizens of Israel need to be treated with dignity and respect and the right of return for Palestinian refugees. Every last one of them. This is stipulated in international law. That is resolution 194. And it also calls for reparations. Um. With a return of refugees, we can start to discuss justice and we can start to discuss living side by side based on equality. Anything short of equality and full human dignity is not justice. So it's not too much to ask for, I think. Full equality. The opposite of that is nationally exclusivist states where Palestinian refugees are not allowed to return. So for me, justice and equality are kind of the basis if we want things to actually really change. Um, what does Palestinian leadership look like? Um, very, very good question. Actually, I wish, uh, a lot of us wish we knew. Uh, there is the Palestinian Authority in the, in the West Bank that is, uh, one of the one of the largest Palestinian parties would be the party. Uh, it is the party that was in charge of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation when the Oslo Accords were signed. And I would say today they are the implementers of the Oslo Accords. Um, on the Gaza side, Hamas was elected, as I mentioned in my talk. Um, and they have been the official leadership there. Uh, Palestinian leadership has always been fractionalised along left and right, like every like many other political movements. Um, but there is a crisis of leadership and there has been a crisis of leadership. Um, for some time now. Um, where the the vision of, of clarity about what Palestinian liberation looks like has been lost to a very large extent, especially with the PLO itself, um, succumbing to and signing the Oslo Accords itself. Even if in the first ten years we could have said, well, that, you know, they had hope in it. Since then, the Oslo Accords have largely for Palestinians, failed. For Israel, they might be a great success, but for Palestinians they have been a failure. And there isn't a new clear vision coming from the current leadership around what should happen next. It's the just the perpetuation and going back to the Oslo paradigm. But that itself is a structural issue because they survive on the international aid and they have power in that way. So there's now it's similar to what May was saying, Palestinians themselves become invested in this paradigm because it's it's what exists. Um, I so deeply wish I had a better, more hopeful answer for that question, but I'm I'm being completely honest right now. Um, the last question about soft power. Um. So I'll take a step back, because I think soft power itself is one of those words that has a long history, has many meanings. Um, I personally don't dissect power in that way. I know the people who adhere to it, what they were trying to get at. Uh, but I would come at it from a much more gramscian perspective of power and hegemony and how it operates. And on that level, um, certainly Palestinian identity and heritage is crucial because it is under attack, because it has the entire purpose has been to say there is no Palestinian people. I mean, now we're at the point where they publicly say these are human animals, but there's always been an assault that says there are no Palestinians. So a huge part of the Palestinian struggle, as I said earlier, is to maintain that. However, I don't think it's simply about saying we're Palestinian and we're going to sit down. We're going to have cafe and we're going to have a coffee and look cool, like it's it's also about doing action and taking that identity into action as well.

SPEAKER 1
Thank you. Okay. I'm going to collect the remaining questions and then come back. So we'll take a few more here. Starting from here maybe.

S18
And you stress on the importance of of history. What is the role that you think Western media is playing in shaping and controlling the historical discourse of this conflict? And what would be like the counter strategies to not just tell the biased story, but just like real, pure, um, history? Do you see that changing anytime soon, considering the implications?

SPEAKER 1
Thank you. How about passing just over here?

S19
Thank you. Quick comment. And then the question, just to add what our previous speaker said about university investments into apartheid settler colonialism. Uh, since most of the people in this room are students, it is your tuition money that's being invested into the militarised apartheid in Palestine. Those are investment cash flows just on the line that, um, to doctor Z. First of all, thank you very much for what you're doing here. Salute you for your resolve and your patience and educating us. Um, my question has to do with what, in your opinion, what is the role of this, uh, colonial economy and Palestinian labour to the future of Zionism? Could you talk highlight something that seems to me like a key contradiction in the in the Zionist project, on the one hand, either expelling or segregating the indigenous population, on the other hand, requiring their existence for its own colonial and in a way also capitalist colonial project. And given the weight of the genocide and what that might do to the PA. Do you think the PA will collapse if the genocide continues? Uh, and do you think that might accelerate a form of liberation that we didn't expect? Or do you think that would actually slow it down? Thank you.

SPEAKER 1
Thanks.

S20
Can we go right to the back there?

S21
Uh, thank you for your amazing talk. Uh, I think we all really, really found it extremely insightful. Uh, you mentioned that development and humanitarianism in Palestine, without considering the power dynamics, can perpetuate dependency and the occupiers power. In terms of aid agencies, many humanitarian organisations operate with the principles of neutrality and impartiality. So there's a bit of a quandary here, because those principles can often grant access, uh, to address the needs most effectively. However, with the Palestinian liberation acquiring a political solution, do you think it's become more imperative that aid agencies should be doing more beyond calling for a cease fire?

SPEAKER 1
Any more questions up top. This question here. Sorry. Making you run. Okay. That's the one here.

S22
I thank you so much for your talk. Um, my question is about Hamas. Uh, so I'm going to be careful. Um, but what how how would development look, uh, in the Gaza Strip, particularly, um, given that Hamas is prescribed by some of these, um, states that are often the, the honest brokers such as the Britain and the US and many European countries. Um, so how is that prescription of Hamas as a terrorist organisation a hindrance to development?

SPEAKER 0
Thank you. Okay.

S23
Um, thank you for your talk today. It was really insightful. Um, yeah. Um, it was really nice to have you. My question is, um, we've been seeing a lot on the news lately, and even, honestly, before October 7th about the, um, offshore gas reserves, like, 20 miles off of, uh, Gaza's coast. And, um, I think speaking, a development like these could potentially be a great opportunity. But we've also kind of seen a lot of news reports about, like, Israeli interests in those gas reserves and how some contracts have been discussed. And so, um, I wanted to just learn more about any insights that you might have about how that could potentially be a precursor for, um, Israel's, like, lack of further incentive, incentive to, um, kind of end the siege that they have on Gaza. Thank you.

SPEAKER 0
Thank you.

SPEAKER 1
Mai. Do you want to come in on any of this?

SPEAKER 0
Oh, no. I have like a final question. If maybe when you're done, we can. Now anything you want might start and I'll catch up with you. You have a lot on your plate. Yes.

SPEAKER 3
Uh, media. Yeah. Media's been bad in the West. It's been pretty bad. Uh, the BBC had a question about, uh, whether there were, um, you know, tunnels under Shifa Hospital in question time. And after that, Israel went into the hospital. Um. Yes. Sorry, I am very tired and when I am tired, Arabic words come to mind that are all like insults. So I have to, I have to do my English filtering and I'm trying my hardest to do it. The racism by which Western media deals with Palestinians is truly unbearable. As as someone put it, when we are invited on Western media, we're not invited to give our perspective or our narrative. We are invited to be interrogated. We are invited to be questioned as if we're at an Israeli checkpoint. Um, the media bias in the way things are presented, the way people are presented, even differences between the word killed versus died. Um, it's constantly there. Um, I think what's changing is people are recognising that media bias because there is such a disconnect. And I'll just speak about this country. There's all these surveys that say 80% of the population is for calling an immediate ceasefire. Yet when you look at the media and you look at the politics in this country, you would think that is not what public opinion is. So what we're seeing is more of a disconnect between public opinion, media opinion and policy opinion. And that is probably a good thing in the long run, because I think it's important that people recognise. Um, that this disconnect exists. There have been some courageous media commentators and journalists that have resigned that have said there is bias. We were hearing more and more stories like that, which I think is good and is positive, but we are very far from Palestinians getting a good hearing. Um, and, and even a neutral hearing in Western media. And I'll leave that at that. Uh, the colonial economy. Yes. I mean, this is one of the tricks of one of the obstacles of settler colonialism, because on one hand, you're settling and you're expelling, and you want to expel as much of the population as possible, but you also want to expand and need that population to be the workforce. Um, but settler colonialism also is not identical across settler colonies. So in the apartheid South Africa case, for example, there was a much larger need for the black population as workers in the mines, etc. and that was also a weakness point of apartheid in South Africa, because strike action and worker action could have a strong, uh, power in the Palestinian case after the Palestinian intifada, the first one, because there were many strikes and Palestinians could cripple the Israeli economy. What happened is Israel tried to change the makeup of the labour force into my more South Asian labour force. So they imported a lot of Thai workers, for example, but they have not been able to get rid of Palestinian labour completely. So if you look at the construction sector, for example, whether the settlements in the West Bank or construction inside Israel, it's still very much dependent on Palestinian workers. Um, more from the West Bank than from Gaza. But we are seeing more permits being given to Gaza. Um, I have right before this latest assault, I've written a report with Ray Elson and Adam Haniyeh, particularly about Palestinian labour and the place of Palestinian labour in the Israeli economy, and I'm very happy to share it. Um, but I think it's a question of degree. Um, how Palestinian labour is used when it's used as a tap, when it's opened up versus closed, and certainly the control over the labour. Will the Palestinian Authority collapse? Again, I don't do very well at predictive questions because I think those things are questions of politics and how it will progress. But there's a contradiction here. At the heart of the Palestinian Authority, it was created for a political project that was the two state solution that's no longer viable. So the very essence of the politics of why the PA came about has disappeared. So there is a contradiction, and I think it will play out in what happens with the Palestinian Authority. We should say the Palestinian Authority is having a major fiscal crisis right now because of Israel not paying the tax revenues. But also a lot of the international community has cut to the aid. And the tricky part about that is that the majority of the West Bank is actually employed by the Palestinian Authority. It's the public sector. So when the Palestinian Authority doesn't have money, we're actually speaking about teachers and nurses and doctors not being able to take their salaries, which again, takes me to my point about the Palestinians then have to perpetuate the cycle because it's how the economy is surviving. They've become embroiled in the occupation itself. So the Palestinian Authority collapsing is not just a political question. It is an economic question and needs to be resolved as an economic question as well. Um, the majority of the of the public sector is dependent, dependent on that money. Now, there is, of course, a way for the PA to put forward a political program that is coherent if they want to. Most likely most of the international aid will be cut and they will have to go and find a different way, you know, to fund themselves and fund Palestine and think of a different form of economy and how everything functions. But that is really one of the crux of the problem right now is the project upon which is based has collapsed, but the structure is still there and the structure and what a lot of money goes to for the structure is actually the security services, around 40%, I think. I don't quote me on that, but a huge percentage of the budget of the PA is actually for security services. Which Israel coordinates with as well. Um, sorry. Lots of questions here. Aid agencies and neutrality. Um. Yes. And unfortunately, um, even even calling for a cease fire was a huge step for a lot of the aid agencies. But on the very basic level, they can't function. Their entire purpose of distributing tents or distributing medicines has collapsed. Also, this is the largest number of UN workers we have seen killed. Um, you know, people say Palestinians are dying in this general sense, but actually we've had journalists murdered and the highest number of UN aid workers also being killed. Um, in this situation, even for their own self-preservation, these organisations need to speak up, even for their preservation in other areas of their operation. Because if the Israeli army is allowed to destroy UN schools, to destroy UN hospitals, to kill you and workers in this situation, other armies will be doing it around the world. So even from the very basic sense of self-preservation, these agencies need to speak up against this. Um, it's not just the question of whether they are neutral or not. It's their very basic operations in war zones, which supposedly the neutrality is to allow them to operate in war zones. And even that is not happening. Um, the the question about, uh, about Hamas and the designation of Hamas and Hamas and development again, I think we're going to have to see where things end up. Um, in the next few months, um, aid agencies and international donors have have gone around these large loopholes to say that they're not giving money directly to Hamas. Um, and this has been ongoing with the siege, but I think we're going to have to see where we end up in a month before we can answer those types of questions about Hamas and where it stands. Um, the development project. Um. Yes. Again, a lot of geopolitics around that because it's, it's it's Palestine. It involves Palestine. It involves Lebanon. Um, already Israel is making claims on the gas already. There are discussions between them and other countries. Um, it's very much a mediterranean question. If I understood you correctly, your question is will this be used? Can this be used as a leverage? Um, I think Israel is trying to basically take the natural resource in the way that it has taken other natural resources, and it has the potential to actually be a problematic, even even more of a problem into the future. Never mind the environmental side of whether, I mean, I'll put my environmental hat on. The idea that this is what they want to do in the Mediterranean is just terrible for the environment of that area. But again, um, I can think of a number of gas experts that could be great speakers for you next term.

SPEAKER 1
Mai. I'm sorry. Yeah, come to the end of our time. Uh, it was so, uh, what, a tour de force under such terrible conditions to remain so erudite and so clear and analytical. I think, you know, I speak for everybody here to thank you for coming this time and and educating us so profoundly. Yeah. Thank you.
These beginning people and even last year, more people even here. Yes, yes. Because people in.