Neoliberalism as Aid for the Settler Colonization of the Occupied Palestinian Territories After Oslo

Abstract

Since the Oslo Accord was signed in 1993, international donors have invested more than $30 billion as aid meant to develop the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) to foster peace with Israel. The approach has been dictated and driven by Western donors who have used their power to radically refashion Palestinian institutions and the economy while building a state based on neoliberal Western values. One of the biggest and more intrusive contemporary aid interventions, it has also been a complete failure, coinciding with a steep decline in Palestinian general welfare and an upsurge in violence. This chapter describes how this failure lies with a donor approach that was flawed from the onset because it adopted an ahistorical and decontextualized neoliberal approach to Palestinian development that specifically ignored Israel’s aggressive behavior as a settler colonial entity in the oPt. So rather than nurturing economic growth and peace, donors have ended up feeding into a process of de-development, dispossession, and violence. The case is though not without precedent as Western liberalism has had a long history of acting in tandem to colonialism.