Centre for Conflict and Development Studies

This text report on a meeting that took place
during the first week of July 2007, within the
framework of the annual summer courses
organized by the Universidad Complutense at
El Escorial, Spain. The course, presented
under the title “Israel–Palestine: One
Country, One State,” was organized by
Universidad Nómada and the Fundación
Europa de los Ciudadanos in cooperation
with Ali Abunimah, Omar Barghouti, and
Virginia Tilley.

This article examines how colonial violence has been recast in light of Israel’s disengagement from Gaza during the summer 2005. By looking at infrastructural networks —the systems that distribute water, electricity, sewage, fuel etc—it explores how far from ending the occupation, disengagement provided a distinct spatial scale from which to experiment new methods of control and repression. In particular, it seeks to expose how these life support systems function as geopolitical sites of spatial control and as biopolitical tools to regulate and suppress life. Specially, it illustrates how the mobilization of discourses, strategies and doctrines, criminalize these critical systems turning them into ‘legitimate’ and ‘pre-emptive’ targets. Drawing on the destruction of Gaza’s only power plant and the subsequent sanctions on electricity and fuel, it argues that the destruction and manipulation of infrastructural networks has severe consequences, particularly in public health. In exploring these claims with respect to Gaza, the article draws attention to the ways in which infrastructures play a crucial role in regulating the elastic Gaza’s humanitarian collapse. The article closes introducing the concept of infrastructural violence as way to further explore this discussion.

This special issue of settler colonial studies emerges out of a March 2011 conference on settler colonialism in Palestine organised by the Palestine Society and the London Middle East Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies. It is our hope that this issue will catalyse creative, collaborative work that puts the settler colonial framework firmly on the agenda of Palestine studies. The need for such engagement arises from our recognition that while Zionism and the Palestinians are gradually being included in the growing body of scholarly works on comparative settler colonialism, the analytical framework that comparative settler colonialism offers has yet to enter the field of Palestine studies

De recente opstanden in de Arabische we- reld hebben dat deel van de wereld zo door elkaar geschud dat het nog jaren kan duren vooraleer we begrijpen wat er aan de hand is. Voor sommigen is het een droom die onver- wacht werkelijkheid wordt, voor anderen een nachtmerrie. Tegelijkertijd worden er wan- hopige pogingen ondernomen om de aard van de snel opeenvolgende ontwikkelingen te bepalen. Waarnemers, commentatoren, wetenschappers en zogenaamde experts gera- ken het niet eens over wat er precies gebeurt. We komen termen tekort - revolutie, onrust, protest, revolte, opstand, lente, rebellie, ont- waken, intifada, renaissance - om de golf van verandering te typeren die in de vorm van een domino-effect de Arabische wereld heeft overspoeld, van Marokko tot Bahrein, en die in de hele wereld weerklank heeft gevonden.

Those who have read Douglas Adams’s book “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy” might remember the surreal opening section where Arthur Dent wakes up in his housecoat to confront an army of bulldozers ready to make way for a bypass road over his house. Arthur ́s initial surprise and anger are quickly interrupted by the prospect of a significantly more dramatic scenario with the appearance of thousands of construction ships hanging motionless in the sky. All of a sudden a god-like voice breaks off: “This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council. As you will no doubt be aware, the plans for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require the building of a hyperspatial express route through your star system, and regrettably your planet is one of those scheduled for demolition.

This dissertation aims to resurface and make visible infrastructure networks as concrete expressions of settler colonialism and uneven development. Focusing on contemporary Palestine, particularly in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, this thesis investigates the ways in which infrastructures come to matter socially, politically, economically and spatially both symbolically and as a set of materials. Drawing on the histories and geographies of road and electricity grids, Fabric of Life explores the ways these infrastructures are constructed, imagined and governed but also how they are experienced and contested. The research takes roads and electricity as object and subject of analysis and traces their role in shaping and producing space while also using them as window into understanding the various actors and ‘larger’ forces and structures that constitute these grids. An interdisciplinary analytical focus on the ‘hardware’ (e.g. wires) and ‘software’ (e.g. policies) aspects of infrastructures and their co-evolution with urban spaces and populations opens up critical perspectives on existing accounts of the political and economic geographies of Palestine. It offers a powerful way of thinking about these large socio-technical systems as a complex assemblage of actors, agents, policies and processes that connect to, and drive, much debated processes of settler colonialism, modernity, statecraft and uneven development. Concurrently, by providing an analytical study of infrastructures, the project generates new knowledge about and insight into the Palestinian case. In pursuing these themes, this thesis represents an attempt to resist and complicate dominant accounts of occupation and development in Palestine but also to make a vital contribution to a broader scholarship in critical urban studies and settler colonialism.

In February 2012 a group of Palestinian activists set up a grassroots campaign against the Jerusalem District Electricity Corporation (JDEC), a Palestinian regional utility company that distributes electricity to the central West Bank region. As part of the campaign the group organized a series of sit-ins and demonstrations in front of the company’s headquarters in Ramallah to protest the recurring increase in electricity prices in a context of growing crisis and unemployment, intermittent frozen salaries, closure and prolonged colonial dispossession.

These protests rendered visible a realm of techno-politics that usually remains invisibly embedded within wires and meters. In protesting against the rising electricity prices in the occupied territories, the highest in the Arab world, the activists effectively brought attention not only to the latest Palestinian Authority attempts to reform and corporatize the electricity sector but also to a broader colonial legacy of electric dependency. A dependency which lasts to this very day with Israel providing up to 86% of the electricity consumed in the Palestinian territories.

Taking these protests as an entry point, this paper investigates the ways in which the ‘roll out’ and governance of electricity infrastructures comes to matter socially, politically, economically and spatially both symbolically and as a set of materials. An interdisciplinary and historical analytical focus on how these ‘large technical systems’ are constructed and governed in the Palestinian West Bank offers a powerful way of thinking about electricity as a complex assemblage of actors, agents and processes that connect to, and drive, much debated processes of colonialism, modernity, statecraft and uneven development. More specifically, the essay investigates the spatial configurations and path-dependency logics underpinning the development and governance of these infrastructure networks. The interest here is not so much in electricity per se but rather the entangled nature of settler colonialism and neoliberal development– their shared genealogy  – and how this relationship is being contested today.

To explore the intricacies and complexities of electrification in the West Bank the paper advances a settler colonial perspective that brings geography related scholarship on infrastructure together with critical development and political economy studies. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, interviews, archival research, and development reports, the paper looks at current Palestinian attempts at privatizing the electricity sector against the background of a long and neglected colonial history of Zionist electrification that progressively grounded contemporary conditions of dependency-cum-dispossession. In doing so the paper highlights not only how these processes induce the impoverishment of the Palestinian population and a weakening of the anti-colonial struggle but also points to the possibilities that struggles around electricity offer to open new spaces of political engagement.

مقدمة
أصاب إدوارد سعيد يف مقالة كتبها عقب التوقيع عىل اتفاقيات أوسلو يف العام 1993، وهو أحد أشد املنتقدين لهذه
ُبرمت بني
ّفها هذه املعاهدة الكولونيالية التي أ
االتفاقيات، عني الحقيقة حينام وضع يده عىل املأساة التي ستخل
إرسائيل ومنظمة التحرير الفلسطينية عىل أبناء الشعب الفلسطيني. فقد وصف سعيد املعاهدة املذكورة بأنها »أداة
لالستسالم، ومعاهدة فرساي فلسطينية«: مبعنى أنها معاهدة انطوت عىل إعادة تشكيل االحتالل الكولونيايل وتوطيد
أركانه ووالدة »سلطة تشبه حكومة فييش«، وهي السلطة الفلسطينية )Said, 1993(. وقد تأكدت الهواجس التي عبرّ
املتحدة األمريكية وعملت فيها عىل إقصاء الغالبية الساحقة من أبناء الشعب الفلسطيني منها، وعطلت حقوقهم ّ عنها سعيد بعد ميض عقدين عىل التوقيع عىل هذه االتفاقية، وتجلىّ إفالس ”عملية السالم“ التي فرضتها الواليات
ّبتها إىل أمد غري معلوم. وعىل هذا املنوال، فقد تبدد األمل الذي يلفه الوهم بـ“إقامة الدولة“
غري القابلة للترصف وغي
ّ تحت وطأة املرشوع االستيطاين الكولونيايل. وتشكل اتفاقيات أوسلو، حسبام ورد فيها من نصوص وأحكام، األرضية
التي ترتكز عليها إعادة إنتاج حاالت انعدام املساواة والتبعية االجتامعية-االقتصادية، وحرمان الفلسطينيني من بسط
سيادتهم عىل ترابهم الوطني ومن التواصل بني ربوع أراضيهم ورفض حقهم يف تقرير مصريهم جملة وتفصيلاً )انظر
Usher, 1999; Massad, 2006; Ahmad, 2006; Said, 2007(. ويف الواقع، وعىل خالف ما يفرتضه البعض يف أحوال
ًا كانت
ً كثرية، فلم تكن اتفاقيات أوسلو مبثابة ”فشل“، ألنها ووفقا ملا جاء عىل لسان آدم هنية يف دراسة نرشها مؤخر
ُ عبارة عن أداة صممت لغايات تعزيز هياكل االحتالل التي فرضها النظام الكولونيايل اإلرسائييل عىل مدى العقدين
املنرصمني وترسيخها عىل نحو ال فكاك منه )Hanieh, 2013: 71(. وبينام مهدت هذه االتفاقية لضياع عقدين
كاملني عىل معظم الفلسطينيني، فقد يرست االتفاقية نفسها للصهيونية توسيع قاعدتها من األرايض التي تحتاجها
وساعدتها عىل إرساء دعائم مرشوعها االستيطاين الكولونيايل الذي طاملا راودها عىل مدى قرن من الزمان. ونتيجة
لذلك، فقد أراح ”سالم الضعفاء“، حسبام يصفه إقبال أحمد، إرسائيل من التزاماتها تجاه السكان الواقعني تحت نري
ّ احتاللها ومكنها من تعزيز مرشوعها االستيطاين الكولونيايل ومأسسة نظام الفصل العنرصي الذي تسبب يف تحويل
الضفة الغربية وقطاع غزة إىل بانتوستانات )Ahmad, 1998 ِ (. وليس هناك من أمر يربز العنف املتواصل الذي
أفرزته اتفاقيات أوسلو واملرشوع االستيطاين الكولونيايل، يف أيامنا هذه، أكرث من االنقسام املادي والرمزي املستفحل
الذي يعيشه أبناء الشعب الفلسطيني بصفتهم وحدة سياسية منظمة: مبعنى الفلسطينيني يف الشتات. ومن وجهة
نظر سعيد، فقد كانت معاهدة االستسالم التي أبرمتها منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية، والتبعات التي انطوت عليها
وما ترافق معها من االعرتاف بالتسمية التي أسبغتها إرسائيل عىل الفلسطينيني باعتبارهم أولئك الذين تحتجزهم يف
محميات معزولة تلفّها الجدران وتحيط بها من كل جانب، مبثابة ”الرضر املأساوي“ الذي أفرزته اتفاقية أوسلو يف
نهاية املطاف )Imseis, 2010:266(.

This discussion panel seeks to bring together cases that illustrate the ways infrastructure —broadly understood as analytical category and metaphor—provide a terrain to think critically about politics and the political. We hope to include contributions from scholars and activists that explore and question the connections between people and infrastructure from the vantage point of grassroots struggles against and for infrastructure. Against the violence embedded in these material worlds. And for creating alternative infrastructures designed for autonomy, emancipation, and justice. In doing so we would like to engage in a collective exercise to explore infrastructure in ways that not simply focus upon the characteristics of these objects, in its actual materiality, but that also address the situated experiences of our material lives, the constitution of infrastructure worlds and concomitantly its shaping of political practices and experiences as well as its extension into growing spheres of life.

Foreword by Center of Development Studies

This book comprises a number of papers that are part of a four-year research program on “Alternatives to Neo-liberal Development in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” that was carried out by Birzeit University’s Center for Development
Studies (CDS) with the support from the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Regional Office Palestine (RLS).

The idea of this research project originated in 2010, when the CDS hosted an international conference on aid interventions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). One crucial theme that the conference could not tackle, was how to envisage ways forward, define new strategies for dealing with aid interventions in Palestine and map alternatives to donor driven aid paradigms and
neoliberal approaches to development. The difficulty of articulating alternatives without first defining particular visions and new concrete ways of understandings “development, became apparent. As a result, this research project was articulated
to think about what is required to begin the process of imagining a ‘beyond’ and envisaging new types of interventions, collaborations, relationships between local and international actors, and new visions of developments, that move away from
the debilitating effects of the aid regime in Palestine, and the disenfranchisement caused by neoliberal economic policies.

Given this perspective, the objective of the research project and these studies is to initiate a critical public dialogue about the rationale behind policy formulation. The research project and papers attempt to achieve this aim by creating debate
and generating consensus around pressing areas with an eye towards advancing possibilities for change. In addition, the papers in this volume explore the ways that developmental alternatives may be achieved in practice, through the participation
of different actors from the international to the national and local levels.

This book, hence, adds to our knowledge in development through examining the devastating impact of neo-liberal development policies under colonialism by exploring how these policies operate to emphasize individualism and separate the economic from the political under colonial conditions. It provides an alternative
way to think about development and tackle policy interventions. It also examines how Palestinians have previously contested colonialism and what lessons can be learned from these past experiences on the path to rebuild an economic and developmental framework that reconnects the struggle for autonomous development to national liberation.

On behalf of CDS, I would like to thank the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Regional Office Palestine for its support, which made this publication possible.

Dr. Samia Al-Botmeh
Center of Development Studies
August 2015

This article brings attention to the political geography of settler colonialism and the ways in which the Palestinian built environment materializes in space, consolidating uneven and racialized landscapes. It argues that settler-colonial space is intimately related to the building of infrastructures structured by development and humanitarian practices. More specifically, the discussion
explores how roadscapes are materially and symbolically constructed; it also examines the ways in which development, rather than constituting a tool of empowerment, becomes a mechanism to manage the short-term “humanitarian” needs of Palestinians that arise from the imperatives of settler colonialism. Problematizing road infrastructure allows us to explore the relationship between Palestinian and donor agendas, and concomitant discourses on economic development and state building—in other words, how settler infrastructures are normalized through their association with tropes of modernity, progress, humanitarianism, and development.