The Resistance Economy: A Holistic Engagement Against the Occupation in Palestine?

Abstract

Since the end of the second Intifada (2000–2006), the failure to achieve national liberation through negotiations or armed struggle, and the territorial fragmentation resulting from the control mechanisms implemented by the Israeli authorities, led to the emergence of renewed local forms of Palestinian resistance. On the one hand, the mobilization of villagers known as the popular resistance led to the formation of numerous local “protest sites” in the West Bank aiming to defend rights to resources, farmland, freedom of movement and so on. On the other hand, over the past few years, citizens’ engagements in an alternative local economy have developed around what has been called a resistance economy: Iqtisad al-sumud or iqtisad al-muqawam, which has a more pro-active sense than sumud. These ongoing actions and engagements have sometimes been described as a “green Intifada”. They are undertaken by farmers, entrepreneurs and intellectuals, and have mushroomed over the past five years in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), mostly in the West Bank, showing a radical shift in the protest paradigm since their demands are not mainly addressed to institutional political actors, nor at a national political level. This chapter shows how this alternative economy has emerged as particularly necessary in Palestine after the failure of the Oslo Accords and analyses the new political practices at work.