Introduction
The highly contested land in the Levant, today referred to as Israel and Palestine respectively, have been the subject of academic, political, and social discourse for over a century. Primarily, these discussions focus on its rich religious histories, or on ‘conflict analysis’ in response to spikes in violence in the region. While this research is being conducted during such a time, this study aims to provide a historical materialist analysis on the shifts in working conditions that Arab natives faced leading up to the establishment of Israel in 1948 under the British Mandate, in order to provide a deeper look into the power relations that shape the present day populations.
The goal of this study is to answer the questions; How has the establishment of the state of Israel affected the living and working conditions of Palestinians? How did racial capitalism play a role? And lastly, what have been the social reproductions? This paper will provide a brief historical overview of the geopolitical timeline of events that are necessary for understanding the collaboration of Britain and the Zionist Organization respectively in relation to Palestine. The bulk of the analysis will focus on the deliberate deterioration of working conditions for Palestinians under the British Mandate (1922-1948) that set the foundation for Israel’s statehood.
This analysis takes a critical realist approach to provide perspective on how hegemonic power has been instrumentalized materially, politically, and socially to shape labour relations in the region and create a subaltern Palestinian class. A secondary goal of this paper is to observe key social reproductions that resulted from these efforts, and how they inform the present in hopes that other researchers and political bodies might use this information to rebuild a dignified working life for all people living on this land in the future.
Limitations
Due to lack of accessibility to the region, this research relies heavily on literature from previous studies and published works. It is worth noting that there is a sizable gap in firsthand accounts of events that could further inform this research, considering the systematic erasure of Palestinian culture and history (which will be mentioned in this study) that started during the Mandate period, and continues to-date under Israeli occupation. This research aims to address these gaps by pulling from various sources - such as unionists, academics, online encyclopedias, and news outlets - to build a more holistic picture of how labour relations (industries, working conditions, and institutions, etc) changed for Palestinians starting under British rule.
The following section aims to give a brief overview of the key historical events that lead to the alliance between the British government and the Zionist movement to establish the state of Israel. This context is non-exhaustive and limits its scope of analysis to the British government and Zionist Organization’s collaboration in regards to Palestine. While more thorough historical research is available, this section is important to contextualize the following analysis on power relations in the region, and the understanding of Israel not as a sudden effort to create a Jewish safe-haven following World War II, but a decades-long stratagem between European colonial powers to build up its own power in the region by settling on Palestinian land.
Historical context: Britain and Zionist imperialism
Zionism is a Jewish nationalist movement that has had as its goal the creation and support of a Jewish national state. It was founded in 1897 by Theodore Herzl through the formation of the Zionist Organization (later renamed World Zionist Organization) and the publishing of a pamphlet called Der Judenstaat (German for “The Jewish State”) which codified its mission and goals. In reference to strategies for creating a Jewish state Herzl writes:
“Here two territories come under consideration, Palestine and Argentine. In both countries important experiments in colonization have been made, though on the mistaken principle of a gradual infiltration of Jews. An infiltration is bound to end badly. It continues till the inevitable moment when the native population feels itself threatened, and forces the Government to stop a further influx of Jews. Immigration is consequently futile unless we have the sovereign right to continue such immigration.” (Herzl, 1896)
Herzl states the ineffectiveness of the strategy the Zionist movement had already put in motion - an attempt to claim land subtly through mass migration - and with that, the intention to seek official statehood. The Zionist committee tried to make this a reality by lobbying the Ottoman Empire during World War I, who had control of Palestine for over 400 years. When this was unsuccessful, the Zionist movement sought out the partnership of powerful British politicians and captains of industry. In a letter drafted to the founder of the recently settled British colony Rhodesia, Cecil Rhodes, Herzl wrote "You are being invited to help make history. It doesn't involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor; not Englishmen but Jews. How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial." (Herzl, 1901).
The Zionist movement was able to successfully concretize the support of the British authorities in 1917 with the signing of the Balfour Declaration by powerful leaders Arthur Balfour (a conservative politician and steel tycoon) and Lord Walter Rothschild (a politician, banker, and heir to the Rotshchild family fortune). This was an unofficial declaration of Britain’s commitment to facilitating the establishment of a Jewish state. “The two principles that the Declaration inaugurated—the erasure of the Palestinian and the partition of the people into those deserving versus those undeserving of a national home—became the foundation of the Mandate Document.” (Seiklay, 2018).
The Mandate for Palestine, drafted by Lord Rothschild in collaboration with the Zionist Organization, allowed the British to officially capture Palestine from the Ottomans with support of the League of Nations in 1922. This mandate, meant to provide "administrative advice and assistance [to former Ottoman territories] by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone", instead codified into law the dispossession of Palestinians from their land, in order to replace them with a Jewish State. While the mandate order promise was for these territories to be able to eventually govern themselves, “the Mandate in Palestine was exceptional because it was the only case in which the Permanent Mandates Commission endorsed settler colonialism” (Pederson 2005, 124). This seizure of Palestine under mandate by Britain and the Zionist Organization is what begins the systematic disempowerment of Palestinian workers and institutions in order to make way for the state of Israel.
Racial capitalism under British Mandate
Before Britain, the Palestinian economic landscape was stable and self-sustaining. A majority of Palestinians in rural regions owned land and were able to maintain their living from crops they had grown - largely oranges, figs, and olives. Closer to the coast, Palestine had rich ports for international trade. “Before 1882, Jaffa, Haifa, and Acre were important export points for external trade. Nablus was the most important center for local and regional trade, manufacturing soap, oil, and cotton. Jaffa exported the produce of southern Palestine—wheat, barley, maize, olive oil, soap, oranges, and other produce—to France, Egypt, England, Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, Malta, and northern Syria.” (Owen 1982,1–9). However, the ability to grow slowly and self-sustain is not what Western powers deemed to be a ‘successful economy’, and therefore justified their Mandate in order to ‘advance’ the society by implementing its neoliberal capitalist values and institutions.
During the period after the Mandate began in 1922 until the late 1930s, Britain had been successful at helping to establish many of these institutions - hospitals with more advanced technology and medicine, subsidized government benefit programs to attract more workers to key industries (along with labour union infrastructure for those workers), permits for large companies to loosen regulations for their growth - however, none of these programs included the native Muslim Arab population. The capitalist growth and mass expansion of the region was a vehicle for expanding the Zionist presence, while simultaneously diminishing Palestinian political power, worker participation in vital industries, and ownership of fertile land.
This systematic removal of Palestinian workers from core societal infrastructure and, therefore, denial for upward mobility is just one of the few ways that Britain deployed racial capitalism. “Racial capitalism is not an account of how capitalism treats different ‘racial groups’, but it is an account of how the world made through racism shapes patterns of capitalist development.” (Bhattacharyya, 2018). While there is explicit racialized discrimination intrinsic to the mission of Zionism, as is written in its founding documents “We should there form a part of a wall of defense for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism.” (Herzl, 1896) - what is important to observe is not the intention, but the way capitalist development practices are predicated on the empowering of some at the exploitation and disempowerment of others.
With capitalism proudly touting its competitive traits, racial capitalism implores us to think about the implications of this combative dynamic to assess - who are the winners? Who are the losers? And, how are these determined? The dehumanization necessary to justify this disparity often breeds the creation of a racialized subaltern group. “Capitalism cannot remake itself without reinstituting differences between populations.” (Bhattacharyya, 2018). In this case, the Palestinians became the exploited subjects to achieve the means of Zionist colonial expansion and capitalist production. To demonstrate this further, it is necessary to look at the tactics and means to which Britain and the Zionist Organization collaborated to suppress Palestinians through racial capitalist practices such as; systematic disempowerment, alienation, militarization, and forced migration.
Systematic disempowerment
As with all cases of colonial conquest, hegemonic forces depict the disruptive changes to the native population as a service of modernity. In a Report of the Royal Commission during the late years of the British Mandate (1937), the commission outlined its policy contributions to Arab Progress in seven points. In point #4, the commission cites “Owing to Jewish development and enterprise the employment of Arab Labour has increased in urban areas, particularly in the ports.” (Palestine Royal Commission, 1937). While one part of the claim was flatly untrue, the other was greatly misleading.
In a widely circulated counter-report from prominent Palestinian trade unionist and then Secretary of the Arab Workers Society, George Mansour, he detailed the reality of workers against these claims from the Royal Commission. Ports were a major target for Zionist industrial development and the Organization as a result had made several calculated and successful efforts to remove Palestinian workers from them. At the time of the report claiming that Arab workers' presence had grown in ports during the Mandate period, Mansour retorted “The port of Tel-Aviv employs no Arabs whatsoever.” (Mansour, 1937). In addition, he details a government-facilitated takeover of the Haifa Harbour at the end of 1936, where previously almost all of the labourers had been Arabs. The Government had resisted Jewish employment in those ports up until that point simply because Jewish labour was more expensive to hire. “The [Jewish] Agency persuaded the Administration to introduce Jewish labour on a system of payment in bulk. The Jewish labourers were supplied with labour saving devices by the Agency, or by Jewish labour organisations, who met the capital expense. They are thus able to do more work with less labour and so in fact receive higher wages for less work. The result is obvious. Arab workmen are displaced and their place is taken by Jews. (Mansour, 1937). This case demonstrates the direct collaboration of the British government and Zionist Organization to accumulate power for Jewish settlers by giving them access to better working conditions within vital industries, at the cost of displacing and disempowering the existing Palestinian labour force.
The other claim outlined in point #4 of the Royal Commission regarding the ‘increase of labour in urban areas’ should not be misconstrued to represent progress. Any reader of Marx could recognize, as Mansour and Arab labourers at the time had - this claim was an admission of the replicated tactics that wealthy English landowners had used on their own soil centuries prior to disempower and displace workers from the means of production in the transition from feudalism to capitalism. “The fact that these cities have developed disproportionately to other Arab cities is also partly because of the landless workers that inevitably drift to the big towns and partly on account of the neglect of the Arab interests on part of the Government.” (Mansour, 1937). Though migration through force will be covered later in this report, it is important to note the systemic economic policies that allowed for the settler capture of land, coerced Palestinian workers into leaving their homes over a decade before the official establishment of Israel.
This table outlines the acquisition of land by Zionist organizations PICA, Keren Kayemeth, and Palestine Land Development Company. Before October 1920 Jewish landowners held 650,000 dunums of land (1 dunum is roughly 1000 square meters). By 1936, with help of British policies and wealthy landowners, Jewish land ownership amounted to 1,231,000 dunums (Halbrook, 1981), making way for a massive influx of settlements that would replace the Palestinian population.
"There is no room for both peoples together in this country," reflected Joseph Weitz in 1940. Head of the Jewish Agency's Colonization Department and in charge of land acquisitions, Weitz continued that "there is no other way but to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries; to transfer all of them: not one village, not one tribe should be left.” (Halbrook, 1981).
It is also paramount to note that the efforts made by governing bodies to destabilize and displace Palestinian workers were also disseminated into the cultural and workplace institutions of Jewish settlers in order to garner their support. In a 1934 letter from the Labour Council of Tel Aviv circulated to its workers in the building trade, false claims were used to fear monger Jewish settlers into cutting off Arab stone industries.
“Dear comrades,
As the result of the shortage of Jewish workers, Arab workers have increased in many industries… the increase has become a striking feature and Jewish labour has been expelled and the industries have thus been Arabised…The Labour Council of Tel-Aviv has started a big campaign against this danger… Therefore we have decided to call on those concerned, contractors, masons, labourers and drivers to demand from them from now on to use the Jewish product only….It is only through the determination of those concerned that this trade can be brought under the control and into the hands of the Jews….You must absolutely refuse to work with stone of Arab provenance.” (Mansour, 1937).
Following this letter came attempts to remove Arab Palestinians from the quarries by deceit, telling them there was ‘no work available’, in order to have them return to their villages and replace them with Jewish workers. When the Arab workers realized what was happening this culminated in tensions and picketing campaigns that resulted in nearly 100 Arabs being arrested, and the other roughly 300 being put out of work, allowing Jewish settlers to officially take over the stone industry.
Alienation
The stone industry takeover was just one of the many ways in which fear was instrumentalized by the Mandates’ governing powers on the general public in order to dehumanize working class Palestinians and advance its mission for a Jewish state. However, Jewish settlers were not the only population being targeted for this effort, and fear was not the only method of isolation. During the Mandate period middle-class (predominantly Christian) Palestinians were recipients of perks and prestige to disincentivize their participation in resistance movements and further alienate working class Palestinians.
The instituting of European schools, architecture, fashion, and culture during the Mandate period created a new wave of excitement among the middle class at the time and shifted their focus to exclusive upward mobility, and away from the affronts happening to their working class countrymen. Christian Palestinians, who lived largely in urban areas and had access to European education through missionary schools, were deemed particularly worthy of access to high society, including government roles. “They [Christians] played central roles in the newly formed Mandate civil administration. In 1921, about two-thirds of government jobs were filled by Christians, who made up about a tenth of the Arab population of Palestine. By 1938 the proportion had declined, but still half of government officials were Christians. They also dominated the white-collar professions – doctors, lawyers, engineers, architects, journalists, and educators – who provided services to the civil service, to merchants, to landowners, and to the wealthy.” (Radai, 2016).
Their access to upward mobility was no mere coincidence of being in the right place and time. While the strategic removal of working class Palestinians was taking place across industries, middle class Palestinians were acquiring access to new, government-subsidized benefits. “The government provided the middle class with vital services- water, electricity, mail, telephone, education, health, and sanitation. Its police force and armed forces guaranteed the security and social order that underpinned the middle class’ economic position. As a result, very few middle class Christians and Muslims took part in the anti-government demonstrations throughout the period of British rule… careful not to endanger their recently acquired class positions.” (Radai, 2016). Thus the Mandate’s selective implementation of cultural hegemony and life-giving services, was used as a tool to further the class divide between Palestinians and quell their resistance.
This age-old tactic of divide and conquer is a tool of racial capitalism that has been deployed throughout history to prevent unity under oppression, particularly in British settler colonies. In 1676 in the Colony of Virginia (now a state of the United States), Nathaniel Bacon, a white property owner who was denied access to expand his land, had successfully united black slaves and white indentured servants and working poor to conduct a series of attacks against the Virginia elite called Bacon’s Rebellion. While these attacks were unsuccessful in their aim to overthrow the elites, the powerful unity among the oppressed masses deeply worried the elites and compelled them to take preventative action. As a result, they instituted a “racial bribe” in which, “Deliberately and strategically, the planter class extended special privileges to poor whites in an effort to drive a wedge between them and black slaves. White settlers were allowed greater access to Native American lands, white servants were allowed to police slaves through slave patrols and militias, and barriers were created so that free labour would not be placed in competition with slave labour. These measures effectively eliminated the risk of future alliances between black slaves and poor whites.” (Alexander, 2010). Looking at history, we can see the specific tactics that the British colonial empire has used (and reused) - in this case, creating racialized stratum among the working class - in order to protect and further accumulate capital.
In discussing deepening class divides under colonialism Frantz Fanon, notable author on racialized capitalism writes “Here, we are not dealing [only] with the old antagonism between town and country; it is the antagonism which exists between the native who is excluded from the advantages of colonialism and his counterpart who manages to turn colonial exploitation to his account.” (Fanon, 1963). Fanon, along with other revolutionary writers, became inspirations for the growing political consciousness and resistance movements of working class Palestinians.
Tensions continued to rise during these times, leading to the ultimate result of mutual isolation among Palestinians. The co-optation and lack of expressed solidarity on behalf of the Christian Palestinians (despite the vast majority claiming to be anti-Zionist), led to anti-Christian smear campaigns by leaders of the Palestinian resistance. In response to this, many middle class Christians fled the region, taking their wealth and prestige with them, leaving working class Palestinians to fight against the Mandate regime alone. The times that followed were increasingly violent due to the mounting exploitation of the Palestinian working class, and the expanding presence of Zionist armed militias and carceral systems in the region.
Militarization and forced migration
“The end of the 1930s was a period of devastation for the farmers and villagers, who were the large majority of Palestinians. Landlessness and indebtedness had plagued most Palestinians throughout the mandate period (1923–48). The British colonial government’s brutal counterinsurgency during the revolt further heightened these conditions.” (Seikaly, 2018).
What had started as subtle antagonisms had made themselves plainly apparent by the late 1930s with sharp increases in Zionist settlements, and displacement of Palestinians from their homes and work. The final catalyst that sparked the 1936 Arab Revolt was a protest by Palestinian workers against the Mandate government for awarding a contract to build Arab schools in Jaffa to a Jewish contractor who refused to employ a single Arab laborer.
The Revolt mobilized Palestinian workers with coordinated general strikes, divestment campaigns, civil disobedience, and tax evasion against the government. “The 1936 Palestinian Revolt contributed to the unification of the Palestinian labour movement and the emergence of independent unions of some professions, such as the union of the Post, Telegraph and Telephone workers, and that of Public Works departments.” (Wardeh, 2014). While workers were uniting and gaining power, they were met with harsh repression from the British and Zionist armed forces. “A report presented by the Arab Workers Association in Haifa to the Bureau of Statistics in Jerusalem estimated the number of unemployed during the second stage of revolt at 60% in some major cities, including Haifa. Added to that, the British colonial government committed hostile acts that included blowing up houses, arson, vandalism, imprisonment, and mass arrests.” (Wardeh, 2014).
At the same time, World War II was happening in Europe and many British soldiers and government officials were being called to return from the region. Prominent Zionist leader and Head of the Jewish Agency, David Ben-Gurion was encouraging Jewish settlers to serve in the British Armed Forces. After being granted permission, 15 Jewish Palestinian battalions were formed, fighting in the war under the Zionist flag with the name the Jewish Brigade Group (Holocaust Encyclopedia). In return, Ben-Gurion was allowed to continue the mass illegal immigration of Jewish settlers to the region, and received lavish funding from the British government to expand Zionist militia operations in Palestine. The most notable militia, Haganah, had been the largest non-British military formation in the Palestine Mandate. It started as a small, decentralized operation, but during the years of the Arab Revolt was bolstered into a powerful and recognized military body.
Britain’s funding of overseas militias to further its own agendas was not a new or rare practice of its government. In fact, since 1945 there have been over 80 documented counts of British military intervention (Declassified UK, 2023) in countries largely across the global south. These interventions are investments for Britain to gain or maintain colonial control within a region by either suppressing resistance, or imposing a more favorable regime. This is a clear tactic of racial capitalism that thwarts democracy in developing (exploited) nations, in order to protect imperial power. In the case of conquering Palestine, while there were bumps in the road that followed for Britain, the backing of a well-funded Zionist military laid the groundwork for the forceful establishment of Israel, to whom Britain still remains a close ally today.
Violence continued in the coming years, not only against Arab Palestinians, but also the British by Zionist forces. Relations had started to strain after Britain published its 1939 White Paper which stated a partition of Palestine might not be possible, and limited Jewish immigration. Following World War II Britain had maintained these “official” limits on Jewish immigration, and according to Zionists, were now re-negotiating its promise to establish a Jewish State. As a result the now-powerful Haganah collaborated with other Zionist militias, Irgun, and Lehi to launch a series of attacks on the British called the Jewish Resistance Movement of 1945 (while continuing its affronts on the Arab Palestinian population) to make clear their demand for official statehood. This demand was actualized in May of 1948 when the Provisional Government of Israel proclaimed its statehood with the support of Britain and other western powers.
While Zionists and western allies celebrated what was being touted as a historic win against anti-semitism, Palestinian suffering was erased from the public discourse. During this time a letter was sent to the Arab Higher Committee (the Palestinian national leadership body that originally came together during the Great Revolt of 1936–9) from Palestinians of the National Committee of Bir al-Sab’i in desperation “We are being attacked and the Jews are close to taking over all of the transportation roads between Palestine and Egypt, please lend us tanks and heavy machinery or direct us to where we can buy [them] ... We have sent you many requests but have not received military attention or organization ... we are without leadership or direction.” (Seiklay, 2018). Just weeks later began the Nakba massacre that marked a devastating turning point for the Palestinian people.
In 1948 Zionist militias initiated a mass displacement attack called “the Nakba” (Arabic for ‘catastrophe’) where they expelled over 750,000 Palestinians from their homes, capturing 78% of historic Palestine, and ethnically cleansing 90% of the Palestinian population from the land that comprises Israel today. During the Nakba over 15,000 Palestinians were killed and 530 villages completely destroyed. It was a brutal massacre on a vulnerable, largely unarmed civilian population that was being portrayed as the actualizing of the Biblical ‘David and Goliath’ story where the settler population had miraculously triumphed despite making up a smaller population. When analyzing the power relations that resulted from the previous decades of racial capitalist practices, we again see the distortion of the truth by hegemonic forces. Who, during the Nakba and the years of the British Mandate, was David and who was Goliath?
Following the Nakba, the Mandate period leadership became the new Israeli government with Ben-Gurion as the state’s first prime minister, and the Zionist militias (Haganah and others) becoming the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and Israeli police. Israel’s statehood had been secured with praise from countless western nations quickly endorsing its legitimacy, while Palestinians were confined to the margins.
The aftermath of the Nakba and partitioning of Palestine had devastating effects on the Palestinian people. The name ‘Palestine’ had been wiped off nearly every world map and atlas, and what remaining areas it had, namely the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, became densely packed ghettos of refugee camps temporarily put under Jordanian and Egyptian administration respectively. “The vast majority of these Palestinian refugees were peasants who had made their living in the past from cultivating the land which they had now lost. Furthermore, most of these refugees were uneducated and faced policies of exclusion, humiliation and forced unemployment. They became dependent on UNRWA and other local and international aid organizations.” (Manna, 2013). The once powerful unions and workers movements had become completely fragmented geographically, and were being outlawed from reorganizing. “Those Palestinian workers who remained in the occupied territories suffered from arbitrary laws that Israel enacted against them. The occupation’s strict military laws, which it imposed on the Palestinians, prevented the establishment or the formation of any labour organization, group or movement.” (Wardeh, 2014). Work was scarce and not only were Palestinians ill-equipped, but faced competition from fellow Arabs in bordering countries. Working class Palestinians post-1948 were relegated to status as refugees, stateless residents, or second class citizens no matter where they lived. Even to not speak at all of the death toll or physical/psychological traumas endured under the Nakba or other Zionist aggressions - the destruction of working opportunities, educational systems, cultural institutions, and access to generational wealth or basic needs was devastating to the very fabric Palestinian life.
Social reproductions
It is impossible to overstate the impact that the Mandate period had on the Palestinian people, and the groundwork that it laid for further oppression. Social reproduction theory implores us to think about why perhaps strategically, the Mandate regime started its campaign with the displacement of Palestinians from places of work, rather than a military campaign from the start. “The fundamental insight of Social Reproduction Theory is, simply put, that human labor is at the heart of creating or reproducing society as a whole. (Bhattacharya, 2017). The role of labour and the access to resources, capital, tools, and skill-building that coexist within it are the lifeblood of any society - and this was the very first base the British and Zionist Organizations sought to destabilize in order to take over Palestine.
When looking at social reproduction conceptually, there are two lenses of analysis. On the one hand, a traditional Marxist lens that looks at the way capitalism itself is recreated, and the other that analyzes the impacts to social relations necessary in maintaining life. “Among other things, social reproduction includes how food, clothing, and shelter are made available for immediate consumption, how the maintenance and socialization of children is accomplished, how care of the elderly and infirm is provided, and how sexuality is socially constructed.” (Bhattacharya, 2017). This analysis will provide a brief synopsis for both.
The social reproductions of colonial capitalism are deepened class divides, and racialized exploitation and discrimination (racial capitalism is closely linked with this theory). As has been demonstrated in this study - the creation of division between Arabs and European Jews, and Muslim and Christian Palestinians was necessary for the development of the Zionist project into the state of Israel. Because capitalism itself is predicated on private property, profit-making, and endless growth, it is a system that cannot and does not strive for universal prosperity. The creation of a subaltern class and exploitation of that class is necessary to keep the machine running. “Apartheid represents the attempt to maintain the rate of surplus value and accumulation in the face of the disintegration of the pre-capitalist economy…The entire logic of apartheid is based around highly policed boundary-marking.” (Bhattacharyya, 2018). Therefore we see the deep linkage of the two - racial and capital exploitation that denigrates one group, in order to provide privileges to another group who becomes (seemingly) assimilated with the class interests of the elite, and fights to protect and further capitalism as a result. For Palestinians during the Mandate period and especially in the years following the First Intifada (Arabic for ‘uprising’) in 1987 when borders and checkpoints vastly increased - it is clear that capitalist exploitation has only bred further privatization and violence to maintain itself.
It is worth mentioning how critical intersectionality is as a frame for understanding racial capitalism and resulting social reproductions as many argue that historic Jewish persecution somehow precludes their ability to be the practitioners of oppression. “These processes need not be tied to any particular group and the object of racialisation may change across time or be articulated variously across space” (Bhattacharyya, 2018). It is true that Jews have suffered historically throughout Europe through vicious pogroms, the horrific events of the Holocaust, and many other accounts of anti-semitism. In addition, like the working class whites of Bacon’s Rebellion, it is important to analyze the interventions of European powers who provide distracting incentives and false villains to avoid accountability and further instrumentalize oppressed groups against a racialized ‘other’ to their own aims.
In the case of Palestine, this strategy is evident as the ‘conflict’ between Jews and Arabs is often depicted as false correlation/causation. Even though we can clearly identify how both European Jews and Arab Palestinians have been oppressed at different points in history, it’s important to ask, who were their oppressors in these moments? Did Palestinians ever possess the infrastructure, status, weaponry, or material wealth to systematically oppress Jewish settlers? When asking these questions it becomes clear that the case of European Zionism in relation to Palestine proves our theory that capitalism reproduces itself in settler colonial contexts by dividing peoples who ultimately share interests into a class of privileged recipients of colonial perks, and a dangerous, subhuman subaltern group. Intersectionality in combination with historical materialism (e.g. class/power relations) can be powerful, complementary frameworks for identifying the nuanced methods of exploitation, and building solidarity against them.
The second lens of social reproduction, the ability to sustain life, has been evident throughout the text so this section will be used to provide a brief summary and tribute to the Palestinian people, who to this day are steadfast in their resistance to extreme colonial violence with faith that they will someday return to their land. While some forms of this resistance have been criticized in different studies at different times, principally, it is a human right to resist displacement and dispossession in the face of settler colonialism. “Given that geopolitical and business interests tend to prevail over human rights concerns, civil society mobilisation is indispensable to push governments, in particular in those cases when human rights concerns do not coincide with other policy priorities.” (Hoffer, 2022). The United Nations has even spelled it out clearly for the Palestinian people in 1974 after years of documented human rights violations. “[The UN General Assembly] reaffirms also the inalienable right of the Palestinians to return to their homes and property from which they have been displaced and uprooted, and calls for their return". This international ruling has yet to be honored as of this date of writing, March 2024.
After accounting for the systematic displacement, alienation, erasure, military opposition, and forced migration of the Palestinians during the Mandate period, and their resulting aid-dependent refugee status that continues today, it is clear that their ability to reproduce life is bludgeoned by colonial violence. What is there to be said when the western-controlled bodies, like the UN, that are given the responsibility to rectify these situations, are also the perpetrators? Or at the very least, investors in this project? “Gone is the Western post-Berlin-Wall triumphalism. The optimism that the world would enthusiastically or from lack of alternatives, willy-nilly, embark on liberal capitalism, including democracy, freedom of expression and respect for human rights, did not materialize.” (Hoffer, 2022). While this question deserves its own exhaustive body of research and analysis, Palestinians in the meantime are faced with two options; to continue fighting for survival and the chance to return home, or to continue being pushed out into the margins until their story is erased from the pages of history altogether.
Conclusion
Racial capitalism played an immense role in the Mandate period transformation of Palestine from a self-sufficient, “pre-modern” society into a capitalist empire of Zionist settlers, that now exists as the state of Israel. The tactics that Britain administered, in collaboration with the Zionist Organization and other western nations, are categorized under racial capitalism not only for their brutal form and explicit discrimination of treatment for one, racialized group (along with specialized treatment for the ‘superior’ other), but also for the cultural hegemonic tactics deployed during to dehumanize the Palestinian population and justify their suffering. As has been demonstrated through various accounts, the Palestinians have been subject to calculated dispossession, displacement, and racialized violence all for the openly stated claim of furthering Zionism - a European Jewish settler colonial project. The social reproductions of the Mandate period have been the strengthening of neoliberal capitalism for western powers, and a severe destruction of Palestinian reproduction of life and livelihood.
The cause for Palestinian liberation goes beyond the stories of holy lands or armed conflicts, and is also about the right to live and make a living (some call these, human rights). The Mandate period was a crucial affront on the foundational working conditions of Palestinians and a series of other disempowerment campaigns that have only worsened with time. Today, as in during the 1922-48 period, Palestinians are stripped of resources and safety at the hands of highly militarized western powers, with their generations-long fight for survival being depicted as ‘barbaric terrorism’ against a ‘civilized victim’. Only by taking a historical materialist approach that analyzes the power relations and interests of each group over time can we read between the lines of the stories we’re told, and find the truth.
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