A Theory of Forced Labour Migration: The Proletarianisation of the West Bank Under Occupation (1967-1992)

233 Pages·2020·2.101 MB·English

by  Ali Kadri

Ali Kadri
A Theory of
Forced Labour
Migration
The Proletarianisation
of the West Bank Under
Occupation (1967–1992)
A Theory of Forced Labour Migration
Ali Kadri
A Theory of Forced Labour
Migration
The Proletarianisation of the West Bank
Under Occupation (1967–1992)
Ali Kadri
National University of Singapore
Singapore, Singapore
ISBN 978-981-15-3199-6 ISBN 978-981-15-3200-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3200-9
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To the memory of Raghid El-Solh
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Michel Chossudovsky for first suggesting the topic of this work; to the
LSE Centre for Human Rights – Laboratory for Advanced Research on the Global
Economy – for providing research facilities; to Seif Dana and Ray Bush for
their many helpful comments; and to Max Ajl for his editorial remarks.
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Contents
1 Working for the Enemy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Migration in the Bigger Picture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Palestinian Proletarianisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.3 Israel in Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.4 The China Tangent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.5 The Problematic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
1.6 Some Issues of Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
1.7 An Introduction in Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
1.8 Chapter 2. A Historical Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
1.9 Chapter 3. Palestinian Labour Under Occupation
from a Mainstream Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
1.10 Chapter 4. The Gelatinous Neoclassical Paradigm . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
1.11 Chapter 5. Structuralism and Migration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
1.12 Chapter 6. Mild Dependency and West Bank Labour . . . . . . . . . . . 32
1.13 Chapter 7. The Practice of Occupation by Sector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
1.14 Chapter 8. The Marxian Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
1.15 Chapter 9. Conclusion: The Future Has Already Happened . . . . . . 33
2 A Historical Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.1 The First Stage: European Penetration Circa 1800 Until 1920 . . . . 36
2.2 The Second Stage: The Mandate Era (1920–1948) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2.3 The Third Stage: Jordanian Stage (1948–1967) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.4 Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3 Palestinian Labour Under Occupation from a Mainstream
Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3.1 Situating the Issue in the Mainstream Argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.2 Neoclassical Dual Economy Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.3 Other Extensions of the Harris-Todaro Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.4 A Hint of the Marxist Critique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
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3.5 Facts Against Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
3.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
3.7 Postscript and Aide Memoire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
4 The Gelatinous Neoclassical Paradigm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
4.1 Israeli Demand for Palestinian Labour from the West Bank . . . . . . 77
4.2 A Short Critique of Neoclassical Labour Demand . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
4.3 The Supply of West Bank Labour to Israel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
4.4 Meaning of Constraints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
4.5 Empirical Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
4.6 Results and Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
4.7 Summary and Unanswered Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
5 Structuralism and Migration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
5.1 The Different Schools of Structural Dependency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
5.2 Eurocentrism and the Mode of Production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
5.3 Dependency and Labour Migration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
5.4 Contrast with the Dual Economy Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
5.5 Further Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
6 Mild Dependency and West Bank Labour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
6.1 Theorising the Facts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
6.2 Economic Restructuring Under Occupation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
6.2.1 Agriculture in Focus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
6.3 Trade and Industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
6.4 Wither Economic Dependency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
6.5 Concluding Remarks and Additional Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
6.6 Postscript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
7 The Practice of Occupation by Sector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
7.1 Agriculture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
7.1.1 Land Confiscation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
7.1.2 Settlements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
7.1.3 The Legacy of Underdevelopment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
7.2 Manufacturing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
7.3 Industry’s Debacle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
7.4 The Construction Sector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
7.5 The Service Sector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
7.6 Closing Comment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
8 The Marxian Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
8.1 Theorising Misery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
8.2 Wages Revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
8.3 From Wages to Modes of Production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
8.4 The Capitalism of Severe Crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
8.5 A Question Bigger than Palestine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
8.6 Ontology and Servile Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
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8.7 A Marxian Epistemology of Labour Migration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
8.8 The Great Deportation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
8.9 From Theory To History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
8.10 Zionism: A Spearhead of Imperialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
8.11 Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
9 Conclusion: The Future Has Already Happened . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
9.1 A Summary of the Empirical Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
9.2 The Measure of Non-employment Income . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
9.3 Initial Wealth of the Migrant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
9.4 Work in Israel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
9.5 Wages and Taxation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
9.6 History of Employment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
9.7 Additional Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
9.8 Recapping Some Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
9.9 Intifada Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
9.10 Israel in International Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
9.11 Back to Labour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
Annex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
About the Author
Ali Kadri teaches at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and is a Visiting

Fellow at the London School of Economics (LSE) Centre for Human Rights –
Laboratory for Advanced Research on the Global Economy. He is the Author of
Imperialism with Reference to Syria (Springer 2019).
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