The ongoing social, political, and conceptual struggles of Palestine against a settler-colonial regime reveal a dynamic interplay between increasingly sophisticated forms of domination and the emergence of novel modes of resistance. The dialectical interaction between colonial domination and anticolonial resistance points to a clear conclusion: As Israeli settler-colonial domination persists, so does Palestinian resistance. The lecture aims to problematise three sites of control/resistance: international aid, security, and state/peace-building. A critical examination of the political economy of international aid over the past three decades, totalled over 50 billion USD, indicates that it has been used as a tool to discipline, silence, and maintain control over Palestinians. The “securitization of everything” apart from the security of the Palestinian people shows how the adopted security paradigm since the foundation of the Palestinian Authority was preset with structural defects meant to deny Palestinians any relief from the main cause of their insecurity, the Israeli occupation. Finally, as the Oslo accords have provided nothing more than a false 'framework of peace' that sustains settler colonialism and apartheid, the obsession with the idea of statehood as a means to realise self-determination and freedom has proved to be detrimental to the struggle of decolonising Palestine.

Speaker:

Dr Alaa TARTIR is Senior Researcher and Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Tartir is also a Research Associate and Academic Coordinator at The Geneva Graduate Institute, a Global Fellow at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), a Program and Policy Advisor to Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network, and a Governing Board Member of The Arab Reform Initiative (ARI). Amongst other positions, Tartir worked as a Senior Researcher and Project Lead at the Small Arms Survey, a Visiting Professor at Sciences Po, a Fellow at The Geneva Centre for Security Policy, and a Researcher in International Development Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where he earned his PhD. He is co-editor of Resisting Domination in Palestine: Mechanisms and Techniques of Control, Coloniality and Settler Colonialism (2023), Political Economy of Palestine: Critical, Interdisciplinary, and Decolonial Perspectives (2021) and Palestine and Rule of Power: Local Dissent vs. International Governance (2019). Tartir can be followed on Twitter (@alaatartir), and his publications can be accessed at www.alaatartir.com.