‘Missionaries of the new era’: neoliberalism and NGOs in Palestine

This article explores the effects of the neoliberal development paradigm on the restructuring of social formations through the external funding and promotion of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Palestine, 1 and more precisely in the West Bank towns of Ramallah and al-Bireh; they are the ‘missionaries of the new era’. 2 It argues that neoliberal rationality aims at transforming societies and subjectivities around the notion of enterprise and weakens the collective national resistance movement.