Intensification of neoliberalization in Palestine: an account of perseverance

By accounting for the role of reflexive agency in the persistence and transformation of capitalist systems, this paper examines how market-driven reforms created momentum for neoliberalization in Palestine after the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords in the early 1990s, leading to the intensification of neoliberalization after the political intradivision in 2007. To understand how neoliberalization unfolded, the paper draws on the variegated neoliberalization thesis. It supplements this with the ‘morphogenetic régulation' (MR) approach, and its notion of reflexive conatus, which considers ideas in terms of ‘self-explication' and ‘adequacy' originating in the material. Through this lens, the paper investigates Palestinian agents’ actions as they diachronically interacted with the structural constraints of the Oslo neoliberal peace paradigm as they mediated neoliberalization. Their actions were not merely shaped by internal and external pressures. Still, they were also strategically recalibrated to preserve their vested interests in the Palestinian Authority as a structure.