A Necropolitical Development? Revisiting Development Politics as Violence in Palestine

This article critiques mainstream development in Palestine and proposes that a new trend of necropolitical development is taking shape, as an attempt to reshape Palestinian society utilizing death-worlds and lifelines to induce cultural change. The article discusses the history of colonial development in Palestine, toward contemporary manifestations, discussing how development shapes reality and agency. It argues that necropolitical development, beyond neoliberal development, took form in Palestine as a manifestation of development within the framework of the Israeli occupation and settler colonialism. This interaction reproduces colonial violence through reward and punishment, and produces these death-worlds, aiming to de-politicize and re-politicize subjectivities. Alternative concepts of development are discussed, such as indigenous grassroots development, whether atomized, mass movements, or state-led. Some of these models support global anticolonial solidarities and alternative global development toward anti-imperialist liberation, while others are negative agencies in spaces provided by mainstream development.