Review of Lisa Bhungalia, “Elastic Empire: Refashioning War through Aid in Palestine” (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2023).
Munich, Germany (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) –– The impact of US military aid on Palestine is there for everyone to see. For decades, Israel has been the largest recipient of US military aid. The list of military items Washington has shipped to Israel since October 7, 2023, is almost never-ending. 14,000 MK-84 bombs for bomber aircraft, 1,000 bunker-buster bombs, or 3,000 precision-guided Hellfire missiles are only some examples. Israel’s war on Gaza would not have resulted in the death of at least 40,000 Gazans absent US support.
Military aid to Israel is by no means the only channel through which the US leaves a major imprint in Palestine. In the form of humanitarian and development aid, the US also shapes the lives of Palestinians in ways that are far more diffuse than bombs and guns but not less consequential. This is what Lisa Bhungalia, an Assistant Professor of Geography at Kent State University, brilliantly explores in her book “Elastic Empire: Refashioning War through Aid in Palestine.”
Bhungalia’s core thesis is that the US operates like an empire by applying strongly securitized conditions on the development assistance and humanitarian aid it provides in Palestine. Although significant steps in that direction were already taken by Clinton’s White House in the 1990s, the 9/11 attacks represented a watershed moment in the securitization of aid.
Less than two weeks after the 9/11 attacks, Bush signed Executive Order 13224, which introduced major changes regarding those groups designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs). Previously, only individuals belonging to FTOs could be prosecuted by the US. In the era of the so-called ‘War on Terror’, individuals “that support or otherwise associate with these foreign terrorists” could also be subjected to financial sanctions.
The (probably purposely) ill-defined concept of “otherwise associated” was accompanied by a new and ever-expanding list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists. Meanwhile, Executive Order 13224 prevented organizations receiving US funds from providing humanitarian and development aid where FTOs, or “otherwise associated” entities and individuals, could benefit.
Executive Order 13224 could have put USAID, the US agency responsible for foreign aid and development assistance, in a tough spot. It had been tasked with providing aid while ensuring that no entity or individual blacklisted by the US was at the receiving end. However, USAID quickly found a way out of this complicated situation. It outsourced risk assessment, and the severe legal consequences of failing to comply with Executive Order 13224, to the international NGOs and contractors receiving USAID funds.
In the West Bank and Gaza, an administrative policy document known as Mission Order 21 institutionalized the responsibility of NGOs relying on US money for vetting aid recipients. The new US policy soon had consequences on the ground. After the 2005 municipal elections in Palestine, Hamas held a majority of the municipal council seats in the Gaza Strip. With Hamas designated as an FTO, the Gaza Strip was almost completely excluded from US monies. In the West Bank, Fatah had come out on top in the municipal elections. Even so, Hamas, together with Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLF) — two other designated FTOs — also won seats in the municipal councils. Consequently, the West Bank experienced a dual reality regarding the arrival of aid funds from the US.
As explained by a contractor to Bhungalia, depending on the parties sitting in the municipal councils, municipalities were classified as either “derogatory or non-derogatory.” For instance, the municipalities of Beit Jala and Beit Sahour, surrounding Bethlehem, received US funds for infrastructure, recreational spaces, and city services. Meanwhile, Bethlehem, where Hamas and other FTOs were politically represented, was known in the aid community as a ‘derog’ area and received no funds. In 2012, Hamas and the PFLF boycotted the local elections — with claims that reconciliation between the different Palestinian factions had to precede any election — and US funds finally reached Bethlehem.
Bhungalia discusses the securitization of aid from the perspective of the US and the NGOs on the ground. It would have been interesting to know more about how Palestinians experience the effects of Washington’s aid policies. For instance, did most citizens in Bethlehem know that their city was being disadvantaged because of the composition of the city council, and if so, what did they think about it?
The blacklists put forward by the US are not restricted to organizations but also include persons. The net is cast so wide that it includes relatives of people tied to FTOs or those who have spent time in Israeli jails without necessarily having been charged with any crime. This practice, known as administrative detention, has become even more common after October 7. Equally problematic, there is no clear legal path to challenge one’s inclusion in these lists. Once on the list, people will be excluded from aid projects depending on US funds.
The effects of the anti-terrorist clauses are often ridiculous. A Palestinian humanitarian worker in a US-funded health program explained to Bhungalia that if he organized a “training”, all the participants had to be vetted. Meanwhile, if he set up a “workshop”, as long as it lasted less than four days, he could avoid the cumbersome vetting process.
In the early years following Executive Order 13224, many Palestinian NGOs decided to boycott USAID projects. These Palestinian aid workers felt they were being asked to police their compatriots on behalf of the US. Bhungalia writes that the boycott of USAID aimed at “consolidating a united Palestinian position against the imposition of the US security state through the mechanism of aid.”[1] The effects, however, were not the intended ones. Faced with the boycott, new NGOs from the US were founded in Palestine to absorb USAID money. In front of this, the boycott by the Palestinian NGOs progressively weakened.
Also decisive in the boycott’s failure, explains Bhungalia, was that other Western donors (most of them European) started to adopt anti-terrorism clauses similar to the ones first put forward by the US. This is not surprising. European countries have often followed Washington’s steps in the Middle East when it comes to anti-terrorist legislation and sanctions policy, as can be observed in the case of sanctions against Iran.
One can think of at least two factors to understand this European alignment behind the US. On the one hand, there is a tendency in Europe to mimic (almost by default) many of Washington’s foreign policy steps. Even if, as in the case of aid for Palestine or sanctions on Iran, these US policies result in collective punishment. On the other hand, the long jurisdictional arm of the US in applying its sanctions policy, together with the power of US banks and the dollar as a global currency, also plays an important role. Risk-averse European states and companies fear running afoul of US directives and opt for preemptive self-policing. When an EU directive regarding counterterrorism and aid in Palestine was finally adopted in 2019, it was harsher than that previously followed by individual European countries, explains Bhungalia.
The US’ “Elastic Empire” in Palestine was traditionally predicated on a mixture of hard and soft power that solidified the Israeli occupation while seeking to mitigate some of its most extreme effects. After coming to power in 2017, “the Trump administration ended this veneer”, writes Bhungalia.[2] Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in late 2017 against any notion of international law and followed by cutting all US funding to UNRWA, the agency responsible for Palestinian refugees.
One of the key messages coming from the Biden administration after the 2020 election victory was that “the adults are back in charge.” Whatever this meant, it did not entail a full reversal of Trump’s measures vis-a-vis Palestine. The status quo ante was distressing, but still preferable to Trump’s turbo-charged pro-occupation policies. However, under Biden the volume of US funds for UNRWA did not fully return to the pre-Trump levels. Washington’s economic contribution to UNRWA is now halted after accusations surfaced that UNRWA personnel had participated in the October 7 terrorist attack against Israel.
In October 2021, Israel outlawed six Palestinian NGOs arguing they were controlled by the PFLP. Among them were organizations such as Al-Haq or Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P). The Israeli government underestimated the strong connections between these six NGOs and large international organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, which stood up for the Palestinian NGOs. Key European countries also continued to work with the NGOs targeted by Israel. A staffer at the NGO Al-Haq told Bhungalia that “Israel did not expect this outcome.”[3]
Israel miscalculated the effects of the move against the Palestinian NGOs. This, Bhungalia argues, has much to do with Israel’s nervousness over the ongoing investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for possible Israeli war crimes. The targeted NGOs had been providing evidence to the ICC to document the case.
Israel moved against the six Palestinian NGOs soon after it became known that they had been targeted with Pegasus, the spying malware developed by the Israeli company NSO Group. For Israel, one of the goals for banning the NGOs was to retroactively justify the espionage they had suffered. Since The Guardian’s revelations two months ago, we also know now that Israeli intelligence agencies have been spying on the ICC for nine years.
The decision by the ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan on May 2024 to seek arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, and Yoav Gallant, his Defence Minister, has been one of the few bright spots for Palestinians over the last months. Although the future trajectory of the ICC case is uncertain, and any decision would come too late for many Palestinians, the possibility of Israeli leaders having to account for war crimes is now a bit less distant.
Washington’s military and diplomatic support for Israel has understandably been the main reason for outrage among campus protesters across the US in the context of the ongoing war on Gaza. In the book “Elastic Empire”, we learn about more subtle forms of violence. It is not only with weapons and vetoes at the UN Security Council, but also through aid, that the US inscribes its imperial influence on Palestine.
Notes
[1] Lisa Bhungalia, “Elastic Empire: Refashioning War through Aid in Palestine” (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2023), p. 94.
[2] Ibid., p. 109.
[3] Ibid., p. 160.
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