Summary
The approach introduced by Israeli historian Micah Goodman in 2018 and taken up by Israeli leaders since 2021, which Walid Habbas debunks as a revised version of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Economic peace model: manage the occupation differently, ostensibly less oppressively, so as to entrench it and prevent either a Palestinian state or a one-state reality (Shrinking the Conflict: Debunking Israel’s New Strategy, lines 141-143).
Details
- Its premise: Israeli tools of oppression breed “unnecessary” daily frictions that increase the likelihood of Palestinian “waves of terror and violent clashes”, so Israel need not dismantle its occupation but simply manage it differently — granting more freedom of movement within the West Bank and increasing economic opportunities with Israel; it has altogether abandoned any serious discussion of the two-state solution (line 143).
- It proposes ways through which the “Palestinian public desire for full civic rights” can be acknowledged without ending the occupation and without recognition of Palestinian sovereign borders, on the assumption that Palestinians will acquiesce if oppression is eased and made less visible (line 169).
- Its measures, in Habbas’s account: the first four of Goodman’s recommendations (Palestinian-only roads, Area C to Area A transfers, Israeli airport access, statehood recognition without borders), a review of the Paris Protocol through joint economic collaboration, Area C industrial parks under Israeli control, the Door-to-Door policy, and increasing and diversifying Palestinian laborers in 1948 territories, including from Gaza (lines 147-149, 173-201).
- Habbas’s critique: it “hinges on a fallacy” that Palestinians will be less likely to resist if made to believe they can enjoy life under permanent settler-colonial occupation; the measures entrench geographic and economic fragmentation and dependence in perpetual De-development, and any proposals falling short of total dismantlement of apartheid, occupation, and settler colonization would bring neither improvement nor acceptance of the status quo (lines 145-153).
- Its uptake and limits in the brief: the 2019 Initiative for Shrinking the Conflict, the New Hope party’s electoral program, and championship by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid (line 173); aspects were invalidated by Netanyahu’s far right-wing coalition’s victory in December 2022, though the economic measures put in place since 2021 will likely continue to shape Palestinian-Israeli economic relations (lines 155, 205).
- Fathi Nimer uses the phrase differently in The Enduring and Racist Trope of Palestinian Rejectionism: after October 7, 2023, the international community cannot “shrink the conflict” indefinitely (line 177 of that source). The generic use and Habbas’s specific, Goodman-derived use are held side by side, not merged.
Related pages
Shrinking the Conflict: Debunking Israel’s New Strategy, Micah Goodman, Economic peace, Door-to-Door policy, De-development