While most living under Israeli occupation are struggling to survive, a powerful group of Palestinian capitalists are thriving and growing in influence. The cost for this prosperity, all too often, is their engagement in “economic normalization” projects — partnerships with Israeli firms as though they were normal business partners rather than an occupying power. Since Oslo, and in recent years especially, the power of these capitalists in the occupied territory has been rising in an unprecedented manner.

They can be divided into three main groups. “Returnee” capitalists, comprising a Palestinian bourgeoisie that had emerged in Arab countries, particularly the Gulf states, as well as in North America and Europe. Many of these businessmen had strong ties to the nascent Palestinian Authority. Others are local capitalists, comprised of two main subgroups: large landowners who historically enjoyed considerable political and social influence over traditional social structures, and interlocutors who accumulated wealth as subcontractors for Israeli companies after the 1967 occupation. And last, the nouveau riche who have particularly benefited from post–Oslo shifts.

Palestinian businessmen have struggled with statelessness and sought the security that a state would provide, where their companies and profits would be better protected from regional instability. As a result, many of them supported the Oslo Accords as a key step towards establishing a Palestinian state, some even imagining that Oslo’s “peace dividends” would transform the West Bank and Gaza into the Singapore of the Middle East.