Much ink has been spilled over Palestine these last three months. Caught between emotional responses and appeals from media and politics, academic researchers have also joined the debate, seeking to shed light on the tragedies and the intricacies of current events. But one area that has been overlooked is economic analysis — or so it would have done, if these analysts really had something to say.

The dominant theories continue to understand the economy only using the grammar of the market, leaving them ill-equipped to think about the conflicts and power relations that develop on this terrain. At most, their aggregated data, and such abstractions as GDP, give us an estimate of the costs of the conflict or of the military occupation. But we are left with far too little understanding of what economic activity and processes are at work in the war and in Palestine generally.