Engineering Destruction: Militarization and the War Economy

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Jul 25, 2025 Palestine
Engineering Destruction: Militarization and the War Economy

Engineering Destruction: Militarization and the War Economy

This conference is organized in partnership between the Ibrahim Abu Lughod Institute of International Studies, the Arab Council for the Social Sciences, the Security in Context network, and the National Pedagogical University in Colombia

29-31 July 2025 online, and at Birzeit University’s campus


Live streaming of all panels will be available on Zoom, with simultaneous translation in Arabic, English, and Spanish

The conference sheds light on militarization and its rapid expansion and global impact, particularly in light of the brutal genocide perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinian people, which has extended to include populations in the Middle East and those standing in solidarity with Palestine. The conference examines the structural, economic, and military relationships that contribute to the militarization of today's world, and its violent impact on populations. 

The program features professors, researchers, and activists who will discuss the ‘engineering of destruction’ carried out by state and non-state actors, as well as the role of military and security companies in restricting and reshaping societies, and transforming public and private spaces into locations for control and surveillance. The conference will be divided into several on-campus and online sessions. These sessions include "The Political Economy of War,” “Carceral Regimes,” "The Militarization of Urban Space," and “Resistance and Solidarity.” The program also includes a roundtable discussion with released Palestinian prisoners.  

The conference will take place on 29 - 31 July 2025, in hybrid format, both on Birzeit University’s campus and through Zoom, with simultaneous interpretation available in Arabic, English, and Spanish. The livestreaming of the conference can be accessed on Birzeit University’s Facebook and YouTube page as well as Ibrahim Abu Lughod’s Institute Facebook page.

To access the conference’s concept note, booklet and program in English and Arabic through the conference’s website. The program is below, adjusted to different time zones. 

We kindly ask that attendees confirm their participation by registering through the google form link.

Conference Schedule


Day One: Tuesday, 29 July 2025


Session I: Political Economy of War

00:00 PDT | 7:00 GMT | 10:00 Jerusalem

Alaa Tartir (Moderator)
Taher Al-Labadi, Economy as Battlefield
Bayan Arqawi, Muniece Al-Far & Tareq Sadeq, Blood and Balance Sheets: The Financial Windfall of the Arms Industry Amid the War on Gaza
Anees Safouri, Militarization of the Middle Class: The Role of Israeli Startups in the Genocidal War since October 7, 2023, as a Case Study
Joshua Bransford, Zionism by Sea: Maersk and the Maritime Geographies of Neoliberal Empire

Session II: Carceral Regimes & Resistance 

1:45 PDT | 8:45 GMT | 11:45 Jerusalem

Qasam Al-Haj (Moderator)
Khalida Jarrar, The Class and Gender Dimensions of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement and its Relation to the Liberation Project
Rahaf Salahat, Colonial Transformations in the Carceral Space
Haneen Bo Absa, Feminism and the Carceral System: Gender-Sensitive Justice, Community Accountability, and an Epistemology of Anti-Violence
Hind Shraydeh, The Militarization of Humanitarian Work: A Case Study of the Floating Maritime Pier off Gaza

Session III: The Militarization of Urban Space

4:15 PDT | 11:15 GMT | 14:15 Jerusalem

Lana Joudeh (Moderator)
Noora Akawi, Tactics of Transmission
Natasha Aruri, Change the System to Change the Results: Reconfigure Urban Antispaces
Mai Al-Battat, Militarization of the Everyday: Infrastructures of Violence vs. Collective Imagination
Faiq Mari, Reconstruction as Sovereign Development

Keynote

9:00 PDT | 16:00 GMT | 19:00 Jerusalem

Nasser Abourahme, On the Necessity of Genocide: Palestine, Zionism, and the World

Session IV: The Militarization of Urban Space

10:15 PDT | 17:15 GMT | 20:15 Jerusalem

Ali Musleh (Moderator)
Marianne Stitzi, The Architecture of Deterrence: Militarized Borders and the Future of Refugee Protection
Saba Innab, No Glass Wall Will Hold the Frame
David Barrios Rodríguez, Urban War Laboratories in Latin America: The Link Between Infrastructure Construction, Mega-events, and Counterinsurgency Narratives
Omar Al-Tahhan, The Panopticism of the City as a Death Machine: Fields of Vision as a Militarized Mechanism in the Siege of Homs
Rima Saleem, The Militarization of Artificial Intelligence: How Israel Employed AI in the Gaza War 2023–2024

Day Two: Wednesday, 30 July 2025


Session I: Violence in Transit: How Repressive Technologies Cross Borders

00:00 PDT | 7:00 GMT | 10:00 Jerusalem

Abd Al-Qader Badawi (Moderator)
Walid Habbas, Algorithmic Violence in Gaza: Gaps in International Law and the Legitimation of Genocide
Salma Hamza, The Role of Israeli Security and Military Industries in Strengthening Ties with Dictatorial Regimes in Latin America
Mazen Iwaisi, Salem Thawaba, & Jamal Barghouth, Scan the QR Code and Evacuate the Square: Reflections on Mapping and Cartography in the Destruction of Gaza
Iker Suarez, The Remilitarization of Europe: The Military–Border Industrial Complex, Waste Accumulation and The Maturation of The Core-Periphery Contradiction

Roundtable | Carceral Regimes & Resistance (Released Palestinian Prisoners)

1:45 PDT | 8:45 GMT | 11:45 Jerusalem

Hasan Fatafta
Mohamad L’malah
Hadeel Shatara
Hossam Shaheen
Bara’a Odeh
Wael Jaghoub (recently re-arrested)

Keynote

7:30 PDT | 14:30 GMT | 17:30 Jerusalem

Andrew Ross, Why Has Palestine Been a Testing Ground for Repression on American Campuses?

Session II: Violence in Transit: How Repressive Technologies Cross Borders 

8:45 PDT | 15:45 GMT | 18:45 Jerusalem

Lisa Hajjar (Moderator)
Tabinda Mahfooz Khan, “Making Muslim Monsters”: How War on Terror Discourse Facilitated Genocide in Gaza and Why it Must Be Retired from Political Science
Iman Ali, Calculated Cruelty: Israel's Use of Technology in Lebanon
Soha Saghazadeh, Drone Re-Circulations: Iran’s Reverse-Engineering Warfare
Jomana Hamadi, Chinese-Israeli Military and Technical Cooperation: Implications for the U.S.-Israeli Alliance
Pablo Ruiz, U.S. Military Training and its Impact on Human Rights from the Perspective of Colombia: What Standards Do We Need?

Day Three: Thursday, 31 July 2025


Session I: Political Economy of War

7:30 PDT | 14:30 GMT | 17:30 Jerusalem

Felice Blake (Moderator)
Mandy Turner, Disaster Capitalism in The Wake of Israel’s Settler-Colonial Genocide in The Gaza Strip
Mustafa Mandoor, War as Investment: Militarization and the War Economy in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Mizhgaan Kakakhel, The Political Economy of War in Afghanistan
Alejandro Mantilla Quijano, The State of Destruction: Militaristic Selectivity, Economy of Dispossession and Expansive Particularisms
Danya Zorba, Colonial Policies Toward Occupied Societies: The Political Reflections in Crime and the Proliferation of Weapons

Session II: Solidarity & Resistance (1)

9:45 PDT | 16:45 GMT | 19:45 Jerusalem

Alaa Alazzeh (Moderator)
Layth Hanbali & Deena Ayesh, Unravelling Humanitarianism: Abolition Medicine and Resisting Health Carcerality in Palestine
Laila Hassan, Opposing the War Economy: Lessons from Italy’s Grassroots Trade Unions and the Palestine Solidarity Movement
Taylor Miller, The Solar War Machine: Weaponizing the Sonoran Desert for Forever Wars

 

Session III: Solidarity & Resistance (2)

10:45 PDT | 17:45 GMT | 20:45 Jerusalem

Alejandro Mantilla Quijano (Moderator)
Yesica Cortes, Pedagogical Resistance: Sustaining Life, Creating Affection and Collectivizing Knowledge in The Context of a Civilizational Crisis
David Ramos-Delgado, Artistic Practices in The Face of Uprooting and Forced Displacement in Colombia
Tadamun Antimili, The Colombian Military Industrial Complex: Reflections on Militarism in Times of Change

 

 
Feb 16, 2011 Lebanon
Jadaliyya Reports By :
Jadaliyya Reports

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412