Chartbook 412 - Economics in the Face of Genocide, the Yusif A. Sayigh Development Lecture, 22 October 2025
On 22 October 2025 it is my privilege to deliver the Yusif A. Sayigh Development Lecture at the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS) in Ramallah by remote link.
On 22 October, the event will be at 3 pm Palestine time, i.e. 8 am NYC. To join the discussion, please sign up here.
The lecture was originally advertised under the anodyne title that you see above. It has since been amended to the one at the top of this newsletter.
The abstract is below.
The subtitle of this Lecture, under which it was first announced (and is still the one advertised on the website), is familiar and almost “normal” sounding.
Post-War Reconstruction and Development - Lessons from History and Policies for Palestine
After all, in a war, thinking about the post-war is a normal thing to do. Faced with destruction, thinking about reconstruction is a natural response. When faced with a nation at a certain level of income, development is simply what we think about next. As for history, where else to look for insights and wisdom but to history? And isn’t economic history the bedrock? Both the secure anchor and the driving force of the long durée?
If we were talking about Ukraine, or Myanmar or Sudan - I don’t know that I would have good answers to give - but I would feel that I knew where to start in answering those questions, about “Post-War Reconstruction and Development. Lessons from History.”
This isn’t by accident.
Economics as we know it today, was made to answer questions like these. Modern economics as a discipline has many different origins, but one powerful set of impulses driving the emergence of 20 th -century macroeconomics were the urgencies of wartime mobilization and postwar reconstruction. There is a long lineage to draw on. The thinking of John Maynard Keynes after World War I and World War II might be one example.
There are even some philosophies of history – call it the doux commerce school – that see economics as the natural antidote to the passions that fuel war. So, turning from making war to thinking about postwar economics is itself a promising sign of escaping a crisis.
MAS certainly have reason to seek solace in a title with a comfortingly familiar ring to it.
But in the present moment, in relation to Palestine, the original sub-title - Post-War Reconstruction and Development. Lessons from History and Policies for Palestine - appears to me jarring, almost unbearably so.
This Lecture will address a range of questions, for some of which there might not be any simple answers that we can all agree to.
Is what Palestine is suffering, is what Israel is inflicting, a war? If there is destruction, what is its purpose? Is it military? No, it’s announced aim is ethnic cleansing at a level and intensity that meets the standard of genocide.
As it is still ongoing, is it even permissible to talk of reconstruction? Relief and recovery will surely remain top priorities for many months even if the guns fall silent.
Does the very idea of “reconstruction” need, first and foremost, to be defended against projects that are euphemistically dubbed “reconstitution” i.e. erasure, incorporation and settler-colonial annexation? Tellingly it is not reconstruction but reconstitution that was the aim of the GREAT Trust plan (Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation (GREAT) Trust), one of the ghastly whims being pushed by the Trump administration, as a prelude to the Gaza “peace” initiative.
Don’t such grandiose externally imposed Plans place the very existence of a distinct Palestine radically in question and thus also the entity to which development policy would be applied, its independent State?
So, will there be a macroeconomics of Palestine to speak of in coming years, or merely the microeconomics of survival, displacement? At what point is it euphemistic to talk in terms of a national economy, rather than a patchwork of enclaves?
As for the promise that economic history might anchor some confidence-inspiring grip on reality or even might itself constitute a “path to peace”, maybe we should recognize that conceit, as itself historical? Does it not belong to the bygone era of the “two state solution” and the 1990s promise of the “New Middle East”?
Without prejudging the answers, if we are to do justice to the extremity of the current moment, it seems essential to insist on such questions and try to provide some reasonable answers.
In this lecture I feel compelled to ask:
How should we think about economics if we abandon the comforting framing of a “post-war” to come?
What if we don’t reflexively reach for the familiar ideas of “reconstruction”?
What if we face the fact that “development” is not an escape from the logic of force, but an attempt to reconfigure those forces on a terrain that is massively unequal?
How can scholars undertake economic analysis and understand economic history in the face of a genocidal project of erasure, an active and on-going assault supported by some of the richest economies and greatest powers in the world?
Thank you for reading Chartbook Newsletter. It is rewarding to write. I love sending it out for free to readers around the world. But it takes a lot of work. What sustains the effort are voluntary subscriptions from paying supporters. If you are enjoying the newsletter and would like to join the group of supporters click below. As a token of appreciation you will receive the full Top Links emails several times per week.
Thank you for your honesty and refusal to hide behind euphemisms. The denouement after the Gaza genocide is different from that after the Nazi genocide, because in the prior one the perpetrators of the genocide were defeated, whereas here the perpetrators are presuming to be among the deciders and beneficiaries of what comes next. Is the word reconstructioneven appropriate when the reality is appropriation and settler colonialism. In what other reconstruction did one have to fit in the miles of barbed wire to continue the ghetto?
Por qué ni una palabra de HAMAS y sus túneles y misiles?