Abstract: This paper examines the repurposing of Palestinian rural lands for real estate investment. Focusing on Rawabi, the celebrated first Palestinian planned city, this study unsettles the city’s narrative of triumphant urban development within an empty rural landscape by centering the experiences of the three villages on whose land this real estate scheme was built. Arguing that this project constitutes a neoliberal mode of capitalist accumulation that is based on seizing the assets of marginalized communities and classes, the paper analyzes how these processes are exposing communities to further precarity. Examining the land grab upon which this city is based, we detail the repercussions of the asset stripping for the peasant communities in question and shed new light on how predatory accumulation is transforming rural spaces, life and class relations in Palestine. In doing so, this paper situates global capitalist dynamics within the settler colonial realities in Palestine and begins to examine their implications for Palestinians struggling to remain on their land.
