Inconceivable! (The factory of settler colonialism): Mohamad Kadan, ‘The Impossible Factory: Dependency and Elimination in Israel’s Settler-Colonial Economy (1956–1960)’, Middle East Critique, 2025 | settler colonial studies blog

Inconceivable! (The factory of settler colonialism): Mohamad Kadan, ‘The Impossible Factory: Dependency and Elimination in Israel’s Settler-Colonial Economy (1956–1960)’, Middle East Critique, 2025

30Dec25

Abstract: This article examines the failure of the Bal-Gharbieh factory in the late 1950s, an industrial venture proposed under Israeli military rule, to show how ‘economic development’ operated as a tool of elimination through dependency. It argues that understanding the Palestinian economy in Israel requires integrating two frameworks: dependency theory, rooted in Marxist critiques of development, and the logic of elimination in settler-colonial studies. Modernization in Arab villages functioned as a discourse of collaboration with select Palestinian figures and local leaders, reinforcing dependency, while simultaneously undermining their authority – as in the case of Fares Hamdan – by restructuring Palestinian economic and social life. Drawing on archival documents, government reports, and community narratives, the study shows that the factory, promoted as a step toward modernization, was designed to dispossess land, dismantle peasant structures, and control surplus labor. The factory’s rapid collapse was not the product of poor planning but of the settler-colonial state’s policies toward Palestinian citizens. Its failure, shaped by the involvement of local Zionist actors and companies seeking to exploit Arab labor, highlights how development projects intersected with elimination. This case complicates conventional narratives of Israeli development and dependency by showing how military rule extended control beyond the state and how minor Zionist actors reinforced settler-colonial structures.

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