The 2023 war between Hamas and Israel elicits many different explanations. As with previous regional hostilities, here too, the pundits and commentators have numerous overlapping processes to draw on - from the struggle between the Zionist and Palestinian national movements, to the deep...

FROM THE ARTICLE: "During the late 1980s, we printed a series of working papers, offering a new approach to the political economy of Israel and wars in the Middle East. Our approach in these papers rested on three new concepts. It started by identifying the Weapondollar-Petrodollar Coalition -...

*** You can read, quote, reference and link this working paper, but you cannot reproduce or post it in any form unless permitted in writing by the authors ***** The war that started in 2023 between Hamas and Israel is driven by various long-lasting processes, but it also brings to the fore a new...

This essay interweaves two stories - one theoretical and empirical, the other autobiographical. The first story embeds the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the broader political economy of the Middle East and the global accumulation of "capital as power." The second story narrates the authors'...

This research note updates selected charts from three previous papers. The new data present a rather startling picture, suggesting that the Middle East - and the global political economy more generally - might face an important crossroads. Our assessment here rests on the analysis of capital as...

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, we identified a new Middle East phenomenon that we called "energy conflicts" and argued that these conflicts were intimately linked with the global processes of capital accumulation. This paper outlines the theoretical framework we have developed over the...

Our recent article on "The Road to Gaza" examined the history of the three supreme-God churches and the growing role of their militias in armed conflicts and wars around the world. The present paper situates these militia wars in the broader vista of the capitalist mode of power. Focusing...

In 1989, we applied for a Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation grant to investigate the funding of fascist and Neo-Nazi movements in Israel. The Foundation did not find the topic important enough, and the application was ceremonially rejected. Here is what we wanted to do. RESEARCH PLAN. The...