Welcome to Capital’s Utopia: Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Racial Catastrophe Capitalism
This essay uses the peace agreements between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain as a prism for understanding changes in Israeli society and politics today. It suggests understanding Zionism not only as a colonial settlement movement but as a form of racialized capitalism, that changes in relation to structural transformations in forms of labor organization and capital accumulation in the global context. Its main argument is that the Abraham Accords reflect a political economy based on three characteristics: one is a global division of social labor based on rigid categories of citizenship, ethnicity and race, which creates fierce struggles over inclusion and exclusion within the framework of the state and beyond; the second is marshalling the state to guarantee the competitive advantage of the national capital, and justifying that role with an ideology that defines the state as its citizens’ holding company; and the third is the process of capital accumulation based on manufacturing profit out of crisis by increasing the exposure of individuals and households to social, economic, political and ecological insecurity, and turning all of the industries into quasi-defense industries. Such an analysis helps to understand the concrete historical context in which the hegemonious struggle is occurring in Israel – namely, the current shape politics is taking, including the institution of the state and the numerous struggles over power – in accordance with changes in the class structure that do not arise from the nation-state and are not limited to it.