Despite, or perhaps because, we live in an increasingly globalized world, sanctions or the threat of sanctions have been used against number of Middle Eastern countries. The papers in this session will collectively address the following questions: What is the rhetoric around the imposition of sanctions? What are the alleged goals of sanctions in each case? Who supports/opposes sanctions and how does that affect the impact of sanctions? What tools are used to economically isolate particular countries or communities? What economic and political impact do sanctions have? Why does the impact vary across different cases?
The case studies to be discussed will include: Iran, Iraq, Palestine, and Israel. The objective is to look at parallels as well as differences in why sanctions have been imposed, the actors involved in proposing and enforcing sanctions (governments/international organizations or other groups), the political motivations behind sanctions (which may be stated and unstated), as well as the impact such sanctions have had/are having on various communities.
The Iraqi sanctions have ended, but were one of the most comprehensive in history, and had a considerable impact on Iraqi society. The Iraqi case will thus provide a historic benchmark for comparing to other, on-going sanctions movements, which differ in a number of ways from the Iraqi case. In the case of Iran, sanctions have been unilaterally imposed by the US, although recently there has been a push to broaden the sanctions to include a broader coalition of countries. In the case of Israel/Palestine, the government of Israel has recently placed Gaza under a strict embargo, with the help of the Egyptian government and the tacit support by the US. At the same time, a broad coalition of activists has been calling for various forms of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, in part in response to the way Palestinians in Gaza have been treated. While each presenter is assigned a case study, contributors will be encouraged to think comparatively (not only comparing sanctions causes and consequences across Middle East cases, but also other countries, such as South Africa and Cuba) with the objective of gaining a better empirical and theoretical understanding of the impetus and implications of sanctions, which may vary both due to the relative power of the coalition of forces calling for sanctions, and the structure of the economy/political system (degree of globalization, democratization) of the community on which sanctions are being imposed.
Ever since Hamas was democratically elected in the West Bank and Gaza in January 2006, the Palestinian economy has been living under an internationally endorsed policy of sanctions. Imposed by Israel and the international community until Hamas renounced terrorism and recognizes the Jewish State's right to exist, these sanctions have evolved in nature and have had a devastating effect on an already fragile Palestinian economy. They have hit most hardly Gaza but they have also strongly impacted the West Bank, which remained under de facto siege until June 2007 when Hamas took over Gaza and severed its links with the Abbas government in the West Bank. Per capita income in the West Bank and Gaza fell by 34% per cent between 2001 and 2008 and poverty have reached 60% of the population since 2006. The situation in Gaza has further deteriorated since 2007 as Israel tied its siege causing the manufacturing sector to collapse, the banking sector to stall, and unemployment to reach over 45 per cent. The latest Israeli war on Gaza in December 2008 only aggravated the dire situation as it was compounded with Egypt's decision to close off its borders with the Strip. Over one third of the population in Gaza are homeless today and two third are food insecure.
The aim of this paper is to analyze the rationale and impact of the sanctions on Israeli-Palestinian relations. The first part will explore the contradictory politics of Egypt and the international donor community who did not want to finance a Hamas government but still wanted to help the Palestinian people and their state building process. The second part of the paper will then examine Palestinian economic response to the sanctions by exploring how the economies of the West Bank and Gaza continued to diverge. It will focus particularly on the political economy of the informal tunnels in Gaza and their impact on poverty and power structures in the Strip. It will also assess how the over 1600 underground tunnels tied Gaza to Egypt while severed its links to Israel and the West Bank. Finally, the paper will assess how far the sanctions enabled Israel to absolve itself of its responsibilities of the occupation and the extent to which a Palestinian campaign of BDS against Israel is necessary or risks to be futile.
This paper revisits the sanctions era in Iraq. The theory of economic sanctions and the larger question of whether or not sanctions work are briefly discussed. The immediate effects of sanctions on the lives of Iraqis are reviewed next. But the main objective of the paper is to assess the far-reaching implications of economic sanctions. In this regard, the paper posits that even though they weakened Iraq with respect to its neighbors, the sanctions weakened society with respect to the state. According to the theory of sanctions, this is the opposite of what is required for sanctions to work. Indeed, it is argued that the sanctions re-enforced social divisions and induced a 'brain drain' out of Iraq, depriving Iraq of its secular and professional classes (that would be expected to advance democratization) and amplifying the problems associated with capital formation (that is required for reconstruction). The economic and political chaos and fragmentation evident today in Iraq is consequently in large part explained by sanctions.
On a number of occasions, Palestinians and their allies have attempted to use economic pressure to make a political statement. As early as the Arab Revolt of 1936, calls for an economic boycott were made. More recently, the first Intifada included a comprehensive plan for the West Bank and Gaza Strip to sever ties with Israel. In 2005 a new movement emerged, calling itself Boycott, Divest, Sanctions for Palestine (BDS). Although the movement was begun in 2005, the political and economic structure of this movement have not been extensively analyzed. In this paper the origins and scope of the BDS movement will be discussed, with an emphasis on the types of campaigns BDS has been involved in and the types of groups that have joined the movement. The BDS movement will also be analyzed within the context of globalization, which has altered the form and structure of boycotts both within Palestine and globally. Drawing both on the economics literature that addresses the question of how, when and why economic sanctions impact targeted economies, as well as the political literature that examines why some sanctions lead to political changes, while others do not, the paper will compare the attempt by BDS members to pressure Israel with previous attempts to pressure countries as diverse as Cuba, South Africa, Iraq and Iran. By comparing the case of BDS both to previous Palestinian boycotts and other sanctions movements the paper plans to contextualize the BDS movement within the broader structure of the global economy.
Economic sanctions against Iran have a long history going back to the early days of the fall of the Shah's regime and the rise of the new Islamic administration three decades ago. In recent years, as a direct response to Iran's suspected rising nuclear capability, the western world has responded by tightening the trade and financial sanctions noose around the Islamic Republic. This paper deals with three inter-related questions: (a) Can economic sanctions achieve their stated objective of halting Iran's nuclear ambitionsi (b) Are they in the long term interest of the countries imposing them (especially in relation to the oil and energy sector)e (c) What would be their impact on the (green) protest movement inside the country and hence on prospects for ultimate social and political change in the countryo Drawing from the economic theory of sanctions literature as well as recent experience in the region (chiefly Iraq), the paper argues that sanctions against Iran are doomed to fail by the virtue of the fact they stand to weaken the very civil society institutions which are to act as agents of real change in a long term democratization process.
