In 2009, I lived for three months in the Tadamon neighborhood, in the suburbs of Damascus. In this suburb, regime control was less visible—a “periphery,” as sociologists call it, always careful to stay on the right side of the line. In 2011, gatherings began to form. 

In the first part of this interview, Emilio Minassian spoke about the integration of Israel/Palestine into global capitalism and the social composition of Palestine. Part two deals with the implications of this social composition for the proletarian and national liberation struggles.

Insisting that “there is such a thing as social class in Palestine” might seem out of place when Gazans have been drowning under bombs for more than a year. No doubt I would refrain from doing this, or I’d do it in another way, had I been hanging about in Gaza and not in the West Bank. But I don’t insist on class in order to downplay the current massacre, but to combat the idea of a radical otherness, of an exteriority, of what is currently happening in relation to capitalist social relations, here as there.