Non-humanitarian Futures?

Abstract

This chapter looks at how, in different moments, facing different challenges, Palestinians have engaged and worked toward non-humanitarian futures. These engagements are another dimension of the politics of living in humanitarianism. And like all such politics, they both make creative use of humanitarian tools and encounter the limits of this framework. The chapter focuses on two instances. The first is the revolutionary humanitarianism of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), specifically the Palestine Red Crescent Society and Samed, the Palestine Martyr’s Society, which focused on development. These institutions argued that humanitarianism could support national politics. The second is an experimental project called Campus in Camps in Dheisheh camp. Campus in Camps works at the intersection of aspiration and refusal, trying to reinvigorate the camp as a site of political invention.