Kareem Rabie

Throughout the West Bank over the last ten or fifteen years, there has been discussion of the link between businessmen in Hebron (Khalil) and China, and hundreds have settled or travel there annually. This study analyzes political economic governance through those figures who allow us to see states, law, and global economics through daily practice—traders and travelers who navigate changing forms of circulation. This research combines ethnography in the West Bank and China with documentation of the process and progress of a container moving from Yiwu to the West Bank, and uncovers intertwined and global economic and social histories. Within and beyond Palestine and China, it asks: what does governance around circulation and movement look like? How does it inflect local social life, geography, and politics?