Building a border-city university in occupied Palestine: Developing a cross-border “resistance economy” in practice

Situating itself within recent debates on the possibilities of developing a “resistance economy” within a neoliberal and settler colonial context, this paper examines how one border-lying university – the Arab American University of Palestine (AAUP) – and the informal city which has developed around it, has leveraged private capital investments to not only address the educational and employment needs of Palestinians living on both sides of the border, but to become an alternative frontier of economic and urban development for Palestinians. Arguing that AAUP's unique economic model of private investment in and through education reflects a highly innovative and flexible form of anti-colonial praxis as well as a unique model of a resistance economy in practice, it nonetheless argues that the capacity of independent start-ups in the surrounding area to adapt to, and withstand, economic shocks and border closures has been more limited. Demonstrating the more uneven and complicated role of private capital in not just kickstarting but sustaining economic, urban and national development in a frontier region under ongoing conditions of occupation, its findings suggest that the long-term developmental potential of this border-city university depends on the continued agility of the university and on increased levels of coordination, cooperation and consultation between it, local businesses and communities which now depend upon it for their survival.