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Paper short abstract

In zones of protracted conflict and occupation, SMEs operate where traditional development frameworks are either absent or obstructed. Yet, a variety of adaptive, resource efficient, and circular practices are emerging not as environmental luxuries but as strategic necessities.

Paper long abstract

This paper investigates how SMEs survive in contexts of Palestine experience. It critically examines whether, how, and under what conditions SMEs not only sustain themselves but also contribute meaningfully to national development including through job creation, improved balance of payments, and social stability, despite enduring structural violence and systemic obstruction. In stead of assuming the presence or success of circular economy (CE) strategies, the panel seeks to explore to which extent such strategies actually emerge in these settings. In environments where formal development infrastructures are denied or destroyed, CE practices may arise not through policy design but through necessity, improvisation, and inherited local knowledge.

By exploring these issues through SMEs strategies, researchers, and comparative regional insights, this opens a deeper conversation about the limits and possibilities of circularity as a developmental framework in colonised, conflict affected regions, mainly through investigation the Palestinian context.

The discussion will bridge academic and practitioner perspectives, including voices of SME owners in Palestine, to critically assess how CE discourses must be decolonised and adapted for fragile and militarised contexts.

We particularly will open discussion on:

- SMEs survival and development in conflict war zones.

- Case studies highlighting the strategic agency of SMEs under siege.

- CE practices as adaptive responses to conflict, blockade, or occupation.

- Comparative insights from conflict-affected states.

By situating circularity within conditions of structural violence, this discussion opens space for rethinking resilience, sovereignty, and economic imagination in the margins of global development.