Abstract

The settler-colonial paradigm has gained traction in the study of Palestine/Israel in recent years. The current war in Gaza, with the International Court of Justice ruling that a genocide is plausible, has highlighted the pivotal role of settler colonialism as an analytical framework to understand and contextualize the current wave of apocalyptic violence. At the same time, references to settler colonialism have triggered discursive resistance among certain academic circles. To debate this issue, Palestine/Israel Review organized a special webinar titled “Israel–Hamas: A Colonial War?”. While the title focuses in its first part on Israel versus Hamas, the second part challenges the claim that Israel is fighting a war against Hamas, and suggests that the recent violence inflicted on Gazans is an escalation of a continuous physical and symbolic erasure of Palestine and Palestinians. Five scholars from different disciplines participated in the webinar.

Ever since the recent cycle of apocalyptic violence erupted in Gaza, there has been a political struggle between those who believe that the history of recent violent events begins with the Palestinian Nakba 75 years ago or even earlier, and those who want to set the clock on 7 October. We at Palestine/Israel Review place ourselves in the first camp. We believe that the 7 October attacks, including the atrocious targeting of Israeli civilians, and the ensuing Israeli violence in Gaza that could be framed as genocidal (as the provisional measures issued by the International Court of Justice indicate) cannot be understood outside the context of Israel’s settler-colonial history. Coloniality can also explain how the colonial roots of the international order and of international law have enables this violence.

But those who believe that the history of this unfolding human catastrophe begins on 7 October suggest that Hamas’s crimes fall outside history, politics, and sociology, and rationalize Israel’s violence as an act of self-defense. This discourse often ignores the Palestinians’ right to be free from oppression and domination, paying little or no attention to the fact that Israeli occupation in itself “constitutes an unjustified use of force and an act of aggression,” as highlighted by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese. Furthermore, to dismiss the relevance of settler colonialism and broader historical perspectives, members of this camp have relentlessly attempted to discredit scholars who refer to settler colonialism by accusing them of legitimizing violence against civilians.

To debate these issues, Palestine/Israel Review organized a special webinar titled “Israel–Hamas: A Colonial War?” While the title focuses in its first part on Israel versus Hamas, the second part challenges the claim that Israel is fighting a war against Hamas, and suggests that the recent violence inflicted on Gazans is an escalation of a continuous physical and symbolic erasure of Palestine and Palestinians. Five scholars from different disciplines participated in the webinar.

In his contribution, Raef Zreik argues that settler colonialism is a useful frame for analyzing Israeli society, economy, politics, and law. However, resort to this paradigm as an analytical tool should not exclude other frames of analysis, such as class struggle, feminist approaches, cultural analysis, global politics, economic analysis, and nationalist analysis. But more importantly, no particular political solution can emerge “from the mere fact that a situation can be analyzed under the frame of settler colonialism.” A solution would ultimately depend on the particularities of each settler-colonial society.

Oren Yiftachel argues that the recent cycle of violence in Israel/Palestine is indeed a horrific outcome of the settler-colonial relations between Jews and Palestinians. However, he argues that settler colonialism alone “cannot provide a sufficient account of the complex forces driving Israel/Palestine in general, and the Gaza flashpoint in particular.” He distinguishes between decolonization and counter-colonization. The former “entails the political and legal dismantling of the tools of colonialism,” while the latter entails “the (violent) overthrowing of the regime of a legitimate political entity and the potential eviction or subjugation of settler-immigrant population, even after several generations.” Accordingly, Yiftachel argues that the 7 October attack and accompanying discourses by Hamas leaders places them under the rubric of counter-colonization.

Ian Lustick refers to the legend of the golem in Jewish tradition, who was created by Rabbi Loew, the Maharal of Prague, to defend the Jews against ferocious antisemitism. While successful in his mission to protect Jews from anti-Semites, with time the golem becomes more and more violent, destructive, and uncontrollable. This eventually forces his creator to end his life to save the community from his violence. Lustick argues that just like the golem, Israel “was imagined and created by Jews as a means of salvation, retribution, and protection.” However, the Zionist settler project with its violence “now appears as probably the most dangerous threat facing Jews, both in Israel and in the diaspora.”

In her contribution, Honaida Ghanim argues that the new far-right leadership under Benjamin Netanyahu has deployed the strategy of “conflict management” to dismantle the Palestinian cause. This strategy involves the Judaization of the space and demography on the one hand and the division of Palestinians into isolated communities under Israeli dominance on the other. This was paralleled with international and regional abandonment of Palestinians. Therefore, Ghanim argues that “Palestinian hopelessness has intensified to an indescribable extent,” leading to an intractable organic crisis that culminated in an eruption of extreme violence. Recognizing the colonial character of this dynamics is crucial for confronting it.

The contribution of Michal Frenkel is a snapshot of mainstream Israeli academia, which resists the contextualization of the 7 October attacks in a broader historical perspective marked by continued oppression and dispossession of Palestinians. She argues that the “colonial lens is sometimes applied, especially by those not directly involved in the study of Palestine/Israel, in ways that appear to justify actions like the Hamas massacre of Israeli and foreign civilians on 7 October.” Instead, she offers an “imperial analysis” that “involves scrutinizing the shifting relations between various empires across different historical periods.”

The war in Gaze continues as these lines are going to press. While we are still looking for words to describe and explain the horrors, vocabulary borrowed from other settler-colonial conflicts remains the optimal—even if not perfect—working tool.

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