Settler Colonialism and Decolonization

Abstract

What is the relation between settler colonialism as an analytical frame and the specific shape that decolonization should take? That such a relation does exist is evident, but it is much less strong than one might imagine. I am fully aware that what I am going to present in the following represents a highly specific point of view, one that is likely to be considered controversial in light of the existing literature on the topic.

I understand settler colonialism as an analytical frame through which we can better understand historical, sociological, economic, and political processes and structures. If it is the case that in classical colonialism colonists are interested first and foremost in the resources that the colonized country offers, settler colonialism suggests a different process, in which settlers come first and foremost in order to stay. They may additionally be interested in the resources of the colonized country, but they are concerned chiefly with moving to it and settling there—and not simply for the sake of material exploitation. Yet unlike immigrants, who in moving to a new country subject themselves to the local laws, settlers bring their nomos—their own law and their own administration—with them. They do not accept the law of the land and are not willing to subject themselves to that law. On the contrary, they intend to subject the indigenous population to their own law. Should the natives refuse to accept this proposition, the settlers invite them to leave; if they do not leave, they then become candidates for annihilation. Where an indigenous population stands in the way of the settlers’ project and its elimination becomes a necessity, this elimination can take several forms: physical annihilation, expulsion, cultural annihilation by assimilation, and so on.

From this type of clash a certain dynamics of expansion develops, of settling the land, and of confrontation with the indigenous population. One feature of this dynamics is that a specific legal system will develop based on legal categories principally from the field of land law and issues of planning. Terra nullius, for instance, is just one of numerous legal categories of this kind that have been commonplace in settler-colonial projects. Along the same lines, a certain political and racial imagination will develop as well, one that in historical and political terms is deployed to justify the process in which the land is taken from its original owners and placed in the hands of the settlers. Narratives of progress and classifications of civilized and barbaric nations and of higher and lower races will develop. There soon follow theories of self-defense tailored to justifying the aggression by the settler against the “savage” indigenous people, and it is under the pretext of self-defense that the settlers will expand their control of new lands. We thus witness the development of concepts such as “the frontier” that allow the settler society to continue its process of expansion. A constitutional legal regime that differentiates between settlers and natives will also emerge. We will also see different waves of settlers arriving at the settler colony and developing into different socioeconomic classes and internal hierarchies within the settler society—and the process will continue in familiar ways.

All of these are common features of settler-colonial projects, features that allow us to compare different settler societies with each other in terms of a shared frame. This frame allows us to discern differences as well as similarities, to be sure. But clearly there are enough similarities across settler societies to make comparisons appropriate and productive. Theoretically any given event can be compared with any other event, and any phenomenon with any other, and I am wary of those who like to put vetoes on comparisons. Analogies do, of course, have their “dark” side as well, given that they hide certain aspects while shedding light on others. But the relevant issue is whether any comparison or analogy is productive and illuminating in a way that will allow us to see things, processes, and developments that we would otherwise overlook and miss.

In this regard, I have found settler colonialism to be a productive frame for analyzing Israel society, economy, politics, and law, one that allows us to understand processes that, without this frame, are hard to conceive. Sometimes it even allows us to predict certain tendencies and trajectories within Israeli society. Can we understand the land regime in Israel without understanding that Israel is a settler society that is based on absorbing new Jewish settlers at the expense of the Palestinian natives? Can one conceptualize the dynamics in mixed cities without that frame? Can we theorize the Nakba without these lenses? Or the failure of the Oslo process? Can we make sense of the nature of the relationship between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews without this frame? Is there a way to comprehend the constitutional crisis in Israel without giving the full account of the settler project in the West Bank? Can we grasp what is going on in Gaza without it?

That said, one must not overestimate the value of this analytical frame. As I see it, this caution should take several forms and manifest itself on different levels. First of all, on the descriptive–analytical level one should be aware that the settler-colonial frame is just one frame among many others. It should not be deployed to the exclusion of other frames of analysis: class struggle, feminist approaches, cultural analysis, global politics, economic analysis, and nationalist analysis. The settler–native divide is just one divide among many. At certain moments it is the most dominant, but at other moments it might carry less weight. Thus, at a given point in time, and in a given situation, the fact of being a woman will play a more significant role in explaining one’s experience than that of being a native. Equally, the material interests of the higher native upper classes of the might coincide with the interests of the upper classes in the settlers’ society—and so on. Beyond this, the dynamics between settlers and natives can play different role in different stages of the settler project. The centrality of the settler–native divide in nineteenth-century America is different from its centrality in the twenty-first century.

But more importantly, I do think that there is a conceptual gap between the analytical frame and the proposed solutions, between analyzing the past—how we got where we are—and suggesting a way out from the colonial reality. No particular solution can emerge from the mere fact that a situation can be analyzed in the frame of settler colonialism. By this I mean that no institutional solutions can be derived from the mere characterization that a certain state or society is a settler-colonial one. There are so many ways to decolonize, given that the settler-colonial project can take on so many different institutional structures and can manifest itself in so many different practices. The settler-colonial project in Algeria differed in numerous ways from that of Australia, which in turn was different from the one in Palestine, and all of them are different from the one that was developed in South Africa. In both Australia and the United States, there was no need to establish a clear apartheid regime similar to the one in South Africa, simply because these states managed to largely annihilate the native population. But in South Africa the white settlers constituted only a minority and the idea of annihilating the local population was not on the agenda. To guarantee their supremacy, the whites had to establish a certain apartheid regime within one country and within one and the same geopolitical unit. In Algeria there was yet another solution: the expulsion of the French settlers—as far as I know Algeria is in fact the exception within the history of settler-colonial societies.

If settler colonialism is a combination of expansion in space, conquering the land, and subjugating the local population, then any project that aims to end colonization must make sure that these practices cease, and that a new regime that guarantees equality emerges—one that puts an end to the ongoing expansion of the settler project that views the local native population as inferior and of less moral worth. But it is extremely difficult a priori to prescribe how colonization must come to an end, and to identify what the right institutional arrangement is for this purpose. The latter might take the form of a single liberal democratic state that does not recognize ethnic or religious affiliation in the public sphere ,following the model of South Africa, or other models that recognize ethnic–cultural–religious identity in the public sphere. Within such communitarian models one can imagine either a binational state, or partition, or a confederation—or a combination of all these together.

Acknowledging the reality of being part of a settler-colonial society, state, or project is the first step in overcoming that reality. The settlers have to acknowledge that they have privileges and that their existence and part of their wealth came at the expense of the natives; that building their project caused the destruction of the natives’ project; and that for a new era to begin, they must be ready to give up those privileges and to accept the fact that they are equal, not superior, to others, and that their lives and security bear the same worth as those of the native.

But clearly, ending colonial relations, relations of domination, subjugation, and dispossession—or in other words decolonization—does not mean replacing the supremacy of one group by another; it cannot be an inversion of hierarchy in which those who are up move down and those who are down move up. That is not decolonization; that is simply shifting the location of each group in the hierarchy without collapsing the structure of hierarchy itself.

To go back to Palestine–Israel, there is no doubt that the Jewish Zionists in Palestine are colonial settlers. Perhaps there is something unique in their project: It is the case that there is a cultural–spiritual link between these settlers and Palestine; it is the case that at least in its early years they did not benefit from the settlement project and even had to finance it; it is true that it is a settler project that arose out of the need to escape persecution in Europe, and that as such it is a colonialism of refugees; it is a project that from the start has been not only a settler one but a national one as well. All that can be acknowledged. Yet this does not mean that this is not a settler project. On the other hand, the fact that it is a settler project does not and should not entail or imply that the solution is the Algerian one. When it comes to solutions, we have a responsibility to the future. No solution can be merely deduced from the past. Solutions are always political and not simply logical, and thus we are more free to articulate them than we can imagine.

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