Response to Elia Zureik's Israel's Colonial Project in Palestine: Brutal Pursuit (original) (raw)
Notes on the 'Exceptionalism' of the Israeli Settler-Colonial Project
Middle East Critique , 2024
Israel's settler-colonial project stands as a peculiar instance of colonial domination in the modern era, distinguished by its ideological roots in Zionism, a potent blend of mythological narratives, militaristic nationalism, and expansionist aspirations. Unlike traditional colonial powers, Israel operates without a conventional metropole, instead leveraging strategic alliances with Western powers, particularly the United States, to sustain its colonial enterprise. The endurance of this project is inextricably linked to the subjugation and fragmentation of the Arab world, which serves as a wellspring of resistance against Israel's colonial ambitions, as evidenced by the normalization of relations between Israel and various Arab regimes. Yet, Palestinian resistance has proven resilient and adaptive, persistently asserting its rights, identity, and connection to the land, while exposing the moral bankruptcy of Israel's colonial dominance. To fully grasp the complexities of Palestine's past, present, and future, it is imperative to employ a settler-colonial framework, which not only illuminates the specific dynamics at play but also sheds light on the broader implications for understanding and challenging similar structures of oppression worldwide.
A Century of Settler Colonialism in Palestine: Zionism's Entangled Project
Brown Journal of World Affairs, 2017
Throughout the past century, the Zionist movement constructed the most sophisticated settler-colonial project of our age: the State of Israel. The violent birth of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent colonization of the entirety of the land of Palestine after the 1967 war are indeed reflections of Zionism's successes in fulfilling its settler-colonial ambitions in Palestine. Yet, while this settlercolonial project continues unabated, it is an entangled one, unable to reach the ultimate point of Jewish exclusivity in the land. Zionist settler colonialism, as its historical precedents suggest, is fundamentally based on the operative logic of "eliminating the native" and failing to utterly marginalize and "minoritize" him. The vibrant Palestinian presence in the land, the everyday resistance to the colonial order, and the robust Palestinian adherence to their rights all stand as structural obstacles to the ultimate realization of the "Zionist dream." 1 Despite Israel's relentless colonial power and domination, Palestinian steadfastness means that this project will remain impeded and incomplete, a matter that may lead to its future demise.
Introduction: the settler-colonial framing of Palestine—Matters of Justice and Truth
International Politics , 2023
As the publication of this forum coincides with the unfolding bombs raining down on the Palestinians of Gaza, the book in question gains heightened significance. Against a backdrop where global audiences are witnessing real-time, genocidal actions by Israel against the Palestinians, contextualizing these horrific events is crucial. An in-depth understanding of the current reality and potential future trajectories requires addressing the root causes and factors that shaped the interaction between the colonizer and the colonized, leading to a highly repressive and unbearable status quo that exploded on the 7th of October 2023. Palestine: Matters of Justice and Truth provides much-needed and timely answers.
For over a century, Zionism has subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation, and erasure in the pursuit of a new colonial Israeli society. Too often, this Palestine 'Question' has been framed as unique; a national, religious, and/or liberation struggle with little semblance to colonial conflicts elsewhere. The two-day conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine, seeks to reclaim settler colonialism as the central paradigm from which to understand Palestine. It asks: what are the socio-political, economic and spatial processes and mechanisms of settler colonialism in Palestine, and what are the logics underpinning it? By unearthing the histories and geographies of the Palestinian experience of settler colonialism, this conference does not only chart possibilities for understanding Palestine within comparative settler colonial analyses. Rather, it also seeks to break open frameworks binding Palestine, re-align the Palestinian movement within a universal history of decolonisation, and imagine new possibilities for Palestinian resistance, solidarity and common struggle.
In the three years since the outbreak of the second Intifada in October 2000, the policy making of the U.S. government has been haunted by the question of Palestine. The Intifada made briefly visible the consequences of Israel's continued occupation and expanded colonization of the West Bank and Gaza, an expansion facilitated by the Oslo accords of 1993 and disguised under the name of "the peace process." Within a year, however, the launching of the worldwide war on terror provided Washington with a new way to misrepresent the nature of Israel's war against the Palestinians. A century-long history of dispossession, expulsion, occupation, and resistance was reduced, once again, to a series of Palestinian acts of terror. A people's loss of their homes and homeland, of their freedom of movement and human dignity, of their personal security and political future, could instead be framed as a battle of civilization against terror, of democracy against hatred, of the West against Islam. Under the banner of the war on terror, the United States then announced its plans for a war against Iraq as the cornerstone of an unapologetic project to remake the political order of the Middle East. Yet the question of Palestine refused to disappear. From the protests of up to half a million people in several cities of Europe to the revived antiwar activism of the campuses of North American universities (see Vincent Lloyd and Zia Mian's essay in this issue), an emergent peace movement in the West placed the issue of Palestinian rights, alongside the right of the Iraqi people to be spared the devastation of war, at the center of its politics. The importance attached to the Palestine question was a response to the obvious discrepancy between Washington's use of U.N. Security Council resolutions against Iraq, its disregard for council resolutions against Israel, and its vetoing of any international intervention on behalf of the Palestinians. But the importance reflected something larger. The injustice against the Palestinians has always been carried out in the name of the West. Washington supports, funds, and arms many forms of injustice in the Middle East. But only in the case of Israel is the injustice disguised and defended as a moral struggle of the West against the rest. The Palestine question now haunts the West, much as the question of apartheid haunted a previous generation. We draw the analogy with apartheid not to make any simplistic historical comparison between Israel and South
NORMALIZING OCCUPATION The Politics of Everyday Life in the West Bank Settlements Edited by Marco Allegra, Ariel Handel, and Erez Maggor Indiana University Press Bloomington and Indianapolis, 2017
The palestinian encounter with the Zionist colonial proj ect, with its varying historical forms and expressions, is a focal point in the Arab discourse in general and the national Palestinian discourse in par tic u lar. One would be hard pressed to fi nd a Palestinian intellectual who has not written on the topic. Some have written about the development of the colonial proj ect, its earlier stages, the plans developed to empty Palestine of its indigenous population and their eff ects and dynamic; others have written about the power relations and the strategy behind the success of the colonial proj ect, the global and regional conditions, and the cooperation between the Zionist movement and the British Mandate. However , alongside such serious scholarship, more superfi cial volumes have also been written, characterized by demagogical and essentialist discourse. Th e result has been an overwhelming deluge of writing about Jews, Zionists, settlements, settlers, colonialism, imperialism, the historical Khaibar tribe and Ibn al-Nadhir, the Jewish plot, and Yajuj and Majuj. Instead of focusing the discussion , a discursive chaos was created. Oft en, the readers fi nd themselves fl oun-dering between two polar opposites, the essentialist pole and the dynamic pole, with numerous variations and levels of complexity between them. At the one pole is a discourse in which the Zionist settler is mediated through a variety of essentialist, cultural, historical ste reo types of the Jew as avaricious, fraudulent, and traitorous. At the other pole, one fi nds rigorous, sociohistorical research that attempts to understand the Zionist enterprise, and its settler-colonial proj ect in par tic u lar, as a product of social dynamics, shaped by the historical conditions and pro cesses created at vari ous crossroads. Th is body of research usually applies a structural and systemic approach, concentrating mainly on macro pro cesses. Between these two trends, the last two de cades have witnessed a growing anthro-pological and so cio log i cal interest in the Palestinian experience vis-à-vis the
Israel-Palestine Through a Settler-Colonial Studies Lens
Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies , 2018
This essay discusses the conflict in Israel-Palestine and its long-term evolution in the context of a settler colonial studies interpretive paradigm. It argues this analytical paradigm may offer valuable insights both in the interpretation of the historical evolution of the conflict and in the analysis of its current circumstances. The first section briefly outlines the possible benefits of such reframing; the second specifically targets exceptionalist claims.
Zionism, Imperialism, and Indigeneity in Israel/Palestine: A Critical Analysis
2018
This article explores the similarities and differences between Zionism and archetypical European modes of settler colonialism to demonstrate the incongruence between the two phenomena. This analysis is contextualized around the recent discourse surrounding the competing claims of indigeneity to historic Israel/Palestine. The claims of both the Jewish and Palestinian Arab communities are explored to demonstrate that both communities can rightfully claim degrees of Indigenous connection to the territory, but that Palestinian Arab claims of being the sole Indigenous inheritors of the land are dubious. The analysis utilizes Burton's unmet human needs theory, and Kriesberg's theories on identity and conflict intractability to demonstrate how perpetuating such claims serves to exacerbate inter-group conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Furthermore, the relationship between Ottoman and British imperialism in the development of both nationalisms is expounded to illustrate the...
A SPECIAL PROJECT ON THE WAR IN GAZA INTRODUCTION: A COLONIAL WAR
Palestine/Israel Review, 2024
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.
American Journal of International Law, 1993
In 1897 Zionism emerged as a European-wide political move ment with the first World Zionist Congress held in Basle, Switzer land, where Theodor Herzl, an editor of the influential Viennese paper, Neue Freie Presse, had emerged as a leader. Herzl's 1896 pamphlet Der Judenstaat (The State of the Jews) had called for a Jewish state in Palestine, and its publication in Vienna made a great impact. Not surprisingly, Zionism had its strongest following in Russia, but even there it was only one of several nationalist currents in Jewry.2 Despite the difficult circumstances of life, most Jews remained in Eastern Europe and of those leaving most still preferred the United States. 3 In Palestine, an Arab-populated country under the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire, Zionist immigrants set up agricultural settlements on pur chased land. "From the very beginning," wrote Ariel Hecht, an Israeli analyst of land tenure in Palestine, "it was clear to the leaders of the Zionist movement that the acquisition of land was a sine qua non towards the realisation of their dream."4 Land was not acquired in a random fashion. The effort, wrote Israeli General Yigal Allon, was "to establish a chain of villages on one continuous area of Jewish land.'0 The Arabs, soon realizing that the immigrant's aim was to establish a Jewish state, began to oppose Zionism.6 As early as 1891 Zionist leader, Ahad Ha'am, wrote that the Arabs "understand very well what we are doing and what we are aiming at."7 In 1 90 1 the World Zionist Organization formed a company, the Keren Kayemeth (Jewish National Fund), to buy land for Jewish settlers.8 According to its charter, the Fund would buy land in "Pal estine, Syria, and other parts of Turkey in Asia and the Peninsula of Sinai."9 The aim of the Fund was "to redeem the land of Palestine as the inalienable possession of the Jewish people."10 Fund director, Abra ham Granovsky, called "land redemption" the "most vital operation in establishing Jewish Palestine."11 The Fund's land could not be sold to anyone and could be leased only to a Jew, an "unincorporated body of Jews," or a Jewish company that promoted Jewish settlement. A lessee was forbidden to sublease.12 Herzl considered land acquisition under a tenure system that kept it in Jewish hands as the key to establishing Zionism in Palestine. "Let the owners of immovable property believe that they are cheating us," he wrote, "selling us things for more than they are worth. But we are The British Connection 5 not going to sell them anything back."13 The Fund thus kept land as a kind of trustee for a future state.14 The Fund purchased large tracts owned by absentee landowners. Most of this land was tilled by farmers whose families had held it for generations with possessory rights recognized by customary law. Re grettably for many of these families, in the late nineteenth century Turkey had instituted a land registration system that led to wealthy absentees gaining legal title to land, often by questionable means. After this occurred, the family farmers continued in possessionas tenantsand considered themselves to retain their customary right to the land, although that was no longer legally the case.15 At the turn of the century the better farmland in Palestine was being cultivated. In 1882 a British traveler, Laurence Oliphant, reported that the Plain of Esdraelon in northern Palestine, an area in which the Fund purchased land, was "a huge green lake of waving wheat."16 This meant that the Fund could not acquire land without displacing Arab farmers. A delegate to a 1905 Zionist congress, Yitzhak Epstein, warned: "Can it be that the dispossessed will keep silent and calmly accept what is being done to them? Will they not ultimately arise to regain, with physical force, that which they were deprived of through the power of gold? Will they not seek justice from the strangers that placed themselves over their land?"17 An element of the Zionist concept of "land redemption" was that the land should be worked by Jews. This meant that Arabs should not be hired as farm laborers. While this policy was not uniformly implemented, it gained adherence. In 191 3 Ha'am objected to it. "I can't put up with the idea that our brethren are morally capable of behaving in such a way to men of another people ... if it is so now, what will be our relation to the others if in truth we shall achieve power?"18 But Herzl viewed the taking of land and expulsion of Arabs as complementary aspects of Zionism. It would be necessary, he thought, to get the Arabs out of Palestine. "We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country.. .. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."19 Some Zion ist leaders advocated moving Palestine Arabs to neighboring coun Israel as a Fact 89 draw its support for Israel's membership in the United Nations and warned against any further idf offensives.20 Under that pressure Ben-Gurion withdrew the idf from Egyptian territory and canceled plans to take Gaza and the Sinai.21 At the same time Ben-Gurion withdrew the idf from southern Lebanon, where it had penetrated. The Litani River, an important water source, flowed through southern Lebanon. General Yigal Allon criticized Ben-Gurion's decision to withdraw, complaining that the Index Aaland Islands, Abdiilhamid II (sultan of the Ottoman Empire), 7 Abdullah (emir of Transjordan, King of
Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine
This special issue of settler colonial studies emerges out of a March 2011 conference on settler colonialism in Palestine organised by the Palestine Society and the London Middle East Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies. It is our hope that this issue will catalyse creative, collaborative work that puts the settler colonial framework firmly on the agenda of Palestine studies. The need for such engagement arises from our recognition that while Zionism and the Palestinians are gradually being included in the growing body of scholarly works on comparative settler colonialism, the analytical framework that comparative settler colonialism offers has yet to enter the field of Palestine studies
Zionists the tactics to suppress the resistance of Palestine's indigenous population. Extrajudicial killings, house demolitions, curfews, administrative detentions, deportations, censorship of the press were practices the Zionists learned firsthand from the British. By the end of the 1930s, Britain estimated that the Zionists "could probably muster some 50,000 trained men" ready to fight Palestine's Arabs (p. 53). This training was soon to be used by the Zionists to inflict a devastating blow on the Palestinians during the Nakba. As Cronin fittingly points out, "Britain was [indeed] the midwife of that mass expulsion" (p. 78).
Land of Progress: Palestine in the Age of Colonial Development (Introduction)
Oxford University Press, 2013
Histories of Palestine in the pre-1948 period usually assume the emergent Arab-Zionist conflict to be the central axis around which all change revolves. In Land of Progress Jacob Norris suggests an alternative historical vocabulary is needed to broaden our understanding of the region's recent past. In particular, for the architects of empire and their agents on the ground, Palestine was conceived primarily within a developmental discourse that pervaded colonial practice from the turn of the twentieth century onwards. A far cry from the post-World War II focus on raising living standards, colonial development in the early twentieth century was more interested in infrastructure and the exploitation of natural resources. Land of Progress charts this process at work across both the Ottoman and British periods in Palestine, focusing on two of the most salient but understudied sites of development anywhere in the colonial world: the Dead Sea and Haifa. Weaving the experiences of local individuals into a wider narrative of imperial expansion and anti-colonial resistance, Norris demonstrates the widespread excitement Palestine generated among those who saw themselves at the vanguard of progress and modernisation, whether they were Ottoman or British, Arab or Jewish. Against this backdrop, Norris traces the gradual erosion during the mandate period of the mixed style of development that had prevailed under the Ottoman Empire, as the new British regime viewed Zionism as the sole motor of modernisation. As a result, the book's latter stages relate the extent to which colonial development became a central issue of contestation in the struggle for Palestine that unfolded in the 1930s and 40s.
Captured politics under colonial dominance: the case of Palestine
ELGAR HANDBOOKS IN POLITICAL SCIENCE Handbook of Middle East Politics Edited by Shahram Akbarzade, 2023
Investigating the Palestinian political system is no easy task. It necessitates a careful clarification of the term “political” by outlining its scope and limitations because the connotations of this term in the Palestinian context differ significantly from its meaning in other countries. In Palestine, politics occur and must be understood within the constrained conditions imposed by the Israeli occupation, which heavily impact the structure and function of the Palestinian political system. Palestinian political actors include secularists, religious dogmatists, nationalists, and leftists. There are those who subscribe to democratic ideals and others who align themselves with authoritarian values. There are also proponents of the Palestinian Authority (PA) who consider it an achievement that should be defended and nurtured, and opponents who believe that the signing of the accords was a grave mistake and that the PA is a burden on the struggle. Political discourse takes place between those who subscribe to peaceful methods and others who defend their right to engage in violent means of resistance; it includes those who believe in cooperation with the Israeli occupier and others who oppose such involvement. Furthermore, political strife takes place between those who seek to end the internal split and strengthen national unity and those who are profiting from it. Overall, “political” in Palestine is a domain that is simultaneously free and constrained: free from the coercive power of a state that does not yet exist and restricted and constrained by the fragility of the existing political order. The limited achievements made by Palestinians and the steady concessions they were forced to make to Israel over the years have led to ever-diminishing options for new conceptions and alternative strategies. Initially, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) aimed to liberate all of Palestine, striving to establish an entity in which Arabs and Jews share a secular state on the basis of equality. Starting in 1974, this goal was reduced to accepting a Palestinian state on the territories occupied in 1967, a mere 22 percent of the land of historic Palestine, while the PLO expressed readiness to reach an agreement through negotiations. When Palestinian rights continued to be violated, the First Intifada erupted in 1987, involving broad-based popular resistance and protest as well as a boycott of Israeli goods, drawing international attention to the Palestinian cause. In 1993, the signing of the Oslo Accords (OA) initiated the establishment of the PA, tasking it with overseeing a self-ruled entity whose powers were severely limited while rendering it heavily dependent on international aid. Ostensibly, this was intended to lead to full independence after a five-year transition period, but in 1999, Israel refused to grant statehood to this entity. Neither did it become the Singapore of the Middle East that some had hoped for. Moreover, instead of responding to the aspirations of the Palestinian people, the PA has become a convenient provider of colonial services and has operated as a subcontractor for the Israeli occupation authorities. Nonetheless, it is now the center of the entirety of Palestinian politics, including the political system that has emerged since 1994. What is striking is the opacity of the PA’s purpose and strategies: should it serve as a weak, elitist political order capable of implementing limited self-rule with a strong emphasis on so-called security, or should it support Palestinians and enable them to achieve independence? Ambiguity has also dominated decisions regarding the strategy that guides Palestinian resistance against the occupier. Should it apply a soft strategy that entails negotiation, diplomacy, and political and legal work in international forums, or a violent strategy of armed resistance? Because these strategies are not complementary, the overall result of the national struggle has been very modest. This chapter examines the structural factors that reduce the Palestinian political system’s ability not only to confront the policies imposed by the Israeli occupation but also to produce cohesive, effective, and responsive internal politics. Discussing the impact of the Israeli occupation and international aid, it illuminates the internal political dynamics and touches on the overlap between the PA and the PLO and ambiguous legitimacies; the split between Fatah and Hamas; and the operations of the executive authority, as security forces remain unrestrained and political parties ineffective.
Seeing Israel through Palestine: knowledge production as anti-colonial praxis
Settler Colonial Studies, 2018
Knowledge production in, for and by a settler-colonial state hinges on both productive and repressive practices that work together to render its history and present, 'normal'. The settler state aims to maintain hegemony over its agents, subjects, supporters and challengers by controlling, how, where, to and through whom it tells its story. This makes the production and dissemination of knowledge production an important battleground for anti-colonial counter-hegemonic struggles. The State of Israel, in its ongoing search for patrons and partners in its colonising project in the Middle East, is especially focused on how to produce and appropriate 'knowledge', and the arenas in which it is developed and shared, to this purpose. In so doing, it works to reshape critique of its political, social and economic relationsin which the dispossession of the native is a ceaseless featureand redefine the moral parameters that inform its legitimacy and entrench its irrefutability. Inspired by existing literature on and examples of anti-colonial struggles and practices of decolonisation, this paper investigates and challenges the myriad modalities through which Israel produces and normalises the colonial narrative. By critiquing existing representations and framings of the Israeli stateand the spaces and structures in which these take holdour article contributes to the range of scholarship and communities of scholars working to radically recalibrate knowledge of 'Israel' and 'Palestine'. As part of this work, the article deliberately and purposefully centres indigenous anti-colonial frameworks that reconnect intellectual analysis of settler colonial relations, with political engagements in the practice/praxis of liberation and decolonisation. Keywords Israel Studies; Indigenous and Settler Colonial Studies; hegemony and counter hegemony; critical pedagogy; anti-colonial/decolonising praxis passions it evokes often present obstacles to balanced analysis and evenhanded discussion. In the six decades since its founding, the State of Israel has spawned a vibrant culture and a multiethnic democracy. It has also faced ongoing challenges and has had to grapple with complex geopolitical issues. An appreciation of the complexities that are Israel requires knowledge, probing analysis and dialogue across different disciplines and viewpoints. Through a commitment to academic rigor and interdisciplinary approaches, the Nazarian Center fosters a broad understanding of Israel and its place in the region and the world." The Younes & Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies, UCLA 'About US' 2 The two quotes above expose the multiple terrains upon which Israel is currently battling for legitimacy. In the first of these, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's Prime Minister, stands on the UN stage, selling the image of Israel as the stable bastion of 'civilisation' in the Middle East to a global audience; a part of the world that Western/US audiences have positioned as the 'heart of darkness' in their global imaginary. In the second, UCLA's Israel Studies Programme describes the rigorous tools needed-and which it offers-to understand Israel's vibrant 'multiethnic democracy' and grapple with the complexities that constitute its social, political and geographic relationships. Together, they highlight key aspects of Israel's struggle for saliency: first, that the sites of engagement are situated well beyond its own geography or populations. As Shihade also notes, this audience is primarily 'Western', with Israel's spokespeople speaking directly to the West's racial and geo-economic anxieties about a part of the world it sees as unfamiliar, unstable and thus threatening. 3 Accordingly, the approach is sophisticated, steeped in seemingly universalist and liberal values. 4 Second, that all stages are deemed potential frontiers, where Israel's control of the political discourse-and the right to determine its moral parametresis insecure. The UN and university campuses are not the only sites; international media, diplomatic exchanges, economic and security fairs, even tourist information and googlemaps are potential opportunities for articulating Israel's legitimacy, with recent 'battles' taking place at INTERPOL, the International Criminal Court and UNESCO, among others, with mixed results for Israel. Third, the discussion of those with whom Israel 'battles'the Palestiniansis contained and restrained, so that when they are discussed, it becomes one of many 'issues' that constitute Israel's story.
From Colonization to Separation: exploring the structure of Israel's occupation
2008
Much has changed during Israel's 40 years of occupation of Palestinian territory. Within the past six years Israel has, on average, killed more Palestinians per year than it killed during the first 20 years of occupation. Those who help manufacture public opinion within Israel claim that the dramatic increase in Palestinian deaths results from the fact that the Palestinians have changed the methods of violence they employ against Israel, and that Israel, in turn, has also begun using more violent means. Palestinians might invert this argument, claiming that they have altered their methods of resistance in response to Israel's use of more lethal violence. While such explanations no doubt contain a grain of truth, they are symptomatic accounts, and do little to reveal the root causes underlying the processes leading to the substantial increase in human deaths. A different approach is therefore needed, one that takes into account the structural dimension of Israel's military rule and tracks the two major principles that have informed the occupation over the past four decades: the colonisation principle and the separation principle. By the colonisation principle I mean a form of government whereby the coloniser attempts to manage the lives of the colonised inhabitants while exploiting the captured territory's resources. By the separation principle I do not mean a withdrawal of Israeli power from the Occupied Territories, but rather the reorganisation of power in the territories in order to continue controlling the resources. The major difference, then, between the colonisation and the separation principles is that, under the first principle there is an effort to manage the population and its resources, even though the two are separated. With the adoption of the separation principle Israel looses all interest in the lives of the Palestinian inhabitants and focuses solely on the occupied resources. Such a reorganisation of power helps explain the change in the repertoires of violence and the dramatic increase in the number of Palestinian deaths.
Israel/Palestine/Middle-East An Ethno-Historical Perspective Project of publications Introduction
One-State, Two-States, Bi-National State: Mandated Imaginations in a Regional Void, by Moshe Behar; Land Regime and Social Relations in Israel, by Alexander Kedar and Oren Yiftachel; The Dream and Its Construction: Mizrahi-Arab Cooperation to Combat Discrimination, by Yifat Bitton: these three papers make up the first volume of the editorial project mentioned in the title, published in Italian by Zambon, October 2016. They frame the Israeli/Palestinian question in a historical and political context which goes further the sterile discussion on One-State, Two-States, Bi-National State solutions. Their value stands out in today’s new, tragic chapter opened in the long history of Western-colonial rule on Near and Middle-East countries.