The term ‘settler colonialism’ was coined by an Australian historian in the 1960s to describe the occupation of a territory with a view to displacing the original inhabitants. A new society would be created on the occupied territory through the elimination or permanent subordination of the existing people. There is often an element of ethnic cleansing, if not actual genocide. Settler colonialism is distinguished from ‘exploitation colonialism’ where the aim is simply to expropriate natural resources, possibly employing the indigenous population as cheap labour. This distinction has been usefully applied in examining the strategies of European colonial powers in the creation of empires throughout Africa, Asia and the Americas.
Its application to the actions of the Israeli state towards the Palestinian people has, however, been contentious. It is argued that the Jewish people have a special relationship to the land that the state now occupies, dating back to Biblical times. It is the land promised to them by their God. As such, they can be neither settlers nor colonialists but a displaced population retaking their traditional space. For some, this extends to a claim that they have a right to exclude all other occupiers and to live in a pure ethno-religious state…
…The roots of today’s Palestinian suffering are deeply embedded in the history of the 20th century, as my father and his unit saw. The situation will not change until there is a better understanding of what might be meant by a Promised Land and the creation of a form of governance that accords equal political, economic and cultural rights to all those inheriting connections to the territory from before the first state-led ethnic cleansing of 1947.
A Social Science Space blog