Settler Colonialism or Apartheid: Do We Have to Choose?

Volume 10|Issue 38| Autumn 2021 |Articles

Abstract

This article examines Israel as a state that emerged out of a settler colonial project, demonstrating that this emergence is not only a historical question, but is also constitutive to the state’s structure and the nature of citizenship in it. The article argues that Israel differs from other settler colonial states in that it failed to normalize or nativize itself, for three main reasons. First, Palestinians had been nationally crystalized before it was established and therefore they were not transformed, like in other settler colonial states, into an "indigenous people" demanding cultural rights. Second, the 1967 occupation is not a classic occupation practiced by a "normal state," but a continuation of the settler colonial project itself. And third, while Israel had established an ethnocracy after expelling the majority of the Palestinian population from its 1948 borders and granted the minority that remained Israeli citizenship, it turned into an apartheid state after the 1967 occupation. In these territories, Palestinians – most of whom were neither expelled, nor granted citizenship – were subjected to direct occupation, which has gradually transformed, due to the settlement project, into an apartheid system.

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General Director of the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS) and Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies (DI). Bishara is a leading Arab researcher and intellectual with numerous books and academic publications on political thought, social theory and philosophy. He was named by Le Nouveau Magazine Littéraire as one of the world's most influential thinkers. His publications in Arabic, some of which have become key references within their respective field, include Civil Society: A Critical Study (1996); From the Jewishness of the State to Sharon (2004); On The Arab Question: An Introduction to an Arab Democratic Manifesto (2007); To Be an Arab in Our Times (2009); On Revolution and Susceptibility to Revolution (2012); Religion and Secularism in Historical Context (in 3 vols., 2013, 2015); The Army and Political Power in the Arab Context: Theoretical Problems (2017); The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Daesh): A General Framework and Critical Contribution to Understanding the Phenomenon (2018); What is Populism? (2019); Democratic Transition and its Problems: Theoretical Lessons from Arab Experiences (2020); and The Question of the State: Philosophy, Theory, and Context (2023) with a second volume titled The Arab State: Beginnings and Evolution (2024).

His latest publication in Arabic titled Palestine: Matters of Truth and Justice (2024), is translated from English, originally published in 2022 by Hurst Publishers in London. Bishara's English publications also include On Salafism: Concepts and Contexts (Stanford University Press, 2022); Sectarianism without Sects (Oxford University Press, 2021); and his trilogy on the Arab revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Syria, published by I.B. Tauris, Understanding Revolutions: Opening Acts in Tunisia (2021); Egypt: Revolution, Failed Transition and Counter-Revolution (2022); and Syria 2011-2013: Revolution and Tyranny before the Mayhem (2023), in which he provides a rich theoretical analysis in addition to a comprehensive and lucid assessment of the revolutions in three Arab countries.


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