Reflection on Elia Zureik's Israel's Colonial Project in Palestine: A Brutal Pursuit

Abstract

Reflection on Elia Zureik's Israel's Colonial Project in Palestine: A Brutal PursuitThe Im/Possible FutureIn reflecting on this work, I engage with two important aspects that I find important. First, the importance of studies on Palestine that connect areas colonized by Israel in 1948 with those areas colonized in 1967 and, second, the crucial link between knowledge on the one hand and power/domination and resistance on the other hand.Zureik is among the early scholars who engaged with the subject of Palestinians in Israel.1 This book is only an additional contribution among his long list of books and articles. In this one, Zureik is following a new trend that aims at connecting Israeli policies toward those Palestinians who fell under Israeli colonial rule in 1948 with those in 1967, and this is one of the crucial aspects of this book.This aspect of the book is important because in most studies, the two areas of geographically/politically divided Palestine have been treated often in isolation. More emphasis has been placed on areas colonized in 1967, which in my view reflects the politics of scholarship. In other words, the political imagination shaped by the so-called two-state solution has led to almost complete focus on Palestine in areas colonized in 1967. In this context, areas colonized in 1948 have been treated as an internal Israeli issue, reflecting an Israeli desire that is supported by the so-called international community (mostly Western countries). Thus, Palestinians in areas colonized in 1948 have been treated as present absentees by both the Israeli state and the Palestinian national movement as I have written elsewhere. In scholarly works, they are also treated as present absentees. Politically and theoretically they are often absented despite their physical presence and numerous contributions. Such political and academic absenting has often misinformed our understanding of Israeli policies in areas colonized in 1967. That is, in order to better understand Israeli policies in areas colonized in 1967, one must study its policies in areas colonized in 1948, and what informs these policies. And, in doing so one is better equipped to predict the future of the whole of Palestine.2What informs these policies both in 1948 and in 1967 areas/territories is an ideology-Zionism-which is the basis for creating a settler colonial structure in Palestine. It is a racist and supremacist regime that not only aims at acquiring more lands for Jews by force, but also aims at the destruction of the Palestinian society. It is a western project that not only targets the Palestinian society, but also peoples and states in the region and beyond. This reflection is informed by several works, most importantly the theoretical insights offered by Fayez Sayegh in his short book published in 1965 and titled Zionist Colonialism in Palestine.3 If there is any possible future for the Palestinian society to exist as such, then the Zionist project must be destroyed. Otherwise, we are in a long journey of further break-up of the native Palestinian society and the region surrounding it. Of course, this project of dismembering the Palestinian society is matched by continuous resistance, for settler colonial projects are the dialectic of conquest, control, and elimination on the one hand and resistance of natives and their supporters on the other hand. This is very much a case like other western settler colonial projects in different parts of the world, despite some differences in space/time, and context between these different projects.The second crucial aspect of the book is the linkage between knowledge and power, which is directly related to the first reflection on the nature of the political structure in Palestine, as I shall discuss further below. Of course, hearing the words knowledge and power one is often tempted to think of Foucault. Instead, I would like to suggest a different and perhaps more relevant source, without denying the valuable contribution of Foucault's work. …