Zionist settler colonialism, Palestinian Nakba and Gaza genocide: the beginning of the end of the Israeli regime?

Abstract

New academic studies confirm that settler colonialism is the most useful explanatory paradigm for understanding the past and present of Palestine-Israel (Salamanca et al. 2012; Barakat 2018; Masalha 2018; Pappé 2018; Halper 2021; Ramos Tolosa 2021; Todorova 2021; Khalidi 2023; Sa'di and Masalha 2023). The Zionist goal of obtaining as much territory as possible with as little non-Jewish population as possible and the logic of “elimination of the native” remains central to understanding the Palestinian question. Likewise, more than three quarters of a century later, the Nakba and its conception as an “eternal present” for the Palestinian people remain central elements within and outside the academy.

For its part, in autumn 2023, the whole world was once again talking about Palestine. On the one hand, the Palestinian Nakba experienced a new episode with the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip, claiming the lives of more than 30,000 Palestinians (including more than 13,000 children) in the first 150 days. On the other hand, the Israeli press called what happened on 7 October 2023 a “colossal failure”, “the biggest intelligence failure in Israeli history” or “the most difficult moment since 1948”. Countless international and military analysts agreed. “Whatever happens in this [new] round of the Israel-Gaza war” wrote Chaim Levinson in Haaretz on 8 October 2023, “we already lost”. There was talk of falling investment, huge trade losses and Israeli “economic collapse”. And, in the reconfiguration of the international and geopolitical system, all this could contribute to a new scenario with Israel more unstable, insecure and vulnerable than ever. In the medium to long term, the Gaza genocide could become a historic turning point in the Palestinian decolonisation process.