HOT · History
Is Israel a settler-colonial state?
In brief
This is mainly a dispute among scholars about which framework fits best. It is not something a court has decided. Both sides can point to real history, so the answer turns on how one defines colonialism and indigeneity.
What is claimed
- Critics argue that Zionism brought European Jews to settle a land already inhabited by Arabs, with the backing of an imperial power, Britain, and that the Palestinians were displaced as a result.
- They note that early Zionists used the word colonization themselves, as in the Jewish Colonization Association, and that Ze'ev Jabotinsky's 1923 essay The Iron Wall was open about the conflict that settlement would cause.
What the record shows
- Early Zionist institutions did use the vocabulary of colonization before the 1940s.
- Jews have lived in the land continuously, and Jewish prayer has faced Jerusalem for over two thousand years. Large-scale modern immigration began in the 1880s.
- About half of Israel's Jewish population descends from Jews who lived in Middle Eastern and North African countries, and many arrived as refugees.
- Britain's role was mixed. It issued the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and then restricted Jewish immigration in the 1939 White Paper, and Zionist groups fought British rule.
The case and the answers
The strongest case against
- The pattern of land purchase, settlement and displacement fits the settler-colonial model developed by scholars such as Patrick Wolfe.
- A people's historical tie to a land does not remove the claims of those who lived there for centuries.
The best answers
- Jews are an indigenous people returning to their ancestral homeland, and the movement was a national liberation movement rather than an imperial one.
- There was no mother country that sent the settlers. Most Jewish immigrants were refugees from persecution in Europe and the Middle East.
- The framework erases Jewish history and treats Israel as foreign in the one place where Jewish identity was formed.
Key dates
- 1882 First Aliyah of Zionist pioneers begins.
- 1897 First Zionist Congress meets in Basel.
- 1917 Balfour Declaration.
- 1923 Jabotinsky publishes The Iron Wall.
- 1939 British White Paper restricts Jewish immigration.
- 1948 Israel declares independence.
Who addresses this
Profiles with articles, videos and podcasts. Open a profile for the full list.
- Einat WilfArgues Zionism is a return and not a colonial project
- Yossi Klein HaleviJewish identity and Israeli society
- Michael OrenDiplomacy and Israeli history
- Haviv Rettig GurExplains Zionist history
Direct sources and further study
- Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine (2020)Presents the settler-colonial reading
- Ze'ev Jabotinsky, The Iron Wall (1923)A Zionist leader on colonization and Arab opposition
- Gershon Shafir, Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian ConflictScholarly study of the early settlements
- Wikipedia: Settler colonialismNeutral overview of the debate
Related on NOWlej
Zionism · Balfour Declaration · Theodor Herzl · British Mandate · Law of Return
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Links to outside sources are provided for study and do not imply endorsement. Figures and rulings are described as of the date shown.