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

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/arabstudquar.38.4.0709
• Pages: 709-713
• Published date: 01 October 2016
• Date: 01 October 2016
• Author: Magid Shihade

REVIEW SYMPOSIUM 709

ASQ 38.4 Produced and distributed by Pluto Journals

Reflection on Elia Zureik’s Israel’s Colonial Project in Palestine:

A Brutal Pursuit

Magid Shihade

The Im/Possible Future

In reflecting on this work, I engage with two important aspects that I find impor-

tant. 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 else-

where. 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 misin-

formed 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.2

What 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.

Magid Shihade, Ibrahim Abu Lughod Institute of International Studies, Birzeit University, Birzeit,

West Bank, Palestine.