A Rejoinder

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/arabstudquar.38.4.0714
• Published date: 01 October 2016
• Date: 01 October 2016
• Pages: 714-715
• Author: Elia Zureik

714 ARAB STUDIES QUARTERLY

www.plutojournals.com/asq/

A Rejoinder

Elia Zureik

Elia Zureik, Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology, Queens University,

Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

When I published my first book on Palestine in 1979, some critics seized on the

title The Palestinians in Israel: A Study in Internal Colonialism to falsely claim

the book is ideological in nature, and one Israeli reviewer even saw fit to label it

“war by other means.” Nonetheless, over the years, the book ended up becoming

a standard reference work by friend and foe alike.

In this book, I detailed the sociological conditions of the Palestinian citizens in

Israel as a colonized minority in terms of class structure, spatial, and territorial

distributions, and a hampered access to life chances in education, occupation, and

equality in general. I also outlined the suffering of Palestinians resulting from

discrimination and racism at the hands of dominant Israeli Zionist institutions and

the Jewish public in general.

Thirty-six years later, I published in 2015 Israel’s Colonial Project in Palestine:

Brutal Pursuit, which is the subject of this symposium. I have decided to extend

my treatment of Israel’s colonial project to all the Palestinians inhabiting historical

Palestine. Mindful of the shortcomings of Michele Foucault’s framework, I viewed

Zionist colonialism in Palestine as a by-product of biopolitics, territory, and state

inspired violence. The subtitle of the book reflects Israel’s relentless pursuit of the

Palestinians—body and soul, seizure of their territory, and surveillance practices.

In adopting this perspective, I sought to bring to the study of Palestine and the

Palestinians current perspectives from critical theory and constructivism that have

a direct bearing upon the study of Zionist colonialism in Palestine.

I must say I have not done everything that the reviewers in this symposium wanted

me to do, but they have provided useful pointers for further research. Hamid Dabashi

from Columbia University saw in the book a valuable contribution to theorizing the

study of Palestine, with its focus on colonial violence, surveillance, and biopolitics.

As I noted in my study, he also concurred that Western theorists from Max Weber to

Michele Foucault neglected the role of colonialism in European state formation.

Helga Tawil-Souri, from New York University, who made important contribu-

tions to the study of surveillance in Palestine and to the role of culture in resistance,

pointed out certain lacunas in my study. One issue that Helga raises has to do with

resistance on the part of the Palestinians. It seems to her that my study is more

focused on victimization of the Palestinians than on them being active agents.

Taking resistance into account, she claims, makes us realize that Israel’s settler

colonialism is “work in progress” where temporality is crucial. There is need to

tease out the role of agency and structure (makes me think of Anthony Giddens’