Summary
In The Continuation of Zionist Settler Colonialism, the embodied Palestinian claim to land that was never ceded, grounded in ongoing Indigenous Palestinian presence, which the Zionist settler colonial project ultimately aims to extinguish through its ongoing elimination and fragmentation of the Palestinian people (lines 145, 173).
Details
- Nabulsi’s definition: “This sovereignty is an embodied claim to land that was never ceded and is grounded in ongoing Indigenous Palestinian presence that both precedes and endures the Israeli settler state.” It takes distinct forms for different Indigenous peoples, but all forms “index an enduring Indigenous claim to the land, refusing the state sovereignty of the settler colony” (line 173).
- Its corollary on Indigeneity: Palestinian indigeneity does not rely on proving the continuation of particular cultural practices or a certain measure of Indigenous blood; indigeneity is “not a set of criteria to fulfill, but rather a political relationship to the structure of settler colonialism”, so that insofar as Israel seeks to eliminate Palestinians from their land, Palestinians are an Indigenous people resisting such elimination (line 173).
- Palestinians resisting colonization are presented in the Introduction as expressing “their Indigenous sovereignty with the land” (line 143), and the Conclusion restates the project’s aim as “eliminating the Palestinian people and extinguishing their Indigenous sovereignty with the land of Palestine” (line 197).
- Nabulsi’s understanding of the concept is credited in his footnote 2 to Chelsea Watego’s intellectual leadership and published writing and to the work of Aileen Moreton-Robinson (line 203).
- In Liberal Zionism: A Pillar of Israel’s Settler Colonial Project, the same object is named from the other side: Apartheid is a step along a settler-colonial continuum that eliminates indigenous sovereignty and so cements and expands settler-colonial conquest (line 207 of that brief).
Related pages
The Continuation of Zionist Settler Colonialism, Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, Jamal Nabulsi, Chelsea Watego, Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Liberal Zionism: A Pillar of Israel’s Settler Colonial Project