The Continuation of Zionist Settler Colonialism

Summary

Jamal Nabulsi’s Al-Shabaka commentary argues that the Israeli regime’s genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza is a continuation of the Zionist settler colonial project, not an aberration in over 75 years of colonization (The Continuation of Zionist Settler Colonialism, lines 141-145). Nabulsi outlines three key features of Zionist Settler Colonialism: it is an ongoing structure, not a singular event; its central aim is to eliminate the Palestinian people; and it pursues that elimination through fragmentation of Palestinian land and people — all ultimately to extinguish Palestinian Indigenous Sovereignty (lines 145, 163-173). The present assault is read through those features: the leaked October 28 Israeli Ministry of Intelligence recommendation to expel all 2.3 million Gazans to Sinai, the West Bank divided into 227 enclaves by the 730 km-long Apartheid Wall, and Gaza’s isolation under 17 years of blockade on top of 56 years of occupation (lines 183-187). The conclusion rejects the “conflict” of “two sides” and advocacy limited to ending occupation or Apartheid, and holds up South Africa’s International Court of Justice case, the Houthis’ Red Sea seizures and the BDS movement as solidarity that names the root cause (lines 195-199).

What the file is

• An Al-Shabaka commentary (topic: Politics), published Feb 5, 2024 as displayed in the text copy (lines 135, 211), “15 min read”, downloaded from https://al-shabaka.org/commentaries/the-continuation-of-zionist-settler-colonialism/ (access basis: NGO). The original is the HTML page; the text copy supplied with it (about 3,873 words, lines 1-358) is a plain-text rendering of that page, with no page markers, so locators are line numbers.
• The text copy includes the site’s frame around the commentary: navigation and featured items at lines 1-128 and 209-358, including items dated September 2026 that belong to the page as captured, not to the 2024 commentary. The commentary itself runs lines 129-207, followed by the author’s biography (lines 205-207).
• Text quality: the commentary’s prose is clean and complete in both copies. Its two footnotes are unnumbered in the text copy (lines 201, 203); their numbering and attachment were checked in the original HTML — footnote 1, whose marker stands after “critical medical supplies” at line 141, is the French-translation note (line 201), and footnote 2, whose marker stands after “the settler colony” at line 173, is Nabulsi’s acknowledgment of Chelsea Watego and Aileen Moreton-Robinson (line 203). Three pull-quotations in the text copy are followed by “Share on X” page controls (lines 159, 179, 189), which are not part of the sentences. The text copy gives the publication date as Feb 5, 2024, and the original HTML’s structured data gives datePublished as 2024-02-05T08:41:31+00:00 and dateModified as 2024-06-30T11:53:45+00:00; the dates agree. One printing is as printed and is not corrected: “Issac Herzog” for the Israeli president (line 177).

Section by section

• Introduction (lines 139-145): the Israeli regime is “currently committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza”, targeting hospitals, schools, universities, refugee camps and residential buildings, while survivors have severely limited access to water, food, electricity and medical supplies (line 141). Statements and leaked documents show intentions to “transfer” (a euphemism for ethnic cleansing) Palestinians in Gaza to Egypt or beyond, almost three-quarters of them already refugees (line 143). The thesis and its three features are stated as in the Summary.
• Zionist Settler Colonialism (lines 147-173): Zionism “has always been a settler-colonial ideology”, declared by its architects — Ze’ev (then Vladimir) Jabotinsky writing in 1923, quoted at length, and Theodor Herzl on Palestine as “a portion of the rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism”, a discourse Nabulsi likens to the white settler fantasy of “manifest destiny” (lines 149-157). Palestinian theorizing: Fayez Sayegh’s 1965 Zionist Colonialism in Palestine and Jamil Hilal in 1976 — “Zionists strove not to exploit the indigenous Palestinian population but to displace it” (line 161). First feature, ongoing structure: the everyday notion of the Nakba as ongoing, in both senses — the 1948 expulsion of over 780,000 Palestinians, still denied return, and a continuing process under which “some two-thirds (9.17 million) of the fourteen million Palestinians worldwide are now forcibly displaced persons” (line 163). Second feature, elimination: physical annihilation from the 1948 massacres and the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre to the current and four preceding major assaults on Gaza and frequent executions in the West Bank including East Jerusalem, and insidious forms — de-Palestinianizing the Palestinians of the 1948 territories, criminalizing the flag and Nakba commemoration, and curricular indoctrination, compared to residential schools in Canada and the US and the Stolen Generations in Australia (lines 165-167). Third feature, fragmentation: splintering land, fracturing bodies, destroying families, dismantling institutions, rupturing space, time and memory, shattering selves and breaking the will to resist (line 169); founded in 1948, when Israel’s colonization of 78% of Palestinian land severed it from the West Bank and Gaza, and extended in the 1967 Naksa occupation (line 171). Together the three aim to extinguish Indigenous Sovereignty, “an embodied claim to land that was never ceded”; indigeneity is “not a set of criteria to fulfill, but rather a political relationship to the structure of settler colonialism” (line 173).
• The Settler Colonial Present (lines 175-191): the early Zionists’ racist discourse echoed in Benjamin Netanyahu’s “children of light and the children of darkness” post, President “Issac Herzog” (as printed) on saving Western civilization, and Yoav Gallant’s “human animals” cut-off announcement (line 177). Over 26,000 Palestinians killed and 1.9 million (over 80% of Gaza’s population) expelled from their homes since the onslaught began (line 181). Genocide and ethnic cleansing as tandem strategies, as in 1948: the Israeli Ministry of Intelligence document leaked on October 28 recommending the permanent expulsion of all 2.3 million Gazans to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, with Israeli actions mirroring its steps southward toward Rafah (line 183). In the West Bank, escalating ethnic cleansing through fragmentation: 227 separate enclaves, East Jerusalem entirely isolated, the “730 km-long Apartheid Wall” beyond the 1967 Green Line (line 185). In Gaza, the extreme form: systematic isolation intensified by the blockade after Hamas’s 2006 election victory, restricting items “from baby wipes to plant seeds”, then the post-October 7 cut-off of the necessities of life (line 187). Isolation serves to carve out land to cleanse and appropriate, a divide-and-conquer strategy consistent with settler colonial projects generally (line 191).
• Conclusion (lines 193-199): freedom and dignity require understanding the assault as a continuation of the settler colonial project and doing away with the “conflict” / “two sides” framework propagated through the so-called “peace” process, behind which, between 1993 and 2000, Israel “doubled the population of Israeli settlers” on the land purportedly to become a Palestinian state (line 195). Solidarity that reproduces that framing — advocacy limited to ending occupation and/or apartheid — fails to name the root cause, a failure Nabulsi attributes in settler colonies and colonial metropoles in part to activists’ own complicity (line 197). The counter-examples and close are as in the Summary (line 199).
• Footnotes and author biography (lines 201-207): the French-translation note and the Watego / Moreton-Robinson acknowledgment as listed in What the file is; the biography presents Nabulsi as a diaspora Palestinian writer and researcher living as a settler on Jagera and Turrbal land, a research fellow at Griffith University on the ARC Discovery project “Voice and Belonging: Pathways to Inclusion for New Migrant Communities”, holding grants from the Antipode Foundation and the Institute of Human Geography, a Global Indigenous Member of the Centre for Global Indigenous Futures at Macquarie University, with a PhD from the University of Queensland and the 2024 British International Studies Association Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Early Career Paper Prize (lines 205-207).

Key passages

• “This commentary anchors the Israeli regime’s genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza as a continuation of the Zionist settler colonial project.” (line 145)
• “Zionist settler colonialism must be understood as an ongoing structure aiming to eliminate the Palestinians through the fragmentation of the people and land” (line 159)
• “Zionists strove not to exploit the indigenous Palestinian population but to displace it.” (Jamil Hilal, 1976, as quoted by Nabulsi, line 161)
• “Contrary to the way it is defined under international law, indigeneity is not a set of criteria to fulfill, but rather a political relationship to the structure of settler colonialism.” (line 173)
• “The reality of the Nakba as an ongoing process has never been clearer than it is now.” (line 181)
• “Advocacy for Palestine that is limited to ending Israeli occupation and/or apartheid fails to acknowledge the root cause of the violence—Zionist settler colonialism” (line 189)

Evidence the work relies on

• Ze’ev Jabotinsky writing in 1923, as quoted by Nabulsi in three excerpts (lines 149-155). No title or fuller citation is given in the commentary.
• Theodor Herzl on the Jewish state in Palestine as “a portion of the rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism”, as quoted by Nabulsi (line 157). No source or date is given in the commentary.
• Fayez Sayegh, Zionist Colonialism in Palestine (1965), as Nabulsi presents it, and Jamil Hilal (1976), quoted in one sentence (line 161). No fuller citation for Hilal is given in the commentary.
• Statements by Benjamin Netanyahu, “Issac Herzog” (as printed) and Yoav Gallant in October 2023, as quoted by Nabulsi (line 177). The commentary links the Netanyahu post and the Herzog warning in the original HTML but gives no date or outlet in the text copy.
• The Israeli Ministry of Intelligence document leaked on October 28, as Nabulsi presents it, recommending the permanent expulsion of all 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula (line 183). The document itself is not reproduced or further cited in the commentary.
• Chelsea Watego’s published writing and Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s work, credited in footnote 2 for Nabulsi’s understanding of Indigenous sovereignty (line 203). The footnote’s links, visible in the original HTML, are to Watego’s Another Day in the Colony and to the Routledge Handbook of Critical Indigenous Studies for Moreton-Robinson; no titles are given in the text copy.
• Figures given without a cited source in the commentary: over 780,000 Palestinians ethnically cleansed in 1948; two-thirds (9.17 million) of fourteen million Palestinians worldwide forcibly displaced; 78% of Palestinian land colonized in 1948; over 26,000 killed and 1.9 million expelled in Gaza; 227 West Bank enclaves; a 730 km-long wall; and the doubling of the settler population between 1993 and 2000 (lines 163, 171, 181, 185, 195).

Analysis

Nabulsi’s method is a short programmatic commentary, not a research report: he states a three-feature framework — ongoing structure, elimination, fragmentation — drawn explicitly from Palestinian theorizing (Sayegh, Hilal) and from his credited Indigenous-sovereignty sources (Watego, Moreton-Robinson), then reads the October 2023 assault and its official language through it. The framework does the argumentative work: once the present assault is classified under the three features, its continuity with 1948 follows by construction, and the conclusion’s rejection of occupation- and apartheid-only advocacy follows from the framework rather than from a separate comparison of those advocacies. The evidentiary base as presented is thin by design: the early Zionist and present Israeli quotations are given without full citations, the central figures are given without sources, and the leaked Ministry of Intelligence document is summarized in one sentence and not reproduced. The commentary’s own terms are kept throughout: Israel is “the Israeli regime” and “the settler state”, its army “the IOF” in the expulsion paragraph, and its wall the “Apartheid Wall”. The piece is dated February 5, 2024, and its Gaza figures (over 26,000 killed, 1.9 million expelled) are figures as of that writing, not as of any date stated in the text.

People, organizations, places and events

Jamal Nabulsi, Vladimir Jabotinsky, Theodor Herzl, Fayez Sayegh, Jamil Hilal, Chelsea Watego, Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Benjamin Netanyahu, Isaac Herzog, Yoav Gallant, Al-Shabaka, Israeli Ministry of Intelligence, Hamas, International Court of Justice, South Africa, Gaza, West Bank, East Jerusalem, Sabra and Shatila massacre, June 1967 War, Green Line

Concepts

Settler Colonialism, Zionism, Nakba, Logic of Elimination, Politics of fragmentation, Indigeneity, Indigenous Sovereignty, Ethnic Cleansing, Genocide, Transfer, Right of Return, BDS movement, Separation wall, Apartheid

How it relates to other sources

• With Zionist Colonialism in Palestine: Nabulsi builds directly on Sayegh’s 1965 dissection of Zionist colonialism “as an ideology and political project” (line 161). Sayegh’s own account distinguishes Zionist colonisation by its incompatibility with the continued existence of the native population; Nabulsi restates that incompatibility in the later vocabulary of elimination and fragmentation, and adds Hilal’s 1976 displacement-not-exploitation sentence as the distinction from extractive colonialism. Neither Sayegh nor Hilal is quoted beyond those points in the commentary.
• With Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: the closest agreement in the wiki. The 2012 editors likewise hold that the Nakba is not a singular event and that the object of analysis is the settler colonial structure, and they quote Wolfe on natives facing elimination. Nabulsi’s three features are a compressed restatement of that program for the 2023-2024 assault, with fragmentation — land and people — given the central strategic role the editors assign to the Green Line’s fragmentation of the Palestinian polity; Nabulsi does not cite the editors, Wolfe or settler colonial studies beyond naming the discipline (line 163).
• With Liberal Zionism: A Pillar of Israel’s Settler Colonial Project: Ayyash, also in Al-Shabaka, argues that Zionism in all its forms eliminates Palestinian indigenous sovereignty and that Apartheid is a step along the settler-colonial continuum; Nabulsi’s conclusion — that advocacy limited to ending occupation and/or apartheid fails to name the root cause — is the same ordering of frameworks, applied to the solidarity movement rather than to liberal Zionism.
• With Beyond Failed Frameworks: A Re-Imagined Collective Future: Hawari’s brief is cross-linked from this commentary in the original HTML — Nabulsi’s phrase “Palestinian indigeneity” at line 173 links to Hawari’s Al-Shabaka commentary Using Indigeneity in the Struggle for Palestinian Liberation, a work Hawari’s brief lists among her own titles. Hawari’s brief and Nabulsi’s commentary share the test of addressing Zionism as a settler colonial structure; where Hawari proposes consensus-building as the remedy, Nabulsi proposes dismantlement and names present solidarity examples.
• With From the River to the Sea: Essays for a Free Palestine: that collection’s editors frame the 2023 war as part of a seventy-five-year-long settler colonial process of expulsion and dispossession; Nabulsi’s “over 75 years of Zionist colonization” (line 145) is the same periodization, written from inside the war’s fourth month. The collection’s chapters give conflicting tolls as dated snapshots; Nabulsi’s over-26,000 figure stands as his February 2024 figure alongside them, unattributed in his text.
• With Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope on fragmentation: Falk’s Politics of fragmentation names Israel’s inward moves to weaken resistance and induce despair; Nabulsi’s fragmentation is broader — of land, bodies, families, institutions, space, time, memory and selves — and is presented as the strategy of elimination itself, not as a complement to deflection. Both accounts stand with their authors.

Open questions

• The commentary’s central figures are given without sources in the text: over 780,000 expelled in 1948 (line 163) stands beside the figures other sources give (more than 750,000 in Ayyash; 804,465 in Sitta’s register for the localities counted); 9.17 million of fourteen million Palestinians worldwide forcibly displaced (line 163); over 26,000 killed and 1.9 million expelled in Gaza (line 181); 227 West Bank enclaves and the 730 km-long wall (line 185); and the doubling of the settler population between 1993 and 2000 (line 195). None is reconciled here.
• “Issac Herzog” at line 177 is as printed; the Israeli president’s name is spelled Isaac in other contexts, but no other ingested source in the wiki names him, so the spelling stands as printed with the page filed under Isaac Herzog and the printed form kept as an alias.
• The leaked document is dated only “October 28” at line 183, with no year stated; the context is the assault that began in October 2023. The document itself is not ingested, so its wording beyond Nabulsi’s one-sentence summary cannot be checked here.
• Jabotinsky’s 1923 writing and Herzl’s rampart-of-Europe claim are quoted without title, outlet or page (lines 149-157); Hilal’s 1976 statement is quoted without a title (line 161). Their wording beyond the quoted excerpts cannot be checked from this source.
• Footnote 1’s marker stands after a substantive sentence at line 141, but its text is the French-translation note (line 201) — the same marker/text mismatch found in other Al-Shabaka pieces in the wiki; it is held as printed, not resolved.
• The commentary says Israel’s actions mirror the leaked document’s steps, and that advocacy limited to occupation or apartheid “fails to acknowledge the root cause”; both are Nabulsi’s characterizations, presented as such, and no opposing account is given in the commentary.

Coverage

lines 1-358 of 358, read in full