On "The End of Settler Colonialism in Light of Genocide" by Fioracchini...

Author: علي حبيب الله

"I do not see what is happening in Gaza as the pinnacle of settler colonialism; rather, I see it as a fundamental deviation from it," says Lorenzo Fioracchini, a professor of history and politics at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, in his article "Genocide in Gaza and the End of Settler Colonialism," which was translated into Arabic by researcher Anas Ibrahim and recently published by the Mada al-Caramel Center.

Israel has long been read as a settler society, and Zionism since its inception as settler colonialism. However, Fioracchini argues that this historical reading of Israel and Zionism is no longer, after two years of war on Gaza, sufficient as a framework to interpret the ongoing genocide in the enclave.

Dr. Azmi Bishara previously discussed this theoretical framework in a related article about the nature of Israel before the genocide war on Gaza in August 2021 entitled: "Settler Colonialism or Apartheid System, Must We Choose?" He pointed to Fioracchini himself as one of the researchers who worked on employing "settler colonialism" to understand the Zionist project before the war. Bishara explained, citing Fioracchini, the difference between classical colonialism and settler colonialism through the distinction between two statements directed at indigenous populations: "Work for me" (classical colonialism) and "Go away from here" (settler colonialism). The former stems from a "logic of exploitation," while the latter emerges from a "logic of elimination" that seeks to expel indigenous populations and replace them.

Bishara agreed with Fioracchini on this distinction, noting that Palestinians themselves became aware of this distinction long before it was academically formulated, as they described Zionist colonialism since the 1960s and 1970s as "replacement" or "substitutive" settler colonialism. Otherwise, what did Palestinians mean by replacement? Bishara asks, concluding in his article that the Zionist project has combined two extinct colonial models: the French in Algeria and the Dutch in South Africa; that is, Israel has been a settler colonialism since 1948, establishing an apartheid regime after its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967.

However, this was before October 7, 2023 and the ongoing genocide war. In his recent article about the war, Fioracchini reviews the opinions of some writers and intellectuals who continued to invoke "settler colonialism" as a theoretical framework to explain Israel in its war on Gaza, describing the genocide as the pinnacle of this colonialism, including Jews like Avi Shlaim. However, Fioracchini no longer sees the genocide as the pinnacle of settler colonialism but a deviation from it, because "genocide is what happens when settler colonialism fails," meaning he moves beyond the lens of "settler colonialism" to interpret what is happening.

"Settler colonialism" remains a universal proposition to explain the reality of stable settler societies, with parliaments enacting laws for settlers and settlers enjoying settlement rights and a prosperous standard of living. Indigenous populations in these societies are suppressed within internationally recognized borders through structural tools of containment and control. Mass death no longer fits these entities, which now prefer to worry about "softening the dying pillow" of the "native race"; the times of killing are behind them, as Fioracchini states.

He means the societies of the Americas, New Zealand, and Australia. However, Israel, in its model, remains a different case. Fioracchini roots the proposition of "settler colonialism" as a cognitive framework connected to Israel in two phases: the first with the writings of Palestinian researcher Faiz Al-Sayegh in the 1960s, following the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and the second with the works of Marxist thinker Maxim Rodinson, who studied Zionism as settler colonialism, with the proposition reentering circulation in the late 1990s and the early 2000s with the developments of Oslo and its collapse.

The distance between the 1960s and the 1990s represented a phase during which Israeli policies sought to impose a more hierarchical subjugation of Palestinians rather than their erasure. Then came Oslo, which Fioracchini viewed as a settler colonial moment that represented a "solution" or metaphorical dismantling of colonialism, as it normalized settler colonialism and the rule of settlers through a discourse of recognition and reconciliation and building more respectful relationships between settlers and indigenous components, namely the Palestinians.

However, that quickly collapsed. The Israeli society moved away from the stable settler colonial model, with Israel insisting on rejecting any political horizon for the Palestinians. This represented a strategic failure of the Zionist project as settler colonialism. Consequently, Fioracchini asks: Is what we see today—i.e., the genocide war on Gaza—"the death" of settler colonialism?

The failure of the integration policy following the 1967 occupation, then the failure of Oslo, was a failure of the settler model. While what Fioracchini considered a "semi-success" during the period between the late 1960s and the 1990s might be inaccurate in our view, the ongoing genocide in Gaza is a continuation of the failure of this model. For Fioracchini, Israel is leaving the framework of settler colonialism irreversibly. A system that returns to its bloody origins and abandons structural tools of repression essentially destroys itself. And while Israel no longer aligns with the model as it "did" previously, the attack on Gaza and the West Bank together, along with the required permanent mobilization, is accompanied by the marginalization of broad Jewish components within Israel, as Fioracchini states.

Moreover, the author refers to the idea of "explosive colonialism," defined by other settler societies as a constant influx of settler immigrants into indigenous populations' lands. However, the attack on Gaza undermines this trajectory; Israel has failed over the last few decades to attract new waves of Jewish immigrants, and many of them today choose to leave in the face of genocide, which has transformed Israel into a country of outward migration. This is because the terror exercised in Gaza threatens to empty it of its Jews more than it threatens them with "terror" from Palestinian resistance, as Fioracchini describes it.

This was the essence of what the article "Genocide in Gaza and the End of Settler Colonialism" presented, where its author warned that genocide does not only mean Israel's departure from the model of settler colonialism, but threatens Israel itself as a society and project. Despite many of our observations on what Fioracchini presented, especially in his approach to the history of the Zionist project alongside other colonial experiences, the essence of the matter remains that Zionist policies of erasure and replacement have never ceased, even if their rhetorical tone has changed. The author also did not give the Palestinian role its due in preventing their transformation into "red Indians" as in other settler experiences.

Nevertheless, genocide today means the erasure of the Palestinian in Gaza and its destruction, as the Zionist project carries colonial characteristics that continue to create a Zionist society ready to reconcile with its most savage models.