Israel is increasingly described as a settler-colonial state, while Palestinians are more frequently identified as an Indigenous population. In recent years, these perspectives have gained ground in both the media and academic circles, building on a rapidly expanding field of research known as settler colonial studies. By drawing parallels with colonial experiences in the Americas, New Zealand, Australia, and other places, scholars focus on how Indigenous peoples are eliminated, replaced, and disconnected from their lands.
Lorenzo Veracini, a leading voice in this field, has spent years examining how settler colonialism shapes political and social realities in Palestine. In this interview, we discuss the latest developments and explore how they reflect shifts within the Zionist project in Palestine.
TNA: Sixteen months into the most devastating military campaigns in Gaza, the political landscape between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean has shifted dramatically. Has 7 October changed the trajectory of the Zionist project in Palestine?
LV: I am a comparative historian of colonial processes. In my work I distinguish between distinct modalities of colonial oppression: there are colonial regimes designed to primarily extract the labour of colonised populations and the wealth of the land, and there are colonial regimes where colonised populations are displaced to make room for settler societies accessing the wealth of the land without needing the labour of colonised populations. The latter mode of colonial domination is typically referred to as settler colonialism. In my opinion the ‘Zionist project’ was always actually a number of ‘Zionist projects’ – all colonialist, but also quite distinct from each other. The settler colonial project has been predominant between the 1920s and the late 2000s. A profound transformation was already underway since the failure of the Oslo process – I wrote about it in a 2012 article, but after the shock and trauma of 7 October we witnessed a further acceleration.
Paradoxically, the contradictions that characterised the Jewish Israeli society were repressed in attempts to deliver a coordinated response and yet forcefully emerged at once. But what we have seen is a decisive shift. The settler colonial prospect of subordinate integration for different Palestinian constituencies living under Israeli rule has now been discontinued everywhere, including in the West Bank. This was the policy that successive Israeli governments had pursued for decades, until the failure of the ‘Oslo’ process. For a long while afterwards, Oslo had survived its demise – nothing had emerged to replace it. Now, in the face of the strategic failure of the settler colonial option, what has been let loose is a wave of unrestrained violence sustained by a collection of genocidal fantasies. Destruction to replace is now just destruction.
TNA: Israel’s military operations have now extended beyond Palestine, occupying territories in Syria and Lebanon. Is this expansion a temporary security measure, or does it reflect a deeper strategic ambition to permanently reshape the region’s borders?
LV: Parts of Lebanon and Syria were already occupied, so there is no qualitative shift there. The ambition of permanently reshape borders was always there too. I see a major policy shift in relation to Palestinians but detect significant continuities in relation to Syria and Lebanon. Then again, when it comes to appraising geopolitical realities, focusing on who is controlling that extra outpost may be misleading. Colonialist powers routinely win every military engagement, and their supporters habitually pat each other on the back, counting how many insurgents are finished off in each. Then they often find that as they were ‘winning’ the geopolitical landscape changed irreversibly against them. Israel may find the same.
TNA: You’ve often argued that settler colonial violence is a structure rather than an event. The Israeli narrative has framed 7 October as an exceptional event, portraying any attempt at contextualisation as moral relativism. Do you think settler colonial studies provide a useful framework for challenging this colonial exceptionalism and respond to efforts that seek to dehistoricise moments of colonial violence?
LV: Colonialism is always violence. At times it is structural, at times it is unleashed, even if these two violences are dialectically related and exist in relation to each other. Coloniser and colonised are embedded in a relationship that is defined by violence. Noting that violence, including epistemic violence, fundamentally defines the relation is not moral relativism, it is the basis of any serious analysis. A large body of scholarship dedicated to the understanding of colonial relations has developed the analytical tools that enable an observation of that violence. But as noted, settler colonial studies typically observes violence in its structural form, whereas what followed 7 October is an unmediated form of plausibly genocidal violence, so in my opinion a settler colonial studies lens is probably misplaced in this instance.
TNA: The term “decolonisation” is increasingly invoked in academic and activist circles, but some argue it has been reduced to a mere metaphor. Do you think settler colonial studies contribute enough to debates about real-world means of decolonisation?
LV: We should keep in mind that the study of a relation (i.e. colonialism), and therefore the study of its discontinuation (i.e., decolonisation), are primarily scholarly endeavours. If they help, it is because they explain and interpret social phenomena. Good heuristics is nice, but those involved in the colonial relation do not need good heuristics to contest and transform the reality they live in. At times metaphorical decolonisation is offered in lieu of substantive decolonisation. So, let’s be clear: metaphorical decolonisation does not supersede the relation of subjection we call colonialism. That said, the study of settler colonialism as a specific mode of domination is useful in highlighting how formal decolonisation – say, international recognition of an autonomous self-governing capacity – is often not the end of the colonial relation.
The settler polities achieved independence, at times through war, at times through negotiation, and yet the Indigenous peoples encompassed within these polities were still subjected to settler colonial rule.
TNA: A growing discourse in Israel suggests that acknowledging the state’s settler colonial nature is not necessarily negative. Instead, some argue it places Israel alongside other “successful” settler societies. Do you see this as an appropriation of settler colonial studies?
LV: The ‘successful’ settler polities you mention, including Canada, Australia and New Zealand, have embarked in recent decades on significant processes of national reconciliation and recognition of Indigenous sovereign capabilities. These processes are contested; they often result in metaphorical rather than substantive decolonisations, but the prospect is to reshape relations between settler publics and Indigenous constituencies. Israel is heading the other way… so perhaps it is not that ‘successful’ after all. As for ascribing a moral value to historical processes, there will always be conservative settlers who will celebrate colonial and settler colonial conquests – I am not surprised. The task of critical scholars is to maintain their integrity, an ethical stance, and to support substantive decolonisations.
TNA: One of the scholars promoting this view is an Israeli academic who authored the Palestine/Israel chapter in The Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonialism, a volume you co-edited. Given that settler colonial studies critically examine structures of dominance, exclusion, and epistemic authority, isn’t it paradoxical that the field itself can reproduce the very hierarchies it seeks to critique?
LV: As an editor, I publish scholarly articles, not authors. This is why scholars perform a double blind peer review before publishing edited collections. What the authors say elsewhere is not my responsibility.
TNA: You have argued that settler colonialism is a useful framework for understanding Zionism up until Oslo, but that after the accords (particularly in the West Bank) the form of domination shifted away from a settler colonial model. Rather than shrinking the case, wouldn’t it be more useful to expand the framework to account for these transformations?
LV: My work on settler colonialism as a specific mode of domination was always intended as integrative rather than substitutive. When I started, I could read a lot about colonialism, and very little about settler colonialism. But the idea was to integrate new knowledge with the existing scholarship. Besides, I always maintained that the two modes of domination coconstitute each other dialectically and interpenetrate on the ground. The idea was to observe distinct modes of domination in their dynamic interaction. Attention to both enabled, for example, my observation of Zionism in its historical evolution. I am not committed to settler colonial studies beyond its effectiveness as an interpretative lens.
TNA: How does the genocidal war on Gaza fit into this broader analysis?
LV: The war we are witnessing now and the ceasefire that followed is also one result of the realisation that the settler colonial project has failed. Zionism always had to contend against Palestinians, but it also had to offer a better deal than life in the Jewish Diaspora could. That drawn out battle was eventually lost. A settler colonial project needs to control territory but also to shape suitable demographies. Many Israelis are leaving Israel for good. Besides, it was in relation to Gaza that dehumanisation could proceed most unrestrained and genocidal fantasies took shape. It is in Gaza in particular where the Zionist ambition of eventually replacing the Indigenous population most visibly failed. It is not that settlers were not established in Gaza – they were, and they were eventually removed in order to perpetuate the settler colonial occupation elsewhere. It was a settler colonial move. But the memory of this removal ended up haunting neo-Zionist thinking. It is a spectre; they are chasing that spectre away and destroying the viability of the settler colonial project as well as everything else.
TNA:“The term ‘Indigenous’ is used in varying ways across different contexts. In academic discourse, it is applied inconsistently, while international institutions tend to define it in relation to ‘traditional ways of life.’ How do you interpret this term within the framework of settler colonial studies?
LV: There are many definitions of indigeneity. I have offered one, but it is a crowded space (and also a very productive debate). In my understanding it is a relational category, like being a husband, or a wife, or a cousin. One is an Indigenous person because they are facing a settler. Before they met the settler, they were just themselves. It is Fanon who notes that it is the settler who brings the Indigenous person into existence. This is also why the settler will never become a native. Asking how long before they do, how long before the settler becomes a native, is like wondering how long it takes for the owner of a factory to become a proletarian. They may spend every day in the factory, but unless they lose their control of the means of production, they will never turn into someone else. Being Indigenous means that, unlike the settler, one’s relationship with the land is ontological and nonhistorical. But in my understanding, it is always and unavoidably political: it is an unequal relationship that constitutes Indigenous persons and settler coloniser, and that relation is defined by the politics of a settler colonial regime. No metaphors: that regime should be dissolved.
TNA: What do you think is the most urgent question facing settler colonial studies today? Are there new areas of research that scholars should be focusing on?
LV: Settler colonial studies is currently under attack. After the outbreak of war in Gaza, it began circulating widely in public discourse beyond academia. But then there was blowback. The New York Times, Time Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal have run critical pieces in 2024. Settler colonial studies was also recently attacked in conservative circles as ‘Critical Race Theory 2.0’. Meanwhile, three economic historians were awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for their defence of settler colonial institutions (which they described as ‘inclusive’). In the current reactionary conjuncture, I expect silencing and repression. But at least the concept is being discussed beyond academia, which is refreshing.
