Last week, the United Nations' International Court of Justice (ICJ) released a ruling stating that Israeli settlements violate international law (read the dissent here). This ICJ ruling enforces the alleged notion that Israel is a settler colonizer. A settler colonizer is a "system of oppression based on genocide and colonialism, that aims to displace a population of a nation (oftentimes indigenous people) and replace it with a new settler population." A classic example of a settler colonizer are the Afrikaners, the Dutch who settled in South Africa in the 17th century. This permanent settlement of Afrikaners later resulted in the Afrikaner-led apartheid of Black people in South Africa. While Palestine and its allies, not to mention the ICJ, would like to paint Israel with that same brush, calling Israel a settler colonizer does not hold for a number of reasons.
The Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel. Jews have had a presence in Judea and Samaria for about three millennia, in spite of who conquered the land over the centuries. There is historical and archeological evidence of this continued Jewish presence, not to mention that the connection to the land of Israel has been embedded within Jewish texts and rituals. Indigenous people cannot colonize themselves by definition because colonization occurs from an outside force. Contrast that to concept of Palestinian nationhood that has existed since the 1960s, which was nearly 20 years after the modern-day state of Israel was established.
There has never been a sovereign, Arab nation known as Palestine. Yes, there were multiple occupiers of the land over the centuries, including the Romans expelling the majority of Jews in the first century C.E., the Byzantines, and the Ottomans until the early 20th century. Then the British ruled over the land until the mid-1940s. The UN Partition Plan of 1947 proposed a Jewish state alongside a de facto Arab state. Instead of agreeing, the Arab nations pounced on Israel right after Israel declared independence in attempts to wipe out the Jews.
Guess what happened? The Jews came out ahead and established the modern-day state of Israel in 1948. But in all this time, there was never a Palestinian government that controlled land in the Middle East. No one can identify a Palestinian national anthem, the first Palestinian president, or a number of facts that would indicate bona fide statehood. That is because there was never an Arab Palestinian state, whether under the Romans, Byzantines, Ottomans, or British. How can you return land to a people that were never a self-governing state in the first place? This point will make another appearance in Part II.
Israel is not trying to replace Jews with the Arab population. This key facet of settler colonialism does not reflect reality for a few reasons. One, there have been multiple occasions when Israel supported the creation of a Palestinian state next to Israel. The problem has been Palestinian rejectionism and its embrace of terrorism as an attempt to wipe out the Jews. Second, there are nearly two million Arab Muslims living in Israel, which negates the "ethnic cleansing" argument. Conversely, Palestinian officials do not want Jews in their midst. Hamas has been trying to wipe out Jews since its founding and even Mahmoud Abbas has said that he does not want a single Jew in a future Palestinian state. The third thing is that Israel is NOT committing genocide.
Settlements are not an obstacle to peace. This argument is important to refute because it assumes that a) Israel is the colonial aggressor and the settlements are a manifestation of that aggression, and b) removing the settlements would bring about peace. As I argued seven years ago, the settlements are not the obstacle to peace. The obstacle is the Palestinian refusal to have Jewish neighbors.
There has not been a moment when the Palestinian politicians (or the rulers of Arab countries, especially in pre-1967 terms) wanted a two-state solution. Nor do a majority of everyday Palestinian civilians want to coexist with Israel on their borders. They always wanted all the land and still do. If that was not clear after all the times the Arab times rejected a two-state solution and after all suicide bombings, intifadas, airplane hijackings, it was certainly clear after the October 7 attacks last year. This animus against the Jews predates the settlements and shows no signs of abating because it is not about settlements: the problem for the Palestinians is Israel's very existence.
In Part II of this blog series, I will cover the legalese that justifies Israel's claim to the land.
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