Eugene Rogan (University of Oxford)

There is a tendency to view the term ‘settler colonialism’ as a pejorative slur rather than as an historical phenomenon. Of course, anti-Israel protesters use the term not just to discredit the modern-day settler movement but to put in question the very legitimacy behind the creation of the state of Israel. Many of my students recoil at the expression, believing it reflects a political bias.  

Yet it is important to restore settler colonialism to its original use in making distinctions between different forms of imperialism. Settler colonialism refers to those movements that went beyond the exercise of formal imperial control over the colonised people to promote large-scale immigration designed to shift the demographic balance of the colonised territory.  

Settler colonialism was far more common in North America, Southern Africa and the Antipodes than in the rest of Asia and Africa where, for the most part, Europeans had no wish to live. Over the course of the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, millions of Europeans resettled in lands owned or claimed by indigenous peoples. In North America, British settlers established 13 colonies that would become the United States. Narratives of ‘pioneers’ and ‘the frontier’ masked the genocidal violence these settler movements inflicted on Native American communities. Nor was the violent displacement of indigenous peoples limited to the United States. Aboriginal groups have levelled accusations of genocide against British settlement in Australia, as First Nation groups charge Europeans with genocide in Canada.

In the twentieth century, the British showed little interest in settler colonialism, opting instead for a managerial form of imperialism that incurred less cost and fewer risks. The goal was a modern, sustainable empire. British rule in Transjordan, for instance, involved only British administrators and military men, but did not lead to the establishment of any foreign colonies. Interestingly, one line of imperial reasoning in Iraq, advocated by A.T. Wilson, sought to adopt far more direct rule, on the precedent of British rule in India, and even sought to settle millions of Indian nationals in Iraq. Wilson’s views were rejected in favour of an allied Arab government under King Faisal, and the British did not introduce foreign settlers in Iraq. However, for a moment, they did consider Indian settler colonialism in Iraq.

France practiced a higher degree of settler colonialism in their North African holdings than they did in their Middle Eastern mandates. Algeria was the extreme example where, over 132 years, the settler population grew to over 15 percent of the total population, with some 1.2 million Europeans in Algeria on the eve of independence in 1962. But France’s other North African protectorates were also the target of settlement, if on a smaller scale – some 255,000 Europeans in Tunisia by independence in 1956, some 350,000 in Morocco in 1955.

Against this background, it is easy to see why Israel and its supporters chafe at the claim that Israel is a settler colonial state. However, from its inception, the Zionist movement sought to change the demography of a host territory for the creation of a Jewish state. Since the First Zionist Congress adopted the Basel Program in 1897, the Zionist movement sought:

… to establish a home in Palestine for the Jewish people, secured under public law. 

To achieve this goal, the Congress envisages the following means:

1. The expedient promotion of the settlement of Jewish agriculturists, artisans, and businessmen in Palestine.
2. The organization and bringing together of all Jews through local and general events, according to the laws of the various countries.
3. The strengthening of Jewish feeling and national consciousness.
4. Preparatory steps for obtaining the governmental approval which is necessary to the achievement of the Zionist purpose.
   
   

In other words, the Zionist movement saw itself as a settler movement from the outset. They sought to advance their dream of Jewish statehood by expanding Jewish colonies (since 1882, Jewish settlers had established a string of colonies in Palestine), encouraging settlement, and changing the demography of Palestine. A Jewish state was inconceivable as long as the Jewish community was a minority in Palestine. The challenge facing the delegates in the Zionist Congress was how to encourage enough European Jews to move to Palestine when it was part of the Ottoman Empire.

The First World War, and the Balfour Declaration, proved transformative for Zionist settlement in Palestine. With the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the post-war partition of Arab lands, Palestine came under an imperial authority committed to Jewish settlement. By drafting the Balfour Declaration into the terms of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, Britain committed itself to advancing the cause of Jewish settler colonialism in Palestine. Over the next two decades, the Jewish community in Palestine increased by hundreds of thousands, transforming the demography of the country.

It remains unclear just how supportive the British were of Zionist aspirations in Palestine. Great Britain was quite committed to retaining Palestine for its own empire and there is no evidence that the Balfour Declaration and its framers ever intended the Jews in Palestine to become the majority population. Were it to do so, the Jewish community of Palestine would seek independent statehood, taking Palestine out of the British Empire. The only time Britain showed its hand, in placing a formal limit on the size of the Jewish community, was in the 1939 White Paper designed to placate the Arab majority in Palestine after three years of violent insurgency. In that document, the British limited future Jewish immigration to 35% the total population and called for Palestinian independence under majority rule by 1949. That both Arabs and Jews rejected the terms of the White Paper is immaterial.  What it demonstrates is that the British sought to restrict the Yishuv to a compact minority rather than to enable Jewish statehood in Palestine. Such a compact minority, ever dependent on British protection, would have better served British imperial interests than an assertive majority community demanding Jewish independence. 

Born of settler colonialism, the state of Israel has never abandoned the goal of changing the demography of Palestine to foster a strong Jewish majority. Efforts to encourage immigration of Mizrahi Jews from Arab states in the 1950s, the rescue of the Ethiopian Falasha Jews in the 1970s, the open encouragement of Russians whether strictly Jewish or not, and the continuing influx of idealistic Zionists from sympathetic diaspora communities in the USA and France continue to demonstrate the appeal of settlement in Zionism down to the present day. Of course, now that Israel is a sovereign state, it would be wrong to refer to the encouragement of Jewish immigration within the Green Line as settler colonialism. It is the rapid expansion of Jewish settlers beyond the Green Line, in the West Bank and, until 2005, in the Gaza Strip, with the aid and encouragement of successive Israeli governments since 1967, that reflects an ongoing logic of demographic change and displacement typical of settler colonialism. For as long as these practices continue, Israel will be accused of settler colonialism with good grounds, not as a matter of pejorative slurs but of historical fact.