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PAST IS PRESENT: SETTLER COLONIALISM IN PALESTINE

7th Annual Conference

5- 6 March | Brunei Gallery | School of Oriental and African Studies – London

organised by SOAS Palestine Society

and hosted by the London Middle East Institute

For over a century, Zionism has subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation, and erasure in the pursuit of a new colonial Israeli society. Too often, this Palestine ‘Question’ has been framed as unique; a national, religious, and/or liberation struggle with little semblance to colonial conflicts elsewhere. The two-day conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine, seeks to reclaim settler colonialism as the central paradigm from which to understand Palestine. It asks: what are the socio-political, economic and spatial processes and mechanisms of settler colonialism in Palestine, and what are the logics underpinning it? By unearthing the histories and geographies of the Palestinian experience of settler colonialism, this conference does not only chart possibilities for understanding Palestine within comparative settler colonial analyses. Rather, it also seeks to break open frameworks binding Palestine, re-align the Palestinian movement within a universal history of decolonisation, and imagine new possibilities for Palestinian resistance, solidarity and common struggle.


Day One: Saturday, 5th March 2011
Registration and Refreshments: 9.00-9.30
Opening and Keynote: 9.30-10.15
Hassan Hakimian – London Middle East Institute
Not Another Racism: Zionism, a Logic of Elimination
Patrick Wolfe – La Trobe University

Session One – Empire, Settler Colonialism and Zionism: 10.45-12.15
Chair: Nelida Fuccaro – School of Oriental and African Studies
Playing the Zionist Card: The British Empire and the Middle East
John Newsinger – Bath Spa University
Literature of Settler Societies: Albert Camus, S. Yizhar, and Amos Oz
Gabriel Piterberg – University of California, Los Angeles
The Settler Colonialism Paradigm and its Place in Palestinian Political Development
Naseer Aruri – University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth

Refreshments: 12.15-12.30


Session Two – Zionism Destroys to Replace: 12.30-14.00
Chair: Laleh Khalili – School of Oriental and African Studies
The Palestinian Labour Market and the Politics of Zionist Settler Colonialism
Gershon Shafir – University of California, San Diego
The Erasure of the Native
Ilan Pappe – University of Exeter
The Second Phase of the Settler Colonial Conquest of Palestine: The 1967 Allon Plan and the Search for a Zionist ‘Settlement’
Gilbert Achcar – School of Oriental and African Studies


Lunch: 14.00-14.45


Session Three – Zionism Controls the Native: 14.45-16.15
Chair: Ruba Salih – School of Oriental and African Studies
Chronicles of a Cultural Destruction: The Appropriation of Palestinian Knowledge during the 1948 War
Gish Amit – Ben-Gurion University
Indigenous Citizens and the Contradictions of Status amongst Palestinians in Israel
As’ad Ghanem – Ibn Khaldun, The Arab Association for Research and Development
Frontier Wars and Robotic Colonisation
Eyal Weizman – Goldsmiths College


Refreshments: 16.15-16.30


Session Four – A Political Economy of Settler Colonialism: 16.30-18.00
Chair: Elisa van Waeyenberge – School of Oriental and African Studies
A ‘Bad Lot’? Palestinian Businessmen and the British Colonial State
Sherene Seikaly – American University of Cairo
The Exploitation of the Palestinian Economy by Israel
Shir Hever – Alternative Information Center
Palestinian Capitalism, Regional Accumulation Processes and Implications for Liberation Strategy
Adam Hanieh – School of Oriental and African Studies

Day Two: Sunday 6th March 2011


Registration and Refreshments: 10.30-11.00


Keynote: 11.00-12.00
Letter from Gaza: On Colonialism, Capitalism and Resistance
Rabah Mohanna – Palestinian Legislative Council, Gaza


Session Five – Indigenous Life and the Reverberations of Settler Colonialism: 12.00-13.30
Chair: Lori Allen - University of Cambridge
Counterfeit Citizenship: On the Politics of Property in Nahr El-Bared
Monika Halkort – Queen’s University, Belfast
Ethnic Cleansing in the Naqab: The Razings of the Bedouin Village of
Al-‘Araqib
Mansour Nsasra – University of Exeter
Policing, Self-Policing and Indigenous Collaboration
Mouin Rabbani – Institute of Palestine Studies


Lunch: 13.30-14.30


Session Six – Overcoming Zionism, Dismantling Settler Colonialism: 14.30-16.00
Chair: Jan Jananayagam – Tamils Against Genocide
Decolonising Settler Colonialisms
Lorenzo Veracini – Swinburne University of Technology
The Power and Pitfalls of a Support Movement: Campaigning Against the Jewish National Fund
Selma James – International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network
Towards Common Liberation
Mezna Qato – University of Oxford


Refreshments: 16.00-16.15


Roundtable – Unsettling (Settler) Colonialism: 16.15-18.15

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