Elia Zureik

By the standards of historical and anthropological scholarship, Israel constitutes a colonial settler regime whose certain features may differ from those exhibited by other European settler regimes. Yet, in the larger scheme of things it shares with other such regimes the displacement of the indigenous population, seizure of their territory, the passing of racially biased laws that discriminate against the native population, and reliance on violence to further its methods of control. Originally, the Zionist movement and later the state of Israel have frustrated the aspirations of the Palestinian people towards statehood. Ultimately, the state of Israel has codified its new Citizenship Law that defines Israel as the state of the Jewish people, thus ignoring the status of the original Palestinian population.