Uncovering the essence of Zionism in spaces of exception: settler elimination in the Occupied Territories

Abstract

Patrick Wolfe’s analysis of the settler colonial logic of elimination has provided insight into the state of Israel’s objectives in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. However, merging Giorgio Agamben’s rendition of the state of exception with the logic of elimination provides a useful political analysis of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and the ideological commitments of the Israeli state. By demonstrating the indissoluble relationship between the Zionist settler vision, the logic of elimination and the mythology required to maintain the legitimacy of the Jewish state, the requirement of force to achieve the Zionist vision becomes clear. However, settler elimination, especially in the age of human rights, liberalism, and democracy, requires an accompanying mythological narrative that legitimises the settler mission to ‘spirit’ the natives away. The mythology that attends the logic of elimination, and permeates the Occupied Territories, is amplified through emergency politics and the state of exception. In this way, the state of exception creates spaces of exception where the sovereign state can behave without moral or legal consequence. After exploring the consistency of Israel’s logic of elimination in the West Bank, throughout the 1900s to the present day, the siege of Gaza can be then viewed as a form of elimination augmented through the state of exception. In the space of Gaza, Israeli power can be expressed with significantly less restriction and moral or legal commitment, thus representing the truest expression of the same logic of elimination that has accompanied the Zionist mission in Palestine from its earliest initiation.

Date of Thesis submission	2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Western Sydney University
Supervisor	Diane Colman (Supervisor)