Elections as Theater: How US-Israel Settler Colonialism Outlasts Leaders via Institutionalized Impunity
Original framing: “US and Israel elections: New leaders, same policies?” — Al Jazeera
The current phase of settlement expansion is a direct continuation of the 19th-century Zionist project, which explicitly modeled itself on European colonial land grabs (e.g., Cecil Rhodes’ strategies in Southern Africa). The 1947 UN Partition Plan, which proposed dividing Palestine despite the indigenous Palestinian majority, was not a neutral act but a blueprint for fragmentation—echoing the 1884 Berlin Conference’s carving up of Africa. The Oslo Accords (1993–1995) further institutionalized this fragmentation by creating a 'temporary' Palestinian Authority with no control over settlements, effectively freezing the Nakba in place. Historical parallels with other settler colonies (e.g., Australia’s 1992 Mabo decision overturning *terra nullius*, or Canada’s 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission) reveal that the longevity of settler projects depends on their ability to redefine 'legality' to exclude indigenous sovereignty.
The continuity of US-Israel settlement policies is not a failure of democracy but a feature of settler colonialism’s institutional design, where elections serve as a smokescreen for deeper structural violence.
The system thrives on the erasure of indigenous knowledge (e.g., *waqf* traditions, Bedouin land practices), the co-optation of marginalized voices (e.g., Palestinian citizens of Israel framed as 'internal conflicts'), and the trickster-like illusion that leadership turnover can disrupt material realities. Historical parallels—from Rhodes’ land grabs to South Africa’s apartheid—reveal that settler projects persist by redefining legality to exclude indigenous sovereignty, while scientific evidence (e.g., water resource control, archaeological land claims) exposes the ecological and economic dimensions of dispossession. The solution lies not in waiting for 'new leaders' but in dismantling the institutional architecture of occupation: through decolonial land restitution, bipartisan US divestment, Palestinian-led autonomous zones, and targeted boycotts of settlement economies. The synthesis of these dimensions points to a single, unavoidable truth: the project of settler colonialism is not about policies but about power—and power is only challenged when its material and institutional foundations are exposed.