Colonizing Palestine: The Zionist Left and the Making of the Palestinian Nakba

Colonizing Palestine examines the formation of settler-colonial hierarchies in Mandatory Palestine, focusing on how the practices and ideologies of the socialist Zionist left in the early twentieth century helped lay the groundwork for the 1948 Nakba. Through a critical and historically grounded analysis spanning from the mid-1930s to the 1950s, and from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, it traces how structures of domination and dispossession became institutionalized and normalized.

The book critically engages with the role of the Socialist Zionist left, challenging conventional narratives that portray it as a force for coexistence. Instead, it reveals how this political tradition contributed to the consolidation of settler-colonial logics. By tracing the material and symbolic mechanisms of land appropriation, population transfer, and legal-political frameworks, the book demonstrates how the foundational power relations established during this period continue to shape the sociopolitical landscape of Israel-Palestine today, including persistent dynamics of displacement, statelessness, and resistance.

• Department of Near Eastern Studies
• Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies
• Humanities Council
• Princeton Palestinian Studies Colloquium
• University Center for Human Values