Settler Colonialism (without settlers) & Slow Violence in the Gaza Strip

Israel’s ongoing settler colonialism in occupied Palestinian territory impacts Palestinians’ everyday life in all its aspects. In this webinar we discuss how Israel’s interventions, in particular since its “withdrawal” from the Gaza Strip in 2005, can be conceptualized through a combined lens of Wolfe’s logic of elimination and Nixon’s slow violence. We suggest that the idea of eliminating the existing population - without the physical presence of settlers inside Gaza - is not only inherent in the production of a new reality and geography, but also at the core of the transformation of the Strip into a frontier. In this manner Israel has fewer and weaker moral obligations over Gaza’s population and hence the possibility of manipulating destructive power and violent practices. With a specific focus on Israel’s interventions in the field of health, we discuss how power, violence and health are entangled in conflicts zone in general and in Gaza in particular, by presenting the effect of violence in general and infrastructure demolition in particular, on the everyday life of Gazans. We argue that Israel’s withdrawal marks not only a continuation but even a radicalization of settler colonialism in the Gaza Strip through (often) slow violence.