Settler colonialism
Settler colonialism is a form of colonialism that seeks to replace the original population of the colonized territory with a new society of settlers. As with all forms of colonialism, it is based on exogenous domination, typically organized or supported by an imperial authority. Settler colonialism is enacted by a variety of means ranging from violent depopulation of the previous inhabitants to more subtle, legal means such as assimilation or recognition of indigenous identity within a colonial framework.
Unlike other forms of colonialism, the imperial power does not always represent the same nationality as the settlers. However, the colonizing authority generally views the settlers as racially superior to the previous inhabitants, which may give settlers’ social movements and political demands greater legitimacy than those of colonized peoples in the eyes of the home colonies, whereas natural and human resources are the main motivation behind other forms of colonialism. Normal colonialism typically ends eventually, whereas settler colonialism lasts indefinitely, except in the rare event of complete evacuation or settler decolonization.
Settler colonialism is generally discussed in terms of the one-way flow of British values, which overtake and repudiate the culture and history of the location in question. Transnational and global studies of settler colonialism often give more importance to the histories of British emigrants rather than the indigenous peoples that were displaced. Legal proceedings in Australia and Canada have challenged settler rights, highlighting the lasting effects of colonial takeover, and the continued displacement of Indigenous peoples at the start of the twenty-first century. In the United States, Western Australia and South Africa, government used land allotment as a legal way to take possession of indigenous peoples’ land.
In the ancient world
Settler colonialism has occurred extensively throughout human history, including in the ancient world.Greek colonization
Following the collapse of the Greek Bronze Age, Greek City states, or poleis, began to grow. By the 8thcentury BCE, population growth was no longer sustainable in and around the Aegean, prompting the Ancient Greeks to look to the other shores of the Mediterranean and Black Sea to direct their people to. Miletus, an Ionian Greek city-state on the Western shore of Anatolia, was a rich polis that was considered to be greatest Greek metropolis. Pliny the Elder, in his book Natural History, credits Miletus with founding over 90 colonies, including Sinope in the Black Sea. Sinope itself founded several Greek colonies in the Black Sea region and flourished in its own right, but the site of Sinope was once a Hittite port called Sinuwa before being colonized by the Greeks. The Hittite empire, at its height, spanned across Anatolia. The Hittites were a distinct people from the Greeks and contact between the two cultures extended back to the Late Bronze Age during the time of the Mycenaean Greeks.Sinope is an example of an αποικία – apoikia, which is a colony that eventually develops into a self-determining city state yet keeps cultural ties with its mother city. Greek colonies were founded across the Mediterranean and facilitated the Hellenization of the basin. Cicero, the Roman orator, once made a remark about the extensive colonization movements of the Greeks and spread of their culture by saying “It were as though a Greek fringe has been woven about the shores of the barbarians.”
Rome
The Roman Republic and later the Roman Empire commonly established settler colonies in newly conquered regions. The colonists were often veterans of the Roman army, who received agricultural land to develop. These agricultural communities provided bastions of loyal citizens in often hostile areas of the Empire, and often accelerated the process of Romanisation among the nearby conquered peoples. Near the city of Damascus in present-day Syria, the contemporary settlements of Mezze and Deraya can trace their origins back to villages opened for settlement by the Romans during the third century CE. Philip the Arab, the Roman Emperor from 244–249, designated this area around Damascus a colonia, and encouraged settlement by veterans of the VI Ferrata legion, as commemorated by coins minted in the city around this time.Medieval Eras
Germany
Ostsiedlung was the medieval eastward migration and settlement of Germanic-speaking peoples into less-populated regions of Central Europe, parts of west Eastern Europe, and the Baltics.Japan
Natives called Emishi in Mutsu Province lived politically independent yet in constant battle with settlers and conquerors from further south, with Kyoto's victory over them in 802 A.D., after which there was cultural extinction and forced assimilation gradually erasing their culture and ethnicity by the time of the Northern Fujiwara.In early modern and modern times
During the early modern period, some European nation-states and their agents adopted policies of colonialism, competing with each other to establish colonies outside of Europe, at first in the Americas, and later in Asia, Africa, and Oceania.In the Americas
European colonization of the Americas began as early as the 10th century, when Norse sailors explored and settled limited areas on the shores of present-day Greenland and Canada. According to Norse folklore, violent conflicts with the indigenous population ultimately made the Norse abandon those settlements.Extensive European colonization began in 1492, when a Spanish expedition headed by Genoese Christopher Columbus sailed west to find a new trade route to the Far East but inadvertently landed in the Americas. European conquest, large-scale exploration, colonization and industrial development soon followed. Columbus's first two voyages reached the Bahamas and various Caribbean islands, including Hispaniola, Puerto Rico and Cuba. In 1497, sailing from Bristol on behalf of England, John Cabot landed on the North American coast, and a year later, Columbus's third voyage reached the South American coast. As the sponsor of Christopher Columbus's voyages, Spain was the first European power to settle and colonize the largest areas, from North America and the Caribbean to the southern tip of South America. Spanish cities were founded as early as 1496 with Santo Domingo in today's Dominican Republic.
Other powers such as France also founded colonies in the Americas: in eastern North America, a number of Caribbean islands, and small coastal parts of South America. Portugal colonized Brazil, tried early colonizing of the coasts of present-day Canada, and sat for extended periods on the northwest bank of the River Plate. This was the beginning of a dramatic territorial expansion for several European countries. Europe had been preoccupied with internal wars, and was only slowly recovering from the loss of population caused by the bubonic plague; thus the rapid rate at which it grew in wealth and power was unforeseeable in the early 15th century.
Eventually, the entire Western Hemisphere came under the ostensible control of European governments, leading to profound changes to its landscape, population, and plant and animal life. In the 19th century alone over 50 million people left Europe for the Americas. The post-1492 era is known as the period of the Columbian Exchange, a widespread exchange of animals, plants, culture, human populations, communicable disease, and ideas between the Pan-American and Afro-Eurasian hemispheres following Columbus's voyages to the Americas.
Settler colonialism in the United States
In the context of the United States, early colonial powers generally respected the territorial and political sovereignty of the indigenous tribes, due to the need to forge local alliances with these tribes against other European colonial powers. However, with the emergence of an independent United States, desire for land and the perceived threat of permanent indigenous political and spatial structures led to violent relocation of many indigenous tribes to the American West, including the notable example of the Cherokee in what is known as the Trail of Tears. While the United States government and local state governments directly aided this dispossession through the use of military forces, ultimately this came about through agitation by settler society in order to gain access to indigenous land, which in some cases used in order to build a plantation society and perpetuate the practice of slavery in the creation of said plantation.This forcible relocation of tribes came about in part through the mentality of Manifest Destiny, the mentality that it was the right and destiny of the United States to expand its territory and its rule across the North American continent, to the Pacific coast. Through various armed conflicts between indigenous tribes on one side, with settler society backed by American military power on the other side, along with an increasing number of treaties centering around land cessation, Native American tribes were slowly pushed onto a system of reservations, where they traded territory for protection and support from the United States government. However, this system could be disadvantageous for tribes, as they often were forced to relocate to reservations far from their traditional homelands, or had trouble obtaining goods and annuity payments that were promised by the government, leading to further armed revolts and conflicts such as the Dakota War of 1862 in Minnesota.
Following the conclusion of U.S./Native American conflicts in the late 1800s, displacement of indigenous peoples and identities switched to a more legal basis. Attempts were made to assimilate them into American society while stripping away territory; legislation like the Dawes Act of 1887 led to the division of previously communally held indigenous lands into individually owned pieces of land that were to be held by tribal members. While 'allotment' was as mentioned held up as a way to help indigenous people become 'civilized' and further assimilated into settler society, other motives included the erosion of tribal culture and social unity, along with allowing for more land for European-American settlement and economic ventures to make use of indigenous lands. In the educational sphere, a system of boarding schools for Native children worked to strip indigenous languages, religions and cultures away from children in order for them to better assimilate into American culture, in schools that were often geographically distant from their home reservation.
Further developments such as the Federal policies of termination and relocation in the 1950s and 1960s reinforced the aims of settler society to eliminate indigenous identity and occupation of space, through the disestablishment of Federal treaty/trust obligations to tribes, the transfer of civil and criminal jurisdiction over many reservations to the individual states, and the encouragement of Native Americans to leave their reservations and relocate to cities such as New York City, Minneapolis, Denver and Portland; it was hoped that this relocation would further erode tribal identity and speed up the process of assimilation. While both policies were officially and unofficially ended by the early 1970s, they had the effect of creating a large population of Native American urban populations, and the unintended side effect of giving rise to increased political awareness among Native Americans, leading to the creation of organizations such as the American Indian Movement.
In the present day, the legacy of settler colonialism in the United States has created a complicated relationship between indigenous tribes and the United States, especially in the area of treaty rights and sovereignty. Much contemporary literature written by indigenous scholars and scholars within the field of American Indian Studies/Native Studies centers around recognising the disruptive effects that settler colonialism has had on Native American tribes, including land loss, destruction of tribal languages and cultures, and tribal efforts to maintain recognition of rights they have gained via treaties with the United States government.
The United States has acknowledged its history of slavery, but has not yet publicly dealt with the historic violence of settler colonialism. Although settler colonialism is a racial issue, it cannot be reduced simply to racism, and therefore cannot be solved through inclusion alone.
Afghanistan
Starting from the 1880s, various governments of Afghanistan have pursued policies towards the goal of having more ethnic Pashtuns settle in northern Afghanistan. These Pashtun colonization policies had three major purposes—to strengthen Afghanistan government's hold on its northern territories, to allow Afghan governments to deport their opponents up north, and to help economically develop northern Afghanistan.Nepal
The native inhabitants of the plains have been the Madheshis. However, due to large planned settlement of Hills people by the King Mahendra of Nepal after construction of a parallel Highway to the existing Hulaki Rajmarg, in many places the native population has been reduced to a minority. Overall the demographic change has been such that a 6% population of people of the hills origin in the plains has risen to 36% in between 1951 & 2011.Vietnam
The native inhabitants of the Central Highlands are the Degar peoples. Vietnam conquered and invaded the area during its "march to the south". Ethnic Vietnamese people now outnumber the indigenous Degars after state sponsored colonization directed by both the government of South Vietnam and the current Communist government of unified Vietnam. The Montagnards have fought against and resisted all Vietnamese invaders, from the anti-Communist South Vietnamese government, the Vietcong, to the Communist government of unified Vietnam.The Montagnard lands in the Central Highlands were subjected to state sponsored colonization by ethnic Vietnamese settlers under the South Vietnamese regime of Ngo Dinh Diem which resulted in estranging the Montagnards and leading them to reject Vietnamese rule.
The South Vietnamese and Communist Vietnamese colonization of the Central Highlands have been compared to the historic Nam tiến of previous Vietnamese rulers. During the Nam tiến Khmer and Cham territory was seized and militarily colonized by the Vietnamese which was repeated by the state sponsored colonization of Northern Vietnamese Catholic refugees on Montagnard land by the South Vietnamese leader Diem and the introduction to the Central Highlands of "New Economic Zones" by the now Communist Vietnamese government.
The thousand year violent war the Vietnamese in the lowlands had with the Montagnards in the mountains was a long established custom and the Vietnamese used the derogatory word "Moi" to address the Montagnards, the South Vietnamese government was strongly against the autonomous Montagnard CIDG who were fighting against the Vietcong because they feared that the Montagnards would gain independence so the South Vietnamese and Montagnards violently clashed against each other. The Vietnamese Communists implemented harsh punishment against the Montagnards after the defeat of South Vietnam.
The Vietnamese viewed and dealt with the indigenous Montagnards in the CIDG from the Central Highlands as "savages" and this caused a Montagnard uprising against the Vietnamese.
The Montagnard Rhades mounted a revolt, seizing hundreds of Vietnamese civilians and soldiers, assassinating officers of the Vietnamese special forces and seizing American advisers on 19–20 September but the 23rd Division of the South Vietnamese army stopped them from sizing Ban Me Thout, the provincial capital of Darlac Province.
The South Vietnamese and Communists "victimized" the Montagnards.
In the Central Highlands the Montagnard FULRO organization fought against both the Communists and South Vietnamese due to discrimination by the South Vietnamese army against the Montagnards. After the victory of the Communist North Vietnamese, the Vietnamese refused autonomy to the Montagnards, and on Montagnard land they settled around one million ethnic Vietnamese in addition to using "reducation camps" on the Montagnards, leading the Montagnard FULRO to continue the armed struggle against the Vietnamese.
The Vietnamese were originally centered around the Red River Delta but engaged in conquest and seized new lands such as Champa, the Mekong Delta and the Central Highlands during Nam Tien, while the Vietnamese received strong Chinese influence in their culture and civilization and were Sinicized, and the Cambodians and Laotians were Indianized, the Montagnards in the Central Highlands maintained their own native culture without adopting external culture and were the true indigenous natives of the region, and to hinder encroachment on the Central Highlands by Vietnamese nationalists, the term Pays Montagnard du Sud-Indochinois PMSI emerged for the Central Highlands along with the natives being addressed by the name Montagnard. The tremendous scale of Vietnamese Kinh colonists flooding into the Central Highlands has significantly altered the demographics of the region.
Violent demonstrations with fatalities have broken out due to Montagnard anger at Vietnamese discrimination and seizure of their land since many Vietnamese Kinh were settled by the government in the Central Highlands.
Long tails and excessive body hair were attributed as physical characteristics of Montagnards in Vietnamese school textbooks in the past.
Up until French rule, the Central Highlands was almost never entered by the Vietnamese since they viewed it as a savage populated area with fierce animals like tigers, "poisoned water" and "evil malevolent spirits", but with the French transformation of the land into a profitable plantation area for crop growing, its desirability increased to the Vietnamese. in addition to the natural resources from the forests, minerals and rich earth and realization of its crucial geographical importance.
Ethnic minorities in general have also been referred to as "moi", including other "hill tribes" like the Muong.
The anti-ethnic minority discriminatory policies by the Vietnamese, environmental degradation, deprivation of lands from the natives, and settlement of native lands by a massive amount of Vietnamese settlers led to massive protests and demonstrations by the Central Highland's indigenous native ethnic minorities against the Vietnamese in January–February 2001 and this event gave a tremendous blow to the claim often published by the Vietnamese government that in Vietnam There has been no ethnic confrontation, no religious war, no ethnic conflict. And no elimination of one culture by another.
The same state sponsored settlement of ethnic minority land by Vietnamese Kinh has happened in another highland region, the Annamite Cordillera, both the Central Highlands and Annamite Cordillera were populated by ethnic minorities who were not Vietnamese during the 20th century's start, but the demographics of the highlands was drastically transformed with the mass colonization of 6 million settlers from 1976 to the 1990s, which led to ethnic Vietnamese Kinh outnumbering the native ethnic groups in the highlands.
Most of the highlands like the Annamite Range and the Central Highlands were populated by ethnic minorities who were not Vietnamese during the 20th century's start, but the demographics of the highlands was drastically transformed with the mass colonization of 6 million settlers from 1976 to the 1990s, which led to ethnic Vietnamese Kinh outnumbering the native ethnic groups in the highlands. The Vietnamese Kinh dominated government media propagate negative stereotypes of the highlander ethnic minorities, labeling them as "ignorant", "illiterate", "backward" and claim that they are impoverished and underdeveloped because of their own lack of economic and agricultural skills. Ethnic Vietnamese Kinh settlers have negative stereotypes and views of the native ethnic minorities with barely any intermarriage and little interaction since they deliberately choose to live in different villages which are a stark difference from the government's portrayal of harmonic relations between minorities and Vietnamese, with the government claiming that "backward areas" are experiencing "development" from the Vietnamese Kinh settlers they are encouraging yet these places are not underdeveloped and no advantages have come about the minorities form the Vietnamese Kinh settlers, instead only negative consequences of the Vietnamese colonization have been brought upon the minorities like the wiping out of their culture and replacement by Vietnamese Kinh culture and exacerbated poverty due to control of the economy by the Vietnamese Kinh.
Cham Muslims in the Mekong Delta have also been economically marginalized and pushed into poverty by Vietnamese policies, with ethnic Vietnamese Kinh settling on majority Cham land with state support, and religious practices of minorities have been targeted for elimination by the Vietnamese government.
Indonesia
Ireland
Philippines
The native peoples of Mindanao are the Moro Muslims and the Lumad Animists. They have been turned into a minority by the settlement of millions of Filipino Christians from Luzon and the Visayas onto their land.At the beginning of the 20th century, the Moro and Lumads controlled an area which now covers 17 of Mindanao's 24 provinces, but by the 1980 census, they constituted less than 6% of the population of Mindanao and Sulu. Heavy migration to Mindanao of Luzon and Visayans, spurred by government-sponsored resettlement programs, turned the indigenous Lumads and Moros into minorities.
The native Moro Muslims and Lumads were supplanted by the first Spanish and American colonization programs with Christian settlers taking control of key areas and disrupting the Muslim's administrative structures and control over resources, the Americans chose Christian settlers to become officials of settler populated townships instead of Lumads and Muslims, with the environment becoming ruined due to the activities of the settlers and logging. Severe deterioration of the land in Mindanao ensued after the continuing influx of Filipino settlers, with the land becoming essentially useless. Eric S. Casiño wrote on the interaction between the Filipino settlers, the Moro Muslim and Lumad natives and the impact on the environment in his book "Mindanao Statecraft and Ecology: Moros, Lumads, and Settlers Across the Lowland-highland Continuum".
The Americans started a colonization program on Mindanao for foreign agricultural companies and Filipino Christian settlers against the native Muslims and non-Muslim Lumads of Mindanao, in order to secure the area with a Christian presence and help the American military assert control over the area once it was conquered.
90% of Mindanao's people used to consist of native Moro Muslims at the start of the 20th century but the invasion and colonization sponsored by the American and Philippine governments led to Filipino Christian settlers turning into the majority of almost 75% of the population, with the American colonial government helping to kick natives off their land and giving the land titles to Christian colonists. Media compared the American conquest of the west from the Native Americans to the Filipino conquest and settlement of Mindanao from the Muslims, the Philippine government, Philippine military and Filipino militias used extremely violent tactics against natives to support the settlers.
The government agencies involved in settlement on Mindanao were the National Land Settlement Administration and subsequently the Land Settlement and Development Corporation, followed by the National Resettlement and Rehabilitation Administration.
The Americans used their control over property and land laws to let American corporations and Filipino Christian settlers take over Lumad and Moro Muslim resources and land and depriving them of self-governance after eliminating the sovereignty of the Moro Sultanates, and ignoring Moro requests for their own independence, with the Philippine government continuing the colonization program after independence leading to a humongous number of Filipino settlers streaming into Moro territories, and this led to Moros making moves for independence and armed struggle against the Philippines.
After 1960 the settlement program turned the Moro Muslims into a minority from their previous majority in Mindanao, similar to what happened in the Indonesian Transmigration program where frontier areas are settled with ethnic Madurese and Javanese people.
The native Moros became victims to land grabs by Filipino Christian settlers.
Severe violence between native Muslims and Christian settlers erupted due to the influx of Christian colonists, companies and other entities seeking to exploit new land on Mindanao who engaged in land grabbing. Lumad and Muslim interests were ignored by the state sponsored colonization program led by the National Land Settlement Administration which provided benefits for the colonists and made no consideration for the Muslims.
Moro Muslims are just 17% of Mindanao's population whereas prior to the colonization program initiated by the governments of the Philippines they had been a massive majority and the colonization and land grabs led to the current violent conflict, with private companies and Filipino colonists from the Visayas and Luzon taking lands from Moro clans with the Philippine government issuing land titles to settlers and ignoring Moro ownership of the land since they declared Moro land as public lands.
Massive settlement by Filipino Christian colonists continued after independence was granted and rule passed to Christian Filipinos from the Americans and land disputes the Christian settlers had with the Muslim and tribal natives broke out in violence, eventually the colonization, along with the Jabidah massacre, led to the formation of the Moro National Liberation Front and Moro armed insurgency against Philippine rule.
The Philippine government encouraged Filipino Christian settlers in Mindanao to form militias called Ilaga to fight the Moros. The Ilaga engaged in massacres and atrocities and were responsible for Manili massacre of 65 Moro Muslim civilians in a Mosque on June 1971, including women and children. The Ilaga also engaged in cannibalism, cutting off the body parts of their victims to eat in rituals. The Ilaga settlers were given the sarcastic nickname as an acronym, the "Ilonggo Land Grabbers' Association".
The Moros were only incorporated into the Philippines by "conquest and colonization", constituting a separate nation from Filipinos analogous to the experience of Native Americans who violently resisted American conquest.
Bangladesh
The CHT were subjected to colonization by Bengalis supported by the government of Bangladesh after independence. In the Chittagong Hill Tracts Bengali settlers and soldiers have raped native Jumma women "with impunity" with the Bangladeshi security forces doing little to protect the Jummas and instead assisting the rapists and settlers.The indigenous Buddhist and Hindu Jummas of Sino-Tibetan background have been targeted by the Bangladeshi government with massive amounts of violence and genocidal policies as ethnic Bengali settlers swamped into Jumma lands, seized control and massacred them with the Bangladeshi military engaging in mass rape of women, massacres of entire villages and attacks on Hindu and Buddhist religious sites with deliberate targeting of monks and nuns. The settlers are Muslims. The Karuna Bihar Buddhist temple was attacked by Bengali settlers.
Russia
Japan
The island of Hokkaido was inhabited by the indigenous Ainu people until the Japanese invasion and annexation of the island in the 19th century and Japanese mass migration.Taiwan
Nearly the entire population of Taiwan is the result of settler colonialism. The so-called "A-soaⁿ-á", made out of the "Chinese" are descendants of settler colonialists who migrated to Taiwan from mainland China in the 1940s and assimilate most of the native "Taiwanese" aborigines.Nazi Germany
In Oceania
Australia
Europeans came and settled in Australia, displacing Indigenous Australians. The Indigenous Australian population, estimated at about 350,000 at the time of European settlement, declined steeply for 150 years following settlement from 1788, mainly because of infectious disease combined with forced re-settlement and cultural disintegration.New Zealand
New Zealand's European population is the result of migration by Europeans since the beginning of the 19th century. The indigenous Māori population are a significant minority population in the 21st century. The Maori Language Act accords official status to the Māori language. The Treaty of Waitangi is a document of central importance to the history and political constitution of the state of New Zealand, and is widely regarded as the founding document of New Zealand.New Caledonia
The Caldoche are the descendants of European—in the majority French—settlers in New Caledonia, who often displaced the indigenous Kanak population from the mid-19th century onwards.In Africa
South Africa
In 1652, the arrival of Europeans sparked the beginning of settler colonialism in South Africa. The Dutch East India Company was set up at the Cape, and imported large numbers of slaves from Africa and Asia during the mid-seventeenth century. The Dutch East India Company established a refreshment station for ships sailing between Europe and the east. The initial plan by Dutch East India Company officer Jan van Riebeeck was to maintain a small community around the new fort, but the community continued to spread and colonize further than originally planned. There was a historic struggle to achieve the intended British sovereignty that was achieved in other parts of the commonwealth. State sovereignty belonged to the Union of South Africa, followed by the Republic of South Africa. As of 2014, the South African government has re-opened the period for land claims under the Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Act.In the Middle East
Ba'athist Iraq
For decades, Saddam Hussein 'Arabized' northern Iraq, an act often referred as "internal colonialism". The policy of Saddam Hussein in North Iraq during the Ba'athist rule was described by Dr. Francis Kofi Abiew as a "Colonial 'Arabization'" program, including large-scale Kurdish deportations and forced Arab settlement in the region.Northern Cyprus
Following the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe stated that the demographics of the island are continuously modified as a result of the deliberate policies of the Turks. Some suggest that over 120,000 Turkish settlers were brought to the island from mainland Turkey, in violation of article 49 of the Geneva convention.According to the UN resolution 1987/19, adopted on 2 September 1987, the UN expressed "its concern also at the policy and practice of the implantation of settlers in the occupied territories of Cyprus, which constitute a form of colonialism and attempt to change illegally the demographic structure of Cyprus".
Nakhchivan and Nagorno-Karabakh
Zionism and the State of Israel
In 1967, the French historian Maxime Rodinson wrote an article later translated and published in English as Israel: A Colonial Settler-State? Lorenzo Veracini describes Israel as a colonial state and writes that Jewish settlers could expel the British in 1948 only because they had their own colonial relationships inside and outside Israel's new borders. Veracini believes the possibility of an Israeli disengagement is always latent and this relationship could be severed, through an "accommodation of a Palestinian Israeli autonomy within the institutions of the Israeli state" Other commentators, such as Daiva Stasiulis, Nira Yuval-Davis, and Joseph Massad in the "Post Colonial Colony: time, space and bodies in Palestine/ Israel in the persistence of the Palestinian Question" have included Israel in their global analysis of settler societies. Ilan Pappé describes Zionism and Israel in similar terms. Scholar Amal Jamal, from Tel Aviv University, has stated, "Israel was created by a settler-colonial movement of Jewish immigrants".s in the occupied West Bank in 2014
Some Palestinians express similar opinions - writer and sociologist Jamil Hilal, member of the Palestinian National Council lives in what he describes as "the heavily-colonised West Bank", and drew parallels in 1976 between South African and Israeli settler colonialism, writes that "as in Southern Africa, stretches of land were acquired by the Zionist settlers and their Arab tenants thrown out". Former Palestinian Foreign Minister Dr. Nasser al-Qidwa opposes the policy of Israeli settlements and has described those efforts as colonialism.
According to a report by the FMEP issued in 2000, the settler population in the West Bank and Gaza strip grew from approximately 1,500 in 1972 to approximately 73,000 in 1989, and more than doubled that in 1998 to approximately 169,000. The report also describes demographics statistics indicating that, by place of birth, 78% of Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza were from Europe or America, 19% from Israel. In January 2015 the Israeli Interior Ministry gave figures of 389,250 Israelis living in the West Bank and a further 375,000 Israelis living in East Jerusalem.
A number of scholars have objected to the idea that Zionism and the State of Israel are tantamount to settler colonialism. Avi Bareli, in his essay 'Forgetting Europe: Perspectives on the Debate about Zionism and Colonialism', argues that the "Colonialist School offered this alternative interpretation to replace the account of the return of the Jewish people to its land". Moreover, he asserts that it "ignores the economic, social, and cultural processes that spurred the Jews in Eastern Europe to emigrate to Palestine over decades in the twentieth century". Arnon Golan contends that "Zionism was not imperialist or colonialist in nature, but a national liberation movement that developed in eastern and central Europe, in conjunction with other national liberation movements in these regions" and that "Zionism was a diaspora national movement that aspired to promote its interests in the destined homeland through becoming a collaborator of imperial powers." S. Ilan Troen, in 'De-Judaizing the Homeland: Academic Politics in Rewriting the History of Palestine', argues that Zionism was the repatriation of a long displaced indigenous population to their historic homeland, and that "Zionists did not see themselves as foreigners or conquerors, for centuries in the Diaspora they had been strangers". Troen further argues that there are several differences between European colonialism and the Zionist movement, including that "there is no New Vilna, New Bialystock, New Warsaw, New England, New York,...and so on" in Israel. He writes that "mandates were intended to nurture the formation of new states until independence and this instrument was to be applied to Jews, even as it was for the Arab peoples of Syria and Iraq. In this view, Jews were a people not only entitled to a state but that polity was naturally located in a part of the world in which they had originated, had been resident since the ancient world, and still constituted a vital presence in many areas of the region, including Palestine" and that "perhaps the most manifest or visible evidence—for those who would be willing to acknowledge—were found in the revival of Hebrew into a living language; the marking the landscape with a Jewish identity; and the development of an indigenous culture with roots in the ancient past." He concludes that "casting Zionists as colonizers serves to present them as occupiers in a land to which, by definition, they do not belong." Others such as Michael J. Cohen, and Bernard Avishai have similarly rebutted criticism of the State of Israel as a settler-colonial state.