Indigeneity in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict

The notion of indigeneity—the quality of being descended from the native or autochthonous inhabitants of a territory, especially a territory that has been colonized—has been central to debates about political legitimacy in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. These debates have centered on whether or not Israeli Jews, Palestinians, or both peoples are to be defined as indigenous peoples to the region of Palestine. During the 21st century, many Zionists have advocated the view that Jews are the indigenous people of the Land of Israel. Advocates of the Palestinian cause often advocate the view that Palestinians are an occupied indigenous people and that Zionism is a form of settler colonialism. Some observers consider both Jews and Palestinians to be indigenous.

Archaeologist Brett Kaufman notes that archaeological and epigraphic evidence corroborates Jewish indigeneity in ancient Israel comes from multiple independent ancient sources outside the Hebrew Bible. Examples cited include a 9th-century Aramaic inscription known as the Tel Dan Stele, excavated in northern Israel, which references both a "King of Israel" and the "House of David," providing non-biblical attestations of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, as well as the Davidic dynasty.^[6] A Neo-Assyrian royal inscription dating to 701 BC namesHezekiah, king of Judah, and describes Jerusalem as his royal seat, corroborating the biblical account.^[6] Inscriptions excavated in Jerusalem name people who also appear in the biblical Book of Jeremiah as officials in the 6th-century BC royal court of Judah.^[6] He notes that Hebrew, the national language of the Jewish people, is an Iron Age development of Bronze Age Canaanite belonging to the Northwest Semitic language family native to the Levant, with documented continuous use spanning over three millenia. Finally, he notes that two passages in the Quran describe the Holy Land as promised to the Children of Israel and the people of Moses, an early Islamic acknowledgement of Jewish connection to the region.^[6]

According to Mahmood Mamdani, the Knesset unanimously codified the notion of Jewish indigeneity in Israel legally with the 1950 Law of Return, which grants any Jewish person in the world citizenship upon entering the territory, whereas Palestinian Arabs, even if born in the recently established State of Israel to parents who had never left the territory, had to meet the criteria of the 1952 Citizenship Law.^[7]

In his 2011 article "The Myth of Israel as a Colonialist Entity: An Instrument of Political Warfare to Delegitimize the Jewish State" Israeli statesman and political scientist Dore Gold, citing Moshe Gil's A History of Palestine: 634-1099, wrote that Jews (along with Samaritans) comprised a majority in the Southern Levant from the Roman period (63 BCE – 324 CE) until the Muslim conquest (c. 636–7 CE) and only began to diminish due to the institution of persecutions, such as the Jizya tax. Jews continued to live in the land without interruption, and those who left maintained cultural and religious ties with the land. In his view, Jews have "deep, indigenous roots" to the Land of Israel. As such, he says, the idea of Zionism as a colonial project should be rejected.^[8]

Ilan and Carol Troen say that Jews were considered to be indigenous by themselves and the international community until relatively recently. The "indigeneity argument" was taken up by Palestinian Arabs in 1990s to cast themselves as the sole legitimate indigenous population, re-framing of Jews as being recent foreign invaders by adopting a colonial-settler paradigm. The argument that modern Jews from around the world have no connection to historical Jews who lived in the region is not based in fact, but is a product of a political supersessionism to deny legitimacy of Israel.^[9][10]

According to anthropologists Rachel Z Feldman and Ian McGonigle, "Israeli settler organizations and allied American-Jewish lobbyists have responded to international condemnation of the occupation by mobilizing narratives of indigeneity, claiming sovereign and divine rights to the land."^[11] Major Zionist organizations including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the American Jewish Committee, and the Israel Action Network of the Jewish Federations of North America have stated that Jews are Indigenous to the Land of Israel.^[12][13]

In 2015, a proposal titled "Recognition of the Jewish People as Indigenous to the Land of Israel" was submitted and approved by a 51% vote in favor at the World Zionist Congress. The bill's author stated that the bill rejects "the core anti-Israel accusation that Jews are foreign colonialists in the country and instead affirms that the Jewish people have indigenous rights to live in their ancestral home." The proposal was opposed by the liberal Zionist organization J Street, the Reform movement's ARZA, and the Conservative movement's Mercaz USA, among other organizations.^[14]

The New Zealand Jewish Council has stated that "Indigeneity and colonialism" are "not useful metaphors for Israel", citing Jewish presence in the land for thousands of years.^[15]

Archaeologist Brett Kauffman listed several attempts within the Israeli–Palestinian conflict to deny Jewish indigeneity. One of these is "Temple Denial," the rejection of any historical Jewish connection to Jerusalem and of the existence of the Temples there. He also refers to the Khazar Myth, a theory invoked to deny Jewish indigeneity by claiming that Ashkenazi Jews are not descended from the ancient Israelites but from the medieval Khazars of the Caucasus region, despite its being a widely debunked conspiracy theory that has also been disconfirmed by genetic studies.^[6] Lastly, he identified the work of anthropologist Nadia Abu El-Haj as a notable example of academic denial of Jewish indigeneity. He argued that, when confronted with evidence she could not refute, the author dismissed the concept of objective facts. Her work later turned to Jewish genetics as another avenue for disputing Jewish ancestral connections to the region.^[6]

Scholars who discuss Zionism as settler colonialism contend that Zionism involves processes of dispossession and displacement of the indigenous Palestinian Arab population,^[16] akin to other settler colonial contexts, such as those of to the creation and expansion of the United States, accomplished through the displacement or elimination of various Native American communities.^[17]: 91

Palestinians represented the vast majority of the population of Palestine at the time of the imposiiton of the British Mandate.^[16]: xx According to M. T. Samuel, because the Jewish community in Palestine, or the Yishuv, constituted only 10% of the population at the time of the 1923 implementation of the mandate under the authority of the League of Nations, Britain was legally obligated to provisionally recognize the right to national self-determination of the indigenous Palestinian population throughout the entirety of the territory, according to Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations.^[18] By incorporating the call to "establish in Palestine a national home for the Jewish people" into the mandate document, the League of Nations codified the clause from the Balfour Declaration into international law.^[18] It thereby facilitated Zionist colonization, which Samuel argues represented a violation of this legal obligation under Article 22.^[18]

The International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs defines the Palestinian Bedouin as the Indigenous people of Palestine.^[19][20] The Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) have stated that "[W]e strongly protest the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands and the legal structures of the Israeli state that systematically discriminate against Palestinians and other Indigenous peoples...We reaffirm this sentiment that recognizes the rights of Indigenous Palestinians when we demand an end to the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands and a free Palestine.^[21]

Jamal Nabulsi, a PhD candidate at the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland, argues that Palestinian indigeneity is a "resistant identity" that is fundamentally defined as the "embodiment of the land of Palestine," meaning the land and the Palestinian body are ontologically inseparable. He contends that this indigeneity is a political relationship to the structure of settler colonialism rather than a measure of "cultural authenticity," maintaining that the connection to the land remains inextinguishable even for those outside Palestine. Nabulsi asserts that this collective indigeneity serves to unify a fragmented population against Zionist efforts to "erase" Palestinian presence. Ultimately, he frames this as the basis for an "Indigenous sovereignty" that rejects liberal state-building projects in favor of a radical decolonial future.^[22]

Historian Nur Masalha says, "The Palestinians share common experiences with other indigenous peoples who have had their narrative denied, their material culture destroyed and their histories erased or reinvented by European white settlers and colonisers."^[23]

The United Nations has referred to Palestinians as the "indigenous people of Palestine".^[24][25]

Some organizations, including the ADL and Center for World Indigenous Studies, have referred to both Jews and Palestinians as Indigenous to the Palestine region.^[12][26]

AIJAC—the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council—has stated that "the claim Palestinians are indigenous in the same way Aboriginal Australians are indigenous is beyond ridiculous" and that "Jews are also not indigenous to the Land of Israel in the same prehistoric way that Aboriginal Australians are to Australia".^[27]

• Genetic studies on Jews
  • History of the Jews and Judaism in the Land of Israel
    • Temple denial
• Genetic studies on Palestinians
• Politics of archaeology in Israel and Palestine
• Politics of food in the Arab–Israeli conflict
• Zionism as settler colonialism
• Indigenous Coalition for Israel
• Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa
• Native American–Jewish relations

• Are Jews Indigenous to the Land of Israel?, Tablet Magazine
• Jewish Roots in the Land of Israel/Palestine, Hoover Institution
• When Settler Becomes Native, Jewish Currents
• 'The Jews: An Indigenous People', Jewish News Syndicate