Books Colonizing Palestine: The Zionist Left and the Making of the Palestinian Nakba (Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures) 1st Edition by Areej Sabbagh-Khoury (Author)

"Colonizing Palestine: The Zionist Left and the Making of the Palestinian Nakba" by Areej Sabbagh-Khoury is a deeply researched historical study focusing on the role of the Zionist Left, particularly the Hashomer Hatzair movement, in the settler colonial project in Palestine. The book traces how left-wing Zionist kibbutzim, which publicly supported Jewish-Arab brotherhood and opposed mass displacement, simultaneously participated in the process of transforming large areas of Palestine into Jewish sovereignty. It explores the interactions between Zionist settlers and indigenous Palestinians on the fringes of the Jezreel Valley, showing that the dispossession and displacement of Palestinians were not abrupt events of 1948 but rather a decades-long, complex process.

Sabbagh-Khoury's work combines archival research with theory to offer a microhistory of these frontier relations within the context of British imperial control. It reveals the ambivalences and contradictions in socialist Zionism's approach to Palestinian land and people, and how social hierarchies, violence, and supremacy were gradually constructed and normalized, laying groundwork for the enduring structures of settler colonialism. The book has been described as a powerful new touchstone for understanding the Nakba and its ongoing impact and is praised for its nuanced account of the mixture of socialist ideology and settler colonialism in Palestine