The incoherence of settler-colonialism should be self-evident mostly for the reasons you elucidate. If this faculty lounge theorizing had any real world application, it would have to set some “as of” date that was non-arbitrary, an impossible task for a species constantly on the move.
As applied to American Indian tribes, would the Lakota Sioux be entitled to the return of the Black Hills which they deem holy, or would the Cheyenne and the other tribes the Lakota ousted from the Black Hills in the mid-18th century gain the real estate with the Lakota moving back to their midwestern homeland from which they’d been evicted by the Mandan. And that’s simply one example.
As to your discussion of Israel, by denying the right of Jewish settlement in what only since the 1950s has been called the West Bank is not only to reward naked Arab aggression in 1948 and their total ethnic cleaning of the Jews living there, but it flies in the face of the internationally agreed list-WWI territorial dispensation of the lands of the defeated Ottoman Empire - the same dispensation that saw 99.75% of those lands revert not to the sovereignty of the indigenous populations but to the rule of the imperial settler-colonialists who preceded the Turks, namely the Arabs.
The devil always lurks in the details, but as currently deployed, the settlers-colonial paradigm is just a cover for a politics of anti-Westernism.
In the case of conflicting Native American claims, settler-colonial theory would surely split the difference by mentioning each tribal contender in a separate land acknowledgment. Problems are easy to solve when they are approached through a theory divorced from reality.
As for Jewish settlement in the West Bank (or Judea and Samaria, if you prefer), the question of right is separate from the question of logic. Israel did indeed only take control of the land after a war that Arabs initiated, and it is a land deeply tied to the Jewish people. But since Jews have no hopes of ever being the demographic majority there, the settlements serve no purpose from a practical Israeli perspective (from an impractical Israeli perspective, perhaps they hasten the arrival of the messiah, though I'm inclined to think not).
"Israeli settlers are succeeding only in exacerbating a broader conflict and eroding their country’s international standing."
This is where I disagree with you. The "settlements as barrier to peace" argument is a smokescreen. The PA could easily just agree to live with Jews living beyond the Green Line. Israel has Arab citizens who serve as generals and Supreme Court Justices; why should a future hypothetical Palestinian state get to ethnically cleanse the Jewish minority?
Proof of this - If the settlements in the West Bank were really the primary impediment to peace, you'd expect the removal of Israeli settlements in Gaza to result in peace. The settlements in Gaza were removed. Rather than bringing peace to the Gaza Strip, it destabilized it further.
The real barriers to peace are holy sites and terrorism. The Martyr's Fund is a big contributor to terrorism, and would exist with or without the settlements.
I never said settlements were the primary impediment to peace. The primary impediment to peace is Palestinian rejectionism. But settlers exacerbate the conflict because they are Israeli citizens surrounded by a hostile non-Israeli population, whose presence is reliant upon Israeli arms and government support. As a general rule of thumb, it’s a bad idea to live in the midst of people who hate and outnumber you. The original Zionists knew that, which is why they became Zionists.
Demographics are destiny, and there are a roughly equal number of Jews and Arabs in the Holy Land. Therefore, the only political solutions are either one democratic state with no clear majority (which would quickly descend into civil war), one people ruling over the other (which is untenable in the long run, not least for the aforementioned demographic reasons), or two separate states. Israeli settlements make that last, least worst solution harder, and thereby exacerbate the conflict.
Most Israeli settlers who live west of the security barrier could be formally annexed to Israel via land swaps as part of a two-state solution. But do the settlers who live deep in the West Bank really want to become Palestinian citizens? Moreover, is a Jewish presence in the West Bank really tenable without Israeli military control? I’m not arguing for the morality of a prospective Palestinian state, which would clearly be worse for minority rights (and worse by most metrics) than Israel. I’m arguing for a realistic appraisal of the facts on the ground.
The incoherence of settler-colonialism should be self-evident mostly for the reasons you elucidate. If this faculty lounge theorizing had any real world application, it would have to set some “as of” date that was non-arbitrary, an impossible task for a species constantly on the move.
As applied to American Indian tribes, would the Lakota Sioux be entitled to the return of the Black Hills which they deem holy, or would the Cheyenne and the other tribes the Lakota ousted from the Black Hills in the mid-18th century gain the real estate with the Lakota moving back to their midwestern homeland from which they’d been evicted by the Mandan. And that’s simply one example.
As to your discussion of Israel, by denying the right of Jewish settlement in what only since the 1950s has been called the West Bank is not only to reward naked Arab aggression in 1948 and their total ethnic cleaning of the Jews living there, but it flies in the face of the internationally agreed list-WWI territorial dispensation of the lands of the defeated Ottoman Empire - the same dispensation that saw 99.75% of those lands revert not to the sovereignty of the indigenous populations but to the rule of the imperial settler-colonialists who preceded the Turks, namely the Arabs.
The devil always lurks in the details, but as currently deployed, the settlers-colonial paradigm is just a cover for a politics of anti-Westernism.
In the case of conflicting Native American claims, settler-colonial theory would surely split the difference by mentioning each tribal contender in a separate land acknowledgment. Problems are easy to solve when they are approached through a theory divorced from reality.
As for Jewish settlement in the West Bank (or Judea and Samaria, if you prefer), the question of right is separate from the question of logic. Israel did indeed only take control of the land after a war that Arabs initiated, and it is a land deeply tied to the Jewish people. But since Jews have no hopes of ever being the demographic majority there, the settlements serve no purpose from a practical Israeli perspective (from an impractical Israeli perspective, perhaps they hasten the arrival of the messiah, though I'm inclined to think not).
Obvious typo: “post-WWI” rather than “list-WWI. Sorry for that.
"Israeli settlers are succeeding only in exacerbating a broader conflict and eroding their country’s international standing."
This is where I disagree with you. The "settlements as barrier to peace" argument is a smokescreen. The PA could easily just agree to live with Jews living beyond the Green Line. Israel has Arab citizens who serve as generals and Supreme Court Justices; why should a future hypothetical Palestinian state get to ethnically cleanse the Jewish minority?
Proof of this - If the settlements in the West Bank were really the primary impediment to peace, you'd expect the removal of Israeli settlements in Gaza to result in peace. The settlements in Gaza were removed. Rather than bringing peace to the Gaza Strip, it destabilized it further.
The real barriers to peace are holy sites and terrorism. The Martyr's Fund is a big contributor to terrorism, and would exist with or without the settlements.
I never said settlements were the primary impediment to peace. The primary impediment to peace is Palestinian rejectionism. But settlers exacerbate the conflict because they are Israeli citizens surrounded by a hostile non-Israeli population, whose presence is reliant upon Israeli arms and government support. As a general rule of thumb, it’s a bad idea to live in the midst of people who hate and outnumber you. The original Zionists knew that, which is why they became Zionists.
Demographics are destiny, and there are a roughly equal number of Jews and Arabs in the Holy Land. Therefore, the only political solutions are either one democratic state with no clear majority (which would quickly descend into civil war), one people ruling over the other (which is untenable in the long run, not least for the aforementioned demographic reasons), or two separate states. Israeli settlements make that last, least worst solution harder, and thereby exacerbate the conflict.
Most Israeli settlers who live west of the security barrier could be formally annexed to Israel via land swaps as part of a two-state solution. But do the settlers who live deep in the West Bank really want to become Palestinian citizens? Moreover, is a Jewish presence in the West Bank really tenable without Israeli military control? I’m not arguing for the morality of a prospective Palestinian state, which would clearly be worse for minority rights (and worse by most metrics) than Israel. I’m arguing for a realistic appraisal of the facts on the ground.