On Liberation

This chapter takes the discussion of the long moment of liberation beyond Palestine. Using examples from India, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Tanzania, Cuba, and Turkish Kurdistan, it demonstrates that, just as the postcolonial exists in the era of colonial rule, so does the struggle for liberation continue long after the withdrawal of the colonizer. This urge to keep fighting is partly driven by an effort to combat the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural remnants of colonization that often endure despite the “official” end of colonial rule. But far more critically, this urge persists because the nature (and experience) of the colonial enterprise is such that despite the (formerly) colonized's enthusiastic search for a decolonized, postcolonial sense of self, they lack any significant memory of a past unadulterated by colonization. This dilemma is further acute for those under settler colonial rule, since the very endeavor of settler colonialism is often to erase the signature of indigenous presence. The result is that liberation cannot be achieved following the single moment when the colonizer withdraws. Instead, the postcolonial and the anticolonial coexist irrespective of the presence or absence of the colonizer, as the (formerly) colonized are compelled to perpetually search for their decolonized sense of self, thereby generating a long and often protracted moment of liberation.

Palestinian Postcoloniality

This chapter analyzes the historical geopolitical events that led to the introduction of postcoloniality in Palestine. It argues that the Oslo Accords ensured that the postcolonial lives alongside the anticolonial in a still-persistent colonial condition in the Palestinian territories. Specifically, this is an outcome of two relevant legacies of the Accords. The first and most palpable legacy is the Accords' failure to end Israel's military rule over the Palestinian territories and establish a sovereign State of Palestine. The second legacy is evident in the manner in which the Oslo Accords introduced and incentivized postcoloniality, encouraging Palestinian factions to refrain from an anticolonial political conduct and instead operate in a manner as if the colonizer had already withdrawn. It is these two legacies of the Oslo Accords which Hamas navigates by means of its dual role. As an armed resistance movement, Hamas exemplifies a response to what the Accords failed to do, namely establish a sovereign Palestinian state and dismantle Israel's settler colonial rule. However, as the government in Gaza, it also embodies postcoloniality as instructed by the Oslo Accords.

Decolonizing Palestine

This chapter provides an overview of the Palestinian struggle for liberation and describes the author's fieldwork in the Gaza Strip, Israel, and Egypt, conducted between 2013 and 2016. The Gaza Strip as a whole became a place of contradictions when Hamas adopted a dual mode of existence following its historic victory in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections. After the unequivocal triumph of the Islamist faction, Fatah refused to be part of the Hamas government. Over the course of the 2007 Battle of Gaza, Hamas then consolidated its rule over the Gaza Strip while maintaining its commitment to the armed resistance. In doing so, Hamas oscillated between the images of the postcolonial state and an anticolonial movement. As the government in the Gaza Strip, it represented a civilian authority posturing like the future Palestinian state. However, by remaining committed to the armed struggle, Hamas also recognized the fact that Palestine is far from being liberated.

Anticolonial Violence and the Palestinian Struggle to Exist

This chapter focuses on Hamas's anticolonial resistance, not least as a means of emphasizing the colonized's existence and cultivating their liberated peoplehood. Drawing on interviews with members of the organization and Palestinians who have participated in, been witness to, or suffered the human and material consequences of Palestinian armed resistance, it argues that anticolonial violence finds relevance in light of its ability to both unmake and make. Hamas's armed resistance is assumed, by the colonized, to be capable of dismantling or unmaking the colonial condition. The chapter contends that its violence unmakes by nominally challenging Israel's settler colonial rule over the Palestinian territories and, in doing so, rendering it a difficult venture to maintain. The potential of violence to be a creative force, to make, emerges as a retort by the colonized to the colonial project's attempt to deny their inner being by imposing its own values on their identity. Hamas's armed resistance makes by allowing each act of resistance to be called an act of Palestinian resistance, thus enabling the subsequent suffering to be labeled instances of Palestinian suffering.

The Palestinian Moment of Liberation

This chapter discusses the Palestinian moment of liberation. It recognizes that Hamas presents an extreme case because Palestinian postcoloniality has, to an extent, been concretized by way of the establishment of the Palestinian Authority and its accompanying institutions under the Oslo Accords. Nonetheless, the case of Hamas shows that liberation is not entirely contingent on the singular moment when the colonizer withdraws from the lands of the colonized. Instead, the colonial subject begins the process of conjuring up a liberated peoplehood while still in a colonial condition. Thus, in the case of Palestine, this means that Gaza is not just a story of siege, war, and the challenges Hamas faces while maintaining its dual role or its growing authoritarianism. If one considers the long moment of liberation to have begun already, one also notices that a Gaza Strip under the canopy of a single Palestinian leadership becomes, albeit minimally, reminiscent of the eventual liberated State of Palestine as a single territorial unit, inhabited by the Palestinian people and ruled by a Palestinian government.

Postcolonial Governance

This chapter demonstrates the manner in which Hamas's postcolonial governance persists in a colonial nonstate context. Despite the “real” Palestinian state being nonexistent, it is necessary to take the materiality of the imagined state seriously. However, in doing so, the aspiration is not to determine “how much” or “how little” Hamas acts like a state, but rather to illustrate the way in which its state-like conduct is socialized into a liberation context. Subsequently, the chapter specifies two perspectives on Hamas's government. The first perspective is that of Hamas. Drawing on interviews with Hamas officials, the chapter outlines the organization's perception of itself as an anticolonial faction that has now infused the postcolonial state with the ethos of the anticolonial struggle and, in doing so, reconceptualized its role as a government as a means of protecting the anticolonial armed resistance. The second perspective is that of the recipients of Hamas's governance, namely the Gazans. Based on interviews with Palestinians in Gaza, the chapter argues that, while the colonized are socialized into the reality of their own statelessness, their encounter with Hamas's governance also emerges as a canvas on which Palestine is displayed as a state.

On the Settler Colonial Elimination of Palestine

This chapter situates the Gaza Strip within Israel's settler colonialism as a way of contextualizing the Palestinian anticolonial subjectivity. While recognizing the Nakba, or catastrophe, of 1948 as having begun the historical process of materializing the settler colonial “dream” of Palestinian nonexistence, it argues that the urge to eliminate the Palestinian community remains just as important today. While this conduct is characteristic of a settler colonizer, the Gaza Strip is often perceived only as representative of an extreme case of Palestinian suffering. Moreover, with a politically divisive organization at its helm and a decade-long siege still in place, the Palestinian coastal enclave is frequently placed outside the limits of any “normal” discussion of the politics of Israel–Palestine. Yet, the Gaza Strip in fact personifies the norm as a spatial representative of the effort to materially realize and naturalize the settler colonial dream of Palestinian nonexistence. Specifically, as Hamas-ruled Gaza has been indomitable in its armed struggle, the treatment meted out to it by Israel, by way of a siege that has continued despite the severity of the consequent humanitarian crisis and the ruthlessness of Israeli military onslaughts, demonstrates the extent of the settler's willingness to subdue any political act or ideology that acknowledges the existence of the indigene and thus insinuates the nonindigeneity of the settler.