The Middle East Studies Forum invites you to the webinar ‘Settler Colonialism (without Settlers) & Slow Violence in the Gaza Strip’ presented by Professor Michelle Pace from Roskilde University, Denmark and Professor Haim Yacobi from University College, London.

Israel’s ongoing settler colonialism in occupied Palestinian territory impacts Palestinians’ everyday life in all its aspects. In this webinar we discuss how Israel’s interventions, in particular since its “withdrawal” from the Gaza Strip in 2005, can be conceptualized through a combined lens of Wolfe’s logic of elimination and Nixon’s slow violence.

We suggest that the idea of eliminating the existing population – without the physical presence of settlers inside Gaza – is not only inherent in the production of a new reality and geography, but also at the core of the transformation of the Strip into a frontier. In this manner Israel has fewer and weaker moral obligations over Gaza’s population and hence the possibility of manipulating destructive power and violent practices.

With a specific focus on Israel’s interventions in the field of health, we discuss how power, violence and health are entangled in conflicts zone in general and in Gaza in particular, by presenting the effect of violence in general and infrastructure demolition in particular, on the everyday life of Gazans. We argue that Israel’s withdrawal marks not only a continuation but even a radicalization of settler colonialism in the Gaza Strip through (often) slow violence.

You can access the webinar flyer here.

Speaker bios:

Michelle Pace is a Professor in Global Studies at the Department of Social Sciences and Business, Roskilde University. Her research and teaching interests are in the areas of political theory, psychology and philosophy, emotions in international relations, global politics, migration and settler colonial studies.

She has published widely on European Union – Mediterranean / Middle East and North Africa Affairs. She has been the Principal Investigator on a Carlsberg Foundation funded project on The Struggle of State-Building in Palestine: Exploring “State-less”-Society  Relations in the West Bank, and is currently the Danish lead partner on the EU-Middle East Network in Action (EUMENIA) Jean Monnet Network (http://eumenia.eu).

Her recent publications include her co-authored book on “The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. The Theatrics of Woeful Statecraft” (2019), a Special Issue (2020) of the Journal Interventions. Journal of Postcolonial Studies on “Imperial Pasts in the EU’s Approach to the Mediterranean”, another Special Issue (2019) of the Journal Political Psychology on “Emotions in the Politics of Security and Diplomacy” and an article on “Norway’s ambiguous approach towards Israel and Palestine” as part of a Forum on The occupation of Palestinian territories since 1967: an analysis of Europe’s role, published in Global Affairs (2018).

Haim Yacobi is a Professor of Development Planning at the Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL and the Programme Leader of the MSc Health in Urban Development. The main issues that stand in the core of his research interest in relation to the urban space are social justice, the politics of identity, urban health, and colonial planning.

In 1999 he formulated the idea of establishing “Bimkom – Planners for Planning Rights” and NGO that deals with human rights and planning in Israel and was its co-founder.

His latest books are “Rethinking Israeli Space: Periphery and Identity” (2011), with Erez Tzfadia and “Israel\Africa: a genealogy of moral geography” (2016).

Details:

19 August 2020
Melbourne 5pm GMT +10 hours
London 8am GMT +1 hour
Copenhagen 9am GMT + 1 hour
Please join us via Zoom*

Please RSVP to mesf@deakin.edu.au by 17 August 2020

*Attendees will be provided with a Zoom link and password to access the webinar via a calendar invite sent to the email address registered with on the 18 August 2020

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