Humanitarian relief ‘terrorises’ settlers: Caroline Lund, Brendan Ciarán Browne, ‘Stigmatisation as settler colonialism: designating humanitarian and civic society organisations in Palestine as security threats’, Peacebuilding, 2024 | settler colonial studies blog

Humanitarian relief ‘terrorises’ settlers: Caroline Lund, Brendan Ciarán Browne, ‘Stigmatisation as settler colonialism: designating humanitarian and civic society organisations in Palestine as security threats’, Peacebuilding, 2024

17Oct24

Abstract: Since Hamas’s 7th October attacks on southern Israel, the Palestinian population living in the Gaza Strip has been subjected to an unprecedented level of destruction that has decimated every aspect of Palestinian life. The ongoing Israeli military invasion has been considered a ‘plausible case of genocide’, and the humanitarian catastrophe has been compounded by major restrictions on access to humanitarian aid. Accusations of supporting ‘terror’ have been levied against UNRWA, the major provider of humanitarian services in Gaza, leading to an initial suspension of donor support to the organisation by many western governments. In this article, we consider the Israeli government’s tactics used to delegitimise those involved in providing humanitarian and lifesaving support for the Palestinian population, concluding that the construction and dissemination of narratives that depict them as being ‘terroristic’ or having ‘terrorist’ connections is a sophisticated additional layer of the settler colonial logic of elimination and erasure.

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