Captive settler colonialism: Z. Baroud, The Colonial Origins of Israel’s Carceral Regime: Examining Colonial and Settler Colonial Applications of Carcerality in Palestine, PhD dissertation, University of Exeter, 2025 | settler colonial studies blog

Captive settler colonialism: Z. Baroud, The Colonial Origins of Israel’s Carceral Regime: Examining Colonial and Settler Colonial Applications of Carcerality in Palestine, PhD dissertation, University of Exeter, 2025

29Jun25

Abstract: The establishment of the state of Israel and its subsequent occupation of the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip brought a long history of British colonial policy and practice in Palestine back to life. This resurrection, achieved through policy transfer, primarily involved carceral policy pertaining to police roles, the administration of prisons, the application of detention, traditions of torture, along with other punitive administrative measures, such as curfews and deportation. However, the (limited) scholarship frames this transfer merely as a continuation, with the result that it is predisposed to overlook the distinctions between the carceral practices of colonial and settler regimes. In addition, this neglects the role of Zionism within the Mandate framework, with the result that it is instead presented inversely, namely as the impact of colonialism on Israel and its policy in the oPt. This thesis, in examining the nuances of Mandate policies in Palestine and Israel’s adoption of colonial carceral policy and practice, analyses the eliminatory nature of carcerality within a Zionist settler programme in Palestine that spans over 140 years. It contends that, rather than existing as strictly separate categories, coloniality and settler coloniality were, in the British–Israeli case, also shaped by the Mandate’s commitments to Zionism, resulting in a more nuanced and complex mission in Palestine. While British carceral policy was indeed adopted by Israel and its occupation regime, this thesis proposes to instead focus on the intensification of these practices under a fully realised settler project which had nearly an additional five decades to develop. Further, building on Kelly Lytle Hernández’s work in the US, this thesis argues that carcerality functioned not only to suppress resistance but also as a mechanism of native elimination in Palestine, with this becoming especially evident during periods of popular uprising, such as the Great Revolt (1936–1939) and the First Intifada (1987-1993). Though distinctly situated, both uprisings were fundamentally struggles against Zionist erasure in its varying forms. A significant portion of this thesis therefore focuses on these two pivotal periods, which precipitated escalations in carceral violence and the expansion of carceral infrastructure. While this thesis acknowledges a slight shift in trajectory in British carceral policy following the rise of anti-Mandate Zionist militancy, (however still not at all comparable to the carceral subjugation inflicted upon Palestinians), it primarly focuses on the era when Mandate and Zionist coordination was intact and flourishing. This thesis advances our understanding of the expanse of carceral violence in its settler colonial application, and its utility as a tool for native elimination in Palestine, while also illuminating how carcerality has facilitated the advancement of both colonial and settler colonial programmes in Palestine. Crucially, it highlights overlooked nuances between these classifications in the Palestinian context. By engaging with the growing (yet still limited) scholarship on this subject in other colonial contexts – particularly the United States – it seeks to challenge and expand the discourse around this subject. Although this thesis centres its attention on the Mandate period (1920-–1948) and the early years of the Israeli occupation, its findings provide a framework for understanding contemporary Israeli carceral regime across occupied Palestine, particularly in light of the current, and ongoing, genocide in Gaza, much of which has taken place within settler spaces of captivity.

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