Settlers imprison children: Lama Alsafi, ‘Settler colonialism and Israel: the incarceration of Palestinian children as a central feature of Israel’s settler colonial project’, Third World Quarterly, 2025 | settler colonial studies blog

Settlers imprison children: Lama Alsafi, ‘Settler colonialism and Israel: the incarceration of Palestinian children as a central feature of Israel’s settler colonial project’, Third World Quarterly, 2025

13Jul25

Abstract: This paper investigates the ways in which settler colonialism, and particularly Zionist settler colonialism, explains Israel’s hyperincarceration and hyperpolicing of Palestinian children and the structural abuse these children are subjected to while detained. It argues that it is critical to contextualise Israel’s hyperincarceration of Palestinian children, including the abuse, torture, rape, displacement, and dispossession that accompany it, within the context of settler colonialism and Israel’s settler colonial project. This is because the ultimate goal of Zionist settler colonialism, as with any settler colonial project, is the total extermination, elimination, and replacement of the Indigenous population in order to secure complete and unfettered control of the land and access to and use of its resources, with the mass incarceration of Palestinian children being a key method utilised by Israel to achieve these aims.

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