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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Israel has distilled western
colonial war techniques, but fails to quell resistance</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Mathieu
Rigouste</div>
<div class="gmail-meta-data">
<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time">July 14, 2025</div>
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<p><a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/palestine" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">Palestine</a> is bearing
the brunt of the imperial boomerang: in globalised
capitalism, regimes of domination adapt to those who
resist them by circulating techniques of war,
surveillance and repression between colonial and
metropolitan battlefields.</p>
<p>Although this imperial mechanism has propelled the
colonisation of Palestine from the beginning, it has
failed to extinguish the "<a
href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300056693/domination-and-the-arts-of-resistance/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">arts of
resistance</a>".</p>
<p>Since the start of the <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/uk"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">British</a>
Mandate in Palestine, colonial domination has
suffered regular counterattacks. To maintain its
hold, the <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/occupation" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">occupier</a> articulated
methods of counterinsurgency - that is, war within
and against populations - tested in the empire and
throughout the history of western colonisation.</p>
<p>This dynamic gained momentum in the face of the
Arab Revolt, the Palestinian <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/palestine-strike-history-explained-revolt"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">uprising</a>
against the British Mandate and its support for
Zionism that took place from 1936 to 1939.</p>
<p>Officer Charles Tegart, who led the
counter-guerrilla operations, had made a career in
intelligence in Northern Ireland during the Irish
War of Independence before heading the Calcutta
police, where he was notorious for the <a
href="https://find.uoc.ac.in/Record/347558/TOC"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">widespread</a>
the use of torture against separatists.</p>
<p>In Palestine, where he was sent in 1937, he ordered
the building of numerous fortified police stations,
a border fence and torture centres.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A vast system of registration, mass arrests and
administrative detention was combined with
torture, collective punishment, deportations and
summary executions</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Another senior office in Mandate Palestine was
General Orde Wingate, originally from a family of
British settlers in India.</p>
<p>He served in <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/sudan" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">Sudan</a> before being
dispatched to Palestine, where he developed the
"Special Night Squads". These police commandos made
up of Jewish settlers were tasked with punitive
expeditions against Palestinian villages. These
paramilitary militias helped found the <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/israel" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">Israeli</a> army.</p>
<p><a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/france" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">French</a> colonial
expertise also played an important role. Like in
Haiti, where it was used to re-establish slavery in
the early 19<sup>th</sup> century, paramilitary
units and dogs were used to hunt insurgents. <a
href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/britains-pacification-of-palestine/67969BBBDFB9CF57200581CBB61C4427"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Modelled</a>
on French colonial methods in <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/syria" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">Syria</a> and <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/algeria" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">Algeria</a>, a vast system
of registration, mass arrests and administrative
detention was combined with torture, collective
punishment, deportations and summary executions.</p>
<p>All of these techniques profoundly influenced the
early Israeli military and security apparatus, but
none was sufficient to quell the sumud, the spirit
of Palestinian resistance.</p>
<h3>A global and permanent war against Palestinians</h3>
<p>The Israeli state was concretely forged on the
basis of a colonial war involving the destruction of
numerous villages, mass expulsions and massacres in
the classic style of western colonisation.</p>
<p>Facing persistent indigenous resistance like his
European predecessors, the Israeli officer of the
Carmeli Brigade tasked with "de-Arabising" Haifa in
August 1948 seized on the genocidal dynamic. He <a
href="https://oneworld-publications.com/work/the-ethnic-cleansing-of-palestine/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">ordered</a>:
"Kill any Arab you encounter; torch all inflammable
objects and force doors open with explosives."
Palestinian refugees were bombarded with mortars.</p>
<div>
<p><a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/war-gaza-why-frantz-fanons-words-are-more-relevant-today-ever"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"><img
src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/styles/read_more/public/images-story/palestine-gaza-khan-younis-hospital-july-2024-bashar-taleb-afp.jpg.webp?itok=62AlNZAn"
width="400" height="250" alt=""
class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img"
moz-do-not-send="true">
</a></p>
<p><font size="1">War on Gaza: Why Frantz Fanon's
words are more relevant today than ever</font></p>
<p><br>
</p>
</div>
<p>Faced with the reorganisation of the rebellion,
Israeli counterinsurgency methods continued to
evolve through regular exchanges with western
colonial powers.</p>
<p>In January 1960, two Israeli generals, Yitshak
Rabin and Chaim Hersog, future prime minister and
president respectively, observed French techniques
of "counter-revolutionary warfare" in Algeria:
separation walls, population displacement and mass
internment, widespread torture, rape and enforced
disappearances, massacres by bombing and chemical
weapons, all combined with industrial propaganda
following a dynamic of general militarisation of
society.</p>
<p>This savoir-faire similarly failed to break the
determination of the Algerian people, but it has
continued to resonate through the methodical
crushing of Palestinian lives. In 1967, during the
so-called Six Day War, patrols sent to Gaza were
trained to throw grenades into homes before entering
them. Soldiers were ordered to shoot and kill any
civilian who resisted the raids.</p>
<p>Mechanisms of extreme violence also governed the
invasion of <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/us"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Lebanon</a>
in 1982 and the war launched in 2002 against the
Palestinian Al-Aqsa Intifada. During Operation
Defensive Shield, the military-police lockdown of
the West Bank city of Jenin likewise failed to
overcome the rebellion.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>These methods are taught to security forces
around the world and thereby contribute to
updating global counterinsurgency</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It served however as a model for the new imperial
wars in <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/iraq" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">Iraq</a> and <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/afghanistan" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">Afghanistan</a>, and for
urban security <a
href="https://www.versobooks.com/products/2128-cities-under-siege?srsltid=AfmBOopvva2XVUW-RgPsBGilCvMAiUpdfCoIkC--6x6qrVUt_zlb46PJ"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">planning</a>
in the world's major cities.</p>
<p>Mass racial internment has also structured the
global history of counter-insurgency since the first
concentration camps created by Spain in Cuba at the
end of the 19<sup>th</sup> century or those
established by Germany to intern the Herero and Nama
people in Namibia as part of the <a
href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/longform/2022/11/6/reckoning-with-genocide-in-namibia"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">first</a> <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/explainers/meaning-definition-what-genocide-israel-gaza"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">genocide</a>
of the 20<sup>th</sup> century.</p>
<p>Israel has <a
href="https://orientxxi.info/lu-vu-entendu/l-incarceration-des-palestiniens-cle-de-la-colonisation-israelienne,4774"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">seized</a>
on it as a "social engineering" technique aimed at
emptying the "human terrain" and reformatting the
inmates' personalities. These principles guide the
arbitrary, sometimes indefinite, incarceration of
thousands of Palestinians and the transformation of
Gaza into an open-air concentration camp.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, Palestinian resistance perseveres and
continually reorganises itself beyond the walls.</p>
<h3>A laboratory for counter-insurgency</h3>
<p>As early as 2010, researcher Laleh Khalili <a
href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-middle-east-studies/article/abs/location-of-palestine-in-global-counterinsurgencies/0E9FF0406FA3781CBF06D129CD8B0632"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">described</a>
Palestine as "an archetypal laboratory and a crucial
node of global counterinsurgencies". Researcher Jeff
Halper, for his part, <a
href="https://www.plutobooks.com/9781849649735/war-against-the-people/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">sees</a>
Israel as a model of "security state" based on a
form of permanent counterinsurgency. In this
framework, deploying extreme violence against
civilians constitutes a rationalised doctrine.</p>
<p>For example, Israel recommends shooting in the head
to kill (shoot-to-kill policy), as well as the
principle of "escalation dominance" that justifies
the intentional use of disproportionate force to
subdue the enemy. These techniques are integrated
into a concept known as "cumulative deterrence" that
advocates the systematic conjunction of violent
treatments.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The war against the people has caused human
carnage while largely benefiting the
military-security industries. However, it has
failed to eradicate the spirit of liberation of
the oppressed</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These methods are taught to security forces around
the world and thereby contribute to updating global
counterinsurgency.</p>
<p>They constitute commodities valued in the same way
as all the weapons tested by Israel against the
Palestinian people and then labelled "combat-proven"
in the international fairs of war and control. In
the era of security capitalism, the crushing of
Palestine constitutes a global political economy.</p>
<p>Since the counterattack of 7 October 2023, this
economy has been operating at full capacity to
benefit a "Greater Israel" plan to colonise the
entire region through the <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/israel-war-gaza"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">destruction
of Gaza</a> and its inhabitants.</p>
<p>Armed, financed and given impunity by the Western
bloc, this phase of intensified genocidal warfare
operates through the systematic bombing of
civilians. This technique, too, is rooted in
colonial history, dating back to 1911 when an
Italian plane struck a camp in <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/libya" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">Libya</a> in the <a
href="http://www.lesprairiesordinaires.com/le-gouvernement-du-ciel-histoire-globale-des-bombardements-aeacuteriens.html"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">first</a>
aerial bombardment in history.</p>
<p>Israel is innovating by <a
href="https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">integrating</a>
artificial intelligence technologies to automate,
maximise and accelerate the mass killing of civilian
populations. Algorithmic extermination thus joins
the global counterinsurgency repertoire.</p>
<div>
<p><a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/gaza-bread-or-blood-israel-planned-social-collapse-how"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"><img
src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/styles/read_more/public/images-story/displaced%20Palestinians%20return%20from%20an%20aid%20distribution%20centre%20in%20the%20central%20Gaza%20Strip%20on%20June%208%2C%202025.%20-afp.jpg.webp?itok=75jwYKBc"
width="400" height="250" alt=""
class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img"
moz-do-not-send="true">
</a></p>
<p><font size="1">Blood or bread: Surviving Israel\u2019s
vicious hunger regime in Gaza</font></p>
<p><br>
</p>
</div>
<p>In Gaza, the Israeli state is destroying homes,
schools and hospitals, refugee camps and facilities
delivering vital supplies. Humanitarian aid and
access to healthcare are blocked through a strategy
known as "food and resource control" that was used
by the United Kingdom in South Africa during the
colonial era and by the <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/us"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">United
States</a> military in Cuba, the Philippines and
Vietnam.</p>
<p>Israel stands out by weaponising humanitarian aid
to <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/execution-site-palestinians-face-death-collecting-food-us-israeli-gaza-aid-points"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">massacre</a>
starving populations.</p>
<p>Chemical weapons such as white phosphorus and toxic
gases that have been used to make Palestine
uninhabitable resonate with the use of mustard gas
by France and Spain against the anti-colonial
resistance in the <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/morocco" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">Moroccan</a> Rif, as well
as the use of napalm and Agent Orange against the
Algerian and Vietnamese revolutions.</p>
<p>On each of these battlefields, the "war against the
people" has caused human carnage while largely
benefiting the military-security industries.
However, it has failed to eradicate the spirit of
resistance of the oppressed.</p>
<p>Following Haiti, Vietnam or Algeria, Palestine
embodies what rises up and holds firm against global
counterinsurgency. Across borders, against the
imperial boomerang, its name resonates through
international solidarity, showing the determination
of the oppressed to resist in order to exist and to
unite for emancipation.</p>
<p><i>The views expressed in this article belong to
the author and do not necessarily reflect the
editorial policy of Middle East Eye.</i></p>
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