Reframing the Question of Palestine by the Early Palestinian Press: Zionist Settler-Colonialism and the newspaper Filastin, 1912–1922

Abstract

This article uses a new conceptual approach to the question of Palestine, namely the settler-colonialism paradigm. This paradigm enabled scholars to develop the depiction of Zionism as a settler-colonialist project. However new approaches which have focused on Zionism as a settler-colonialist movement have, in fact, neglected indigenous Palestinian perspectives. The article advocates further refinement to the discourse of anti-colonialism by revisiting early Palestinian perceptions of Zionism. The article also shows that in the early stages of Zionism the movement was clearly depicted as a settler-colonialist project by Palestinian journalists and press commentators of the newspaper Filastin. However the existential implications of such an analysis were ignored by the Palestinian political elite, an oversight which also contributed to the 1948 Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe).