Settler-colonial states facing unresolved legitimacy needs keep manufacturing legitimation

Evidence

First: The Zionist settler-colonial project over Palestine in its entirety (including Israel within its pre-1967 borders) has not ended. It has been aggressively using various means to achieve displacement and replacement (such as by relentless settlement of the West Bank; Judaization of Jerusalem; discriminatory immigration laws; and confiscation of Arab land inside Israel). The project’s final goal of establishing an exclusive Jewish state, although in terms of sovereign statehood on the ground has been achieved, is both aggressively continuing to expand (with no defined final borders), and at the same time, its future is not determined. Israel, as a state, is an ongoing project. One can say that many states are – in the sense that state identity, political system, demographic composition, international relations, and power constantly evolve. But Israel as an ongoing project has deeper meanings: Israel’s borders remain undefined, and Israel itself declines to delineate its boundaries; its capital (itself with wholly undefined borders) is not recognized except by very few nations, which the UN considers null and void; it occupies since 1967 a territory – the West Bank and Gaza (in addition to the Golan Heights) – not only with its control not recognized by even one state but with the Occupied Territories recognized by the UN General Assembly as a nonmember observer state; its Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories are not recognized internationally and are considered to be illegal by the UN; its identity as a Jewish state is rapidly evolving with stronger national religious components; and its very legitimacy as a Jewish state is not accepted by its neighbors and is challenged by most of the people under its own control who are not Zionists – close to 50 percent of the population (citizens, residents, and occupied). Most importantly, Israel’s future – at least as what many Israelis call a “Jewish and democratic” state – is not seen by many of them as guaranteed. Under these circumstances, need for legitimacy is rising. … Therefore, the project is in constant need of legitimation, both internally and internationally. Furthermore, this need rises because the settler-colonial policies are constantly resisted by Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and in Israel itself and are therefore more internationally visible. — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 469

Categorization

• XREF: Feeds directly into the reader’s core question: sustained external threat and legitimacy deficit, rather than primordial identity, drive ongoing political sacralization and expansion. — connects to: Settler-colonial incorporation of new territories demands new legitimacy claims — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 550; Secular settler-colonial projects increasingly need religious legitimation to sustain expansion. — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 527
• DEEPTHINKING: The undetermined-future argument — a state both fully achieved and perpetually unfinished — reframes legitimacy-seeking as structurally un-satiable.

Broader Connections

• Settler-colonial incorporation of new territories demands new legitimacy claims #expands (0.85) — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 550
• Secular settler-colonial projects increasingly need religious legitimation to sustain expansion. #exemplifies (0.80) — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 527