Editing Zionism (section)

=== The Transition from British sponsored colonialism to the Israeli state ===
Gershon Shafir describes the use of violence by a colonial metropole as essential to settler colonization. Shafir defines settler-colonialism as the creation of a permanent home in which settlers benefit from privileges withheld from the indigenous population. He describes colonization, the establishment of settlements against the wishes of the indigenous people, as the distinctive characteristic of settler colonialism.{{sfn|Shafir|2016|p=794}}

Shafir distinguishes between the pre-1948 era and the post-1967 era in the sense that after 1967, the Israeli state became the sponsor of the Zionist movement's colonial efforts, a role that had previously been played by the British.{{sfn|Shafir|2016|p=795}} For Shafir, Jerome Slater and Shlomo Ben-Ami, after the Israeli conquest of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967, the Zionist movement more closely resembled other colonial movements.{{sfn|Shafir|2016|pp=799–805}}{{sfn|Slater|2020|loc=Zionism Reconsidered}}{{sfn|Ben-Ami|2007|p=3}} Similarly, Avi Shlaim describes 1967 as a milestone in the development of the "Zionist colonial project" rather than as a qualitative shift in its nature.{{sfn|Shlaim|2023|loc=Epilogue}} Israeli historian Yitzhak Sternberg cites Sivan, Halamish and Efrat as similarly describing 1967 as a turning point in which Zionism became involved in colonial efforts.{{sfn|Sternberg|2016|p=836}}

Shafir and Morris both further distinguish between Zionist colonialism during the First Aliyah and following the arrival of the Second Aliyah. Shafir describes the First Aliyah as following the ethnic plantation colony model, exploiting low wage Palestinian workers.<ref>{{harvnb|Shafir|1996|p=xii}}: "The colonialism of the First Aliya was based on sparse settlement and exploitation and the employment of low-paid Palestinian workers on Jewish-owned farms."</ref>{{sfn|Shafir|2016|p=797}} Morris describes this relationship:
<blockquote>
These Jews were not colonists in the usual sense of sons or agents of an imperial mother country, projecting its power beyond the seas and exploiting Third World natural resources. But the settlements of the First Aliyah were still colonial, with white Europeans living amid and employing a mass of relatively impoverished natives.{{sfn|Morris|1999|p=38-39}}
</blockquote>