There is an uncomfortable question that Israeli political language rarely allows itself to ask: has the State of Israel begun to produce Palestinians through a structure similar to the one through which particular European secular, colonial, and administrative regimes historically produced “Islam” as a political and social problem? This is not an argument that Israel is simply Europe, that Zionism can be reduced to colonialism, or that Jewish and Muslim histories can be collapsed into the same moral story. Such comparisons are too easy and therefore usually misleading. The question is narrower: who is allowed to appear as a full political subject, and who appears mainly as an object to be interpreted, managed, monitored, controlled, or feared?

Modern Europe did not merely disagree with Islam. In different historical settings, it repeatedly constructed “Islam” as something to be interpreted, regulated, modernized, integrated, tolerated, surveilled, secured against, or explained. European institutions retained the authority to ask the questions, while Muslims increasingly became those about whom the questions were asked. This asymmetry matters because it shapes political intelligibility itself. A political subject can calculate, hesitate, make mistakes, revise strategy, contain internal disagreements, pursue conflicting interests, and learn from failure. A security object can threaten, radicalize, destabilize, or require control. One inhabits history as an actor; the other appears primarily as a problem.

Something disturbingly similar can be detected in the political language through which Palestinians increasingly appear in Israeli discourse. Israel is allowed strategy, while Palestinians are more often assigned intention. Israel makes mistakes; Palestinians reveal what they are. Israel responds to circumstances; Palestinians become the circumstances to which Israel must respond. Israeli violence can be described as excessive, badly planned, politically costly, tactically mistaken, or strategically counterproductive. Palestinian violence, by contrast, is much more easily treated as evidence of a deeper and more permanent nature. This is not merely a rhetorical difference. It determines which explanations remain politically........

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