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On August 9, dozens of Israeli settlers surrounded three Palestinian homes in Qusra, south of Nablus. They blocked residents from leaving safely, cut water and electricity, damaged water pipes, and prevented food and other essential supplies from reaching the families inside. Days later, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee — a longstanding supporter of the Israeli colonial enterprise — called those responsible “Israeli terrorists,” echoing the growing use of the term in the mainstream media and by human rights groups, the UN, and diplomatic circles.

For Palestinians who have endured over a century of systemic settler colonial violence, this rhetorical shift may be tempting to welcome as a step toward accountability. But embracing the “terrorism” framework would ultimately harm our cause and our people.

Settler colonial violence is, of course, real and terrifying, but “terrorism” is the wrong framework for understanding and confronting it, because it was designed to serve imperial designs and make settler violence look like an aberration. In this way, the label of “Israeli terrorism” often misleadingly characterizes settler violence as confined to the Israeli far right, even though it’s the product of a broad Israeli consensus and a systemic feature of Israel’s colonial regime.

The Origins of the “Terrorism” Label

The terrorism framework did not emerge from positive or emancipatory values, but has been exclusively weaponized against oppressed and marginalized peoples in the service of imperial agendas. While in the 1960s, the terrorism framing was used by western imperial interests against anti-colonial struggles (Algeria, South Africa, Vietnam, to name a few), the post 9/11 global “terrorism” narrative shifted to focus on a new “global enemy” — Islamic fundamentalism — and used to justify military occupations and atrocities across the world under the banner of the “War on Terror.” More dangerously, it was used to build a legal arsenal encroaching on people’s rights and freedoms, undermining the rule of law and peoples’ sovereignty under the cover of legality.

Palestinians know intimately what this framework enables. For decades, the “terrorism” label has been used to criminalize the Palestinian liberation movement, from designating much of the Palestinian political spectrum as “terrorist,” to carrying out colonial violence under the guise of “counterterrorism” — assassinating, imprisoning, and torturing Palestinians in Jenin, Tulkarem and across Palestine. The same framework has been used to stifle Palestinian civil society, including through Israel’s designation of six leading Palestinian organizations as “terrorist” organizations. And today,........

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