When Sayegh writes in Zionist Colonialism in Palestine that Zionist racism is different from other race-supremacist European settler projects, he is saying that while other colonies have instantiated conditions of dependency over the native population wherein the natives may develop in ways that suit the colony, Israel has never primarily sought to exploit the Palestinians, although that has undoubtedly occurred. Rather, Palestinians have been configured for eviction, elimination, and dispossession without the opportunity for development. Sara Roy would later call this ‘de-development’. Where underdeveloped societies are often structured by demands for economic exploitation, de-development in this case is not primarily motivated by the extraction of surplus value from Palestinian laborers. The so-called ‘Ingathering’ is an ideological motive that cannot be made to fit with the long-term preservation and exploitation of a Palestinian population. In this regard, Sayegh cites Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan who once claimed “economically we can” accommodate a Palestinian population, but this was impossible because “It would turn Israel into […] a poly-Arab-Jewish state instead of a Jewish state.” Rather than reconfiguring the Arab population for exploitation — a form of domination that might include the typical features of settler colonial domination such as the construction of a comprador class or limited industry tailored to the global division of labor — Zionism has systematically dismembered and crippled Palestinian society in order to facilitate their expulsion. The Palestine Problem is then this problem of “non-being”.
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