48 chapter two Where others see historical bastards, I find a streak of historical ancestry. I offer, therefore, a theoretical and conceptual perspective that highlights the continuous centrality of colonization in Zionism and at the same time gives appropriate weight to the changes that have taken place, under new circumstances, within the framework of settlement. European colonialism, after all, did not create just one model of overseas society, and it seems to me that we can understand the transformation of Israeli society since 1967 most fruitfully as a transition from one method of European colonization to another one (Shafir 1999, 83). Shafir begins his comparative analysis by outlining the specific attributes of the Zionist means of colonization: unlike European hegemonic powers, the Jews had no organized polity until the beginning of the British Mandate; areas earmarked for settlement were selected ideologically by Zionists and not based on their economic potential; only a minor segment of the indigenous Palestinian population were nomadic when Zionist settlement was underway and most were in the process of expanding their areas of residence to coastal and inland areas; purchase was considered a means of territorial accumulation by Zionist settlers unlike their European counterparts who considered colonized land as free; Jewish farmers employed seasonal unskilled wage labour unlike the contract-based or slave workers in European colonies; and many of the Jewish colonizers were refugees and lacked independent resources (Shafir 1999, 84–85). These differences between the Zionist ‘pure settlement’ project and other frontiers of settlement do not indicate a non-colonial character of the Jewish national movement, explains Shafir. Instead, these differences existed to ensure the smooth colonization of Palestine given the particularly difficult state of the land and circumstances of the incoming settlers. To Shafir, colonialism is not a cursory or transient effect of Zionism, but instead serves as its congenital backbone.8 Shafir distinguishes between two phases of Zionist settlement in Palestine, what is called the First Aliyah from 1882–1903 with about 20,000– 30,000 Jewish immigrants and the Second Aliyah from 1904–1914 with about 35,000–40,000 Jewish immigrants, the latter during a time where approximately 425,000 Palestinian-Arabs lived in Palestine (Shafir 1999, 86–88). The former period developed into what he calls an ‘ethnic 8 This point is deepened and expanded upon in the recent work of Gabriel Piterberg whose intricate and insightful account of the Zionist ideology and ethic explains how the Zionist movement was an unexceptional colonial project compared to those initiated by European hegemonic powers (see Piterberg 2008).