“New Wars” and Classic Imperialism: The Siege on Gaza and the Occupation of the West Bank

Abstract

Proponents of the New Wars thesis contend that warfare is evolving into a new era, one that has by necessity placed warfare among civilians. Much of this era-based analysis is designed to condition the reader to acceptance of an overt targeting of civilian papers, justified through a claim that the war on terror will be fought in civilian spaces. A more critical reading of this notion of new wars rejects the notion that warfare can be divided into neat chronological categories, and that voluntary wars have always been fought against the civilian population, particularly in wars of colonialism. New Wars, rather than being an innovation in the strategies of war, are simply an evolution in the rhetoric of war, and are deeply bound with a process of neoliberal colonialism, essentially nothing new. Following the warnings of Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine (Klein 2007), it stands to reason that New Wars are inseparable from neoliberal anti-state strategies, targeting civilians and the infrastructure and institutions they rely upon. This paper will examine the “New Wars” thesis in the context of the current Israeli occupation of Gaza to understand the significance of the New Wars thesis in a real-world context.

Much of the analysis of the Gazan context for this paper relies on participant observation and interviews undertaken by the author in the summer of 2009 in Gaza, and corroborated through press reports. The article relies on these sources due to the dearth of geographical academic writing on Gaza, a condition that this edited volume will help to address.