Abstract
Following Israel’s campaign in Gaza after October 7, 2023, which was widely recognized as a genocide, the “ceasefire” of late 2025 introduced the prospect of a new occupation of the territory by the USA and Israel, leading to its redevelopment by them rather than the restoration of the pre-2023 Palestinian society. Together with the parallel accentuation of Palestinian dispossession under Israeli occupation in the West Bank, this development calls for a theorization of the relationship between occupation and genocide. Yet, although the concept of genocide was introduced by Raphael Lemkin in his analysis of the German occupations of European countries, this question has been neglected in the literature.
This article discusses Lemkin’s conceptualization of the relationship, relating it to the international law of occupation as well as the use of the concept in the colonial genocide literature, in order to propose a concept of the “genocidal occupation” which can be distinguished from “normal” repressive military occupations. In particular, the article uses Lemkin’s analysis of the two main options of the genocidal occupier to propose an analytical framework, which is then applied in outline to the history of occupation in Palestine, primarily from 1967 to date, although with reference to the earlier history of British and Zionist-Israeli occupations. It is argued that the post-1967 Israeli occupation has had a hybrid form, in which elements of normal occupation have been combined with an eliminatory or genocidal dynamic, but that the latter has strengthened over time. The article concludes by asking whether a new US-Israeli occupation in Gaza, should this be institutionalized, could represent a continuation or an end to the genocide.
First Page
62
Last Page
81
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Dirk Moses and Nimer Sultany for their comments on drafts of this article.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.20.1.2104
Recommended Citation
Shaw, Martin
(2026)
"Genocidal Occupation and the Occupier’s Dilemma: From Lemkin’s Axis Rule to 21st Century Palestine,"
Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal:
Vol. 20:
Iss.
1:
62–81.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.20.1.2104
Available at: https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/gsp/vol20/iss1/6
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