Counterterrorism and the Question of Palestine: contemporary delegitimisation, historical erasure and the redundancy of international humanitarian law

The role that Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and Palestinian resistance to that occupation, have played in shaping counterterrorism regimes in the West has become even more apparent in recent years. One example of this is the recent wave of criminalisation, through counterterrorism laws, of pro-Palestine solidarities in the UK. This reflection takes these recent trends as an opportunity to critically examine the entanglements (historic and contemporary, discursive and material) between terrorism, counterterrorism and the Question of Palestine. It suggests that the current preoccupation of the UK’s counterterrorism regime with pro-Palestine activism can be explained by reference to, and is itself a manifestation of, the centrality of the Question of Palestine to the historical evolution and eventual metastasising of the global counterterrorism regime.