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The Practice of Siege Warfare: Reckoning with War, Genocide and Settler Colonialism in Palestine

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Una McGahernORCiD

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Abstract

This paper centers the practice of modern siege warfare in the study of war, genocide and settler colonialism. Identifying the siege as a form of totalizing warfare that is fundamentally colonial and genocidal in nature, it asks what new or alternative understandings of the genocidal war on Gaza might be revealed if we take the longer history of siege warfare in Palestine more seriously? Examining the role of the siege in the “ethnic cleansing” of Palestine during the wars of 1947-49, it argues that siege warfare cannot be considered as “old” or “new,” “small” or primarily “urban” in nature, and that – then as now – it played, and continues to play, a key strategic role in escalating the eliminatory logic of settler-colonial projects. Building on recent scholarship that accepts the general hybridity of war and genocide, and which see attempts to distinguish “ethnic cleansing” from genocide as fundamentally misguided, this paper seeks to advance new directions in the study of war, genocide and settler colonialism by demonstrating how siege warfare is not only immanent to settler-colonial projects but is, like settler colonialism itself, inescapably genocidal.

Publication metadata

Author(s): McGahern U

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Journal of Genocide Research

Year: 2025

Pages: Epub ahead of print

Online publication date: 11/09/2025

Acceptance date: 19/08/2025

Date deposited: 12/09/2025

ISSN (print): 1462-3528

ISSN (electronic): 1469-9494

Publisher: Routledge

URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2025.2555627

DOI: 10.1080/14623528.2025.2555627

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