Saharan Zion: state evasion and state-making in modern Jewish and Sahrawi history

ABSTRACT Based on a comparison between Jewish and Sahrawi nationalism, the article introduces James Scott’s theorization of state-evading and state-making societies to the study of Zionist state formation. Given the state-evading features of Jewish Diaspora life (physical dispersion, segmentary kinship, acephalous social structure), the article argues that Zionism might best be compared to the state-making projects of other state-evading communities (including Kurdish, Berber, and Sahrawi nationalism). As an example for this comparative research agenda, the article explores the case of Sahrawi nationalism: While POLISARIO, the national liberation movement of Western Sahara, was consciously modelled after Third World insurgencies in Algeria and Palestine, the Sahrawi proto-state (the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic) applies a model of state-driven nation-building that corresponds closely to the statism (mamlakhtiyut) of the Zionist state-in-the-making.