Ever since Patrick Wolfe published his 1999 book Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology, scholars have been quoting his famous pronouncement that settler colonialism should be understood as an invasion, and such an “invasion is a structure, not an event.” Settler colonialism, according to Wolfe, is different from other forms of colonialism because the settlers come to stay and put in place a social, economic, and political structure based on “elimination of the native.” Scholars have been less concerned with settler colonialism’s temporality. Perhaps because the prospect of decolonization has primarily been focused on dismantling its structure, far less attention has been paid to the “when” of settler colonialism. Drawing on a multidisciplinary body of work including that of Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, Gary Fields, and Gil Anidjar, this paper considers the case of Israel/Palestine from a temporal lens. It asks how thinking through periodization, beginnings, repetition, and patterns can enrich our understanding of settler colonialism. Thinking through temporality raises questions about presumed causality and the kinds of “problems” that require our attention.