User:SlimVirgin/Z

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Zionism and the Arabs

See also: 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, Israel-Palestinian conflict, and Palestinian exodus

The attitude of the Zionist leaders towards the Arab population of Palestine in the lead-up to the 1948 conflict is one of the most hotly debated issues in Zionist history.

The Jews who already lived in the area had a long and complex history of interaction with their Muslim neighbours and rulers. Outside Jerusalem, Safed, and Tiberias, Arabs and Muslims constituted the overwhelming majority of the population. The early Zionists were aware of this, but believed the inhabitants would benefit from Jewish immigration. They were also inclined to settle in uninhabited areas, such as the coastal plain and the Jezreel Valley, thus avoiding conflict with the Arabs. Within Zionist literature, the Arab presence was largely ignored, as in the famous slogan "A land without a people for a people without a land." This slogan is often attributed to Israel Zangwill, but its original form, "A country without a nation for a nation without a country," was penned by Lord Shaftesbury.^[1]

Though there had already been Arab protests to the Ottoman authorities in the 1880s against land sales to foreign Jews, the most serious opposition began in the 1890s after the full scope of the Zionist enterprise became known. This opposition did not arise out of Palestinian nationalism, which was in its infancy at the time, but out of a sense of threat to the livelihood of the Arabs. This sense was heightened in the early years of the 20th century by Zionist attempts to develop an economy from which Arab people were largely excluded, such as the "Hebrew labor" movement that campaigned against the employment of Arabs. The severing of Palestine from the rest of the Arab world in 1918 and the Balfour Declaration were seen by the Arabs as proof that their fears were coming to fruition.

Chaim Weizmann, Israel's first president, indicated that the British did not view the welfare of the Arab residents highly, and according to Arthur Ruppin, formerly in charge of the Jewish Agency, Zionist leaders failed to grasp the nature and importance of the Arab question. Ruppin told the Agency in May 1936: "Dr Weizmann once told me how he received the Balfour Declaration. And when I asked him, 'And what did you think then in reality on the Arab question?' he replied, 'The English told us that [there are] some hundred of thousands [of] blacks there, and this has no importance.' This shows me that at that time our leaders didn't have a clue regarding the Arab question, and even much later they relegated this question to the margins."^[2]

A wide range of opinion could be found among Zionist leaders after 1920. The division between these camps did not match the main threads in Zionist politics as cleanly as is often portrayed. For example, the leader of the Revisionist Zionists, Vladimir Jabotinsky, is often presented as having had an extreme pro-expulsion view but the evidence offered for this is weak. According to Jabotinsky's Iron Wall (1923), an agreement with the Arabs was impossible, since:

[They] look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true fervor that any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or any Sioux looked upon his prairie. To think that the Arabs will voluntarily consent to the realization of Zionism in return for the cultural and economic benefits we can bestow on them is infantile.

The solution, according to Jabotinsky, was not expulsion, which he was "prepared to swear, for us and our descendants, that we will never [do]", ^{[citation needed]} but to impose the Jewish presence on the Arabs by force of arms until they came to accept it. Only late in life did Jabotinsky speak of the desirability of Arab emigration, though still without unequivocally advocating an expulsion policy. After the World Zionist Organization rejected Jabotinsky's proposals, he resigned from the organization and founded the New Zionist Organization in 1933 to promote his views and work independently for immigration and the establishment of a state.^[3]

The situation with socialist Zionists such as David Ben-Gurion was also ambiguous. In public, Ben-Gurion upheld the official position of his party that denied the necessity of force in achieving Zionist goals. The argument was based on the denial of a unique Palestinian identity coupled with the belief that eventually the Arabs would realize that Zionism was to their advantage. The British plan was soon shelved, but the idea of a Jewish state with a minimal population of Arabs remained an important thread in Labour Zionist thought throughout the remaining period until the creation of Israel.

[edit] Notes