The Zionist Dilemma

I have always found the history of Zionism fascinating, it’s such a unique social experiment that it’s hard not to be fascinated by it, so I’ve read and thought quite a lot about it over the years. One idea I keep coming back to is that, in a way, the tragedy of Zionism is that it came too late. The Zionist movement was born at the end of the 19th century, but the conditions that made it possible for it to have a chance of success did not emerge until after WWI, once the British took over Palestine and decided to support the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” as per the Balfour Declaration. This allowed Jewish immigration to reach levels that made it possible for the Yishuv, as the Jewish community in Palestine was called before the establishment of Israel, to be strong enough to finally create a state in 1948 and defend it against both the Arabs of Palestine and the Arab states that surrounded Palestine.

However, by the end of WWI nationalism had already started to spread outside of Europe and, while in a sense this moment was arguably the height of European colonialism, it was also the beginning of the end for colonialism as it came under attack from colonized people and was increasingly seen as illegitimate even in Europe. By the time Ben-Gurion proclaimed the independence of Israel in 1948, the anti-colonial movement was about to enter its terminal phase, which resulted in the unraveling of the colonial order within the next two or three decades. Thus, the Zionist movement was in a sense anachronistic, a colonial project that reached maturity just as colonialism was collapsing everywhere. But unlike the French or British colonialists, the Jews in Palestine didn’t have a state of their own to return to, so they persisted and the state of Israel is still here. Nevertheless, this timing has implications that I think people who are involved in the debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict don’t think about enough, because they are unpalatable to both sides, though not for the same reasons.

Indeed, had the Zionist movement emerged and met conditions favorable to achieving its goals one century earlier, things would probably have gone very differently. First, while it’s not true that in the mid-19th century Europeans thought no moral rules applied in their interactions with non-Europeans, it’s fair to say that relative to the mid-20th century they were less constrained in that respect. Thus, had Jews established a state in Palestine around 1850, they could probably have almost completely emptied the country of Arabs. By 1948 on the other hand, this was no longer possible, so while during the Arab-Israeli War the Jews managed to secure a demographic majority within the post-armistice borders of their state by expelling most of the Arab population from it, they couldn’t finish the job and were stuck with a large Arab minority after the war.¹

Not only were they dependent on the great powers, who limited how far they could go, but even the Zionists, who for the most part shared the values of other Europeans, had moral qualms about ethnic cleansing even if they were hardly the advocates of inter-ethnic harmony depicted by Zionist propaganda. This was even more true after 1967, when Israel conquered Gaza and the West Bank, which greatly increased the number of Arabs who lived in the area they controlled. Moreover, while in the 19th century European populations had a much higher of natural growth than non-European populations (because the former had already entered the demographic transition but not the latter), by 1948 this was no longer the case and in fact the opposite was true. Thus, while in the 19th century the Jews could have demographically overwhelmed the Arabs they wouldn’t have been able to expel, in the 20th century this was not the case, even though they were able to partly make up for this with immigration.

In that alternative history, nationalism would also have been completely foreign to the Arabs of Palestine when the Zionists would have arrived, which also would have changed a lot of things. Indeed, what this means is that after being forcibly displaced to neighboring Arab countries by the Zionists, the Arabs of Palestine wouldn’t have espoused irredentist politics because this would have happened before they even developed a national consciousness. Thus, once in neighboring Arab countries, they wouldn’t have retained a distinct Palestinian identity and would have blended in the local Arab populations. When nationalism would have reached the region from Europe several decades later, they would have undergone the same process of nationalization as the rest of the population in the area where they happened to live, becoming Egyptians, Syrians, Jordanians or whatever depending on how the Middle East was divided into states in that alternate universe.

Instead, nationalism had already started to spread in the region when the British took over Palestine at the end of WWI and the development of Arab nationalism largely coincided with the progress of the Zionist movement during the Mandate period. Palestinian nationalism also emerged during that period, in part though not only as a response to Zionism, but arguably lagged behind somewhat and only solidified during the first decades of the state of Israel. Nevertheless, the Arabs of Palestine were already in the process of becoming Palestinians in 1948 when most of them were expelled from the area that remained under Israel’s control after the war and, despite the pan-Arab rhetoric, that process was largely finished by the time Israel conquered the rest of historic Palestine in 1967. This ensured that Palestinians retained a distinct identity even when they lived in neighboring Arab countries instead of assimilating.²

Thus, had Zionism arrived one century earlier, Jews would probably have been able to sidestep the Palestinian question for the most part. Israel’s experience would have been much more like that of the US or Australia, other colonial states that were created earlier and largely as a result of that fact don’t have to deal with a large indigenous population that has gone through a process of nationalization and embraced irredentist politics, because it was overwhelmed by the newcomers through a combination of demography, war and disease. Other things would have been different. In particular, Israel would still have been surrounded by millions of Arabs and most of them would still have been Muslim, so it probably still would have had to deal with Muslims angry that a formerly Islamic land and in particular Jerusalem was now controlled by Jews. However, this would have been a lot easier to manage, especially since in that scenario Israel would have been a well-established state in the region for decades by the time Arab nation-states were constituted.

I contend that, if Jews were going to establish a state in Palestine, this would have been much better for everyone, not just the Israelis but also the Palestinians. That it would have been better for the Israelis should be obvious, since there wouldn’t have been another large group of people with a claim on the same territory as them. But it would also have been better for the Palestinians, even though or rather because in that alternative history they would never have become Palestinians. Indeed, while a tragedy for the people actually displaced during the initial Jewish conquest, their descendants in neighboring countries would have avoided the fate of Palestinians today, who are condemned to be stateless and either oppressed by the Israelis in the occupied territories or foreigners in the Arab countries where they live, because the Israelis can’t give them citizenship without destroying Israel as a Jewish state and the Palestinians don’t want to become citizens of Israel or assimilate into other Arab societies since they have developed a national consciousness.

Ironically, in a way, what I’m saying here is not very different from what many pro-Israel people are saying. For instance, the Israeli historian Benny Morris, who is a staunch Zionist but is more honest than most about the history of Zionism and Israel, famously argued that it would have been better if Ben-Gurion had finished the job and expelled all the Arabs between the Jordan and the Mediterranean in 1948. The difference is that unlike them I understand that, because Zionism came too late, the Israelis have no choice but to address the Palestinian question and there is no point in fantasizing about what might have been if that problem had never arisen in the first place. First, while Israel may have gotten away with expelling all the Palestinians from within its post-armistice borders in 1948 and could probably have expanded those borders somewhat, it definitely couldn't have gotten away with expanding those borders to the whole of historic Palestine then and expelling all the Arabs from there. Moreover, even if the Israelis had somehow been able to do that, it wouldn’t have solved their problem because while still not yet fully developed Palestinian nationalism was already irreversible by then and this wouldn’t have stopped the process. Again, at the end of the day, this sort of solution was precluded by the fact that Zionism did not appear earlier.

In fact, not only is this not what happened, but it also couldn’t have happened. In the 19th century, Palestine while still firmly in control of the Ottoman Empire and, while it was already weak, it was protected by the rivalry of European powers and the fragile equilibrium between them. It was only WWI that, by ending this equilibrium, made it possible for the Ottoman Empire to be dismembered and for a European power to take over Palestine and sponsor the Zionist movement. Moreover, it’s no accident that Zionism did not emerge until the end of the 19th century, because it was itself the result of the spread of nationalism in Europe, which left European Jews with no choice other than assimilation, internationalism or Zionism. In other words, while it would have been better if Herzl had been born one century earlier, he also wouldn’t have been Herzl if he had. Ironically, this is also what made the Zionist project so difficult, because it meant that by the time the first steps to actually carry it out would be taken nationalism would already have started to spread in the Arab world. Nevertheless, it’s still interesting to consider how different things would have been in this alternative timeline, because it can shed light on how the fact that it didn’t happen that way since Zionism only emerged much later and as it were missed the train of history affected the subsequent development of Israel.

Indeed, I think that fact is largely responsible for what I call the Zionist dilemma, which has so far prevented the Israelis from truly fulfilling the original Zionist aspirations. Early Zionists didn’t merely aspire to create a Jewish state in Palestine, they also wanted the existence of that state to be secure. Of course, Israel doesn’t current face any military threat that could realistically put its existence in peril and is unlikely to face any in the foreseeable future (because it enjoys an overwhelming military superiority over its neighbors and would in any case be protected by the West if its existence were ever at risk), but as long as it remains surrounded by hundreds of millions of people who are hostile to it and regard it as illegitimate, it will never be truly secure. In turn, this will not cease to be the case as long as a settlement is not reached with the Palestinians to adjudicate their competing claims on historic Palestine, since the irredentist aspirations of the Palestinians are the main fuel of the hostility toward Israel in the Arab world.³

This hostility from their neighbors, combined with Judaism’s history of persecution and the offensive ethos of Zionism that was largely born from it, resulted in extreme levels of risk aversion and a very aggressive conception of deterrence that leads them to almost always choose force to defend their security, which only compounds the rejection by their neighbors by inflaming hatred toward Israel. Indeed, while Zionist propaganda depicts Israel as the innocent victim of Arab aggression, eager for peace but unable to find a partner, this picture is at odds with the historical record, which shows that Israel has often struck first, provoked its neighbors and used massively disproportionate force in response to their own provocations while rebuffing Arab peace feelers. This started immediately after the Armistice signed with the Arab countries in 1949, when Israel responded to infiltration by Palestinian fedayeen with devastating raids in Gaza and the West Bank, such as the Qibya massacre in 1953 during which IDF troops under Ariel Sharon killed sixty-nine villagers in the West Bank in response to a Palestinian attack that had left three Israeli civilians dead. Early Zionists had a very negative view of Jews in the Diaspora for their perceived meekness and were determined that as Israelis they would assert what they took to be their rights very aggressively.

Although their propaganda distorts the historical record, I actually believe the Israelis, for the most part, when they claim that ultimately they only aspire to live in peace and be accepted by their neighbors as a Middle Eastern state. I just think that, as a result of the hostility of their neighbors (which itself is largely the product of the fact that Zionism came too late and therefore couldn’t avoid the creation of a Palestinian question) and their own psychological dispositions (which in turn were largely the result of Judaism’s history of persecution), they have usually concluded that force was the only way to safeguard their rights. The idea that Jews should achieve overwhelming military superiority and use it to make clear that force will not compel them to give up their rights by inflicting devastating losses to their enemies, instead of relying on diplomacy to reach a modus vivendi with them, has always dominated Israeli security thinking. When I say that, people think that I hate Israel, but I don’t. I say that because that’s what a careful examination of the historical record shows and, for the reasons I just explained, it’s not even particularly surprising.

While in public Western officials have largely adhered to the Zionist narrative, in private they have often shared that view, as shown for instance by a declassified memorandum written by Rodger Davies, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs shortly before the outbreak of the Six-Day War:

We have endeavored to make clear to our Israeli contacts that we do not view our cooperative anti-infiltration efforts as a cure-all, but rather as part (one might say the U.S. component) of a more measured and precise response to the type and level of threat Israel now faces than are massive retaliatory raids of which Samu [a large assault on a Jordanian town in the West Bank conducted in November 1966 by the IDF in response to a raid by Fatah] is the most recent example. The latter, in our judgment, exacerbate rather than contain the problem. The raids encourage the terrorists in their aim of goading Israel into intermittent hostilities with its neighbors. Fundamentally, we do not believe that Israel can achieve absolute security, so long as there is no peace between it and its Arab neighbors, or that it can shoot its way to peace. We think military retaliation is both ineffective and reckless and may in time give serious substance to Palestinian terrorism which, despite some tragic successes, is still a shadowy and relatively disorganized force.

I think that it was true back then and that it’s still true today.

As should be clear from what I said above, not only do I think that Davies was right that Israel’s security would never be truly ensured as long as there is no peace with its neighbors, but I think that even if it somehow managed to sign a peace agreement with its neighbors it still wouldn’t be secure as long as Arab populations are so hostile to it, because any peace agreement is always at the mercy of a revolution or a coup. In turn, this hostility will never stop unless the Palestinian question is solved, because the Arab world will never consider Israel legitimate as long as it continues to oppress the Palestinians and the millions of Palestinians in the territories controlled by Israel and in neighboring countries are not going anywhere, no matter how many people fantasize about ethnic cleansing. Again, this might have been possible if Zionism had emerged a century earlier and Zionists had expelled the Arabs of Palestine before they developed a national consciousness and created a persistent irredentist movement, but that’s not what happened and the Israelis have to deal with the world as it actually is, not as they wish it was.

Nor can the Israelis be sure, as long as they continue to rule more or less directly over millions of Palestinians, that it will always be possible to maintain the status quo. First, while they’re not as worried about the demographic threat posed by Palestinians as they used to be, because since then Arab fertility has gone down while Jewish birth rates have remained stable, fertility is unpredictable and this could change again, but the more time the status quo persists and the harder it will be to change if Israel needs to because settlers will continue to create facts on the ground in the meantime. Even if Jews don’t become a minority between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, it’s hardly obvious that Israel will be able to maintain the status quo forever and continue to oppress millions of Palestinians indefinitely. Israel is not China or even Russia, it’s a small country that is dependent on the rest of the world and in particular on the West, which it cannot afford to alienate. While I think the claims that Western support for Israel is going down are exaggerated, it can’t just take that support for granted. As the Holocaust fades into history and Western countries undergo demographic change as a result of immigration, Western attitudes toward Israel will change and the West may not tolerate the status quo forever. At the moment, the Israelis think that by dragging the conflict they will be able to end it on their terms, but it may be that it will do precisely the opposite. History is long and no one is immune to hubris.

The model that has worked relatively well for the Arab citizens of Israel, denying them any hope of achieving any meaningful collective achievement while ensuring that individually they can be relatively successful and enjoy a decent life, can’t be generalized to the entire Palestinian population between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, because there are just too many Palestinians and Israel can’t get rid of them no matter how much it would like to. No country will volunteer to absorb them and the vast majority don’t want to leave anyway, something that is unlikely to change even if Israel tightens the restrictions to which it subjects them because it’s constrained in how far it can go by international pressure. Again, it’s ultimately dependent on the West, so it can’t just disregard that. As Israeli leaders have long recognized, the only reason why this model works for the Arab citizens of Israel is that they’re a small minority, which makes it possible to prevent them from threatening the Jewish character of Israel while granting them equal rights in theory, which in practice can be circumvented in various ways (such as discriminatory practices in the provision of building permits to people in Arab communities) to deny them any national aspirations they might have. As long as there are millions of Palestinians in the territories controlled by Israel and a negotiated settlement of the conflict is not reached, the Jewish state can never be truly secure and the Israelis will always worry about its existence in a way people in other countries don’t.

People who think it’s naive to talk about a negotiated settlement believe I don’t realize that Palestinians hate the Jews, which is not particularly surprising in the circumstances, but I do. What I’m saying is that, in spite of that, the Israelis must demonstrate a willingness to accept a fair settlement and make the necessary sacrifices, which they never really have so far. Palestinian military force does not pose an existential threat to Israel and never will, even if Israel were to grant the Palestinians a state, but the Arab world’s hostility toward Israel and Palestinian irredentism do. While negotiating a settlement of the conflict may not be possible, and even if a negotiated settlement can be achieved it may not be enough to eliminate those threats, if that doesn’t work then nothing else will, so that’s not a reason not to try. Israel has been killing Palestinians, dispossessing them and oppressing them for decades. I’m sure it can reduce the threat posed by Palestinian terrorism in that way, at least as long as internal and external conditions don’t change too much, but what is naive is to think that it can end the status quo by forcing the Palestinians to give away their rights and accept whatever terms the Israelis want to impose on them for a peace agreement.

The Palestinians know they don’t have to relinquish their rights in order to prevent Israeli oppression from getting much worse and that doing so would only marginally improve their lot, because on the one hand Israel is constrained by the international community and on the other hand it can’t improve their situation too much without putting the Jewish character of the state at risk in the long run. Again, if Israel granted more rights to the Palestinians in the occupied territories in exchange for subservience, it would have no way to prevent a resumption of nationalist and irredentist agitation eventually, hence every reason to expect that subservience wouldn’t last. Israelis like to talk about how, before the Oslo process, Palestinians in the occupied territories were less oppressed and Israel was more secure, but they forget that it ended with the First Intifada. It’s not as if the Israelis entered the Oslo process willingly, they were forced to do something because the previous system no longer worked. I’m sure they could unravel what is left of the Oslo process completely, and indeed they may have to if Fatah is forced to scuttle the Palestinian Authority under pressure from public opinion as a result of the carnage in Gaza, but the idea that Israel could go back to the pre-Oslo situation is a fantasy.

However, in order to really give a negotiated settlement a shot, the Israelis will not only have to abandon their own irredentism in the West Bank (which is less often talked about than Palestinian irredentism but no less real and has arguably played a greater role in preventing a settlement of the conflict), but also the aggressive conception of deterrence and the extreme risk aversion that have always dominated their security thinking so far. This will be very difficult because, as I have argued, both are a logical product of the historical circumstances in which Zionism was born and in particular of the fact that it was a latecomer to history. In other words, in order to have a chance of eliminating the only existential threats they really face (namely Palestinian irredentism and the hostility it fuels among Muslims in general and in the Arab world in particular), the Israelis would have to jettison psychological dispositions that, given Judaism’s history of persecution, are a natural, if not rational, reaction to the existential threats in question.

This is what I call the Zionist dilemma and I don’t believe the Israelis will ever be able to truly fulfill the original aspirations of Zionism unless they’re able to overcome it. At this point, most of them are convinced that peace is impossible, hence that it’s pointless to even talk about a negotiated settlement of the conflict. While I don’t claim to know with certainty that such a settlement is possible, I think the Israelis’s confidence that it’s impossible is not warranted by the evidence and that it’s mostly a result of the psychological dispositions born from the difficult circumstances in which Zionism emerged I described above, as well as of the fact that their propaganda was so successful that they ended up buying it themselves. Be that as it may, if their confidence were justified, then in a sense it would be rational for them to continue to rely exclusively on force to protect their state, but in a way it would also mean that the Zionist project simply can’t succeed because it missed the train of history.

1. There is a debate in the literature on whether or to what extent the departure of more than 700,000 Arabs from Palestine during the war had been planned in advance by the Zionist authorities. It doesn’t really matter here because, regardless of what the answer to that question is, the decision not to allow those refugees to return was undoubtedly deliberate.

2. It’s often claimed that, if the refugee problem still persists today, it’s only because the Arab states have instrumentalized Palestinian refugees against Israel by refusing to integrate them and insisting on their right of return. The truth is more complicated than this simplistic narrative suggests, but it doesn’t really matter here, because even if that narrative were accurate it would still be the case that, had the Arabs of Palestine been expelled before nationalism appeared in the Middle East, there would have been no Palestinian question.

3. It’s often claimed that Arabs and more generally Muslims in the Middle East don’t really care about the Palestinians and that the plight of Palestinians is merely an excuse to justify their hostility toward Israel. I think the case for that position is weak, but even if I’m wrong and solving the Palestinian question is not a sufficient condition to end the hostility toward Israel, it surely is a necessary one and that’s good enough for the point I’m trying to make in this essay.