Zionism and the Birth of Israel

When one speaks of “history”, the event in question  is often presented as objectively true in the sense that most people agree on what happened. But this obscures the extent to which many of the facts and events of the past that people take for granted are actually the constructs of scholars and historians who disagree among themselves on what constituted the historical event. In this regard, a useful conceptual distinction is between “history” and “historiography”: the latter refers to the methods and theories that scholars deploy to understand the past, while “history” refers to the popular—and mistaken—use of the term, namely, that history can be objectively and conclusively known. This is rarely the case, and that is especially true for the circumstances that surrounded the birth of Israel, which led to one of history’s most intractable and interminable conflicts that persists to this day and will likely continue to for many generations. The previous blogpost on Israel was about a book written by Menachem Begin, a Zionist whose interpretations of the past differ greatly from others that will be the focus here. “New Historians”, as they are called, are a group of Israeli scholars who challenge the Zionist narrative that Israel is surrounded by enemies bent on its destruction, that it miraculously won the war of independence in 1948 against seemingly insurmountable odds, that the Palestinian Arab refugees voluntarily fled their homes because they were told to by their brethren in neighbouring countries,  and that the conflict is ultimately rooted in the Palestinians’ intransigent refusal to recognize the legitimacy of the Jewish state.

A discussion of the birth of modern Israel must start with the policy of Britain, the colonial power that ruled the Holy Land in the crucial years before 1948. Zionists tend to focus on the Balfour declaration, which established the legal basis for a Jewish state in their ancestral homeland. Zionists are correct that legally, as the ruling power, Britain did have the authority to make that decision. It is worth recalling that it was made before the right of national self-determination had become an established principle of international relations. This meant that Britain did not have a legal obligation to consult with the locals who might have objected, even if it had a moral obligation to do so. In fact many of today’s states in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa were created by the great powers in Paris after World War 1 precisely because, at the time, drawing borders and installing client states was how international politics worked. Locals often resisted, but unlike in the present time there was no universal legal code that they could appeal to.

However, what the Zionists neglect to mention is that Britain also promised a state to the local Arabs in Palestine in return for their services to the British Empire in its fight against the Ottoman Turks. In other words, Britain made promises to both communities that were contradictory and unrealizable. Perhaps this was done in good faith; the British may have thought that the two communities would find some sort of compromise that would allow some form of co-existence. Maybe it was the perfidious Albion making promises it knew it could not keep because it furthered the interests of the Empire. The truth is probably more prosaic: human stupidity. Britain bungled the situation because it stumbled in its temptation to satisfy both parties. The rest, as they say, is history.

When it became clear that Jews and Arabs would not find a compromise, Britain threw its hands in the air and passed the problem to the United Nations, which imposed a partition. Jews accepted it, the Arabs did not and subsequently invaded the nascent Jewish state. This is one of the only events that the Zionists and the New Historians agree happened. However, their interpretations of the events are very different. First, the New Historians do not accept that all the Arab states shared the same goal of pushing Jews into the sea. Rather, there were mixed motives. King Abdullah of Jordan, for example, was the nominal leader of the Arab invasion of Israel, but his main agenda seemed to be territorial aggrandizement for Jordan in some areas even if it meant making peace with the Jews. This may have clashed with the motives of others, like the Mufti of Jerusalem, who openly proclaimed a jihad against the Jewish inhabitants and directed his followers to fight them uncompromisingly. These mixed motives, as well as poor organization, training, communication, and transportation, are what contributed to the Arab defeat, at least according to the New Historians who want to dispute the Zionist belief that the Jewish victory was some sort of miracle that could be explained only by divine intervention. The New Historians also have a different take on the reaction to the UN’s partition plan. Although it is correct that the Jews accepted it and Arabs did not, the founders of Israel never really believed that the borders were final. Territorial expansion was the plan from the beginning, and this seemed to be confirmed by the capture of Arab territory in subsequent wars and the continued expansion of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which are illegal and recognized by no country, not even Israel’s allies. According to this interpretation, the Jews’ acceptance of the UN partition is essentially a moot point, since from the beginning there were plans to encroach on Arab territory.

The war of 1948 between Jews and Arabs led to an exodus of around 700 thousand refugees that continues to stain historical memory and that prevents a final resolution to the conflict. Israel’s supporters have long held that the Arabs voluntarily fled their homes because they were encouraged by neighbouring Arab states who sent messages via radio frequency that warned of an impending invasion and that encouraged them to leave, promising that they could return after they had destroyed the Jewish state. This, of course, is very self-serving, for, if the local Arabs left of their own volition, than they are responsible. The New Historians have adduced evidence that poses a fundamental challenge to this account of the refugees, thumbing their noses at this attempt to shroud the Jewish states’ complicity. Benny Morris, for example, argues that many Arabs fled because there were many massacres of innocent civilians in Arab villages. Their flight, then, was coerced in the sense that staying might have meant a violent death. Avi Shlaim goes further, arguing that there was a systematic plan among the Jewish leadership to expel as many Arabs as possible to make room for Jewish settlement. In this regard, he quotes Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, who expressly ordered his men to expel Arabs.

The stakes of this debate are not only scholarly. They raise existential questions about the legitimacy of Israel itself. One of the characteristics of the Zionists is that they are internally consistent: their narrative, although partial and perhaps even tendentious, supports the case for Israel’s sovereignty in Palestine—legally and morally. The same cannot be said of the New Historians. Their narrative arrives at an inescapable conclusion: that a monumental and epochal injustice was done to the local Arabs when Israel was created. And yet the New Historians persist in proclaiming that the Jewish state has a right to exist. The mental gymnastics required to square that circle are worth mentioning. Avi Shlaim, one of the most articulate New Historians, argues that Israel’s legitimacy rests on the United Nations partition plan. Legally he is absolutely correct: the recognition of Israel by the great powers of the Security Council does give the Jewish state juridical legitimacy. But this elides the fact that the Security Council did not have the consent of the local Arabs or the Arab countries in the region. In a sense, then, the Security Council was acting imperially, the way that empires have always acted: drawing borders as they please, and locals’ wishes were secondary to the superior military force of imperial masters. The fact that it was an international body ostensibly suffused with the ideals of the United Nations does not change that.

Many Arab states have reluctantly resigned themselves to Israel’s existence. The Jewish state has signed peace treaties with Egypt, Jordan, and has ratified agreements with the moderate Palestinian leadership that recognizes Israel’s right to exist. What is more, even Arab states that still do not formally recognize Israel, like Saudi Arabia, have expressed a willingness to do so provided it makes major concessions on borders, refugees, and Jerusalem. This is progress, of a sort, even when we take into account that Arab masses likely do not feel the same, and that the Jewish state still has implacable foes bent on its annihilation, like Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and others. The climate in the region remains poisonous and toxic, raising questions about whether, and how, the conflict can be solved.

There have been many missed opportunities to resolve the conflict, and this is another area where Zionists and New Historians disagree. The former sustains that the conflict has not been solved because of the Palestinians’ unwillingness to recognize the legitimacy of Israel. One example that supports their view is the collapse of the second Oslo negotiations. Then, the Labour Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat over 80% of the West Bank, the return of East Jerusalem which would become Palestine’s capital, and a solution to the refugee problem that included accepting 500 refugees a year plus compensation. It was an unprecedented offer, and broke many taboos, especially on Jerusalem, which for Zionists must remain under complete Israeli control. Arafat, under pressure from other Arab countries, refused the offer, and, even worse, did not make any counter-offers. The talks collapsed, and even former US president Bill Clinton blamed Arafat. It seemed to confirm the Zionist belief that the Arabs do not really want a two state solution, otherwise they would have accepted it when it was offered to them.

The New Historians agree that Arafat missed an historic opportunity to finally end the conflict, but they point out that this does not absolve Israel from its illegal settlement expansion that makes a two-state solution more remote than ever. They also mention that the Jewish state has also rejected offers from Arab states to end the conflict. For example, after the 1948 war, some Arab modernizers, like Colonel Zaim of Syria, were willing to accept Israel’s existence and even help solve the refugee problem in exchange for territorial concessions that would not have threatened the country. Israel, from a position of strength, declined the offer, arguing that the armistice agreements were sufficient to keep the peace. According to Avi Shlaim, this represents a missed opportunity that might have led to peace between Israel and Syria, which to this day remain hostile enemies.

So where do we go from here? Global elites and members of the commentariat believe that the two-state solution is the only way for the communities to co-exist. Every time there is a war between them—around every 2-3 years—that “solution” is uncritically bandied about as if it is self-evident to all thinking and well-meaning people. I too believed that, until I travelled to Israel and Palestine in the spring of 2014. It was then that I realized that the so called two-state idea is largely an elite construction that does not accord with many facts on the ground. First is the fact that many, perhaps most, Palestinians would not want to live in a Palestinian state, regardless of what they tell pollsters or foreign journalists. Why? Because such an entity would probably be corrupt and poor and mostly dependent on foreign aid. Consider this: Arabs living in Israel enjoy one of the highest living standards in the world, with access to world class schools and public services that rival and even surpass those in the developed world. How many of them would give up these benefits to live in some Palestinian state that would be much poorer, where perhaps only the politically connected would enjoy a high standard of living? This speaks volumes about the viability of a Palestinian state. It also confirms one of the observations I made through the simple act of talking to average people: most do not care about abstractions like “two-states”. Rather, most want the things that others take for granted: a job that can support a family, security of property, and good public services. This basic fact is obscured to Westerners because the media provides a skewed version of reality. We see either images of negotiations between elites, or the after effects of violence perpetrated by extremists. But this does not reflect the reality of the majority who do not share the interests of either the elites or the radicals.

A two-state solution is not viable for other reasons. When I was in the Holy Land, I was struck by how closely the communities were to each other. I recall seeing an Israeli settlement in Bethlehem (in the West Bank) that was a stone throw’s distance from Palestinian homes. East Jerusalem, which many Arabs would like as their future capital, seems to seamlessly connect with the Christian parts of the city. In Hebron, the tomb of Sarah and Abraham—holy to both Islam and Judaism—is in an ancient building that is divided between Jewish and Muslim sections. Jewish settlements in Hebron are also often atop Palestinian stores and apartments. How would the two state idea be applied to communities who live in such close proximity? In theory, Jews would be subject to the laws of their state, and Palestinians to the laws of their own state, even though in practice they are essentially sharing the same territory. This seems unfeasible, to put it lightly, and one can envisage endless legal disputes between two nominally sovereign nations that would be difficult to resolve.

It seems, then, that the only viable idea is a bi-national unitary state. This would challenge the whole paradigm of the conflict, since the mantra of the two-state solution has become so unthinkingly entrenched in the discourse on Israelis and Arabs. This was recognized by Edward Said, a Palestinian Christian born in Jerusalem whose family fled the 1948 war. He was one of the world’s most articulate and vocal defenders of Palestinian rights, and he too believed in the two state idea—until he travelled back to his homeland and realized that the facts on the ground make it unrealizable. A unitary state would not be a panacea, and it would be difficult to overcome resistance from those who want to preserve Israel’s Jewish identity. But compromises could be found that allow, at least for the time being, the state to retain its Jewish identity while granting citizenship rights to Palestinians. The current Israeli president, Reuven Rivlin, is a proponent of the one state idea, as are several groups among both Israelis and Palestinians. Under current conditions, it will not happen, but neither will the two-state idea. We can therefore expect conflict to continue, with wars breaking out every two or three years. Sooner or later, though, events may force the major actors towards radical solutions like the bi-national unitary state.