Editing Zionism (section)

=== Early Zionist settlement ===
{{Main|First Aliyah}}
In the early twentieth century, Zionism advanced by establishing towns, colonies, and an independent monetary system to channel Jewish capital into Palestine. Due to the unstable local economy and fluctuating currency values under Ottoman rule, Zionists created their own financial institutions. Despite their small numbers, the Zionists instilled a fear of territorial displacement in the local Palestinian population.{{sfn|Pappé|2004|loc=Chapter 2}} This fear would be the main driver of antagonism from the Arabs,<ref>{{harvnb|Morris|1999|p=37}}: "The fear of territorial displacement and dispossession was to be the chief motor of Arab antagonism to Zionism down to 1948 (and indeed after 1967 as well)."</ref> leading to physical resistance and the eventual use of military force by settlers. Initially, the impact on rural Palestinians was minimal, with only a few villages encountering Jewish colonies. However, after World War I and as Zionist land purchases increased, the rural population began to experience dramatic changes. From almost the beginning of Zionist settlement, the Palestinians viewed Zionism as an expansionist endeavor. According to Israeli historian Benny Morris, Zionism was inherently expansionist and always had the goal of turning the entirety of Palestine into a Jewish state. In addition, Morris describes the Zionists as intent on politically and physically dispossessing the Arabs.{{sfn|Morris|1999|loc=Conclusions}} Early warnings from local leaders in the 1880s about the destabilizing effects of Jewish immigration went largely unheeded until these later developments.{{sfn|Pappé|2004|loc=The Arrival of Zionism}} By the early 20th century, there were fourteen Zionist settlements in Palestine, established through land purchases from both local and external landowners.{{sfn|Pappé|2004|loc=The Arrival of Zionism}}

From the outset, the Zionist leadership saw land acquisition as essential to achieving their goal of establishing a Jewish state. This acquisition was strategic, aiming to create a continuous area of Jewish land. The World Zionist Organization established the [[Jewish National Fund]] (JNF) in 1901, with the stated goal "to redeem the land of Palestine as the inalienable possession of the Jewish people." The notion of land "redemption" entailed that the land could not be sold and could not be leased to a non-Jew nor should the land be worked by Arabs.{{sfn|Quigley|2005|pp=4–7}} The land purchased was primarily from absentee landlords, and upon purchase of the land, the tenant farmers who traditionally had rights of usufruct were often expelled.{{sfn|Khalidi|2010|p=102}} Herzl publicly opposed this dispossession, but wrote privately in his diary: "We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our country... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly." Support for expulsion of the Arab population in Palestine was one of the main currents in Zionist ideology from the movement's inception.{{sfn|Morris|1999|pp=20–24}}{{Failed verification|date=March 2025|reason=The referenced pages contain only a brief comment about Herzl's alleged views regarding expulsion of the Arabs and don't contain any general claims about it being "one of the main currents in Zionist ideology from the movement's inception"}}

The arrival of Zionist settlers to Palestine in the late 19th century is widely seen as the start of the [[Israeli–Palestinian conflict]].{{sfn|Masalha|2012|p=70}}{{sfn|Karsh|2009|p=12}}{{sfn|Morris|2008|p=1}}
Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible.<ref name="ZionistLandJewsArabs">{{bulleted list|
| {{harvnb|Manna|2022|ps=, pp. 2 ("the principal objective of the Zionist leadership to keep as few Arabs as possible in the Jewish state"), 4 ("in the 1948 war, when it became clear that the objective that enjoyed the unanimous support of Zionists of all inclinations was to establish a Jewish state with the smallest possible number of Palestinians"), and 33 ("The Zionists had two cherished objectives: fewer Arabs in the country and more land in the hands of the settlers.")}}
| {{harvnb|Khalidi|2020|p=76|ps=: "The Nakba represented a watershed in the history of Palestine and the Middle East. It transformed most of Palestine from what it had been for well over a millennium—a majority Arab country—into a new state that had a substantial Jewish majority. This transformation was the result of two processes: the systematic ethnic cleansing of the Arab-inhabited areas of the country seized during the war; and the theft of Palestinian land and property left behind by the refugees as well as much of that owned by those Arabs who remained in Israel. There would have been no other way to achieve a Jewish majority, the explicit aim of political Zionism from its inception. Nor would it have been possible to dominate the country without the seizures of land."}}
| {{harvnb|Slater|2020|ps=, pp. 49 ("There were three arguments for the moral acceptability of some form of transfer. The main one—certainly for the Zionists but not only for them—was the alleged necessity of establishing a secure and stable Jewish state in as much of Palestine as was feasible, which was understood to require a large Jewish majority."), 81 ("From the outset of the Zionist movement all the major leaders wanted as few Arabs as possible in a Jewish state"), 87 ("The Zionist movement in general and David Ben-Gurion in particular had long sought to establish a Jewish state in all of "Palestine," which in their view included the West Bank, Gaza, and parts of Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria."), and 92 ("As Israeli historian [[Shlomo Sand]] wrote: 'During every round of the national conflict over Palestine, which is the longest running conflict of its kind in the modern era, Zionism has tried to appropriate additional territory.'")}}
| {{harvnb|Segev|2019|p=418|ps=, "the Zionist dream from the start—maximum territory, minimum Arabs"}}
| {{harvnb|Cohen|2017|p=78|ps=, "As was suggested by Masalha (1992), Morris (1987), and other scholars, many preferred a state without Arabs or with as small a minority as possible, and plans for population transfers were considered by Zionist leaders and activists for years."}}
| {{harvnb|Lustick|Berkman|2017|pp=47–48|ps=, "As Ben-Gurion told one Palestinian leader in the early 1930s, 'Our final goal is the independence of the Jewish people in Palestine, on both sides of the Jordan River, not as a minority, but as a community numbering millions" (Teveth 1985:130). ''Ipso facto'', this meant Zionism's success would produce an Arab minority in Palestine, no matter what its geographical dimensions."}}
| {{harvnb|Stanislawski|2017|p=65|ps=, "The upper classes of Palestinian society quickly fled the fight to places of safety within the Arab world and outside of it; the lower classes were caught between the Israeli desire to have as few Arabs as possible remaining in their new state and the Palestinians' desire to remain on the lands they regarded as their ancient national patrimony."}}
| {{harvnb|Finkelstein|2016|loc=Ch. 1 ("Justifying the Zionist Enterprise")|ps=, "Zionism's claim to the whole of Palestine not only precluded a modus vivendi based on partition with the indigenous Arab population, it called into question any Arab presence in Palestine."}}
| {{harvnb|Rouhana|Sabbagh-Khoury|2014|p=6|ps=, "It was obvious to most approaches within the Zionist movement—certainly to the mainstream as represented by Labor Zionism and its leadership headed by Ben Gurion, that a Jewish state would entail getting rid of as many of the Palestinian inhabitants of the land as possible ... Following Wolfe, we argue that the logic of demographic elimination is an inherent component of the Zionist project as a settler-colonial project, although it has taken different manifestations since the founding of the Zionist movement."}}
| {{harvnb|Engel|2013|ps=, pp. 96 ("From the outset Zionism had been the activity of a loose coalition of individuals and groups united by a common desire to increase the Jewish population of Palestine ..."), 121 ("... the ZO sought ways to expand the territory a partitioned Jewish state might eventually receive ... Haganah undertook to ensconce small groups of Jews in parts of Palestine formerly beyond their sights ... their leaders had hoped for more expansive borders ..."), and 138 ("The prospect that Israel would have only the barest Jewish majority thus loomed large in the imagination of the state's leaders. To be sure, until the late 1930s most Zionists would have been delighted with any majority, no matter how slim; the thought that Jews in Palestine would ever be more numerous than Arabs appeared a distant vision. But in 1937 the Peel Commission had suggested ... to leave both the Jewish state and Arab Palestine with the smallest possible minorities. That suggestion had fired Zionist imaginations; now it was possible to think of a future state as 'Jewish' not only by international recognition of the right of Jews to dominate its government but by the inclinations of virtually all of its inhabitants. Such was how the bulk of the Zionist leadership understood the optimal 'Jewish state' in 1948: non-Jews (especially Arabs) might live in it and enjoy all rights of citizenship, but their numbers should be small enough compared to the Jewish population that their impact on public life would be minimal. Israel's leaders were thus not sad at all to see so many Arabs leave its borders during the fighting in 1947–48 ... the 150,000 who remained on Israeli territory seemed to many to constitute an unacceptably high proportion relative to the 650,000 Jews in the country when the state came into being. This perception not only dictated Israel's adamant opposition to the return of Arab refugees, it reinforced the imperative to bring as many new Jewish immigrants into the country as possible, as quickly as possible, no matter how great or small their prospects for becoming the sort of 'new Jews' the state esteemed most.")}}
| {{harvnb|Masalha|2012|p=38|ps=, "From the late nineteenth century and throughout the Mandatory period the demographic and land policies of the Zionist Yishuv in Palestine continued to evolve. But its demographic and land battles with the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine were always a battle for 'maximum land and minimum Arabs' (Masalha 1992, 1997, 2000)."}}
| {{harvnb|Lentin|2010|p=7|ps=, "'the Zionist leadership was always determined to increase the Jewish space ... Both land purchases in and around the villages, and military preparations, were all designed to dispossess the Palestinians from the area of the future Jewish state' (Pappe 2008: 94)."}}
| {{harvnb|Shlaim|2009|p=56|ps=, "That most Zionist leaders wanted the largest possible Jewish state in Palestine with as few Arabs inside it as possible is hardly open to question."}}
| {{harvnb|Ben-Ami|2007|p=50|ps=, "The ethos of Zionism was twofold; it was about demography–ingathering the exiles in a viable Jewish state with as small an Arab minority as possible–and land."}}
| {{harvnb|Pappé|2006|p=250|ps=, "In other words, ''hitkansut'' is the core of Zionism in a slightly different garb: to take over as much of Palestine as possible with as few Palestinians as possible."}}
| {{harvnb|Morris|2004|p=588|ps=, "But the displacement of Arabs from Palestine or from the areas of Palestine that would become the Jewish State was inherent in Zionist ideology and, in microcosm, in Zionist praxis from the start of the enterprise. The piecemeal eviction of tenant farmers, albeit in relatively small numbers, during the first five decades of Zionist land purchase and settlement naturally stemmed from, and in a sense hinted at, the underlying thrust of the ideology, which was to turn an Arab-populated land into a State with an overwhelming Jewish majority."}}
| {{harvnb|Morris|2001|pp=676–682|ps=, "Zionism was a colonizing and expansionist ideology and movement ... Zionist ideology and practice were necessarily and elementally expansionist ... Zionism was politically expansionist in the sense that from the start, its aim was to turn all of Palestine (and in the movement's pre-1921 maps, the East Bank of the Jordan and the area south of the Litani River as well) into a Jewish state ... The Zionists were intent on politically, or even physically, dispossessing and supplanting the Arabs; their enterprise, however justified in terms of Jewish suffering and desperation, was tainted by a measure of moral dubiousness ... Zionism had always looked to the day when a Jewish majority would enable the movement to gain control over the country ... Palestine would not be transformed into a Jewish state unless all or much of the Arab population was expelled."}}
}}</ref>

In 1903, 'the Eretz Israel assembly' was held by [[Menachem Ussishkin]]. This assembly marked the beginning of a more formalized Zionist colonization effort. Under his leadership, both professional and political organizations were established, paving the way for a sustained Zionist presence in the region.{{sfn|Pappé|2004|loc=The Arrival of Zionism}} Ussishkin delineated three methods for the Zionist movement to acquire land: by force and conquest, by expropriation via governmental authority, and by purchase. The only option available to the movement at the moment in his perspective was the last one, "until at some point we become rulers".{{sfn|Morris|1999|p=35-40}}

==== Second Aliyah ====
{{Main|Second Aliyah}}
The second wave of Zionist settlement came with the [[Second Aliyah]] starting in 1904. The settlers of this period laid the foundational elements for the Jewish society in Palestine envisioned by the Zionist movement. They established the first two political parties, the socialist [[Po'alei Zion]] and the non-socialist [[Hapoel Hatzair|Ha-Po'el Ha-Tza'ir]] and initiated the first collective agricultural settlements known as [[kibbutzim]], which were fundamental in the formation of the Israeli state.{{sfn|Shafir|1996}} They also formed the first underground military group, [[Ha-Shomer]], which later evolved into the Haganah and eventually became the core of the Israeli army. Many leaders of the Zionist national movement were products of the Second Aliyah.{{sfn|Gorny|1987}} The Zionists of the second aliyah were also more ideologically motivated than those of the first aliyah. In particular, they sought the "[[Hebrew Labor|conquest of labor]]", which entailed the exclusion of Arabs from the labor market.{{sfn|Shafir|1996|loc="Conquest of Labor"}}