Editing Zionism (section)

=== The Balfour Declaration and World War I ===
{{main|Balfour Declaration|Mandate for Palestine|Homeland for the Jewish people}}
[[File:Palestine claimed by WZO 1919.png|thumb|right|Palestine as claimed by the World Zionist Organization in 1919 at the [[Paris Peace Conference, 1919|Paris Peace Conference]]]]
At the start of [[World War I]], the Zionist leadership attempted to persuade the British government of the benefits of sponsoring a Jewish colony in Palestine. Their main initial success was in establishing a lobbying group centered around the [[Rothschild family]], largely driven by [[Chaim Weizmann]].{{sfn|Shlaim|2001}} In the 1917 [[Balfour declaration]], Britain declared its support for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". The declaration was largely motivated by war-time considerations and antisemitic preconceptions about the putative influence Jews had on the [[Tsarist autocracy|Tsarist government]] and in the shaping of American policy.{{sfn|Shapira|2014|loc=The Balfour Declaration}}{{sfn|Pappé|2004|loc=Palestine in the First World War}} Though his decision was also motivated by religious convictions,{{efn|"The irony here is in the now well-documented understanding that Lord Balfour was himself deeply religious and that his thinking on the projected post-World War 1 fate of Palestine was influenced by his expectations of the fulfullment of biblical prophecy. What disappointed Balfour, [[William Hechler|Hechler]] and [[Abraham Isaac Kook|Kook]] was that the secular Jewish settlers of British Mandate Palestine did not see divine Providence at work in international affairs."{{sfn|Goldman|2009|p=133}}}} Balfour himself had passed the [[Aliens Act 1905]], which aimed to keep Eastern European Jews out of Britain.{{efn|[[Brian Klug]] states that "Keeping Jews out of Britain and packing them off to Palestine were just two sides of the same antisemitic coin"{{sfn|Masalha|2018|loc=Chapter 10}}}} More decisive were Britain's colonial and imperial geopolitical goals in the region, specifically in retaining control over the [[Suez Canal]] by establishing a pro-British state in the region.{{sfn|Shapira|2014|p=70-71}}{{sfn|Roy|2016|p=33-35}} Weizmann's role in obtaining the Balfour Declaration led to his election as the Zionist movement's leader. He remained in that role until 1948, and then was elected as the first [[President of Israel]] after the nation gained independence.

Weizmann's ultimate goal was the establishment of a Jewish state, even beyond the borders of "Greater Israel." For Weizmann, Palestine was a Jewish and not an Arab country. The state he sought would contain the east bank of the Jordan River and extend from the Litani River (in present-day Lebanon). Weizmann's strategy involved incrementally approaching this goal over a long period, in the form of settlement and land acquisition.{{sfn|Flapan|1979}}{{pn|date=February 2025}} Weizmann was open to the idea of Arabs and Jews jointly running Palestine through an elected council with equal representation, but he did not view the Arabs as equal partners in negotiations about the country's future. In particular, he was steadfast in his view of the "moral superiority" of the Jewish claim to Palestine over the Arab claim and believed these negotiations should be conducted solely between Britain and the Jews.{{sfn|Shlaim|2001}} According to Zionist Israeli historian [[Simha Flapan]], the essential assumptions of Weizmann's strategy were later adopted by [[David Ben-Gurion]] and subsequent Zionist leaders.<ref>{{harvnb|Flapan|1979}}: "The importance of analysing Weizmann's strategy derives from the fact that the assumptions on which they were based were, with slight modifications, adopted by Ben-Gurion and his successors. If one substitutes 'United States' for 'Great Britain' and the 'Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan' for the 'Arab National Movement', Weizmann's basic strategic concepts might be taken as descriptive of Israel's present foreign policy."</ref>{{pn|date=February 2025}}

==== King-Crane Commission ====
[[File:King Crane Commission 1919 Summary of Arguments Presented to the Commission For and Against Zionism.jpg|thumb|left|During the [[1919 Paris Peace Conference]], an [[King–Crane Commission|Inter-Allied Commission]] was sent to Palestine to assess the views of the local population; the report summarized the arguments received from petitioners for and against Zionism.]] In 1919, the US-based [[King–Crane Commission]] started with a strongly sympathetic disposition towards Zionism but concluded that the maximum Zionist demands implied subjection of Palestinians to Jewish rule and that this was a violation of the principle of self-determination, given the anti-Zionist sentiment of the non-Jewish population.{{sfn|Ovendale|2015|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=XM_MCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA51 51–]}} The report stated that "The initial claim, often submitted by Zionist representatives, that they have a 'right' to Palestine based on occupation of two thousand years ago, can barely be seriously considered."{{sfn|Quigley|2021|p=181}}<ref name="Crane">{{Cite report |title=Report of the American Section of the International Commission on Mandates in Turkey |publisher=[[King-Crane Commission]] |date=August 28, 1919 |page=794 |url=https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1919Parisv12/d380 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231216002528/https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1919Parisv12/d380 |archive-date=December 16, 2023}}</ref> Consequently, it recommended a considerably "modified" or "reduced" version of the Zionist programme, with Palestine as a Jewish national home but not a Jewish state.<ref name="Crane"/>

==== The Development of Revisionist Zionism ====
[[Ze'ev Jabotinsky]] founded the [[Revisionist Zionism|Revisionist Party]] in 1925, which took on a more militant ethos and openly maximalist agenda than Weizmann and Ben-Gurion. Jabotinsky rejected Weizmann's strategy of incremental state building, instead preferring to immediately declare sovereignty over the entire region, which extended to both the East and West bank of the Jordan river.{{sfn|Shlaim|2001}} Like Weizmann and Herzl, Jabotinsky also believed that the support of a great power was essential to the success of Zionism. From early on, Jabotinksy openly rejected the possibility of a "voluntary agreement" with the Arabs of Palestine. He instead believed in building an "iron wall" of Jewish military force to break Arab resistance to Zionism, at which point an agreement could be established.{{sfn|Shlaim|2001}} Jabotinsky's "iron wall" strategy would have a lasting effect on the Zionist perspective towards the demographic problem posed by the presence of the local Palestinian population.<ref>{{harvnb|Slater|2020}}: "In short, the Iron Wall concept—together with the premises, values, and historical myths that underlie it—has been and still is the dominant political and military strategy of Zionism. Summarizing its consequences, Flapan wrote that Jabotinsky "left an indelible mark on the Zionist attitudes towards the Arab question""</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Cohen|2017}}: "Combined with the justification for using force to impose Zionism's minimum requirements, Jabotinsky's practical proposal for coercive pedagogy quickly filled the void that was Zionism's official policy on the Arab question."</ref> Both the left and right factions of Zionism would rely on this strategy of leveraging military strength in pursuit of political aspirations.<ref>{{bulleted list
| {{harvnb|Shlaim|2001}}: "Jabotinsky never wavered in his conviction that Jewish military power was the key factor in the struggle for a state. It was the Labor Zionists who gradually came around to his point of view without openly admitting it. So in the final analysis the gap was not all that great: Labor leaders, too, came to rely increasingly on the strategy of the iron wall... all Israeli governments, regardless of their political color, have adopted the first stage of the strategy of the iron wall—to impose their presence unilaterally on their neighbors... Despair was expected to promote pragmatism on the other side and thus to prepare the ground for the second stage of the strategy: negotiations with the local Arabs about their status and national rights in Palestine. In other words, Jewish military strength was to pave the way to a political settlement with the Palestinian national movement..."
| {{harvnb|Gorny|1987}}: "From the outset, Zionism sought to employ Jewish force in order to realize national aspirations. This force consisted primarily of the collective ability to rebuild a national home in Palestine. It also included the organization and education of the people and recruitment of Jewish funds and military means of defending the Yishuv. The ha-Shomer organization fulfilled this last task in the Second Aliyah and its continuation was the Hagana set up by Ahdut ha-'Avodah in 1919 and adopted by the Histadrut a year later. Thus, Revisionism's campaign for a Jewish military force in Palestine was innovative only in that it viewed the implementation of Zionism as conditional on the existence of such a force."
| {{harvnb|Morris|2001}}: "The Revisionists found support for their belief that Zionism would win through only with military force. The binationalists saw in the violence "proof" that conciliation had to be achieved quickly, before the Arab majority overwhelmed the Yishuv. The socialist mainstream—now represented by Mapai (Mifleget Poalei Eretz Yisrael—the Land of Israel Workers Party), established in 1930 with the amalgamation of Achdut HaAvodah and HaPoel HaZair—was obliged at last to admit that there existed a Palestinian-Arab nationalist movement, and that the Yishuv was not merely confronting a group of bloodthirsty fanatics or incited hooligans.42 The natural consequence was the growing appreciation, expounded by Chaim Arlosoroff, the director of the Jewish Agency's Political Department from 1931 until 1933, that Zionism would have to use force to achieve its aims.43 After Arlosoroff was murdered by unknown assailants in Tel Aviv in 1933, Ben-Gurion met repeatedly with Musa al-Alami, a PAE member, and argued that Zionism would develop the country to the benefit of both peoples. Al-Alami replied that he would rather have the country remain desolate for a hundred years than see Zionism succeed.44 These contacts came to naught, and the stage was set for the outbreak of the Arab revolt."
| {{harvnb|Shapira|1992}}: "The romanticism of the use of force, a feature that had characterized Zionism in its early period, gave way to a down-to-earth political attitude: Force was conceptualized, coolheadedly and soberly, as one of a gamut of means utilized by a political movement seriously intent on realizing its objectives... Up until World War II, the Zionist leadership had viewed physical power as a tool designed to provide an answer to the challenge of Arab militancy. They regarded it as a means to curb and prevent Arab action but not as a way to advance Jewish initiatives or to create new facts. There was already a certain ambivalence in this matter at the time of the Arab Rebellion. The ascent to Hanita and its settlement could not have taken place without the threat of force by the Jews. In other words, in this instance, force also created facts on the ground."
| {{harvnb|Finkelstein|2016}}: "The 'defensive ethos' was never the operative ideology of mainstream Zionism. From beginning to end, Zionism was a conquest movement. The subtitle of Shapira's study is 'The Zionist Resort to Force'. Yet, Zionism did not 'resort' to force. Force was – to use Shapira's apt phrase in her conclusion – 'inherent in the situation' (p. 357). Gripped by messianism after the issuance of the Balfour Declaration, the Zionist movement sought to conquer Palestine with a Jewish Legion under the slogan 'In blood and fire shall Judea rise again' (pp. 83–98). When these apocalyptic hopes were dispelled and displaced by the mundane reality of the British Mandate, mainstream Zionism made a virtue of necessity and exalted labor as it proceeded to conquer Palestine 'dunum by dunum, goat by goat'. Force had not been abandoned, however. Shapira falsely counterposes settlement ('by virtue of labor') to force ('by dint of conquest'). Yet, settlement was force by other means. Its purpose, in Shapira's words, was to build a 'Jewish infrastructure in Palestine' so that 'the balance of power between Jews and Arabs had shifted in favor of the former' (pp. 121, 133; cf. p. 211). To the call of a Zionist leader on the morrow of Tel Hai that 'we must be a force in the land', Shapira adds the caveat: 'He was not referring to military might but, rather, to power in the sense of demography and colonization' (p. 113). Yet, Shapira willfully misses the basic point that 'demography and colonization' were equally force. Moreover, without the 'foreign bayonets' of the British Mandate, the Zionist movement could not have established even a toehold, let alone struck deep roots, in Palestine.51 Toward the end of the 1930s and especially after World War II, a concatenation of events – Britain's waning commitment to the Balfour Declaration, the escalation of Arab resistance, the strengthening of the Yishuv, etc. – caused a consensus to crystallize within the Zionist movement that the time was ripe to return to the original strategy of conquering Palestine 'by blood and fire'."
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