Demography and Transfer: Israel's Road to Nowhere

Third World Quarterly, Vol 24, No 4, pp 619–630, 2003 Demography and transfer: Israel’s road to nowhere ELIA ZUREIK ABSTRACT The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, which dates back to the latter part of the nineteenth century, has always been a conflict over land and population balance. At the start of the twenty-first century, with no end in sight to the conflict, the issue of demography stares both sides in the face. Israel’s ability to maintain military and economic superiority over neighbouring Arab countries in general and the Palestinians in particular is matched by its inability to maintain long-term numerical superiority in the areas it holds west of the Jordan River. It is expected that within 10 to 15 years there will be parity between the Arabs and the 5.5 million Jews who currently live in historical Palestine. While discussion of Arab population transfer has been relegated to internal debates among Zionist leaders, the idea itself has always remained a key element in Zionist thinking of ways to solve the demography problem and ensure Jewish population dominance. A recent decline in Jewish immigration to Israel, the rise of the religious-political right, continuing Jewish settlement in the West Bank and Gaza and the recent Palestinian uprising have moved this debate to the public arena. Fractions among Israel’s intellectuals, political figures and Sharon government ministers have raised the demography issue publicly, calling openly for the transfer of the Palestinian population to Jordan. It was Theodore Herzl, the father and ideologue of modern Zionism, who more than a century ago lobbied the Ottoman government and the potentates of Europe on behalf of the Zionist movement for a foothold in Palestine. He advocated the transfer of Palestinian peasants across the border in order to realise the Zionist project of colonisation. Benny Morris, a revisionist historian who recently added his voice to those advocating the transfer of Palestinians across the border, quoted the following from Herzl’s diary: ‘we shall try to spirit the penniless [Arab] population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our country … The removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly’.1 Not to be outdone, Israel Zangwill, a politically active British Zionist, popularised in imperial circles at the turn of last century the slogan ‘a land without a people for a people without a land’. The concept of transfer has been an enduring theme in Zionist discourse.2 Benny Morris, for one, resurrected statements made by Zionist and British officials favouring transfer.3 These officials included, on the Israeli side, Chaim Elia Zureik is in the Department of Sociology at Queen’s University, Mackintosh-Corry Hall, Room D431, Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6, Canada. Email: [email protected]. ISSN 0143-6597 print/ISSN 1360-2241 online/03/040619-12 ᭧ 2003 Third World Quarterly DOI: 10.1080/0143659032000105786 619 ELIA ZUREIK Weizman, David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Sharett, Israel’s first president, prime minister and foreign minister, respectively. On the British side were foreign secretary Ernest Bevin and Hugh Dalton, the chancellor of the exchequer in 1944. With these endorsements behind him, Morris now justifies ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians as a necessary, if belated, solution to the conflict between Israel and the Arab world. Had not the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 and the prevention of their return taken place, there would have been no Jewish state now with an overwhelming Jewish majority. Nearly 50% of the population in the area allotted to Israel by the United Nations partition resolution of 1947 would have been Arab.4 Yet here we are at the start of the twenty-first century, hearing the talk of transfer loud and clear, this time from members of the academy, media and Ariel Sharon’s own government. The Israeli public and leadership remain committed to the principle of demographic politics even though, as we will show below, these have produced neither a pure Jewish state nor a Jewish and democratic state of which the Zionist leadership, past and present, continues to dream. Yet the debate over the transfer of Palestinians from their homeland continues unabated, and is increasingly normalised as part of legitimate political discourse in Israel. Demography debate The drive to maintain Jewish dominance in historical Palestine has shaped both the domestic and foreign policies of Israel. The ratio that is usually cited to ensure a continued Jewish demographic majority is for the population to be 80% Jewish and 20% Arab—a ratio which has been maintained since 1948. When the population balance is altered, even in minute degree, signalling a slight reduc- tion in the four-fifths Jewish majority, Darwinian language about national survival surfaces. It is to safeguard against a perceptible drop in the Jewish–Arab population balance that Israeli policy makers are always on the lookout to recruit new immigrants, even at the cost of importing large numbers of non-Jews, as was the case with Soviet immigrants to Israel in the 1990s. Only around one-third of world Jewry lives in Israel, thus the task of ‘in-gathering the exiles’ remains an unfinished business. Outwardly, Israel’s leaders have constantly reminded world Jewry of the danger intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews poses for the continued existence of Jewish identity outside Israel. Indeed, it is a pastime of Israeli demographers and media pundits to publish forecasts on Jewish demography world-wide. They use these forecasts to demonstrate the continued decline in the numbers of Jews and to urge further Jewish immigration to Israel. The perpetual quest for land and the displacement of the indigenous Palestinian population may have been slowed down, and even derailed at times, but they remain the main items on the Zionist national agenda. Israeli politicians remain preoccupied by Herzl’s dream to this day, and have been so ever since the state came into being more than half a century ago. The legendary cartoons depicting Golda Meir’s nightmares and sleepless nights over the number of newborn Palestinian babies have now become the stuff of population counting and demographic debates. 620 DEMOGRAPHY AND TRANSFER Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line remain tied to demographic considerations. For example, of the various reasons (such as security, absorptive capacity, religion and the endangering of its culture) Israel gives for flouting international conventions and opposing the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes, none is as important as demography. As Barak remarked in the aftermath of the Camp David summit failure in July 2000, demography is an ‘existential’ question. Opposition to the return of Palestinian refugees, and indeed to the continued substantial Palestinian presence in the ancestral homeland, is linked to the ‘Jewishness’ of the state. Several think-tanks, research centres and national policy-making bodies have recently turned their attention to the issue of demography. For example, Itzhak Ravid, at one time the director of Operations Research in the Israeli air force and later head of the National Security Team in the prime minister’s office (1992–93), prepared a study on Arab–Jewish demography for a high profile conference held in April 2001 under the auspices of the prestigious Herzliya Interdisciplinary Centre.5 The overall concern of the conference was to suggest ways for Israel to remain a Jewish state in the face of the low birth rate among the Jewish population, declining Jewish immigration and a high Palestinian birth rate—both in Israel and the occupied territories. Among the core recommendations of the conference, to which Ravid was a main contributor, was a call for the government to adopt a more proactive policy of Arab population ‘containment’, to encourage a decline in the birth rate among the Arabs in Israel, prevent the refugees from returning to their homes and increase Jewish immigration. In the event of revived negotia- tions between Palestinians and Israelis, a far-reaching proposal that was included in the proceedings and adopted by the Herzliya conference involved so-called population and land exchange.6 According to one variant of this proposal, which was publicly endorsed by transportation minister Ephraim Sneh, Arab towns and villages which fall close to the 1967 Green Line, such as Um El-Fahm, should be handed over through a ‘silent transfer’ to a new Palestinian state. In return, Israel would annex the Jewish settlements close to the Green Line—thus further diminishing the number of Arabs in Israel.7 Although the Arab minority, particu- larly those who will be directly affected by such a transfer, has not been consulted during the ongoing demographic debate, its reaction to the idea of a land and population swap has been to reject it outright.8 The idea of transfer resonates with the Israeli public as well. In a national opinion survey released in March 2002, 46% and 31% of the Israeli Jewish public favoured, respectively, direct transfer of Palestinians from the territories and of Arab citizens from Israel. A larger proportion of 60% said they were in favour of indirect transfer through encouraging the Arabs in Israel to accept monetary incentives to leave the country.9 These results are not solely the by- product of the second intifada. They have deep roots in the consciousness of Israelis. A national survey carried out in 1997 showed that 52% of Israel’s Jews would approve the transfer of their Arab co-citizens to a Palestinian state if one were established, 56% would deny Arabs the right to vote in electing a prime minister and 55% would prohibit Arabs from participating in political referenda.10 A Gallup survey in October 2000 in Israel showed that 60% of Israeli Jews would support the transfer of Arab citizens outside Israel’s borders.11 621 ELIA ZUREIK The demography debate is by no means confined to the extreme fringes of right-wing politicians.

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