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Ian S. Lustick LUSTICK: THE RED THREAD OF ISRAEL’S “DEMOGRAPHIC PROBLEM” THE RED THREAD OF ISRAEL’S “DEMOGRAPHIC PROBLEM” Ian S. Lustick Dr. Lustick is at the University of Pennsylvania. n the spring and early summer of Israel”) explains much about the history of 2018, Israeli forces shot or gassed Zionism and Israel. It also explains Israel’s more than 16,000 people. The ferocity unblinking use of violence against thou- of this response to the massing of Pal- sands of men, women and children and Iestinians near the barrier surrounding the why Israel’s inability to sustain a Jewish Gaza Strip is striking but not astonishing. majority is accelerating its adoption of less It reflects a fundamental truth and springs and less deniable forms of apartheid. from a deep fear. The truth is that the es- The longest and bitterest unresolved sential aspiration of the late nineteenth conflict within Zionism is the territorial and early twentieth century architects of question. If Zionism requires a Jewish the Zionist movement was to ensure that majority, should Zionists forgo options somewhere in the world — and that place for territorial expansion in Palestine/the came to be Palestine — there would be a Land of Israel in order to protect Jewish majority of Jews. The fear is of Jews losing demographic preponderance? Or should the majority they achieved. the movement’s commitment to “liberat- For centuries, said the founders of Zi- ing” the whole land and faith in the growth onism, Jews lived as a minority everywhere of the Jewish population be strong enough and as a majority nowhere; everywhere as to seize and keep as much as possible? In guests, nowhere as hosts. This unnatural the 1930s, the World Zionist Organization condition they identified as the taproot of split over this question. In 1937, David anti-Semitism. Gentile fear and hatred of Ben-Gurion and the Labor Zionist leader- Jews would end, or at least diminish, to ship of the movement, using arguments of safe levels once Jews could point to a land demography, desperate need and realism, where they, like other “normal” peoples, was barely able to convince his associates were a majority and among whom lived to at least negotiate with the British about others as minorities and as guests. their offer to partition Palestine into Jewish Demographic predominance in Pal- and Arab states. The British withdrew the estine thus became Zionism’s categorical offer, but Ben-Gurion was astounded and imperative. The contradiction between this gratified to learn that, with partition, the objective and other Zionist goals (includ- British had imagined evacuating most of ing settling and ruling the “whole Land of the Arab population of the Jewish state. © 2019, The Author Middle East Policy © 2019, Middle East Policy Council 141 MIDDLE EAST POLICY, VOL. XXVI, NO. 1, SPRING 2019 The image of attaining so purely Jewish a reasserted itself with a vengeance after state fired Ben-Gurion’s imagination and the June War. Not only did the “Revision- helped lay the groundwork for his excite- ist” Zionist right wing — founded by ment about accepting the UN partition plan Vladimir Jabotinsky and led by Menachem 10 years later.1 Begin — find new public excitement and Demographic considerations weighed support for its traditional irredentism, so heavily in Ben-Gurion’s decision to accept also did radical fundamentalist elements a truncated and divided Jewish state, as within Jewish orthodox circles and groups outlined in the UN partition resolution of within the “activist” wing of the Social- November 1947. But as it stood, the state ist Zionist movement affiliated with the would still have as many Arabs as Jews powerful Hameuchad kibbutz movement living in it. Having judged that his forces and a variety of land-development and would prevail in the fighting that engulfed settlement-building institutions. From the country, that international intervention 1967 to 1977, Labor Party-led coalition would not occur, and that a Jewish state governments found themselves paralyzed would emerge, what became crucial was by the conflict between those who wanted to ensure that the “liberation” of additional the occupied territories (especially the territories did not threaten the imperative West Bank and Gaza Strip) more than they of Jewish demographic predominance. were concerned about the Arabs who lived Under Ben-Gurion’s direction, the Haga- there, and those who were so opposed to nah (the Zionist movement’s main under- the possibility of absorbing more non-Jews ground army) and its strike force, the Pal- into the state that they favored quickly re- mach, then acted to systematically reduce linquishing the “administered areas” — or the Arab population of the areas the state at least the most densely inhabited regions came to control. This was accomplished within them. This paralysis appeared very by expulsions and by refusing to allow quickly, resulting in the Eshkol govern- refugees to return to their homes. The ment’s famous “decision not to decide” same demographic imperative also helps to and the dominance of Defense Minister explain Ben-Gurion’s decision to overrule Moshe Dayan’s approach of tightening his commanders and refuse permission to Israel’s control of and presence on the land extend the war by conquering the West while holding the Arabs living there at Bank. Ben-Gurion wanted the territory, but arm’s length. he feared the demographic implications of To be sure, in June 1967, Israel did its large Arab population more. extend the enforcement of its laws to a In the decade prior to the June War of 71-square kilometer chunk of the West 1967, Labor Party governments, whether Bank that included East Jerusalem (al- under Ben-Gurion’s leadership or not, de- Quds). But even this act was meticulously emphasized irredentism, characterized the implemented according to the demands of West Bank as “foreign territory,” and more the demographic imperative. The expanded or less accepted a small Arab minority as boundary of what Israel announced as the a permanent feature of the State of Israel. municipality of Jerusalem twisted and But the question of balancing the rule of turned to maximize vacant land while min- more of the Land of Israel against increas- imizing the number of Arab inhabitants. ing the country’s non-Jewish population Deliberately avoiding formal “annexation” 142 LUSTICK: THE RED THREAD OF ISRAEL’S “DEMOGRAPHIC PROBLEM” or the declaration of Israeli sovereignty rael living in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza over the area (something that was also District” if Israel’s sovereignty over these avoided in the 1980 “Basic Law: Jerusa- areas were recognized. But this provision, lem, Capital of Israel”), the government contained in the hand-written version of issued a complex collection of amend- Begin’s original “autonomy plan,” was ments to existing laws and ministerial quickly removed. Even for the Cabinet of decrees. Their a government effect was to Despite substantial political and dominated extend the by territorial boundaries psychological support for such drastic maximalists, of the Israeli measures, the mass removal of Arabs awarding municipality from the country no longer appears in citizenship of Yerusha- Israeli political discourse as an explicitly to millions layim, rather of Palestin- than the advocated formula for solving the ians was too boundaries of “demographic problem.” direct and the State of dangerous a Israel. One crucial reason for this subter- contradiction of Zionism’s demographic fuge was that it made the 60,000 Arab in- imperative. habitants of al-Quds and its environs “per- Accordingly, instead of declaring manent residents” but not Israeli citizens, Israeli sovereignty over the portions of thereby softening the political consequenc- the country under Israel’s control (an act es of adding to the demographic burden of that would have implied or strongly risked the country’s non-Jewish minority.2 citizenship for millions more Arabs) the During the first decade of the occupa- Begin government used the autonomy tion, the discourse in Israel over the dis- negotiations that were part of the Camp position of the territories was most com- David peace process as camouflage to monly expressed and depicted as a struggle massively expand settlement and rapidly between “annexationists” and “anti-annex- advance processes of de facto annexation. ationists.” But when the Likud formed the This was a slow and unofficial incorpora- first non-Labor-party-led government in tion of the territories that would not entail 1977, under its enthusiastically irredentist change in the political status of their and explicitly annexationist leader, Men- Arab inhabitants. The Israeli “left,” what achem Begin, it did not annex the territo- became known as “the peace camp,” pan- ries or declare sovereignty over them. The icked, believing that a “point of no return” single most important factor explaining would soon be reached beyond which the why Begin refrained from implementing Arabs of the territories would, willy-nilly, the principle that had been his life-long become part of the State of Israel. The passion was demography. primary argument it offered to ordinary In 1977, during the ramp-up to the Israelis in support of territorial compro- Camp David summit with Anwar Sadat mise appealed to their fear of and distaste and Jimmy Carter, Begin offered an Israeli for Arabs and to the Zionist imperative of citizenship option for the population he protecting Israel’s Jewish majority, which referred to as “the Arabs of the Land of Is- would be imperiled if the West Bank and 143 MIDDLE EAST POLICY, VOL. XXVI, NO. 1, SPRING 2019 Gaza were permanently incorporated. of Arabs to the state’s population, and as But stoking Jewish hatred of Arabs Arab citizens attained at least a modicum led many Israeli Jews in a very different of national political influence, right-wing direction, toward support for the “transfer” politicians amplified explicit calls for or expulsion of Arabs out of the territories expulsion of Arabs, through either “vol- and even out of the country.
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