Tamar Amar-Dahl Zionist Israel and the Question of Palestine Tamar Amar-Dahl Zionist Israel and the Question of Palestine Jewish Statehood and the History of the Middle East Conflict First edition published by Ferdinand Schöningh GmbH & Co. KG in 2012: Das zionistische Israel. Jüdischer Nationalismus und die Geschichte des Nahostkonflikts An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libra- ries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access. More information about the initiative can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/. ISBN 978-3-11-049663-5 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-049880-6 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-049564-5 ISBN 978-3-11-021808-4 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-021809-1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-021806-2 A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. ISSN 0179-0986 e-ISSN 0179-3256 Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License, © 2017 Tamar Amar-Dahl, published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston as of February 23, 2017. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/. Cover image: Jerusalem, Thinkstock: gkuna Translated from the German by Dr. Olga Thierbach-McLean Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Typesetting: Dr. Rainer Ostermann, München A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Printing: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid free paper Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Printed in Germany Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliogra- fie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über www.degruyter.com http://dnb.dnb.de abrufbar. www.magnespress.co.il © 2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Druck und Bindung: Duck & Co., Ortsname ♾ Gedruckt auf säurefreiem Papier Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com This book is dedicated to a dear friend and mentor Professor Hans Mommsen (1930–2015) Contents Introduction 1 1 Zionism and the Ideology of the Jewish State 4 2 Zionist Israel and its Enemies 18 3 Israeli Democracy and the Zionist Project 52 4 Israel’s War Policy in the Service of Zionist Israel 92 5 Jewish Statehood and Regional Peace 148 Bibliography 191 Internet sources 196 Index of Persons 197 Introduction Introduction Israel is a product of Zionism. The Jewish state originates in Jewish nationalism that emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century in Europe. In the course of the secularization and formation of national states that was taking place in Western Europe, the religiously hued, old Christian hatred towards Jews assumed racist features, turning into virulent anti-Semitism. At the same time, efforts to achieve real emancipation for European Jews were failing. Consequently, as new approaches to a resolution seemed to be called for, the Jewish people themselves took up the “Jewish question.” Theodor Herzl’s 1896 pamphlet The Jewish State (Der Judenstaat) was fol- lowed in 1897 by the First Zionist Congress in Basel. With the founding of the World Zionist Organization the political goal was promptly proclaimed: the estab- lishment of a Jewish state for the Jewish people outside of Europe. The hostility towards Jewish life in Europe turned into the Zionist principle of the “negation of the diaspora,” with Zionist-motivated Jewish emigration starting as early as 1882, first from Eastern and later also from Western Europe. And it was the old-new land of Israel – Eretz Israel – that in the beginning of the twentieth century was chosen as the appropriate territory. Half a century later – but only after millions of European Jews had been mur- dered by Germany’s Nazi regime – the Jewish national movement won an import- ant victory in the proclamation of the Jewish state. Apart from 1945, the year 1948 represents the decisive turning point in contemporary Jewish history. With the founding of Israel so soon after the Shoah, the Zionist project in Eretz Israel appeared to be a matter of bitter urgency. More than anything else, the extermina- tion of the intended citizens of the to-be-founded Jewish state solidified Zionism as the ultimate answer to the “Jewish question,” not only among Jews but also on the international political-diplomatic stage. These two historical momentums set into motion a historic process, namely the nationalization of the Jews in the second half of the twentieth century. Jewish national statehood was established as a manifest way of life, with political sover- eignty and military strength becoming the cornerstones of the new Jewish-Israeli self-image. To wit, in the Zionist understanding of history, national statehood is seen as the normal state of the to-be-nationalized Jewish people – a state that needs to be actively fought for. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Jewish self-concept has a markedly Zionist orientation: Eretz Israel is in Jewish hands, the majority of the Jewish people live in the old-new country, and the Jewish nation state is the reason d’être of Israeli polity. But Zionist Israel is neither a self-evident nor a natural state of affairs. Israel does not have an internationally accepted state territory, a large part of the coun- DOI 10.1515/ 9783110498806-001, © 2017 Tamar Amar-Dahl, published by De Gruyter Olden- bourg. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. 2 Introduction try’s population is made up of non-Jews, and above all it has been in nothing less than a permanent state of war from the very time of its proclamation. The con- flict over Palestine and its escalation into an irresolvable regional problem has deeply impacted Israeli nationalism. The fight for national statehood is de facto still continuing, thus dominating the policy, society, military and political culture of Israel. And so “security” has become a key code of Israeli society. The history of Israel may be mapped in terms of this tension between, on the one hand, the perception of national statehood as a Jewish way of life to which there is really no alternative and, on the other hand, the given conditions for the realization of the Zionist project. The history of the Zionist undertaking is charac- terized by the conflict between Zionist self-image in Eretz Israel and the reality in Palestine, the place where that self-image is lived. This is where the key to under- standing Israel’s history and the Middle East conflict may be found. In this book, I am addressing the following questions: How did Zionist Israel come into existence? What does the Zionist ideology, which forms the basis for the Israeli state, actually imply, and what does it mean for the realization of Zionism in a de facto bi-national Palestine? What kind of political order has emerged over the years in the face of this discrepancy between the prevailing notion of the state and the demographic and geopolitical reality? And also: How can political culture, the relationship between the state, politics, military and society in Israel, be characterized? This book comprises five thematic clusters, in the first of which I discuss the origin and ideology of Zionism. From there, in the second section, I go on to examine the view of the enemy that has emerged in the course of Israeli history, taking a closer look at the way the opponent, who is identified as nemesis, is treated. A third chapter addresses Israeli democracy, and especially the dichot- omy present in the self-imposed standard according to which the Israeli state can be not only “Jewish” but also “democratic.” The subject matter of my account is the demographical contradiction between a Jewish state in Eretz Israel and the bi-national reality in Palestine. As well it covers the meaning for Israeli democ- racy of a political culture that has been so strongly shaped by security-political aspects in the course of its historical development. The key question is whether Israeli democracy can be sustained in the face of a permanent state of war. The subsequent fourth part explores the role and significance of war in the creation and consolidation of Jewish national statehood. Here, the reasons for and also the form and understanding of military action as an indispensable instrument for ensuring the security and national statehood of Israel are inves- tigated with a view to their consequences. And finally, the fifth chapter deals with the question of whether a peaceful settlement of the Middle East conflict is Introduction 3 compatible with Israel’s reason of state. In other words, is Zionist Israel actually capable of reconciling with its neighbors? For it is especially with regard to the old-Zionist question of Palestine – which is, however, still being denied in the political culture of the country – that today’s political Israel stands with its back against the wall. As the pressure from the international community to resolve the problems of state and international law by political means is dramatically increasing, the country is poised in its tradi- tional position of obstinate defiance. This “destructive” ethos calls for an expla- nation. It may be found in the history of Zionist Israel that is related in this book – in a way that is critical without being accusing, differentiated without seeking to expose, and sober without being detached.