Israel, Palestine and Zionism

Abstract

"A country without a people for a people without a country." If it were possible to reduce to a formula the underlying reason for the conflict between Israel and the Arabs, and for the Palestine problem, the formulation above is the principle to which reference should be made, because it represents the essence of Zionist thinking and of the Zionist effort: it contains in synthesis the entire programme of Zionism, and at the same time the main source of Zionism's weakness. Around this idea the Zionist movement was organized, and the progress of the movement has been measurable in terms of how far this idea has been realized. Now, this formula had two flaws. The first of them may still serve as the subject of a controversy of a more or less semantic order-what does the concept "people" mean when applied to the Jews? I am not going to get involved in the snares offered by such a discussion. The other flaw, however, in the Zionist formula is both undeniable and big with consequences : the country called Palestine which was presented to the Jews in order that they might realize in it their national aspirations was not a virgin and uninhabited land but, on the contrary, was occupied by a settled and active native population numbering, in 1880, about 500,000 persons.