Israel in Comparative Perspective: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom

9. Zionism and Colonialism: A Comparative Approach

9 Zionism and Colonialism: A Comparative Approach Gershon Shafir Studies telling the story of Israeli state-building usually have two plots. One tells the story of the Zionist immigrants who constructed their institutions according to their ideals and ideologies, mostly socialist ideas imported from the Pale of Settlement, occasionally in disagreement with other non-socialist immigrants who had different blueprints for the state-to-be. The other tells the story of the interaction between Palestinian-Arabs, who were unalterably opposed to the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, and the Jewish immigrants, who were intent on protecting their emerging commonwealth. These two plots, however, rarely intersect. These separate plots should be twined since Israeli state- and societybuilding were not solely an internal Jewish affair. In fact, the distinct characteristics of the Jewish-Palestinian conflict influenced and decisively shaped the character of the Jewish state-to-be and continue to do so in a myriad ways. Some of the unique features and institutions of Israeli society, the overlong period of the Labor Movement's domination, the focal place of the Histadrut, even the kibbutz, are distinct corollaries of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Further, I argue that spcialist ideals and other imported blueprints played a lesser role in creating the Israeli state than the circumstances in which the Jewish immigrants found themselves in Palestine. The most crucial circumstances were found in the land and the labor markets where, An earlier version of this paper has been presented under the title: "Anomalies of Zionist Colonization and Their Normalization," in the Conference on "Trends in the Transformation of Israeli Society," at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, in December 21-22, 1989. 227 228 Gershon Shafir as will be shown, through a prolonged period of trial and error the immigrants made hard choices that determined the character of the yishuv and the future Israeli state and society. Historians, political scientists, and sociologists of Israeli society holding the perspective that disassociates state-building and national conflict and, simultaneously, privileges consciousness at the expense of existence, tended to emphasize those characteristics of the Zionist settlement in Palestine that appear to distinguish it from colonial encounters. The separate development of Jewish and Palestinian societies was widely used as proof that the former could not have exploited the latter, while the universalistsocialist ideologies of the most authoritative group among the young immigrants is presented as an impediment to any potential or lingering colonial characteristic in Zionist settlement. In response to the Likud's large-scale settlement plans in the West Bank, a new critical perspective, according to which Israel had come to resemble Northern Ireland, Algeria in the 1950s and 1960s, and/or the white supremacist regime of South Africa, appeared in the public discourse.! The authors of this perspective routinely drew a sharp line of demarcation between pre-1948 Zionist settlement in the coastal zone and inland valleys of Palestine and the post-1977 colonization of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The latter was seen as a radical departure, even better, as the corruption of Zionism; the colonial Athena seemed to have sprung full-grown from the head of her non-colonial father, Zeus. But, in spite of the many differences between the two settlement drives, they also exhibited uncanny resemblances, enough indeed to make one wing of the Labor movement proclaim continuity, and the rest of the movement wince and shuffle uneasily while complaining that its distinctiveness was being stolen. These responses, however, can also indicate that the attempt to recommence Israeli history in 1967 has been too sweeping: its proponents ignored the similarities between the two phases of Israeli colonization and, consequently, failed to seize it as a propitious context for a revision of the dominant interpretation of the past and its long debilitating legacies. Where others see historical bastards, I find a streak of historical ancestry . I offer, therefore, a theoretical and conceptual perspective that highlights the continuous centrality of colonization in Zionism and at the same time gives appropriate weight to the changes that have taken place, under new circumstances, within the framework of settlement. European colonialism , after all, did not create just one model of overseas society, and it seems to me that we can understand the transformation of Israeli society since 1967 most fruitfully as a transition from one method of European colonization to another one. Zionism and Colonialism 229 This argument will be presented in three parts...