Introduction
- Introduction
The following four essays are refinements of papers delivered at a conference held at Brandeis University under the auspices of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies and the Crown Center for Middle East Studies on December 1–2, 2007: "One Land, Two Peoples: Sixty Years since the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan for Palestine.
The full program contains presentations by scholars of the Jewish and Palestinian positions on partition from the 1930s through the present. In the course of the discussion and debate, it became abundantly clear that there has been since the 1930s a vital and often acrimonious debate among Jews over whether Palestine should be divided into two states. Despite internal divisions, the dominant opinion throughout has been acceptance of the division of Mandatory Palestine. The reasons are many, and range from recognizing the merit of some Arab claims to a pragmatic approach that partition is the only course that may allow for a Jewish state even if the price is an Arab one alongside it. The course of this line of thought can be readily followed in the first three essays of Itzhak Galnoor, Colin Shindler, and Asher Susser.
The Palestinian side had been marked by a significant continuity: the rejection of the legitimacy of any Jewish state and an unwillingness to accept a pragmatic approach. While this view may be dominant, it is not exclusive. The shift in the position by the PLO beginning in 1989 and the subsequent signing of the Oslo Accords of 1993 mark radical change. So too, are the articulations beginning in the 1990s of such rare voices as that of Sari Nusseibah, president of Al-Quds University and a significant Palestinian intellectual. This relaxation of opposition to partition may be partial and temporary as witnessed in the essay by As'ad Ghanem, a Palestinian academic on the faculty of Haifa University and a major exponent of the emerging position of Arab intellectuals. Ghanem calls for the end of a Jewish state in favor of a one-state solution, sometimes known as "a state [End Page 72] of all its citizens." In effect, his essay reflects a continuing tradition of rejection of an independent Jewish state in what had been Mandatory Palestine although the bases for denying it have changed since the proposition first arose during the Mandate.
The entire conference can be accessed at the website indicated below. It contains not only papers by Arab and Israeli scholars but by students of other examples of partition, particularly Ireland and the Balkans. http://www.brandeis.edu/israelcenter/newsEvents/2007_dec/video/index.html [End Page 73]
- The Zionist Debates on Partition (1919–1947)
Between World War I and the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, decisions were made by the Zionist Movement that continue to provide lessons for the dilemma facing Israelis and Palestinians today. In these territorial decisions the Zionist movement was willing to consider trading territory for other values, mainly political sovereignty. Jewish attitudes toward territory in these decisions reflect a duality. On one hand, territorial attitudes were emotional and inseparable from a sense of collective identity, fatherland, motherland, and homeland, leading to expressive positions. On the other, territory was seen as a tangible resource, a means for satisfying specific needs—security, economic viability, social development, natural resources. The Zionist agreement to partition indicates that the pre-1948 decisions of the Zionist movement fell rather consistently on the side of instrumental pragmatism, and this approach dominated Israeli policy until 1967.
Introduction
Between World War I and the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, three internal decisions were made by the Zionist Movement that reflect its attitudes and position toward territory, boundaries, and partition. These decision crossroads—in 1919, 1937, and 1947—were not only critical during those formative years, but also carry lessons for the dilemma facing Israelis and Palestinians today. At the time they were subject to considerable internal debate, and once these decisions were made, they established precedents that were crucial in forming Zionist consensus around the [End Page 74] relative value of—and the potential trade-offs between—state sovereignty, territory, and boundaries.
The central question discussed here is...
