The arithmetic of rights: Zionist intellectuals imagining the Arab minority May–July 1938

ABSTRACT

This article examines Zionist debates regarding the status of the Arab minority in the Jewish State following the Royal Commission's recommendation to partition Palestine. Three conclusions arise from the debates: first, that the Zionist leadership regarded the civil and political rights of the Arab minority to be dependent on the power equilibrium between Jews and Arabs in all of Palestine. Second, the Zionist leaders imagined the Jewish State as a parliamentary democracy, but argued that a democratic regime should be created only after a Jewish majority had been achieved. Finally, because democracy in the Jewish State – including minority rights – was dependent on the creation of a Jewish majority, Zionist plans to transfer Arabs out of the Jewish State were not considered by them to be undemocratic, but rather a precondition to the creation of a Jewish and democratic state.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Derek Penslar and Jessica Radin for reading and commenting on earlier versions of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. N. Katzburg, Me-ḥaluḳah la-Sefer ha-lavan: mediniyut Briṭanyah be-Erets Yisraʼel 1936–1940 [From Partition to the White Paper: British Policy in Palestine, 1936–1940] (Jerusalem: Yad Yitsḥaḳ Ben Tsevi, 1974), pp.39–41.

2. Ibid., p.48.

3. Ibid., p.55.

4. Ibid., pp.55–6.

5. ‘Estimates of Statistical Summary to Three Proposed Area’, Central Zionist Archives (CZA), S25\5126.

6. See Y. Katz, ‘Diyunei ve'adat ha-sokhnut le-ha'avarat ukhlusin, 1937–1938’ [The Debates of the Jewish Agency's Committee for Population Exchange, 1937–1938], Zion Vol.53, No.2 (1988), pp.167–89; S. Teveth, The Evolution of ‘Transfer’ in Zionist Thinking (Tel Aviv: Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Shiloah Institute, Tel Aviv University, 1989); N. Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of ‘Transfer’ in Zionist Political Thought, 1882–1948 (Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992), pp.56–119; B. Morris, ‘“Ve-sfarim ve-gvilim be-zikna regilim”: mabat hadash ‘al mismakhim tsioni'im merkhazi'im’ [Books and Scrolls Are Accustomed to Old Age: A New Look at Central Zionist Documents], Alpa'im Vol.12 (1996), pp.73–103; E. Karsh, ‘Siluf me-tokh pikhahon? Siluf me-tokh ‘ivaron? Benny Morris ‘al sugiyat “ha-transfer”’ [Fabricating out of Sobriety or out of Blindness? Benny Morris on the Question of Transfer], Alpa'im Vol.13, pp.212–32; E. Oren, ‘Me-hatsa'at ha-transfer, 1937–1938, el “transfer be-di'avad”, 1947–1948’ [From the 1937–1938 Transfer Proposal to the 1947–1948 Retroactive Transfer], ‘Iyunim be-tkumat yisrael No.7 (1997), pp.75–85; B. Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) pp.41–60; E. Karsh, ‘Resurrecting the Myth: Benny Morris, the Zionist Movement, and the “Transfer Idea”’, Israel Affairs Vol.11, No.3 (2005), pp.469–90.

7. Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians, pp.49–50; Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, p.59.

8. Teveth, The Evolution of ‘Transfer’ in Zionist Thinking, p.2; Karsh, ‘Siluf me-tokh pikhahon?’, p.214.

9. Karsh, ‘Siluf me-tokh pikhahon?’, p.217.

10. The only other scholar to study both the transfer and the minority debate is political geographer Yossi Katz, in his book, Medina ba-derekh: ha-tokhniyot ha-tzioniot le-halukat ha-aretz ve-le-hakamat medina Yehudit [A State to Be: The Zionist Plans to Partition Palestine and Establish a Jewish State] (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2000). Katz's treatment of the subject, however, is mostly descriptive and he does not reach the conclusions that I present in this article.

11. ‘Palestine Partition Commission, Minutes of Proceedings of Fifth Meeting’, 23 May 1938, the Weizmann Archives (WA).

12. Ibid., pp.17–8.

13. Ibid., p.19.

14. Ibid., p.20.

15. Ibid., p.22.

16. Ibid., p.23.

17. Ibid., pp.23–4.

18. Ibid., pp.24–5.

19. Ibid., p.27.

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid., p.28.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid., p.32.

24. Ibid., pp.32–3. On Arab peasant economy in Mandatory Palestine, see A. Nadan, ‘Merchants and Peasants in the Nazareth Region, 1922–47’, Journal of Peasant Studies Vol.34, No.1, (2007), pp.51–68.

25. ‘Palestine Partition Commission, Minutes of Proceedings of Fifth Meeting’, p.38.

26. ‘Palestine Partition Commission, Minutes of Proceedings of Sixth Meeting’, 26 May 1938, WA, p.2.

27. Ibid.

28. Ibid., p.3.

29. Ibid., p.4.

30. Ibid. Emphasis mine.

31. Ibid., p.13.

32. Ibid., p.14.

33. Ibid., p.16.

34. Ibid., p.4.

35. Ibid., p.2.

36. Meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive, 7 June 1938, CZA, p11

37. Ibid., p.10.

38. Ibid., p.11.

39. Ibid, p.12.

40. Ibid., p.14.

41. Ibid., p.16.

42. Ibid.

43. Ibid.

44. Meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive, 9 June 1938, CZA, p.3.

45. Meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive, 12 June 1938, CZA, p.32.

46. Ibid., p.9a.

47. Ibid., pp.9a–10a.

48. Meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive, 9 June 1938, CZA, p.1.

49. Meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive, 12 June 1938, CZA, p.22.

50. Ibid., p.24.

51. Ibid., p.25.

52. Meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive, 12 June 1938, p.4a.

53. Ibid.

54. Ben-Gurion's comments, meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive, 7 June 1938, p.16; Ben-Zvi's comments, meeting of Mapai's political committee, 8.6.1938, Labor Party Archives [LPA] 2-023-1938-19, p.5; Shertok's comments, meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive, 9 June 1938, CZA, p.9;

55. Shertok and Golomb's comments, meeting of Mapai's political committee, 8 June 1938, pp.6–7; Kaplan's comments, meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive, 9 June 1938, p.5.

56. Meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive, 9 June 1938, p.8.

57. Meeting of Mapai's political committee, 8 June 1938, p.7.

58. Leonard Stein, ‘Notes on Minority Policy’, 23 June 1938, CZA S25\5102, p.11.

59. Meeting of Mapai's political committee, 8 June 1938, p.5.

60. Ibid.

61. Ibid., pp.5–6.

62. Meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive, 9 June 1938, CZA, p.6.

63. Ibid.

64. Meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive, 12 June 1938, p.28.

65. Gruenbaum to the Political Department of the Jewish Agency, 23 July 1938, CZA S25\5131, p.4.

66. Meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive, 9 June 1938, p.7.

67. Meeting the Jewish Agency Executive, 12 June 1938, pp.22–23.

68. Ibid., p.30.

69. Ibid., p.34.

70. Ibid., p.35.

71. The members of the Committee were Ben-Gurion, Shertok, Senator, Joseph, Leo Kohn, Georg Landauer, a German-Jewish leader, Leo Herrmann, the general secretary of Keren Ha-Yesod, the Zionist fundraising organ, and Matityahu Lazersohn and Nathan Feinberg, both legal scholars.

72. ‘Protocol shel yeshivat ve'adat ha-mi'utim’ [Minutes of the Committee for Minorities Affair's Meeting], 23 June 1938, CZA S25\5131, p.1.

73. Nathan Feinberg, ‘Regarding the International Protection of the Minorities in the Event of the Establishment of a Jewish State’, CZA S25\5131.

74. ‘Note on a Conversation between “B” and “W”’, 4 July 1938, WA.

75. Katz, Medina ba-derekh, pp.99–100.

76. Leonard Stein, ‘Memorandum on the Treatment of Minorities’, 31 July 1938, CZA 25\5131, p.2. This issue was raise during the Zionist evidence before the Partition Commission. See above, pp.8–9.

77. Ibid., pp.2–3.

78. Ibid., pp.3–4.

79. Ibid., pp.4–5.

80. Ibid., p.6.

81. Ibid., pp.6–7.

82. Ibid., p.8.

83. Ibid., pp.9–10.

84. Ibid., p.11.

85. Ibid., p.12.

86. Ibid., p.13.

87. Ibid., p.15.