Back in 1923, the situation in Palestine was markedly different from what we have been familiar with for the past half-century. The eventual rise of the state of Israel was considered a pipe dream, even by most of the Zionist immigrants of the day. Though there were high tensions between the Jewish immigrants and the Palestinian Arabs, and there was some fighting (including some very horrid incidents on both sides), the major violence was still some years away. Questions in the Yishuv (the term for the pre-state Jewish immigrant community in Palestine) were abstract, dealing in general approaches to relations with the Arabs of Palestine. The dominant view, of the Labor Zionists, was that if the Arabs could only be made to understand how the Zionist immigration would benefit them (in familiar, colonial terms, envisioning how the immigrants would “civilize” the indigenous population), they would be willing to consent to the creation of the Jewish national home in Palestine.
This view was countered by Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the founder of the Revisionists, who were the ideological ancestors of today’s Likud Bloc, Israel’s dominant political party. Jabotinsky expounded his view in his famous 1923 paper entitled “The Iron Wall”. In his view, the Labor image of the Palestinian Arabs was unrealistic and condescending. While he agreed that the Zionists could offer the Arabs the benefits of “civilization”, he said that the Labor stance denied the basic fact that the Palestinians were people like any other and that no indigenous population would ever willingly accept foreign settlement. Thus, Jabotinsky reasoned, the Labor view of winning the Palestinian Arabs over to support of the Zionist movement was naïve and doomed to failure. History has certainly demonstrated that Jabotinsky was correct about this, at least. On this basis, Jabotinsky reasoned that since the goal was a majority Jewish population in Palestine, that necessarily meant dominating the indigenous population. As the Palestinian Arabs would never accept this state of affairs no matter how the Labor Zionists tried to pretty it up, it would be necessary to battle them for supremacy in the land. In Jabotinsky’s view, it was only when the Jews of Palestine had erected a figurative “iron wall” that the Arab population of Palestine would be willing to make the necessary compromises. They would do so simply because they would realize they had no other choice. History, of course, shows that Jabotinsky underestimated the Palestinians’ will and resolve.
Interestingly, Jabotinsky actually made the point that his “iron wall” vision did not include the requirement for any Arabs to leave Palestine. Whether or not one believes that to have been a sincere commitment, it is striking in its contrast to the way things actually evolved. In 1923, conversation and thought about population transfer was necessarily far off. Most did not think about it, as it simply seemed ludicrously outside of foreseeable possibilities. Yet, by 1948, that is precisely what did happen. That turn of events changed everything, and it was only one of many changes.
Avi Shlaim, in his book, “The Iron Wall” (intentionally named after Jabotinsky’s essay, as Shlaim posits that this line of thinking has been, in fact, the cornerstone of Israeli strategy since the 1940s) makes a strong case that Jabotinsky, despite being the ideological father of the Likud, actually saw a good deal of his Iron Wall strategy seep into the thinking of the leaders of the Labor Party. Labor was the dominant political force in Israel until the late 1970s. David Ben-Gurion and his successors pursued a strategy of military strength, which Shlaim demonstrates was very much in line with Jabotinsky’s ideas. The contention between Labor and Revisionists evolved into the competition we have seen over the last quarter century between Labor and Likud, yet Shlaim amply demonstrates that their basic strategies were similar, even while their tactics differed markedly. Now, that seepage of ideology is playing itself out in the creation of a physical Iron Wall.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=3894
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