Zionism, The Birth of Israel, and the Palestinian Predicament

 The Zionist movement  The British Mandate of Palestine  Birth of the Israeli state and the Palestinian catastrophe (al-Nakba) Later  Post-WWII conflicts  Peace Process

 The emergence of political Zionism:  Jews before emancipation  Emancipation’s mixed record and the Haskalah Movement and integration attempts  Jewish Political Movements ▪ Zionism, Socialism, Folkism, Territorialism  Zionism & Development of Nationalist Ideology  Adoption of a nationalist ideology ▪ Leo Pinsker’s Autoemancipation (1882) ▪ Eliezer ben-Yehuda’s re-creation of Hebrew in 1880s ▪ Theodor Herzl’s The Jewish State (1896) ▪ First Zionist Congress in Basel (1897)…Palestine ▪ Division of labor: Western European Ideologues & Eastern European migrants  Imagining Palestine as an empty land  The Balfour declaration (1917)

 : British military rule  : Mandate  1920 Appointment of Sir Herbert Samuel as Civilian High commissioner  Conflicting “White Papers” Samuel’s 1922 White Paper and Balfour Declaration  Divided Arab leadership, strongest component under Mufti Amin al-Husayni.  Husayni-Nashashibi rivalry  Incoming Jews formed the Jewish Agency to run the Yishuv—a parallel government ▪ Histadrut: ▪ most powerful institution in Yishuv ▪ mainstay of the Labour Zionist movement ▪ Aside from being a trade union, its state-building role made it the owner of a number of businesses and factories  Largest employer in the country ▪ Also controlled Jewish Defense Force -- Haganah

 David Ben-Gurion was a kibbutznik who became General Secretariat of the Histadrut.  Kibbutzim (collective community based on traditional agriculture.  Transformed Histadrut into an institution to help realize the goals of Zionism  Immigration was key to Ben-Gurion & used Histadrut to facilitate this  Jabotinski’s Revisionist Zionism: “Historical” Israel (Judea and Sumeria)  Settlement efforts: Jewish National Fund  1936 & Arab rebellions  External effects on Jewish emigration (Hitler & Nazism)

 US post-WWII support for a Jewish state  The Jewish insurgency: Haganah guerilla fighting & Irgun terror  Haganah defeat of Arab military resistance ( )  UNSCOP Partition Plan  British withdraw, Ben Gurion declares new state on May 14, 1948  Arab-Israeli war of 1948: Israel holds territory and creation of Armistice Line

 Haganah expulsion of Palestinians and Palestinian flight  The Nakba (‘Catastrophe’)  The refugee situation  Arab Israelis  Palestinians in the West Bank & Gaza— creeping colonization  Palestinians in Lebanon, Jordan & Syria  Nationality Law versus Right of Return