|
In 1897, under
order of First Zionist Congress president Theodor Herzl,
two Austrian rabbis traveled to Palestine to explore the
possibility of locating a Jewish state there. "The bride is
beautiful," the rabbis cabled Herzl, "but she is married to
another man." That "other man" was the Palestinian Arab
nation, long established in the region as a political entity.
Undeterred, Herzl
pressed on with his program of emigration, ignoring
Palestine's existing occupants and creating in the process
what came to be known as the "Arab question."
In this far-ranging history, Avi Shlaim analyzes that question
in remarkable detail, tracing the shifting policies of Israel
toward the Palestinians and the Arab world at large. Herzl, he
writes, followed a policy that consciously sought to enlist
the great powers--principally Britain and later the United
States--while dismissing indigenous claims to sovereignty;
after all, Herzl argued, "the Arab problem paled in
significance compared with the Jewish problem because the
Arabs had vast spaces outside Palestine, whereas for the Jews,
who were being persecuted in Europe, Palestine constituted the
only possible haven." This policy later changed to a stance of
confrontation against the admittedly hostile surrounding Arab
powers, especially Syria, Jordan, and Egypt; this militant
stance was a source of controversy in the international
community, and it also divided Israelis into hawk and dove
factions. The intransigence of those hawks, Shlaim shows,
served to alienate Israel and made it possible for the
Palestine Liberation Organization and other Arab nationalist
groups to enlist the support of the great powers that Herzl
had long before courted. Both sides, in turn, had eventually
to face the "historic compromise" that led to the present
peace in the Middle East--a peace that, the author suggests,
may not endure.
|
