Status and rights of the Arab minority in the Nascent Jewish state

Abstract

The attitude of Zionism toward the issue of the Arabs in Palestine from the beginning of Zionism until the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 has been the subject of considerable scholarly interest. Among the more prominent studies are those by Alsberg, Ro'i, Hattis, Sela, Mandel, Kollat, Rubinstein, Goldstein, Haim, Caplan, Be'eri, Gorny, and Shafir.1 These works deal not just with the attitude toward the Arab issue of prestate official Zionist bodies (all constituents of the World Zionist Organization, primarily the Zionist Congress, the Zionist General Council, the Zionist Executive, and the Jewish Agency Executive), but also with the prevailing attitudes of the right and left wings of the Zionist movement.2 This research draws a broad picture of the role of the Arab issue in the Zionist movement and responds to fundamental questions such as the roots of the Zionist-Arab conflict in Palestine; the perception of Arabs among various camps of the Zionist movement - official Zionism, the Revisionists, Berit Shalom, and HaShomer HaZa'ir; Zionist efforts to reach agreement with the Arabs; the reasons for the failure to reach agreement, and so forth. However, although the foregoing studies are in general agreement that it was the mission of Zionism from its earliest stages to establish a state in Palestine, they do not examine in depth the approach of the Zionist movement to the status and rights of the Arab minority in the future Jewish state.3 This issue was relevant for official and Revisionist Zionism in particular, as neither accepted the concept of a binational state, which had been proposed by other Zionist camps such as Berit Shalom and HaShomer HaZa'ir. Indeed, the Zionist movement did not ignore the issue of an Arab minority in the Jewish state, but issued statements about it in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.4 In other words, the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 as a Jewish state having an Arab minority was not the first time that the Zionist establishment was called upon to deliberate the issue of minority rights of non-Jews. The issue seems to have been first addressed by official Zionist bodies in a comprehensive, thorough, and detailed manner, looking at all the dilemmas, in the context of the recommendation of the British Royal Commission in 1937. This Commission proposed that the JewishArab conflict be resolved by partitioning the land and founding two states in Palestine, one for the Jews and the other for the Arabs. In that era, in