Ze’ev Jabotinsky began his 1923 “On the Iron Wall” essay by denying that he is “an enemy of the Arabs, who wants to have them ejected from Palestine, and so forth.”
He insisted that “it is not true.” He did admit that, emotionally, his “attitude to the Arabs is the same as to all other nations: polite indifference.”
A veteran of the campaign for equal rights for Jews in the Russian Empire, including autonomous national rights for all nationalities, he wished to see a parallel reality develop in the Mandate for Palestine. He believed that “there will always be two peoples in Palestine.”
Based on that belief, he added: “I consider it utterly impossible to eject the Arabs from Palestine,” and insisted that he would be prepared to take an oath, binding on future generations, “that we shall never do anything contrary to the principle of equal rights, and that we shall never try to eject anyone.” All that, however, was before the 1929 riots, those of 1936 to 1939, and all the wars since.
He set certain basic principles. There must be peace, and it needs to be obtained by peaceful means. There must be a Jewish majority in the future Jewish state. The Arabs need to agree that the Jews belong to their homeland. Responding to whether all this is possible, he wrote: “The answer to this question does not depend on our attitude to the Arabs, but entirely on the attitude of the Arabs to us and to Zionism.”
A century later, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, speaking at the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in mid-February, said: “Why not give Gazans a choice? … Over the last couple of years … 150,000 Gazans left. … If people want to leave, if they want to emigrate, it’s their choice. And I think President [Donald] Trump’s plan is right on the dot.”
In other words, they should have freedom of movement and the right to emigrate.
Netanyahu could have added that some 70% of Palestinians in Gaza consider themselves “refugees.” As such, they are planning to move away from Gaza in any case. Of course, their desired destination is Israel—with the aim of eradicating the Jewish state, a purpose they adopted as a life’s mission since 1947 when they rejected that year’s U.N. Partition Plan in a not very peaceful manner.
Many of them continued to pursue their aim during the 1950s in the ranks of the fedayeen when they engaged in cross-border raids of theft, destruction and murder. A new phase of their “armed struggle” resumed after the Sinai Campaign with the founding of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964. In 1987, Hamas was established, designated a foreign terrorist organization by the United States and other countries.
It is not surprising then, given the anti-Israel atmosphere in the studios of broadcasting outlets and on the pages of mainstream newspapers and news websites that it was the Jews who had to keep leaving Gaza. Jews were forced out of their Gaza homes during World War I, during the 1929 riots, during the 1948 War of Independence, and then, in 2005, 8,000 Jews were forced out—this time by Israel’s own government as part of a disengagement plan under then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
All of these actions—of Jews leaving Gaza—have never brought peace to the area. Not even security for Israel has been gained. It certainly has not worked in favor of equal rights for Jews, whether in Gaza or Israel. After every clash, Arab terror continued. After every agreement, Arab violence reappeared—above ground, underground and in the skies. This has been going on for 100 years.
Regarding the removal of Arabs from Gaza, temporarily or otherwise, which has now been raised by U.S. President Donald Trump, several matters should be clarified. Population movement has always been part of the political considerations since the days of the British Mandate, as intimated by Jabotinsky above. It has also been applied in other conflict zones when millions moved from country to country. Arabs, however, for propaganda victimization purposes, have always framed the matter as “forced.”
In 1937, the Peel Commission proposed an exchange of population. In December 1944, the annual conference of Britain’s Labor Party adopted a resolution that promoted, “on human grounds,” a “transfer of population. Let the Arabs be encouraged to move out, as the Jews move in … .” The resolution even sought to “re-examine also the possibility of extending the present Palestinian boundaries, by agreement with Egypt, Syria or Trans-Jordan.”
Among the non-Jews who saw the exit of Arabs from Palestine as an equitable result were presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover, the former while in office and the latter after leaving the White House. In 1939, Mojli Amin, a member of the Arab Defense Committee for Palestine, also proposed an exchange of populations: Arabs to Arab countries and Jews from Arab countries to what was then Palestine. His reasoning? To put an end to the killing of the Arabs.
Is the plan practical? Is it doable? Can the financing be found? I am not convinced.
And I doubt those in the Middle East who need to be involved possess the will to assist in its implementation, in its original conceptualization. Yet Gazans still need to be awarded the human right to emigrate.
As for Israel, apparent ideological overenthusiasm—as expressed by Betzalel Smotrich, the finance minister, and Itamar Ben-Gvir, former minister of national security—does not seem to be helpful. Netanyahu’s positioning, announcing “I am committed to U.S. President Trump’s plan for the creation of a different Gaza,” appears to be skirting the question of population movement as much as possible.
Will Palestinians in Gaza take advantage of Trump’s initiative and improve their lives abroad, or back in Gaza, if they choose to return, but without Hamas in leadership? Or will they remain committed to their century-old rejectionism if it means that the Jews can have a state?
In the end, we are back at Jabotinsky’s gist of the conflict, which is that peace and security all depend on the Arab attitude toward Zionism.