Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs: From Peace to War

246 Pages·1985·2.854 MB·English

by  Shabtai Teveth

Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs

BEN-GURION
and the Palestinian Arabs
From Feace to War
SHABTAI TEVETH
Oxford New York
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1985
Oxford University Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Teveth, Shabtai, 1925-
Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs.
Bibliography: p. Includes index.
1. Ben-Gurion, David, 1886-1973—Views on Jewish-Arab relations.
2. Jewish-Arab relations—1917- . I.T ide.
Dsl25.3.B37T47 1985 956.94'05'0924 84-29618
ISBN 0-19-503562-3
Printing (last digit): 987654321
Printed in the United States of America
The clear, aware, and courageous perception of the re­
cesses and fathomless depths of reality; and the alert and
intuitive harkening to the forces of change and motives
of the future which are the heartbeats of ever-renewing
history—on these, the Zionist policy of the workers*
movement rests.
David Ben-Gurion, in his introduction
to We and Our Neighbors, May 1931

Preface
There are a number of sound reasons for examining David
Ben-Gurion’s thinking on the Palestinian Arabs. As a Zionist
theoretician and statesman, Ben-Gurion grappled with the
question of relations between Arabs and Jews for over sixty-
five years, from his arrival in Ottoman Palestine in 1906,
until his death in 1973. More than any other Zionist leader,
he had the opportunity to implement his ideas as a maker of
policy. In the forty-two years between 1921 and 1963—dur­
ing which he served as labor leader, Zionist statesman, and
the Prime Minister of an independent Israel—his influence
grew to have a decisive effect on Zionist policy; Israel came
to view the Arabs, to a great extent, through the eyes of David
Ben-Gurion.
Zionists called the complex issues surrounding relations
between Arabs and Jews in Palestine “the Arab question.”
Ben-Gurion noted that this was “an imprecise definition.”
He recognized that this “tragic question of fate” arose only
as a consequence of Zionism, and so was a “question of
Zionist fulfillment in the light of Arab reality.”1 In other
words, this was a Zionist rather than an Arab question, posed
to Zionists who were perplexed about how they could fulfill
their aspirations in a land inhabited by an Arab majority.
viii Preface
More than any Zionist leader, Ben-Gurion dwelt on this ques­
tion, in a perpetual search for a satisfactory answer. From
the outset, he was one of the few leaders of Labor Zionism
who sought to anchor the Jewish right to Palestine in some­
thing other than historical argument and nationalist myth.
The claims of Zionism derived from its character as a move­
ment of peace, justice, and progress. And so in his thought,
one can trace an evolution, away from a vision of Zionism
as a movement for absolute justice bearing a universal mes­
sage, a movement of peace and constructive labor. His revised
view of Zionism, forged by events and the specter of the
Holocaust, was of a movement for relative justice with the
Jews its sole concern, a movement prepared to wage war and
to take the country, by force, if necessary.
Ben-Gurion’s thought, then, was influential and exemplary.
On these accounts alone, it warrants study. Yet it has also
been misinterpreted. There is a view abroad that Ben-Gurion,
in many important respects, was naive about the depth of
Arab political aspirations and Arab determination to resist
the Zionist transformation of Palestine. This view rests almost
exclusively on Ben-Gurion’s public pronouncements, taking
these to be a full expression of his conviction. A comparison
of these pronouncements with Ben-Gurion’s private reflec­
tions, committed to paper in his diary, in letters, and in the
protocols of closed meetings, however, reveals a far more
complex picture. For Ben-Gurion was a political man and
was quite capable of pragmatic insincerity. To bring the max­
imum number of Jews to Palestine’s shores, he was prepared
to “sup with the devil,”2 so he hardly would have shunned
a tactic of dissimulation for moral reasons. Which of Ben-
Gurion’s stated views arose from genuine conviction, and
which from pragmatic calculation? The question is difficult
to answer, particularly since Ben-Gurion, like other Labor
Zionists, had every reason to deny the claim of Palestine’s
Arabs for recognition as a political community. To have of-
Preface
IX
fered such recognition in public would have cast doubt on
Zionism as a movement that aspired to absolute justice for
Jew and Arab alike.
Not only is it important to separate Ben-Gurion’s convic­
tions from his tactics; it is essential to appreciate the trans­
formations those tactics underwent during many years of
shifting political sands in Palestine. In the years between 1910
and 1918, Ben-Gurion declared to all who would listen that
a fundamental conflict divided Jews and Arabs over Palestine;
from 1918 to 1929, he denied that any such conflict existed
and argued that such misunderstanding as existed between
Jews and Arabs would be dispelled by the coming social rev­
olution. From 1929 until 1936, Ben-Gurion again recognized
in public that Jews and Arabs were at cross-purposes, but
held that differences could be resolved through negotiations
between Arab nationalists and Zionist leaders; from 1936,
he admitted that Jewish and Arab differences were funda­
mental, and no longer did he believe that they could be re­
solved peaceably. This evolution reflected a constant reas­
sessment of tactics. But Ben-Gurion took all of these positions
to achieve, in different circumstances, two unchanging goals:
to bring about the immigration of endangered Jews on such
a scale as to render them a majority in Palestine and to win
the support of a world power, preferably the one that ruled
Palestine, for the fledgling Zionist enterprise.
I wish to offer my special thanks to Professor Elie Kedourie,
who convinced me that Ben-Gurion’s thinking on the Arabs
deserved separate study, although the initial inspiration emerged
from the larger Hebrew biography that I have prepared and
begun to publish. In the course of collecting archival material,
I incurred a number of debts to helpful institutions and per­
sons. I wish to offer my thanks to the Central Zionist Ar­
chives, under the direction of Dr. Michael Heymann, and to
Mr. Israel Philip, for their kind assistance; to the Institute for
the Legacy of David Ben-Gurion and its director, Dr. Meir
x Preface
Avizohar, an old and faithful friend who assisted me with
sources and advice; and to Haim Israeli, former secretary to
David Ben-Gurion, who filled some of my documentary gaps
and turned my attention to points I had overlooked. I am
most grateful to the Nahman Kami Memorial Fund for its
support.
My thanks also go to Professor Itamar Rabinovich, head
of the Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies
at Tel Aviv University, for his sound advice. I owe special
thanks to Professor Yoram Dinstein, rector of Tel Aviv Uni­
versity, who read the manuscript with great diligence and
offered useful comments; and to Professor Yehoshua Porath
of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who answered all of
my questions with patience and generosity. I should also like
to offer special thanks to my secretary, Mrs. Rachel Rader,
who withstood the hardships of researching Ben-Gurion’s life
with me. Finally, it gives me particular pleasure to thank Mr.
Gershom Schocken, my long-time editor and publisher, for
his unstinting guidance and support. It was he who led me
to undertake my study of Ben-Gurion’s life.
This work is a rendition in English of a rather weightier
tome in Hebrew. The English version is distinguished from
the Hebrew by an economy of expression and documentation,
which I believe will be appreciated by the English reader. My
deepest thanks to Dr. Martin Kramer, of the Dayan Center
for Middle Eastern and African Studies, at Tel Aviv Univer­
sity, for making it possible.
Tel Aviv S.T.
September 1984