Israel and the Arabs

370 Pages·1982·35.402 MB·English

by  Maxime Rodinson

Pelican Books
Israel and the Arabs
Maxime Rodinsonwas born in Paris in 1915; his fatherwas one ofthe
founders oftheJewish Workers’ Trade Unions in Paris. He received his
primary education in Paris, then worked as an errand boy before taking
advanced studies in theEcole des langues orientales vivantes andatthe
Sorbonne, where he studied Semitic languages,ethnography and sociology.
After serving in the army in Syria he stayedfor seven years in the Lebanon
workingas ateacher ina Muslim high school andas anofficial in the French
Department ofAntiquities for Syriaandthe Lebanon; duringthis timehe
madefrequent trips across the MiddleEast. He had joinedthe Communist
Party in I937andhebecame acquaintedwith the Communists andthe Left
in these regions. He returned to France in 1947 totake charge oforiental
printedbooks in theNational Library, andfrom 1950to 1951 hepublished
Moyen-Orient, apolitical monthly on the Middle East. MaximeRodinson
left the Communist Party in 1958, but stayed in the Marxist Left as a
freelance writer and theoretician. His publications inEnglish include
Mohammed,MarxismandtheMuslim Warand IslamandCapitalism.

Maxime Rodinson
Israel and the Arabs
Translated by Michael Perl and Brian Pearce
Secondedition
Penguin Books
PenguinBooksLtd,Harmondsworth,Middlesex,England
VikingPenguinlnc.,40West23rdStreet,NewYork,NewYork10010,U.S.A.
PenguinBooksAustraliaLtd,Ringwood,Victoria,Australia
PenguinBooksCanadaLtd,2801JohnStreet,Markham,Ontario,CanadaL311IB4
PenguinBooks(N.Z.)Ltd,182-190WairauRoad,AucklandIO,NewZealand
FirstpublishedasaPenguinSpecial 1968
ReissuedinPelicanBooks1969
Reprinted1970, 1973
Secondedition1982
Reprinted 1985
Copyright1‘ MaximeRodinson,1968,1970, 1982
ChapterIIcopyright4‘ OlivierCarré, 1982
TranslationofChapters1-8copyright(C MichaelPerl, 1968,1970
TranslationofChapters9-12copyrightQ"BrianPearce,1982
Allrightsreserved
AcknowledgementismadetoVictorGollanczLtdforpermissiontoquote
apassagefromGoldaMeir:WomanwithaCause
MadeandprintedinGreatBritainby
RichardClay(TheChaucerPress)Ltd,Bungay,Suffolk
ExceptintheUnitedStatesofAmerica,thisbookissoldsubject
totheconditionthatitshallnot,bywayoftradeorotherwise,belent,
re-sold,hiredout,orotherwisecirculatedwithoutthe
publisher’spriorconsentinanyformofbindingorcoverotherthan
thatinwhichitispublishedandwithoutasimilarcondition
includingthisconditionbeingimposedonthesubsequentpurchaser
Contents
Publisher’s Note 6
1 JewishNationalism and Arab Nationalism 7
2 FromNationalismto Nations 20
3 Israel’s First Decade 37
4 The RiseofArab Socialism 68
5 Israel Softens 91
6 The Arab Circle and the World at Large 103
7 From Disengagement to Armed Vigil I33
8 Crisis 165
9 The Palestinians Take Over I85
I0 The Intoxication ofVictory: and a Desperate Remedy 243
11 Steps Towards Peace? (by Olivier Carré) 277
12 Conclusion: On the General Nature ofthe Conflict 314
Index 356
Publisher’s Note
Theessentialtenetsofthisbookremainunaffectedbyeventsfollowing
the revision ofthe text for the second edition, including the outbreak
ofwar between Iran and Iraq in the autumn of 1980; the election of
Ronald Reagan to the Presidency ofthe United States ofAmerica at
the endof1980; andtheassassinationofPresidentAnwarEl-Sadat of
Egypt on 6 October 1981.
I
Jewish Nationalism and
Arab Nationalism
Once again in the course of human history, events in a tiny Middle
Eastern province (in area about the size ofWales or ofthree French
départements) have shaken the world and unleashed fierce passions
from San Francisco to Karachi. The province is that little patch of
Palestiniansoil,barrenandinhospitable,inwhichonlytheimaginations
ofhalf-starvednomadscouldsee ‘alandflowingwithmilkandhoney’.
But it is from here thatasizeable proportion ofmankind have chosen
toderivetheir God,theirideas,andeverythingthatgoverns theirlife,
customs, loves and hates.
A new epoch in the history ofthis land opened less than a century
ago. This new phase, strange as it seems, was heralded by events and
situations which arose in territories far removed from that land in
distance,customs, social structureand ideas. Justas atthetimeofthe
Crusadesalmostathousandyearsago,Palestine’stribulationsstemmed
from the fact that faraway men andwomen longed for her, and were
ready to die for her, like lovers pining for an absent mistress.
In the eleventh century, Palestine’s lovers were Western Christians
moved by the memory of their God and the danger threatening his
tomb. In the nineteenth century, they were Eastern European Jews.
Foralmosttwothousandyears, Jews alloverthe worldhaddreamtof
their old homeland as the land in which God would reign in their
midst, a dream-world where the wolfwould lie down with the lamb
andalittlechildwouldleadthem.ButthenGoddiscreetlydisappeared
from the vision, and a very terrestrial kingdom emerged instead. Far
from any Messianic prophecy, it was hoped that this would be an
‘ordinary’ kingdom where the rulers and the ruled, the rich and the
poor,wisemenandfoolswouldlivesidebyside,justasanywhereelse.
There would even be, like everywhere else, murderers, thieves and
prostitutes- from which no anti-Jewish inference should be drawn.
TheJews,onceinhabitantsofPalestine,hademigratedandscattered
over almost the whole ofthe earth’s surface— like their Syrian neigh-
bours and many other peoples. The independence of their national
home, again like many others, was destroyed by the Romans. But the
cult of their national god Yahweh had certain characteristics which
8 Israelandthe Arabs
rendered it peculiarly attractive to many people. Their prophets had
proclaimedthat he was not onlytheir Godbutthe Godofallpeoples,
althoughhehadconferredaspecialprivilegeonthepeopleofIsrael,as
they called themselves. One of their heresies, Christianity, had con-
queredthe Romanworldandspreadbeyondit. ManyJews werecon-
verted to pagan cults, then to Christianity, and later still, in theEast,
to Islam, a new religion born in the heart ofthe Arabian peninsula,
which also drew its authority from their God, their laws and their
prophets.
But as predicted by its prophets, a ‘remnant’ ofthe Jewish people
wasleft,scatteredoveramultitudeofdifferentcommunities,remaining
faithful to the old law, to the old scriptures, to ancient, complicated,
archaic and cumbersome rituals. These, Jews in the true sense ofthe
word, practisinga minority religion, had been tolerated by the Chris-
tianstates,butcametobeviewedwithincreasingmistrustandhostility.
Theirfailuretorecognizethedivinenatureofoneofthemselves,Jesus
ofNazareth, appeared more and more scandalous. After centuries of
moreorlessgrudgingtolerancecametheeraofviolentpersecutions,of
tortureandthestake.Again,manybecame Christians. Butasbefore,a
‘remnant’ was left, and multiplied in Eastern Europe where the Jews
were at first welcomed. In the territory ofIslam they were, like their
Christianrivals,toleratedand‘protected’,atthepriceofcertainspecial
taxes anddiscriminatorymeasures, andat thepricealso, fromtime to
time and under special circumstances, ofoutbreaks ofintolerance on
the part ofthe Muslim mob— the ‘poor white’ reaction ofthose who
cling to the last vestige oftheir superiority, their membership ofthe
dominant community.
Within this networkofself-containedminoritycommunities, inter-
polated like cysts in states professing a rival ideology, the hope of
salvationsurvived.ThissalvationwastobepreparedbyGodonbehalf
ofhis chosen people, whom in hismysterious but infinite love he had
allowed to suffer, no doubt so that the happiness they were to inherit
shouldbeallthemoresplendid. Theoldhomeland,Palestine,theland
of Israel as they called it, together with its centre the Holy City of
Jerusalem, were still worshipped as the place appointed for the final
victory, thekingdomofpeaceandplentyatthe endoftime. TheJews
visited it whenever possible; they hoped to die there; they had them-
selves buried there. But the task of preparing their return to the
promised land was left to God.
After the fall ofthe Jewish State ofPalestine and the last struggles
forJewishindependencefromtheRomansintheyears 70and 135,up
jewishNationalism andArab Nationalism 9
to the fateful day of 1948, only two Jewish states were ever formed.
ThefirstappearedintheYemeninthecourseofthefifthcentury,and
took the form ofa core oforiginal Jews ruled by natives ofsouthern
ArabiaconvertedtoJudaism. Theotherwas likewisean empireofthe
converted:theKhazars,apeopleofTurco-Mongoloidstockdwellingon
the lower Volga. It lasted fromabout the eighth to the tenth century.
For nineteen centuries these were the only instances when Judaism
wasanythingotherthanagroupofminoritycommunities,andbecame
itselfa state religion.
The new spirit running through Western Europe in the eighteenth
centurywastochangeallthis. Terrestrialcommunitieswerenolonger
built up around a god, but only within the frameworkofa state. The
world ofreligious communities began to disappear, to be replaced by
the world of nations. And for many men and women, God himself
gradually receded fromthe earthly scene, to thepoint ofdisappearing
altogether. The French Revolution drewthe logical conclusions from
these new conditions and new ideas. It proclaimed aloud and carried
through to the end the abolition of every act of discrimination - a
change already accepted by the enlightened despot Joseph II and by
theyoungAmericanRepublic.Faithinasystemofdogmas,thepractice
ofcertainrites,adherencetooneorotherreligiouscommunitywereno
longer relevant criteria by which citizens ofthe same nation could be
isolated from one another. Jews became Frenchmen like any other.
They worshipped their own God after their own fashion, within the
framework,iftheysodesired,oftheirownreligiousassociation,justas
did the Catholics.
The logic ofthe French solution conformed so well with the social
and ideological conditions of the time that Western Europe and
Americagraduallycametoacceptit. Theconsequences fortheJewish
situationwere enormous. Inthisnewworld, religious communitiesno
longer formed nations or quasi-nations to which the individual was
bound, whether by choice or by force, but had become hardly more
thanfreeassociationsmuchlikepoliticalpartiesorchess clubs. Inthis
situation, a Jew who lost faith in the religion ofhis ancestors was no
longer obliged either to be converted to another religion or somehow
Io sidestep the inntunerable practical andmoral problems withwhich
he was faced as the subject ofa community whose creed he did not
accept.HebecameaFrenchman,anEnglishmanoraBelgian,ofJewish
origin, and even this fact would probably fade from men’s memories.
Noonecouldholdhimtoaccount forhis religious opinions. Nobond
tiedhimtoJudaism.Andinconformitywiththegeneraltendenciesat