THE PALESTINE-ISRAELI CONFLICT

Dan Cohn-Sherbok and Dawoud El-Alami

Chapter 1:

The Zionist Movement

Religious and Spiritual Zionism

For thousands of years Jews anticipated the coming of the Messiah who would bring about a final in-gathering of the Jewish people to their ancient homeland. This was to be a divinely predetermined miraculous event which would inaugurate the messianic age. However, in the early nineteenth century within religious Orthodox circles there emerged a new trend, the advocacy of an active approach to Jewish messianism. A number of Jewish writers maintained that, rather than adopt a passive attitude towards the problem of redemption, the Jewish nation must engage in the creation of a homeland in anticipation of the advent of the Messiah.

Pre-eminent among such religious Zionists was Yehuda hai Alkalai, born in 1798 in Sarajevo to Rabbi Sholomo Alkalai, the spiritual leader of the local Jewish community. During his youth Yehuda lived in Palestine, where he was influenced by kabbalistic thought. In 1825 he served as a rabbi in Semlin in Serbia; in 1834 he published a booklet entitled Shema Yisrael in which he advocated the establishment of Jewish colonies in Palestine, a view at variance with the traditional Jewish belief that the Messiah would come through an act of divine deliverance.

When in 1840 the Jews of Damascus were charged with the blood libel (killing a child and using its blood in an act of ritual), Alkalai became convinced that the Jewish people could be secure only in their own land. Henceforth he published a series of books and pamphlets explaining his plan of self-redemption. In Minhat Yehuda, for example, he argued on the basis of the Hebrew scriptures that the Messiah will not miraculously materialize; rather, he will be preceded by various preparatory events. In this light the Holy Land needs to be populated by Jewry in preparation for messianic deliverance. For Alkalai, redemption is not simply a divine affair - it is also a human concern requiring labour and persistence.

This demystification of traditional messianic eschatology extends to Alkalai's advocacy of Hebrew as a language of communication. Traditionally, Hebrew was viewed as a sacred language; it was not to be profaned by daily use. Alkalai, however, recognized the practical importance of having a single language for ordinary life in Palestine. It would be a mistake, he believed, to think that God will send an angel to teach his people all seventy languages. Instead the Jewish people must ensure that Hebrew is studied so that it can be used for ordinary life.

How can this process of redemption be accomplished? Alkalai stressed the importance of convening an assembly of those dedicated to the realization of this goal. Thus he asserted that the redemption must begin with efforts by Jews themselves. They must organize, choose leaders and leave the countries in which they reside. Since no community can exist without a governing body, the first step in this process of resettlement must be the appointment of elders of each district to oversee the affairs of the community.

Another early pioneer of religious Zionism was Zwi Hirsch Kalischer, the rabbi of Toun in the province of Posen, in Poland. An early defender of Orthodoxy against the advances made by Reform Judaism, he championed the commandments in prescribing faith in the Messiah and devotion to the Holy Land. In 1836 he expressed his commitment to Jewish settlement in Palestine in a letter to the head of the Berlin branch of the Rothschild family. The beginning of redemption, he maintained, will come through natural causes by human effort to gather the scattered of Israel into the Holy Land.

Such a conviction did not actively engage Kalischer until 1860 when a society was organized in Frankfurt on the Oder to encourage Jewish settlement in Palestine. After joining this group, he published a Zionist work, Derishat Zion (Seeking Zion), which appeared in 1862. The redemption of Israel, he argued, will not take place miraculously. Instead, the redemption of Israel will take place slowly through awakening support from philanthropists and gaining the consent of other nations to the gathering of the Jewish people into the Holy Land.

For Kalischer practical steps must be taken to fulfil this dream of resettlement. What is required is that an organization be created to encourage emigration, and to purchase and cultivate farms and vineyards. Such a programme would be a ray of deliverance to those who were languishing in Palestine suffering poverty and famine; this situation would be utterly changed if those able to contribute to this effort were inspired by the vision of a Jewish homeland. An advantage of this scheme would be to bring to fruition those religious commandments that attach to working the soil of the Holy Land. But beyond all this, Kalischer was convinced that Jewish farming would be a spur to messianic redemption.

Following in the footsteps of such religious Zionists as Alkalai and Kalischer, Abraham Isaac Kook formulated a vision of messianic redemption integrating the creation of a Jewish state. Born in Greiva, Latvia, in 1865, Kook received a traditional Jewish education and in 1895 became rabbi of Bausk. In 1904 he emigrated to Palestine, eventually becoming the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi after the British Mandate. Unlike secularists who advocated practical efforts to secure a Jewish state, Kook embarked on the task of reinterpreting the Jewish religious tradition to transform religious messianic anticipation into the basis for collaboration with the aspirations of modern Zionism.

According to Kook, the centrality of Israel is a fundamental dimension of Jewish life and a crucial element of Jewish religious consciousness. Yet the fervent belief in messianic deliverance has not been accompanied by an active policy of resettlement. This disjunction between religious aspirations for the return from exile and the desire of most Jews to live in the diaspora highlights the confusion in Jewish thinking about the role of Israel in Jewish life. There is thus a contradiction between the messianic belief in a return to Zion and the accommodating attitude to exile of most Jews throughout history.

For Kook, this contradiction at the heart of Jewish existence must be confronted and resolved. Kook maintained that a Jewish person in the diaspora is able to observe all commandments of the Law and live as a devout Jew. Yet, because he lives outside the Jewish homeland, an essential dimension of Jewishness is missing from his life. Life in the diaspora involves one in unholiness whereas by settling in Palestine it is possible to live a spiritually unsullied life. Return to Zion is thus imperative for an authentic existence. For Kook, attachment to the land must serve as the foundation of Jewish life in the modern world. Although the secular pioneers who came to Palestine were motivated by ideological convictions alien to traditional Judaism, their actions are paradoxically part of God's plan of redemption. In the cosmic scheme of the divine will, seemingly atheistic and secular actions are absorbed into the unfolding of God's plan for his chosen people. Therefore these pioneers unintentionally contributed to the advent of the Messiah.

Like Alkalai and Kalischer and Kook, Asher Zvi Ginsberg (later known as Ahad Ha-Am) was concerned with the spiritual redemption of the Jewish people, although his thought is devoid of traditional Jewish ideas of messianic redemption. Born in Skvira in the Russian Ukraine on 18 August 1856, he received a traditional Jewish education. In 1868 his family moved to an estate that his wealthy father leased; there he studied the works of medieval Jewish philosophers and writers of the Enlightenment. Later he studied French and German literature and philosophy. After attempting unsuccessfully to continue his study in various European capitals, he moved to Odessa in 1886, where he began to publish articles concerning contemporary Jewish life.

His first essay, Wrong Way, set the stage for his role within the Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion) movement. In this work he advocated a return to Zion, but remained critical of a number of aspects of the movement's platform. In a later essay, The Jewish State and the Jewish Problem, he discussed the notion of a Jewish settlement. According to Ahad Ha-Am, even if a Jewish state existed in Palestine, not all Jews would be able to settle there. What would be the result if only a small section of the world Jewish population emigrated? Ahad Ha-Am argued that the economic problems facing Eastern European Jewry would not be solved for those who remained behind. The Jewish state could only contribute to cultural and spiritual regeneration.

The central dilemma faced by Zionism is how the spiritual perplexities of Jews in the diaspora could be resolved by the creation of a Jewish homeland. For Ahad Ha-Am, Zionism is able to solve the problems of Western Jewry more readily than to ameliorate the condition of Jews in Eastern Europe. Jews in the West are separated from Jewish culture and simultaneously alienated from the society in which they reside. The existence of a Jewish state would enable them to solve the problems of national identity, compensating them for their lack of integration into the culture of the country in which they live. This ideal can cure the Jews in the West of their social unease, their sense of inferiority in lands where they are aliens. Ahad Ha-Am was thus insistent that the Jewish state be infused with Jewish values, and not simply be a homeland for the Jewish people. It must embody the religious and cultural ideals of the Jewish past.

Although Ahad Ha-Am's vision of the return to the Jews' ancestral homeland was not filled with messianic longing, his idealization of the spiritual, religious and cultural dimensions of Judaism and their embodiment of a Jewish state was rooted in Jewish messianism. For Ahad Ha-Am, it would not be a divinely appointed Messiah who would bring about the realization of God's kingdom on earth. Rather this would be the task of the Jewish people themselves. Through the creation of a Jewish state, the spiritual values of the faith are to materialize in the Holy Land.

Secular Zionism

In contrast with such figures as Alkalai, Kalischer, Kook and Ahad Ha-Am, modern secular Zionists have been preoccupied with the problem of anti-Semitism rather than religious and spiritual values. Modern secular Zionism begins with the writings of Moses Hess. Born in Bonn, Germany, Hess settled in Paris, where he was active in socialist circles. From 1842 to 1843 he served as the Paris correspondent of the Rheinische Zeitung, edited by Karl Marx. In 1862 he published Rome and Jerusalem, a systematic defence of Jewish nationalism. In this work, he argued that anti-Jewish sentiment is unavoidable. Progressive Jews think they can escape from Judeophobia by recoiling from any Jewish national expression, yet the hatred of Jews is inescapable.

For Hess, Jews will always remain strangers among the nations: nothing can alter this state of affairs. The only solution to the problem of Jew hatred is for the Jewish people to come to terms with their national identity. According to Hess, the restoration of Jewish nationalism will not deprive the world of the benefits promoted by Jewish reformers who wish to dissociate themselves from the particularistic dimensions of the Jewish heritage. On the contrary, the values of universalism will be championed by various aspects of Judaism's national character. What is required today, Hess asserted, is for Jewry to regenerate the Jewish nation and to keep alive the hope for the political rebirth of the Jewish people.

For Hess, a Jewish renaissance is possible once national life reasserts itself in the Holy Land. In the past the creative energies of the people deserted Israel when Jews became ashamed of their nationality. But the holy spirit, he argued, will again animate Jewry once the nation awakens to a new life. The only question remaining is how it might be possible to stimulate the patriotic sentiments of modern Jewry as well as to liberate the Jewish masses by means of this revived national loyalty. This is a formidable challenge, yet Hess maintained that it must be tackled. Although he recognized that there could not be a total emigration of world Jewry to Palestine, Hess believed that the existence of a Jewish state would act as a spiritual centre for the Jewish people and all of humanity.

The Russian pogroms had a profound impact on another early Zionist, Leon Pinsker, driving him from an espousal of the ideas of the Enlightenment to the determination to create a Jewish homeland. Born in Tomoaszów in Russian Poland in 1821, Pinsker attended a Russian high school, studied law in Odessa and later received a medical degree from the University of Moscow. Upon returning to Odessa, he was appointed to the staff of the local city hospital. After 1860, he contributed to Jewish weekly papers and was active in the Society for the Spread of Culture among the Jews of Russia. However, when Jews were massacred in the pogroms of 1881, he left the Society, convinced that a more radical remedy was required to solve the plight of Russian Jewry.

In 1882 he published Autoemancipation, in which he argued that the Jewish problem is as unresolved in the modern world as it was in former times. In essence, this dilemma concerns the unassimilable character of Jewish identity in countries where Jews are in the minority. In such cases there is no basis for mutual respect between Jews and non-Jews. Among the nations of the world, Pinsker argued, the Jews are like a nation long since dead. The fear of the Jewish ghost has been a typical reaction throughout the centuries, and has paved the way for current Judeophobia. This prejudice has through the years become rooted and naturalized among all peoples of the world.

Such Jew hatred has generated various charges against the Jewish people: throughout history Jews have been accused of crucifying Jesus, drinking the blood of Christians, poisoning wells, exacting usury and exploiting peasants. Such accusations are invariably groundless - they were trumped up to quiet the conscience of Jew baiters. Thus Judaism and anti-Semitism have been inseparable companions through the centuries, and any struggle against this aberration of the human mind is fruitless. Unlike other peoples, the Jews are inevitably aliens. They are not simply guests in a foreign country; they are more like beggars and refugees.

The isolation of the Jew, Pinsker continued, cannot be removed by any form of official emancipation, since the Jew is eternally an alien. Given this situation, the Jewish people have no choice but to reconstitute themselves as a separate people. The Jewish struggle to attain this goal has an inherent justification that belongs to the quest of every oppressed people. Although this endeavour may be opposed in various quarters, the battle must continue - the Jewish people have no other way out of their desperate position. There is a moral duty to ensure that persecuted Jews wherever they live will have a secure home.

For Pinsker the present moment is a decisive time for the revival of national aspirations. History appears to be on the side of world Jewry in its longing for a national homeland. Even in the absence of a leader like Moses, the recognition of what Jewish people need most should arouse a number of energetic individuals to take on positions of responsibility. Already, he noted, there are societies that are pressing for the creation of a Jewish nation. They must now invoke a national congress and establish a national directorate to bring to fruition these plans. Not all Jews would be able to settle in this Jewish homeland. Yet, it would serve as a refuge for those who seek to flee from oppression and persecution.

More than with any other figure, modern secular Zionism has become identified with Theodor Herzl. Born on 2 May 1860 in Budapest, Hungary, he was the only son of a rich merchant. After studying at a technical school and high school in Budapest, he went to Vienna, where he enrolled in the law faculty of the university. In 1884 he received a doctorate and worked for a year as a civil servant. Subsequently he wrote plays, and in 1892 was appointed to the staff of the Neue Freie Presse. As its Paris correspondent, he witnessed the Dreyfus affair and became convinced that the Jewish problem could be solved only by the creation of Jewish homeland.

In May 1895 Herzl requested an interview with Baron Maurice de Hirsch to interest him in the establishment of a Jewish state. When the Baron expressed little sympathy for the project, Herzl hoped the Rothschilds would be more receptive and wrote a sixty-five-page proposal outlining his views. This work was an outline of his The Jewish State, which appeared in February 1896; this was followed by a utopian study, Alteneuland, published in 1902. Herzl's analysis of modern Jewish existence was not original - many of his ideas were preceded in the writings of Moses Hess and Leon Pinsker. However, what was novel about Herzl's espousal of Zionism was his success in stimulating interest in and debate about a Jewish state in the highest diplomatic and political circles. This was due both to the force of his personality and to the passionate expression of his proposals.

Convinced of the importance of his views, Herzl insisted that the building of a Jewish homeland would transform Jewish life. In the preface to The Jewish State Herzl states that his advocacy of a Jewish homeland is not simply a utopian scheme; on the contrary, his plan is a realistic proposal arising out of the appalling conditions facing Jews living under oppression and persecution. The plan, he argued, would be impractical if only a single individual were to undertake it. But if many Jews were to agree on its importance, its implementation would be entirely reasonable. Like Pinsker, Herzl believed that the Jewish question can be solved only if the Jews constitute themselves as one people.

Old prejudices against Jewry are ingrained in Western society - assimilation will not act as a cure for the ills that beset the Jewish people. There is only one remedy for the malady of anti-Semitism: the creation of a Jewish commonwealth. In The Jewish State Herzl outlined the nature of such a social and political entity. The plan, he argued, should be carried out by two agencies: the Society of Jews and the Jewish Company. The scientific programme and political policies that the Society of Jews will establish should be carried out by the Jewish Company. This body will be the liquidating agent for the business interests of departing Jews, and will organize trade and commerce in the new country. Given such a framework, immigration of Jews will be gradual. Their tasks will be to construct roads, bridges, railways and telephone installations; in addition, they will regulate rivers and provide themselves with homesteads.

Those Jews who agree with the concept of a Jewish state should rally round the Society of Jews and encourage its endeavours. In this way they will give it authority in the eyes of governments, and in time ensure that the state is recognized through international law. If other nations are willing to grant Jews sovereignty over a neutral land, then the Society will be able to enter into negotiations for its possession. In his novel Alteneuland Herzl discussed the social and economic structure of such a state in Palestine. These two works, one a passionate call for the building of a Jewish country and the other a novelistic proposal for Jewish existence in such a future society in Palestine, strengthened the case for political Zionism. Championing the concept of a Jewish refuge from persecution, Herzl laid the foundations for the creation of a Jewish homeland in the Middle East.

The origins of the Zionist movement

Anxious to pursue his Zionist vision, Theodor Herzl began a campaign to arouse interest in the creation of a Jewish homeland. In 1896 he established contact with Hovevei Zion in Russia and Poland. This was followed in the same year by a meeting with the Grand Duke of Baden. In the summer of 1896 Herzl travelled to Constantinople to meet with the Sultan. On route he encountered Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews at the station in Sofia who hailed him as the 'Heart of Israel'. Joyously they declared 'Leshanah Haba Birushalayim' (Next year in Jerusalem). Despite such enthusiasm, this mission accomplished little - Herzl failed to see the Sultan and instead met with the Grand Vizier.

Returning to Europe, he spoke to a gathering of poor immigrant Jews in Whitechapel, London. Sitting in their midst, he perceived that the masses saw him as their redeemer, a modern Messiah who would lead them back to the Promised Land. Nonetheless, the leaders of Eastern European Jewry became increasingly agitated about Herzl's appeal. Fearing the consequences of mass hysteria, like that which accompanied Shabbetai Zevi in the seventeenth century, they were wary of his political activities. In addition, members of Hovevei Zion became suspicious of what they perceived as Herzl's messianic pretentions.

By the autumn of 1896, Herzl was discouraged by these reactions. Yet, he quickly revived and renewed his labours. After conferring in Berlin with members of Hovevei Zion from Berlin, Herzl came to the view that a congress of Zionists should be convened in Switzerland. Once invitations to this gathering had been sent, delegates enthusiastically responded. Even the leaders of Hovevei Zion agreed to attend despite their reservations about Herzl's appeal among the Jewish masses. On 29 August 1897, the First Zionist Congress opened in the concert hall of Basle Municipal Casino. Over two hundred men and women attended, representing twenty-four states and territories.

Though only about half of the participants came from Eastern Europe, a large proportion of those from Western countries were of Eastern European origin. Half of those from Germany, for example, were originally from Russia. Herzl took special care not to dominate the Congress, and the most moving speech was given by Max Nordau, who spoke eloquently about the dismal conditions of European Jewry at the end of the nineteenth century. Anti-Semitism, he explained, dominated their lives. Not only do the Jews' fellow citizens repel them, but the Jews have no sense of belonging to the countries where they reside. Believing that the world hates them, they are unable to find a place where they can feel secure. In his speech to the Congress, Herzl emphasized that the creation of a Jewish homeland is an abiding feature of the Jewish tradition.

Paradoxically, however, there was no mention made at the Congress of a Jewish state because mention of such a vision might endanger Jewish settlers in Palestine and prejudice future development of the movement. Delegates were well aware that the Sultan had no intention of handing back Palestine to the Jews. Further, even if this had been his intention, he would have feared the Russian response. As Rothschild had explained to Max Nordau several months previously, the Sultan feared Russia, and Russia would never permit Palestine to fall under Jewish control. This was so because the Russian Orthodox Church would never permit the Jews to become masters of Jerusalem.

In its programme the Congress adopted by acclamation the quest to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Yet, after Basle there were two approaches to Zionism: political Zionism as espoused by Herzl, and practical Zionism, the official policy of Hovevei Zion. Dedicated to settling the land, Hovevei Zion continued with their small-scale settlements in Palestine, committed to the view that the development of a Jewish presence should be a gradual process. Herzl, however, believed that there must be a massive in-gathering into the Holy Land. Determined to save those Jews who were compelled to live in adverse conditions, Herzl sought to negotiate at the highest levels a grant of land sufficient for Jewish statehood.

In 1898 a Second Zionist Congress was held at Basle with nearly double the number of participants. Since the First Congress, the number of Zionist societies had grown to 913, most of them in Russia and Austria-Hungary. The total membership of these organizations was approximately one hundred thousand. In his address to this body, Herzl stressed that the emancipation of Jewry did not result in the elimination of anti-Semitism. Rather, Jews have continued to be oppressed and persecuted in the countries in which they reside. As a result, the historical intent of emancipation is to create a homeland for modern Jews. This was not possible in earlier times, but it can now become a reality.

Critical of Russian Jews who sought to smuggle settlers into Palestine, Herzl argued that a formal agreement must be reached with the Turkish authorities. In this address, Herzl alluded to the visit of Kaiser Wilhelm II to Constantinople, Jerusalem and Damascus in October and November 1898 - this, he believed, would provide an opportunity to enlist support for the movement, since Imperial Germany was emerging as the patron and protector of the Ottoman Empire. On 18 October 1898 the Kaiser met Herzl in Constantinople at the Yildiz Kosk, where the Kaiser was staying as the Sultan's guest. During their discussion, Herzl encouraged the Kaiser to ask the Sultan if a chartered company for Jews in Palestine under German protection could be created.

Initially it appears that the Kaiser viewed this plan favourably, but when he met with a Zionist delegation headed by Herzl in Jerusalem nothing was said about this plan. At the conclusion of his tour in Damascus, the Kaiser declared himself a friend of the Islamic people, and it became an official policy of Germany that no intervention in favour of Herzl's state should be undertaken because of the damage it would inflict on Germany's interests in Turkey. Following the Kaiser's visit, the Sultan announced his decision to award the Deutsche Bank the concession for a railway to Baghdad and the Persian Gulf.

At the Third Zionist Congress Herzl stressed that progress had been made toward creating a Jewish state. He had met the Kaiser, and all efforts must now be directed toward obtaining a charter from the Turkish government under the sovereignty of the Sultan. Such an agreement would enable Zionists to undertake widespread settlement in Palestine. In pursuit of this aim, Herzl met with the Sultan on 17 May 1901 at Yildiz Kiosk, where he had met the Kaiser two years before. Despite Herzl's enthusiasm for this meeting, the interview produced no positive results. Returning to Constantinople, he was conscious that he was up against an insuperable obstacle to his plans.

Not surprisingly the Sultan rejected Herzl's overtures. Herzl and other Zionists believed they could hide their ultimate objective - the establishment of a Jewish state - by focusing on the formation of a chartered company. Ottoman diplomats, however, were clear about the intentions of the Zionists. Reporting on the Sixth Zionist Congress, which took place in 1903, the Ottoman ambassador to Berlin, Ahmed Tevfik, encouraged his government to draw up special laws to prohibit the purchase of land in Palestine in order to prevent the colonization of the country. This, he declared, was the essential aim of the Zionists.

Undeterred by such resistance, Herzl concentrated on influencing British opinion. The Fourth Zionist Congress was to be held in London, and Herzl turned his attention to influencing British policy. Giving evidence before the Royal Commission on immigration, he stated that European Jews were subject to increasing anti-Semitism. How were they to escape such persecution? he asked. Emigration would be possible if a Jewish homeland were made available. Joseph Chamberlain, a member of Balfour's Conservative government, was seriously interested in such a project. At a meeting with Herzl in October 1902, Chamberlain expressed his approval of a Jewish settlement at El Arish in the Sinai peninsula on the border of Palestine. The Foreign Office, however, was opposed to such a solution, as was the de facto governor of the area, Lord Cromer.

By this stage Herzl was suffering from heart disease, and pogroms in Russia became increasingly disastrous for the Jewish community. On 19-20 April 1903, the Jews of Kishinev were assaulted by an unruly mob which killed thirty-two men, six women and three children. In addition, 495 were injured and subsequently eight others died. Herzl's response to this onslaught was to go to St Petersburg to meet with the Tsar's Minister of the Interior, V.K. Plehve. Determined to divert Russian Jews from revolutionary activity and to rid the country of a Jewish presence, Plehve stated that Russia favoured the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine and would intervene in Constantinople to support the establishment of a Jewish settlement. Despite such assurances, little resulted from this meeting.

Returning from St Petersburg on 16 August 1903, Herzl stopped in Vilna, where he was met by crowds of enthusiastic Jews who had thronged to welcome him as their saviour. After encountering these Eastern European Jews, Herzl became even more convinced of the need for a Jewish homeland. Yet, he recognized the difficulties of creating a Jewish state in Palestine. The same month the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Lansdowne, told the Zionists that if a suitable site could be found in East Africa he would be prepared to entertain favourably proposals for the creation of a Jewish colony or settlement.

At the Sixth Zionist Congress in Basle in August 1903, Herzl encouraged sending a committee to East Africa to investigate. Although this proposal was passed by 295 votes to 178 with 99 abstentions, Russian Zionists were bitterly opposed to such a development. In their view, this was a travesty of Zionist aspirations. The delegates from Kishinev in particular were determined to thwart this scheme; in November 1903 they met at Kharkov and an ultimatum was sent to Herzl: he was to withdraw the East Africa project, or a new Independent Zionist organization would be formed.

Determined to carry on with negotiations, Herzl met with the King of Italy and Pope Pius X in Rome in January 1904 and explained the importance of creating a Jewish settlement in Palestine. The Pope, however, was insistent that the Jewish people embrace the Christian faith if he were to support the notion of a return to the Holy Land. On 3 July, Herzl died and was buried in Vienna. From throughout Europe thousands of supporters came to his funeral. The next year the Seventh Zionist Congress rejected the East Africa project and declared the movement's commitment to creating a Jewish National Home in Eretz Israel. This was to be the guiding policy of the Zionists throughout the century.

Jewish settlement in Palestine

While Herzl and others agitated for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, Jewish immigrants founded a variety of settlements and institutions in the Holy Land. By the middle of the nineteenth century approximately ten thousand Jews lived in Palestine. Most of these immigrants resided in Jerusalem; several hundred others settled in Safed, Acre and Jaffa. Most of these Jews had emigrated from Poland and Lithuania and survived on charity. In 1870 a French educator, Charles Netter, founded an agricultural school at Mikveh Israel (Hope of Israel) with the approval of the Turkish authorities. Eight years later a number of Jews from Jerusalem established Petah Tikvah (Gateway of Hope) on the coastal plain; in the same year religious Jews from Safed founded Rosh Pinah (Head Stone).

Following pogroms in Russia, members of Hovevei Zion emigrated to Palestine, where they established farms and villages. During the First Aliyah, from 1882 to 1903, about twenty-five thousand Jews reached Palestine. The first village created by settlers from outside Palestine was Rishon le-Zion (First to Zion), later supported by Baron Edmond de Rothschild - the first language kindergarten and elementary school in Palestine were opened there several years after its establishment. In 1882 the town of Zichron Yaakov (Memory of Jacob) was created by Romanian immigrants, again with the support of Baron Edmond de Rothschild; in the same year Hayyim Amzalak, a Jew from Gibraltar, bought the land on which Petah Tikvah had been built; this was given to Bilu, secular and socialist pioneers from Russia who took their name from the Hebrew initials of the biblical verse ‘Beth Jacob Lechu Venelcha’ ('O House of Jacob, come and let us go').

In 1883 a Russian Jewish emigrant, Reuben Lehrer, built a house in an Arab village, Wadi Hanin, on the coastal plain; he was later joined by several other Jewish settlers. In 1884 another Russian Jew, Yehiel Michael Pines, bought land needed for Bilu pioneers to create another village, Gederah. In Jerusalem the population grew considerably through these waves of immigration. By the 1850s Jews were in the majority - by 1889 their numbers had risen to twenty-five thousand. In 1890 another Jewish village, Rehovot (Wide Expanses), was founded on the coastal plain. The same year, Russian Jews who had emigrated from Vilna, Riga and Kovno founded Hadera (The Green). At the same time a group of Hovevei Zion created a small farming settlement in Upper Galilee on the west bank of the River Jordan - Mishmar Ha-Yarden (Guard of the Jordan).

In 1903 Menachem Ussishkin travelled from Russia to Palestine to convene a convention at Zichron Yaakov, where he encouraged delegates to remain faithful to the Zionist vision. Before returning to Russia, he founded the Hebrew Teachers' Federation in Palestine. From 1904 until the First World War a further wave of immigration - the Second Aliyah - took place. In 1906 the first Hebrew high school was founded in Jaffa. Two years later, Arthur Ruppin became head of the Palestine Office of the Zionist Executive and encouraged the creation of Jewish farming settlements; in addition, he arranged for the purchase of land and set up an agricultural training farm at Kinneret. The money for this acquisition came from the Jewish National Fund, as did funds that were used to buy farming land at Hulda in the Judean Hills. In 1910 Aaron Aaronsohn set up the Jewish Agricultural Experiment Station at Athlit.

During this period Tel Aviv (Hill of Spring) was founded just north of Jaffa on land purchased from Turks. The Jewish National Fund provided funds needed to build the first sixty houses, and foundations were laid for the creation of a Hebrew language high school, the Herzliya Gymnasium. In 1911 the first Jewish hospital was opened in the Arab port of Haifa by Elias Auerbach, a German-speaking doctor who had emigrated to Palestine. The following year the Hadassah Women's Zionist Organization of America sent two members to establish a clinic in Jerusalem. In the same year a girls' agricultural farm was created at Kinneret.

In 1914 supporters of the creation of the Hebrew University sought to persuade Sir John Gray Hill to sell them his house on Mount Scopus. Much of the money for this project was raised by the Hovevei Zion at the instigation of Menachem Ussishkin. On 9 March 1914 Arthur Ruppin recorded in his dairy that he had been successful in acquiring an option to purchase Sir John Gray Hill's property. Four years later this option was acted upon. Other early institutions founded in Palestine included the Bezalel art school, which was funded by Otto Warburg and a group of German Zionists. An American Jew, Nathan Straus, provided funds to establish a Jewish hospital in Jerusalem.

Simultaneously, Jewish settlements continued to be created in Palestine. In 1914 a group of Hovevei Zion from Russia founded Nahalat Yehuda (the Inheritance of Yehuda) north of Rishon le-Zion. By this stage there were approximately ninety thousand Jews living in the Holy Land, of whom seventy-five thousand were immigrants. In the years following the creation of the Jewish National Fund at the beginning of the century, forty-three settlements had been created with a population of 120,000. The majority of those who had emigrated to Palestine were from Russia and Romania - they either worked on the land as farmers or agricultural labourers or were employed as shopkeepers, artisans and labourers. By contrast, the number of Arabs in Palestine was about half a million.

Anxious about the influx of Jewish settlers, the Arab population began to engage in political activity. Two Jerusalem Arabs were elected to the Ottoman Parliament in Constantinople as anti-Zionists. In the summer of 1914 the Turkish government imposed strict measures to curtail Jewish immigration. Later, when Turkey entered the First World War on the side of the Central Powers, France and Russia became Turkey's enemies. As a result, the Jews of Palestine suffered great hardships as food supplies dwindled and the Turkish government came to regard the Jewish population with hostility, since large numbers of Jewish immigrants were Russian in origin.

The Turkish military commander, Jemal Pasha, sought to quell both Jewish and Arab national sentiments. In Beirut and Jerusalem several Arab leaders were hanged, and eighteen thousand Jews were expelled or fled from Palestine to Alexandria. In addition, Jews known to have been active in Zionist circles, including Arthur Ruppin, were expelled from the country. In response to these developments, the Jaffa Group, consisting of a number of Jewish fighters, was established to defend Jewish settlements in Palestine. With the outbreak of war, a number of Zionists were anxious to establish a Jewish legion to fight alongside the Allies against the Turks. It was the aim of this group to participate in the liberation of Palestine from Turkish control and to convince the Allies of the need for a Jewish homeland. Pre-eminent among these Zionists, Vladimir Jabotinsky, a Russian correspondent of a Moscow newspaper who was based in Egypt, encouraged Zionists there to join in political and military alliance with the British, French and Russians against the Germans and Turks.

Another major Jewish figure in this campaign was Joseph Trumpeldor, a veteran of the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5. Strongly in favour of a Jewish military force, he joined with Jabotinsky in an effort to persuade the British government to create a Jewish defence force, the Zion Mule Corps, to serve on the Gallipoli Peninsula, where an Anglo-French force had landed. Although the Allied offensive at Gallipoli was unsuccessful, the efforts of the Zion Mule Corps were appreciated by the British, an outcome that encouraged the Allies to include Jewish troops in the conquest of Palestine. Yet, as the war intensified, Turkish troops were successful in keeping the British out of the country.

Throughout the war, the defence of outlying settlements in the north became a priority. In 1916 Kibbutz Kfar Giladi was established by members of Ha-Shomer to guard the northern settlements against Arab attack. In Tel Aviv a committee headed by Meir Dizengoff, head of the local Israel council, was created to help those suffering in the war. Like other Jews, he was expelled by the Turks and sent to Damascus, where he remained until liberated in 1918 by the British. During this period, a spy ring working behind Turkish lines, known as Nili (from the initial letters of the Hebrew verse ‘Nezah Yisrael Lo Yeshakker’ ('The strength of Israel will not lie')), had been set up in Palestine to support the British. One of this faction, Aaron Aaronsohn, was instrumental in the quest to persuade the British government to allow Jews to create a national home in Palestine.

After more than a year of negotiations between the Zionists and the British government, the Balfour Declaration was issued. Such a solution to the Jewish problem was in line with the British aspiration of defeating Turkey and becoming the major power in the Middle East. In a letter from the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, to Lord Rothschild, dated 2 November 1917, the British government resolved to create a National Home for the Jewish people in Palestine. Such a resolution was a cause for rejoicing throughout the Jewish world. In Odessa two hundred thousand Jews followed Ussishkin and his colleagues in a motor-car in a massive procession. However, in the United States, David Ben-Gurion, the future Prime Minister of Israel, was more reserved. Britain, he declared, had not given back Palestine to the Jewish people. The British had made a magnanimous gesture in recognizing the right of the Jewish population to their own country. But it was only the Jewish people, he emphasized, who could transform such a decree into a historical reality.