What Debate on Zionism is Really About

By Shibley Telhami
Boston Globe

August 30, 2001

AS THE Durban conference on racism approaches, the debate about ''Zionism as racism'' has generated Israeli fears that Arabs will never accept Israel as a  Jewish state, and Arab fears that Israel will never recognize the injustices endured by the Palestinians.  

Arabs worry that US attempts to end the debate are aimed at protecting Israel from  international norms, and Israelis fear that Arabs are trying to single them out. This debate, which has been blurred by the confusion of legitimate and illegitimate claims, is not merely rhetorical.  

It is a symptom of the reality on the ground today, giving a hint of the collapsing nationalist paradigm that has framed Arab-Israeli negotiations, and of the haunting prospect of ethnic/religious conflict that could take its place.  

Many Palestinians have not recognized the legitimacy of Jewish nationalism, insisting that Jewishness constitutes only religious and ethnic identity, and many Israelis have not recognized the injustice that Palestinians have endured or that the ultimate legitimacy of the Zionist project in Palestine rests with satisfying basic Palestinian rights.  

Jewish nationalism in Europe in the 19th century was a legitimate expression of Jewish aspirations in the midst of pervasive persecution and rising European national movements that excluded Jews. But the international legitimacy of implementing Jewish nationalism in Palestine through a state for the Jews has always been tied to the fate of Palestinians. The Balfour Declaration, which signaled British support for the establishment of a Jewish home in Palestine in 1917, was predicated on ''it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.'' 

 The first UN support for this project, in 1947, envisioned the partition of Palestine into one Arab and one Jewish state. The recognition of the state of Israel at the UN in 1948 was also coupled with resolutions calling for fulfilling the rights of Palestinian refugees.  

Zionism is legitimate to the extent that it seeks a homeland to embody Jewish nationalism in Israel. This nationalism can be inspired by a religious narrative that ties it geographically to the Holy Land. But it cannot justify the employment of religious narrative as the primary basis for taking occupied land from Arabs to give to Jews, trumping other moral and legal considerations; it renders illegitimate religiously motivated settlement policy in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.  

Beyond settlement policy, there is inequality between Palestinians under occupation and Israelis. This inequality is not in principle racist, since it is typically explained as a condition of occupation. But occupation, which always entails inequality, is understood internationally as a temporary state of affairs awaiting a permanent conclusion.  

The Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have been under occupation for 34 years and are approaching the longest occupation in modern history. For the schoolteacher who can, at the whim of an Israeli soldier, be humiliated in the presence of his terrified child, the scars are not temporary. It is these painful realities that leap to the mind of many Palestinians when they think of Zionism.  

While they in the process overlook the legitimacy of Jewish nationalism and display little empathy with genuine and legitimate Israeli insecurities, many Israelis ignore the profound discrimination entailed in their policies in the West Bank and Gaza, and overlook the continuing inequality between Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel.  

To be sure, there are Arab and Jewish racists, and the motives for some behind initiating or silencing the debate about Zionism may be political; the Durban conference must not be allowed to play into their hands. But this should not blind us to legitimate questions about discriminatory policies.  

There are only two possible solutions to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that are reasonably fair and minimally discriminatory: two states respectively manifesting Jewish and Palestinian nationalism, and one democratic bi-national state. The former means that Israel must withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza, and Palestinians, in the context of establishing a Palestinian state there, must accept that the refugee problem will be resolved fairly but without jeopardizing Israel's Jewish majority. 

The latter solution means the end of Zionism and Palestinian nationalism. Since the latter solution seems even more remote today than it has been in the past 50 years, the two-state solution remains the only viable political outcome in this generation. But the debate about Zionism today is a symptom of the diminishing prospects of this nationalist solution and of the turn to ethnic and religious conflict. If occupation does not end soon through a political settlement, Israelis and Palestinians are slated to live in a state of protracted conflict that will almost certainly engulf Arabs and Jews inside Israel and elsewhere.

Shibley Telhami is Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

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