Was the formation of Israel a colonial endeavour?
Since the 1880s, Zionists and Jews settled in the land of Palestine with the specific intention of creating a Jewish state. Palestine was a sparsely inhabited land, but those who lived in it had done so for centuries. By the 1920s, it is uncontroversial to state that the claim to Palestine was contested by two national liberation movements. Both Zionists and Palestinian nationalists desired to claim the entire land for themselves. Given that Palestinians were the majority of the native population of the land, we must ask whether the Zionist project in Palestine was a form of settler colonialism.
Settler colonialism is an activity in which settlers attempt to replace the original population within the land with the caveat that the settlers are racially superior to the indigenous population. The replacement can occur via violent methods, such as ethnic cleansing or genocide, or by more subtle means such as assimilation or recognising the indigenous population in a colonial framework. Settler colonialism is distinct from colonialism in that the imperial power is not the same nation as the settlers.
During the period of the Palestinian mandate, the British Empire was the imperial power in charge of the people living within Palestine. Jews were the settlers seeking to establish their own state throughout Palestine. The Palestinian refugee crisis, caused by the 1948 war, is evidence that Palestinians were displaced from their own land so that a Jewish state could be formed. Consequently, the formation of Israel was a form of settler colonialism implying that Israel is a racist endeavour.
Such an argument fails to account for the subtleties of history. It fails to address whether the Jews had a legitimate claim to Palestine themselves, presumably assuming that they didn’t. It assumes that Zionism is an ideology that asserts the racial superiority of Jews, even potentially with the intention of drawing comparisons of Zionism with Nazism. It presumes that a zero-sum game exists between the settlers and the indigenous population in which one must gain power over the other so they may have the power to assert the dominance needed to fulfil their nationalist ambitions.
The Jews inhabited and held sovereignty over Judaea, i.e. Palestine, in some capacity for approximately a millennium between c. 1000 BCE to 63 CE. Jewish independence and (limited) sovereignty ended when the Roman Empire sieged Jerusalem destroying the Second Temple. Afterwards, the Jews who identified themselves as a nation in diaspora hoped to reclaim the land promised to them by the God of Israel. This ambition held true even as Jews became secularised as a people following the Enlightenment.
Fleeing the pogroms of Russia, Jews began settling in Palestine in the hope of reforming their homeland. As the persecution of Jews throughout Europe increased in severity over the 20th century the need for the Zionist ambition to become reality became apparent. Jews needed a safe haven to ensure their rights as human beings could be preserved. Europe could no longer ensure the safety of Jews. This is the historical context driving the ambition and necessity of the Zionist settlers in Palestine.
On a moral basis the need for Jewish self-determination via a state is apparent, anarchists withstanding. Likewise, the fact that Palestinians were native inhabitants and had a national consciousness entail they also have the right to self-determination. It is also clear that the Palestinians have a rightful claim to Palestine. Does the history of the Jewish people entail they have a rightful claim to that land? I’d argue yes for two main reasons.
First, as a left-libertarian I believe that land should be treat as a commons accessible to all. Compensation in some form ought to be paid to everyone else when land is appropriated exclusively, which is a necessity to ensure people have private living space. The fact the Palestinians were the native inhabitants of Palestine doesn’t exclude others having a rightful claim.
Second, the long history of the Jewish people does allow us to assert they have a cultural heritage and attachment to that land. The Jewish identity is closely related to the relationship its people had to Israel. Even after the Babylonian Exile, Jews defined themselves in relation to their relationship with the Kingdom. To be an exile was to play your part in the theological implications of God’s judgement of the nation as a whole. The same logic applies to the Diaspora Jews after the 63 CE destruction of Jerusalem.
If Palestinians and Jews want to claim the lands of Palestine then both have sound cases. Can both their respective nationalisms be fulfilled without resorting to expulsion of the other? Yes, but it involves compromises. Either a way must be found in which both sets of people can share Palestine together, or the land must be partitioned. Both solutions involve both sides giving up the right to claim Palestine exclusively themselves. They either get to share the whole land of Palestine, or they only get dominion over a certain percentage of it.
The UN Partition deal of 1947 was an attempt to implement the two-state solution which would have ensured that people would not have been forcefully displaced. The establishment of Israel could have been accomplished, without violence, if only Palestinians were willing to compromise on the amount of territory they could exclusively claim. The rejection of the deal and the following conflict ensured that violent relocation of Palestinians, and Jews as well, occurred. The circumstances of history resulted in expulsion of some Palestinians Arabs.
Did the ambition for a greater Israel among Zionists mean that Zionists would have been prepared to systematically remove Palestinian Arabs from the whole land? The answer would have to be yes, before we jump to the conclusion that Zionism was a form of settler colonialism we must add a caveat. In 1936, Zionists realised it was necessary to make the compromises stated above if a Jewish state was to form. From then on, Zionists were committed to implementing the two-state solution even if a one-state solution was their ideal. Zionists realised it was necessary to establish a safe-haven for persecuted Jews, even if it meant the Zionist ideal of claiming the whole of the promised land was put on hold or extinguished. Unlike Palestinian nationalists, Zionists realised it was better to have a smaller state than what they wanted to having no state at all.
It’s also nonsense to assert that Zionism presumes that Jews are superior to other people. It is true they would feel they had a more legitimate, or greater, claim to Palestine than the Palestinians. That’s not saying Jews are superior to Palestinians. Palestinians feel they have a greater claim to Palestine than the Jews, that needn’t entail that they think they’re superior to Jews. Zionism asserts the ambition for Jewish self-determination in the former land the Jewish people used to reside and have dominion over. It doesn’t assert that Jews are superior to all, or some, races.
It would be historically inaccurate to say that Zionism could never have been a settler colonial movement. If the then Zionist movement was reflective of contemporary right-wing Zionism, it’s entirely possible Israel would have been established in a colonial fashion. That is not how history played out though. Zionists of the day were committed socialists and secularists who utilised the cultural affinity of Jews to Palestine to ensure a Jewish safe haven could be established. They were prepared to compromise to ensure the Palestinians claims to Palestine was respected as well. Jews and Palestinians could have peacefully coexisted as far back as 1937 or 1947. That’s not colonialism. It was the Palestinians, not Zionists, that rejected the deals proposed in those years. It was the Palestinians that started the conflict which would see them end up with nothing. Only a biased reading of history could attribute the suffering of the Palestinians down to a colonial ideology. The violence and the refugee problem that ensued from the 1948 conflict only goes to show how tragic civil wars are.

