Here’s a quick follow-up on my post from last night about the Israel-Lebanon war. In my post I referred to “my core belief in the Zionist project.” And a number of readers have written in to ask what I mean by that.
Zionism is too multifaceted and controversial a subject to define here at TPM. And in any case what Zionism ‘is’ or ‘means’ isn’t really relevant in this case. What’s relevant is what I mean or meant when I identify myself with it.
Here’s what I mean. I believe in the project of building a democratic and secular Jewish state in Palestine.
Some of Israel’s enemies and too many of her friends and advocates use the word to mean in a Jewish state in all of historic Palestine or even, as used to be the Revisionist credo, a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan River.
That’s not what I believe.
I believe there should be a Palestinian state on the West Bank and in Gaza. Not a collection of autonomous cantons but a full state, with the border being the Green Line or some very near approximation of it. As Ben-Gurion saw from the beginning and others like Moshe Dayan realized not that long after, trying to settle the West Bank and Gaza was a terrible mistake, one born of Israeli triumphalism, fed by coalitional politics in Israel and constantly enabled by the intransigence of the Arab states.
