Summary
Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s 1923 strategy, as presented by Avi Shlaim in Chapter 5 of For Palestine — Essays from the Tom Hurndall Memorial Lecture Group: a Jewish state in Palestine could only be built unilaterally and by military force behind an iron wall of Jewish military power, with negotiation with the Arabs coming only in a second stage, after they despaired of overpowering the Zionists (For Palestine — Essays from the Tom Hurndall Memorial Lecture Group, PDF p.94-96).
Details
- Shlaim presents the iron wall not as a strategy of the right, left or centre but as the national strategy, based on broad consensus from the 1930s onwards, under successive prime ministers from David Ben-Gurion to Binyamin Netanyahu (PDF p.95).
- In Shlaim’s summary of his The Iron Wall (2000), “Israel’s leaders have always preferred force to diplomacy in dealing with the Arabs” (PDF p.94-95).
- Shlaim argues only Yitzhak Rabin moved from stage one, building military power, to stage two, negotiations with the Palestinians, in the Oslo talks (PDF p.96).
Related pages
For Palestine — Essays from the Tom Hurndall Memorial Lecture Group, Avi Shlaim, Vladimir Jabotinsky