Published: 25 July 2023
Last updated: 5 March 2024
Israel’s PM recently paid homage to the pioneer leader known for advocating an "Iron Wall" against Palestinians. ITTAY FLESCHER considers the implications.
Each year in Israel, a memorial is held on the anniversary of the death of early Zionist leader and territorial maximalist Zeev Jabotinsky. It is usually attended by the Prime Minister.
This year the memorial was particularly significant because it is 100 years since the publication of Jabotinsky’s influential essay “The Iron Wall”, which argued Zionism must proceed, regardless of the Palestinian Arabs, protected by an “Iron Wall” of security.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended the memorial, held on July 18, as prime ministers usually do. He tweeted a message:
“One hundred years after the ‘Iron Wall’ was stamped in Jabotinsky’s writings, we are continuing to successfully implement these principles.”
Jabotinsky was tragically mistaken in that building an “iron wall” would lead to long term peace.
In response to this tweet, Yousef Munayyer, former executive director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, wrote: “In the Iron Wall, Jabotinsky identified Zionism as a settler colonial movement and noted that it was only natural to expect the native Arabs to resist Zionism just as people resist colonialism around the world.”
Munayyer seems to be referring to the following paragraph in Jabotinsky’s 1923 essay. “It may be that some individual Arabs take bribes. But that does not mean that the Arab people of Palestine as a whole will sell that fervent patriotism that they guard so jealously, and which even the Papuans will never sell. Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonised.”
Jabotinsky’s prophecy of Palestinian resistance has proved true. His suggested response, to which Netanyahu was referring, is captured in this paragraph: “Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population – behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach.”
