The state of Israel was founded in 1948, realizing the political dream of the Zionist movement. Yet the fact that, in 2024, supporters of Israel’s existence must describe themselves as Zionists is itself a failure of Zionism. Political Zionism aimed to normalize Jewish life, marked by centuries of powerlessness and dispersion, via the re-establishment of a Jewish state.1 As Leon Pinsker wrote in 1882: ”We must learn to recognize that as long as we lack a home of our own, such as the other nations have, we must resign forever the noble hope of becoming the equals of our fellow-men.” Through the reconstitution of a homeland, Jews would retake their rightful place among the nations: they would have their Judea just as the French have France, the Italians have Italy, and the Spanish have Spain. This Zionist bid for normalization is enshrined in Israel’s Declaration of Independence, which affirms “the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations [emphasis mine], in their own sovereign State.“
Yet no other nation requires a term to recognize its right to a state that’s already been established. In the 19th century, Risorgimento activists sought to unify the disparate states of the Italian peninsula. Once the Kingdom of Italy was established in 1861, the term itself became history. (Though Isaiah Berlin called Israel, politically resurrected like modern Greece and Italy, the “last child of the European Risorgimento.”2) More recently, and analogous to Zionism in its ethnoreligious basis, the Pakistan movement sought to establish a nation-state for South Asian Muslims. Yet after the British Raj was partitioned in 1947, resulting in the creation of Muslim Pakistan and Hindu-majority India, the notion of belonging to a “Pakistan movement” became obsolete. To recognize the existence of Pakistan today is not to belong to any movement: it is simply to acknowledge political reality. Even though the contemporaneous partition of India resulted in a far larger population displacement than the partition of Palestine, India’s partition is considered history, while Palestine’s remains a live issue.
Unlike “Risorgimento” and “Pakistan movement,” the term “Zionism” is still current because large parts of the world do not acknowledge Israel’s legitimacy. After Israel’s founding, its first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, prematurely declared that he no longer considered himself a Zionist. Yet the prominence of anti-Zionism has impelled a continued identification with Zionism, despite the completion of the movement’s original mission. Twenty-eight UN member states (mostly Muslim) refuse to recognize the Jewish state. And even in Muslim countries that do formally recognize Israel, public sentiment is often supportive of its destruction. In the West, anti-Zionism was typically relegated to Muslim immigrants and the far-left/academic fringe. However, since October 7 and the war in Gaza, anti-Zionism has become an increasingly fashionable cause in broader left-wing circles. While there are no serious voices calling for the undoing of Italian unification or of India’s partition, the right of Jews to a state in their historic homeland remains a matter of dispute.
In the short term then, Zionists must defend Israel’s basic right to exist, which is under constant attack. But in the long term, the goal for Zionists should be to make the continued use of the word “Zionism” unnecessary: not because Israel has been destroyed, but because it has been universally recognized. The fulfillment of Zionism will come through the relegation of anti-Zionism to the dustbin of history. Just as the acceptance of a South Asian Muslim homeland obviated the need for a Pakistan movement, the normalization of a Jewish homeland will eliminate the need for a Zionist movement. Like Israel, Pakistan has disputes over territory (eg, Kashmir), national rights (eg, Baloch separatism), and the role of religion in public life. But unlike the Jewish homeland, the legitimacy of a South Asian Muslim homeland goes largely unquestioned. When Zionism is fulfilled, Israel will be afforded the same basic decency. Israeli policies may still be criticized, but as exactly that: criticisms, not indictments of an entire nation.
The Road to Zion Lies Through Mecca
At its ideological core, anti-Zionism is an Arab and Muslim phenomenon. Ten of the 13 countries that voted against the 1947 UN Partition Plan for Palestine were Arab and/or Muslim.3 All countries that have waged wars to destroy Israel are Arab and/or Muslim. (Though most were both: the exceptions are Lebanon, which was a Christian-majority Arab country when it participated in the 1948 Arab war against Israel, and non-Arab but Muslim Iran, which is engaged in a largely proxy war with Israel through Arab pawns.) The only non-Arab and non-Muslim countries that don’t recognize Israel are the Communist relics of Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea.4 Left-wing anti-Zionists, who substitute the more chic “decolonization” for “jihad,” are their campus analogs. If Arabs and Muslims were, en masse, to recognize Israel’s right to exist, their leftist fellow travelers would likely go along.5 The far left bestows moral authority on those deemed “oppressed” or “colonized,” so would lack the independence of mind to take a contrary stance. Progressives’ willingness to discard core principles—women’s rights, gay rights, secularism—to take the side of Hamas is proof of their thralldom.
The fulfillment of Zionism, then, requires rapprochement with the Arab and Muslim worlds. Arab opposition to Israel is based on ethnic solidarity with fellow Arab Palestinians and a desire to reclaim formerly Arab (though historically Judean) territory. Muslim opposition to Israel is based on religious solidarity with the mostly Muslim Palestinians and a desire to reclaim holy Islamic (though previously Christian and traditionally Jewish) land. In both cases, rapprochement requires an iron wall (to prove the futility of retaking all of the Holy Land) and an olive branch (because conflict with Palestinians also inflames their ethnic and religious brethren). While Israel is militarily and technologically superior to any Arab or Muslim nation, sheer numbers make a lasting accommodation critical. There are 15.7 million Jews in the world, compared with over 400 million Arabs and 1.9 billion Muslims. Besides outnumbering Israelis in the Middle East, Arabs and Muslims are now larger minorities than Jews in most Western countries. In a democracy, those greater numbers—which will only increase due to mass migration—must lead to greater influence. Even with Evangelical and other allies, the math does not favor the Jews in an everlasting ethnoreligious conflict.
Since the majority of Arabs are Muslims, Arab and Muslim opposition to Israel often overlap, but their distinction is of analytical importance. Islam was founded and spread by Arabs, whose Islam is considered normative and who often remain “first among equals” in the religion. Hence the greater Muslim passion for the Palestinian Arab cause than that of China’s Uyghurs or Myanmar’s Rohingya. Notably, Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, funds puritanical madrassas in Pakistan. But Pakistan, the territories of which were a later conquest by Arab armies, lacks the theological authority to influence Saudi Arabia in any comparable way. Thus Saudi ties with Israel would likely lead to Israeli ties with Pakistan, but the reverse isn’t true.6 And Saudi ties with Israel are only possible—to placate “the Arab street” if nothing else—via an agreement that leads to a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel does not need to normalize relations with every Muslim country separately; it needs to forge ties with the ones that matter most. That means the descendants of the Muslim conquerors, not the descendants of the Muslim conquered. The road to Zionism’s fulfillment lies through Mecca.
It was the Arab League that declared the first of multiple Arab-initiated wars on the Jewish state in 1948. It was the Arab League that issued the Khartoum Resolution in 1967, which called for “No peace with Israel, no negotiation with Israel, no recognition of Israel.” And it is through the 22-country Arab League (which includes Palestine), that the universal recognition of Israel—and thus the fulfillment of Zionism—must come. Rapprochement with non-Arab Muslim countries will naturally follow from rapprochement with the Arab world. The anti-Zionist left, deprived through Israeli-Arab peace of its raison d’etre, will be forced to move on to other “colonialist” targets. Irredeemable anti-Zionists, motivated by religious or ethnic animus, will always remain. But the more Israel is normalized, the more they will be marginalized. Those on the right side of history will be able to say, per an old Arab proverb, “The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.”
From Arab League to Semitic League
Normalized relations between Israel and Arab countries are demonstrably possible. Israel achieved “cold peace” with neighboring Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994. Through the 2020 Abraham Accords, warmer ties were established between Israel and three additional Arab countries: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco. But the resolution of the Israeli-Arab conflict requires normalization between Israel and all Arab countries—their peoples as well as leaders—which is only plausible in the context of an accord with the Palestinians. In 2002, at the initiative of Saudi Arabia, the Arab League proposed just such a normalization of relations in exchange for full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights; a "just solution" for Palestinian refugees; and the establishment of a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem. In 2007, the Arab Peace Initiative was re-endorsed by all Arab League members, with the notable exception of the delegate from Hamas.
Palestinian rejectionism, embodied by Hamas, remains the most significant obstacle to Israeli-Arab peace. But the destruction wrought on Hamas, if coupled with an ambitious Israeli response to the Arab Peace Initiative, could lead to the belated fulfillment of Zionism itself. Such a triumph requires a focus on national security, since Zionism cannot be fulfilled if Israel is destroyed. It also requires rejecting the alternative, messianic Zionist vision of the religious settler movement, which views control of the entire Holy Land as more important than Israeli normalization. But if framed in terms of the completion of Zionism’s original mission, then the visionary but pragmatic spirit of Theodor Herzl’s generation may yet prevail. Inspired by Herzl’s immortally Nietzschean incantation, “If you will it, it is no dream,” below I put forth imagined Israeli responses to the Arab League’s proposals:
Proposal: Complete withdrawal from the occupied Arab territories, including the Syrian Golan Heights, to the 4 June 1967 line and the territories still occupied in southern Lebanon.
Response: Israel unilaterally withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000. Subsequently, southern Lebanon became a base for Hezbollah to fire rockets on Israel. To demonstrate their commitment to Israel’s security if it were to withdraw from more territory, Arab League countries must pressure Hezbollah to disengage and exit north (in compliance with UN Security Council Resolution 1701), including by imposing sanctions on Lebanon. If the pressure campaign doesn’t succeed, the Arab League must support (materially and diplomatically, if not militarily) an Israeli war on Hezbollah. Once the Hezbollah threat has been subdued, Israel will withdraw from other territories.
Proposal: Attain a just solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees to be agreed upon in accordance with the UN General Assembly Resolution No 194.
Response: The resolution says that “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property.” Descendants of Palestinian refugees who wish to live at peace with their Israeli neighbors are welcome to do so. In order to ensure their neighborly intent, Palestinians who plan to move to Israel must learn basic Hebrew, swear an oath of loyalty to the Jewish state, and, if of conscription age, commit to serving in the Israeli Army. Other descendants of Palestinian refugees may move to Palestine or elect for compensation instead, which will be provided in tandem with Arab League compensation to the descendants of Israeli Jews expelled from Arab countries.
Proposal: Accept the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state on the Palestinian territories occupied since 4 June 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Response: Israel will accept the establishment of an independent Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Contiguous Israeli settlements in the West Bank may be formally joined to Israel as part of mutually agreed-upon land swaps. An Abrahamic Authority—composed of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian leaders, and chaired by Saudi Arabia—will guarantee access to shared religious sites in both states (including Jerusalem’s Holy Basin and Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs). In exchange for religious custodianship, Saudi Arabia will lead the rebuilding of Gaza and de-radicalizing of Palestinians as part of an Arab League Mandate of Palestine prior to complete independence. Once the Mandate has ended, Israel and Palestine will agree to ban parties that refuse to recognize the sovereignty of the other (eg, Hamas, Otzma Yehudit) from participating in government.7 They will also agree not to form alliances or military ties with states that don’t recognize the sovereignty of the other (eg, Iran) upon threat of sanctions.
Proposal: In return the Arab states will do the following: Consider the Arab-Israeli conflict over, sign a peace agreement with Israel, and achieve peace for all states in the region. Establish normal relations with Israel within the framework of this comprehensive peace.
Response: The peace agreement with Israel should be followed by Israel’s admission to the Arab League itself. After all, two-thirds of Israel’s population are Mizrahi Jews (largely descendants of refugees from Arab countries) and Arabs, which makes Israel more of an Arab nation than League member Somalia. Ideally, the Arab League will then be renamed the Semitic League to honor the Hebrew language’s place in the region (as well as that of Aramaic, still spoken by Middle Eastern Christians). In tandem with its admission, Israel will sign a mutual defense pact with other Arab (or Semitic) League members aimed at constraining Iran and its proxies.
Free Palestine to Stop Iran
Israeli-Arab peace will come not through mere idealism, but through recognition of common interests and a common enemy. Saudi Arabia and like-minded Arab countries are pursuing economic modernization, which Israel, as the most technologically advanced country in the region, can help them achieve.8 Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries are also, like Israel, threatened by Iran and its expansionist designs. Iran, as much as Israel, is a regional outsider as a non-Arab, non–Sunni Muslim state. But while Israel’s territorial ambitions are limited to the Holy Land, Iran’s revolutionary ideology knows no bounds. Iranian officials boast that they control four Arab capitals already (in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen). When Iran launched a direct attack on Israel in April 2024, Arab countries like Jordan and Saudi Arabia helped shoot down its missiles or provide intelligence. Israel’s foreign-policy priority should be to formalize these furtive strategic ties into an open Sunni-Jewish alliance, blessed by imams and rabbis. Agreeing to the establishment of a Palestinian state, if it can be coupled with security guarantees, is a worthy trade for a path to genuine regional acceptance.
Most Israelis identify as right-wing, largely due to the failure of the previous left-driven peace process, but accommodation with the Arabs can be approached on rightist terms. In 1923, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the militant Revisionist Zionist leader, predicted that “when there is no longer any hope of getting rid of us,” Arab leadership would "pass to the moderate groups, who will approach us with a proposal that we should both agree to mutual concessions.” Many Palestinians still hope to get rid of Israel, but as the Abraham Accords proved, that sentiment is far from universal among Arab leaders. The Arab Peace Initiative, then, should be seen as a fulfillment of Jabotinsky’s vision. Israel should respond to it as a living peace initiative, not a diktat, and negotiate from a right-coded, religiously conscious, security-focused stance. Insofar as Israel is accepted in the region, it is accepted because it is strong. Complete acceptance of Arab terms would demonstrate weakness, which would only decrease Israel’s attraction as an ally against Iran. But even Jabotinsky, the forefather of the right-wing Likud Party, counseled mutual concessions “so that both peoples can live together in peace, like good neighbors.” His disciple, former militant and later Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, withdrew from Sinai in exchange for peace with Egypt. Given the significance that Palestine has assumed for Arab identity, acceptance within the Middle East also requires Israel to accept a Palestinian state.
Many Israelis argue that implementing a two-state solution after October 7 would reward terror. But it was Hamas that perpetrated October 7, and the goal of Hamas is to eliminate Israel, not to establish a state alongside it. A Hamas severely diminished (or ideally, destroyed) by Israel’s war in Gaza, then marginalized in an expansive post-war settlement, would have no claim to victory. For Jew-hating, death-loving Islamists, Israeli-Arab normalization would mark a greater defeat than the destruction of Gaza. The risk that an independent Palestine becomes a base for terror, like Hamas-run Gaza, could be mitigated through the involvement of third-party guarantors via a Saudi-led regional agreement. Even then, the benefits of normalization are worth the risk of creating a failed state that Israel could easily defeat on the battlefield.9 The Palestinians, including Hamas—despite their worst intentions—cannot destroy Israel. A nuclear-armed Iran, on the other hand, could do so, and Israeli-Arab normalization would help counter this greater threat.10 If Arab leaders require a Palestinian state to sell an Israeli alliance to their people, then the price for that alliance is worth paying.
Of course, a two-state solution and normalized Israeli-Arab relations wouldn’t end hatred of Israel and of Jews more broadly. For that, an Arab cultural and Muslim religious transformation is required, not just a treaty. But a grand bargain would widen the cleavage between Middle Eastern pragmatists, who accept political reality, and extremists, who could increasingly (and accurately) be depicted as lackeys of Persian-Shi’ite imperialism. The contrast will be between Dubai’s investors and Yemen’s pirates; Saudi Vision 2030 and Hamas Vision Dark Ages; Israel as start-up nation and Lebanon as failed state. While it may take generations, as the Israeli-Arab conflict fades from memory, and the benefits of regional integration become manifest, the ranks of the pragmatists will grow. At the First Zionist Congress in 1897, Herzl wrote that “I founded the Jewish State. If I said this out loud today l would be greeted by universal laughter. In five years perhaps, and certainly in fifty years, everyone will perceive it.” His prophecy proved almost exactly correct, as the state of Israel was founded fifty-one years later. To fulfill Zionism requires the same long-term thinking, and willingness to dream and act boldly, as the movement’s founders.
Cultural Zionism, as promulgated by Ahad Ha’am, focused on re-establishing a Jewish cultural center in Palestine, not necessarily a state. However, a Jewish cultural center in Palestine would have still entailed Jewish immigration, which would have led to the same chain of events (eg, Arab anti-Jewish violence, Jewish self-defense, spiraling antagonism) that culminated in Jewish statehood.
See “Jewish Slavery and Emancipation” in Berlin’s 2000 essay collection The Power of Ideas.
The other three were India (which has a substantial Muslim minority), Greece, and Cuba.
Belize and Bolivia have also suspended ties with Israel in response to its war with Hamas, but these seem likely to resume once the war concludes.
In addition to Arab, Muslim, and leftist anti-Zionists, there are also ultra-Orthodox Jews who are opposed to a Jewish state for religious reasons, and far-rightists who are opposed for antisemitic reasons. However, Haredi Jewish and white nationalist anti-Zionism are politically marginal compared with Islamist, Arab nationalist, and leftist “anti-colonial” anti-Zionism.
The same is true of other major non-Arab Muslim nations. For example, as The Guardian reports, “As the largest Muslim-majority nation and a developing, postcolonial state, Indonesia has been a prime recipient of the full spectrum of Saudi proselytisation – known as dawa, the call to Islam…. Despite their great numerical advantage – there are more Muslims in the archipelago than in all the Gulf states combined – ideas rarely flow in the opposite direction.”
For comparison, many democratic countries ban parties that are subversive to national security. West Germany banned the Nazi Party after World War II. In 2003, Spain banned Batasuna, a far-left Basque nationalist party. In 1994, Israel itself banned the far-right Kach and Kahane Chai parties for their support of Jewish terrorism.
As far back as 1948, Israeli diplomat and politician Abba Eban advocated a Near Eastern League based on shared economic interests: “Arab society starts off with an Eastern environment to which it endeavors to adapt Western ideas. Jewish society starts off with Western ideas, which it must contrive to adapt to an Eastern environment. There is an objective historic harmony in this relationship, a basic affinity, more profound than the transient political deadlock which obscures it.”
According to an Israeli security analyst, “a major problem Israel faces in dealing with a non-state actor such as the Palestinian Authority is that, unlike with state actors such as Egypt or Jordan, classic principles of deterrence and punishment are far less effective as there is no unified government that asserts control over people, weapons, and terrorist groups.” A security benefit of a functional, non-Islamist Palestinian state, then, would be the ability to effectively use the classic principles of deterrence and punishment.
Ultimately, Israeli-Arab normalization should be followed by Israeli-Iranian normalization (ie, the Cyrus Accords) after the fall of the Islamic Republic.
Good try but:
1. The right of return is a fallacy created to destroy Israel. No other refugees in history have a right of return to a country they abandoned in war. And once they have settled in a new country they cease to be refugees. Only for the Palestinians is the status of refugee inherited. Palestinian refugees will need to go to a Palestinian state. Until they recognize that fact this conflict will never end. I suggest you read Einat Wilf on the subject if you haven't already.
2. Jerusalem will never be divided again. Jews lived with that, when the Jordanians destroyed every synagogue and turned the Kotel into a garbage dump. These synagogues have been rebuilt and the Kotel turned into the holy place that it is. Why Jews would ever allow someone else to rule over their holy places again is ridiculous. The idea that Muslims cannot imagine that others have the same rights to holy places that they do is to simply give in to their religious supremacism. Instead of asking the Jews and Christians actually to placate this racism, maybe it's time for the supremacists to grow the heck up. Jews and Christians are not lesser peoples and have a right to rule over their own holy places without having to placate haters of any kind. No Israeli government will ever divide Jerusalem ever again.
3. Israel has already given back land....ahem Gaza and areas A and B in the West Bank. See how that turned out. Oslo was killed by Arafat in the 2nd intifada. Hamas has killed the idea of a truly independent Palestine for the near future. There is no way any Israeli government is going to agree to this nonsense and no reason that they should. That the world thinks to placate the Palestinians for their barbarism with a state is disgusting. I didn't see the US offer al Qaeda a state after 9/11 or beg Al Qaeda for forgiveness for making them kill Americans. Same rules need to apply to Israel when it comes to the Palestinians/Arabs.
4. Thinking that KSA is ever going to sign a peace treaty with Israel was and is nonsensical. Wahhabism which is the underpinning of the right of the Saudis to rule would never allow for it. Anyone who thinks there will ever be peace beyond what actually exists , whether Israel agrees to a Palestinian state or not, does not understand Saudi Arabia at all. MBS is playing the US and everyone for fools. The funniest bit when he said that Netanyahu is a war criminal. This murderer who leads a gender apartheid, backward country based on a 7h century philosophy really should keep its mouth shut about human and civil rights.
The only way there is ever going to be peace in the Middle East is if, or when, the Arab/Muslim nations actually come to the conclusion that Israel is not going anywhere. That they live with some kind of fever dream that someday they will be able to commit genocide against Israel and by extension the Jews worldwide is no different than nazism and should be treated with the same disdain instead of being given a hearing and placated. The only reason the world even pays these genociders any mind is that those that want to destroy are Jews.
You want to make the word zionism an anachronism. Then rid the world of antisemitism and then there will be no need for zionism. You make all of this the Jews fault. The Jews are no more at fault for antisemitism than POC are at fault for racism. To say otherwise is to not understand how much of the antisemitic mindset has attached itself to the discourse surrounding MENA.
Dividing Jerusalem is a terrible idea. No way that the radical Muslim leaders who believe in Temple denialism will agree to share holy sites, and Jews/Jewish students will be displaced like they were in 1948.