The Zionist debates on partition (1919-47)

This essay presents the public debates and the decisions within the Zionist movement between World War I and the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. In these decisions the Zionist movement was willing to consider trading territory for other values, mainly sovereignty. Itzhak Galnoor places the decision of the Zionist movement on the 29 November in the historical context in which it was made and presents it as the culmination of a process which had begun thirty years earlier: Beginning with the decision of the Zionist Organization in 1919 which presented a map of its territorial “ideal,” through “the great debate” which took place in the Zionist movement in 1937 following the Peel Commission report, and concluding with the more subdued internal debate within the Zionist movement between 1946-1947 and the agreement to the UN General Assembly Resolution on the 29 November. Jewish attitudes toward territory in these decisions reflect a duality. On one hand, territorial attitudes were emotional and inseparable from a sense of collective identity, fatherland, motherland, and homeland, leading to expressive positions. On the other, territory and boundaries were seen as a tangible resource, a means for satisfying specific needs-security, economic viability, social development, and natural resources.