The origin of the Zionist project can be traced back to a set of false assumptions.
The first assumption was that Palestine was inhabited solely by Jews and that Palestinians were the ones who occupied it, expelled the Jews, and scattered them across the earth. It was believed that now was the time to reclaim Palestine so that it became exclusively for its Jewish inhabitants. The killing of Palestinians by them was seen as legitimate revenge by the invaders. Therefore, they consider the establishment of Israel beyond the partition decision of Palestinian lands as a retrieval, not an occupation. Benjamin Netanyahu has modernized this theory since 1996.
The second assumption is that Jews have a persecution complex due to their genius compared to other people they lived among. It was believed that this persecution, witnessed throughout history, was due to their genius. The solution was not to compel other peoples to respect the Jews, but rather the necessity to separate the Jews from these peoples and gather them in a state of their own.
The third assumption is that the Jewish state must be exclusively for them and should not be mixed with Palestinians.
The fourth assumption is that this state possesses four attributes: Firstly, it embodies genius and creativity, as President Peres envisioned in his book “The New Middle East”, the coupling of Arab capital and cheap Arab labour with Jewish genius. Secondly, the Jewish state would lift the region from economic, political, and cultural backwardness to the ranks of civilization, progress, and democracy. Thirdly, the Jewish state is a civilizational extension of the democratic West’s message, thus claiming to be the sole democratic model in the region. Fourthly, Israel must be armed with all weapons because it was planted in a backward and hostile Arab environment. Therefore, Netanyahu envisaged that Israel must eliminate the Arabs and eradicate the Palestinian people until the land is emptied of its inhabitants and Jews from around the world are brought in to establish Greater Israel.
The fifth assumption is that Israel is the practical vanguard of the Zionist project.
The sixth assumption is that Israel is the Jewish commonwealth.
The seventh assumption is that Israel must conceal its true intentions and achieve its goals in stages.
The eighth assumption is that Israel must have three basic sources of power: First, complete reliance on the United States and the West behind it. Secondly, the a necessity to adhere to democratic practices for Jews only, while Palestinians within Israel can enjoy Israeli citizenship, and Jews have exclusive citizenship. Thirdly, the necessity to use force against neighbouring countries, occupy their territories and return some of these territories in exchange for ending the conflict with Israel. As a result, the Golan Heights in Syria, Sinai in Egypt, the West Bank, and Jerusalem in Palestine were occupied.
The ninth assumption: The necessity to bring as many Jews from around the world as possible and settle them in the Palestinian and occupied Arab territories as settlers. Later, Israel incorporates these settlements into any future settlement. This is why Israeli Prime Minister Begin insisted on retaining settlements in Sinai and vehemently rejected President Carter’s request to withdraw settlements from Sinai.
The tenth assumption: is Israel’s integration into the region and the elimination of Arab identity, replacing it with Zionism as the region’s attribute. This entails removing common Arab working institutions and the Arab League, replacing the Arab world with the New Middle East.
The eleventh assumption is that Egypt is the linchpin of the Arab world. Thus, the Zionist project primarily targeted Egypt to eliminate it, control its decisions, and remove it from geography and history. Israel and Washington envisaged that blocking the Nile and withholding water from Egypt would achieve this. For Egypt, without the Nile, is nothing. Historically, Herodotus, the Greek historian, said that Egypt is the gift of the Nile. Indeed, Egypt flourished on the banks of the Nile, and its population was distributed alongside it. Jamal Hamdan, in his encyclopedic book “The Personality of Egypt,” affirmed that the Nile protects Egypt from decline, poverty, and division. If the Nile were to vanish, these great calamities would befall Egypt: decline, poverty, and division.
It’s worth noting that these ideas have spread in one form or another among Jews since the Middle Ages. However, the Austrian Jewish journalist Theodor Herzl dared to publish his book “The Jewish State,” which was the origin of the Zionist project discussed in five conferences beginning with the Basel Conference in August 1897. It’s noteworthy that this project was a dream that reality did not support. Therefore, the project was met with disdain and attacks on Herzl. Jews described him as crazy, manipulating the tragedy and persecution of Jews wherever they were, especially given that the book was preceded by a series of unfortunate persecution incidents in various European countries, especially in Russia and France. This persecution led all European countries to expel Jews at various times, but they would return to the countries from which they were expelled.
However, this project found immense support from prominent Jewish figures and Great Britain at that time. Thus, the milestones of the Zionist project began cautiously, and these key milestones are:
Firstly: The Sykes-Picot Agreement on May 19, 1916, during World War I, which started in 1914 and ended in 1918.
Secondly: The second milestone is the Balfour Declaration by Britain’s Foreign Secretary to the British House of Commons on November 2, 1917. With this declaration, the project transitioned from a dream to the beginning of reality. It clashed with reality, as Britain pledged to sponsor and implement the project on the ground. The pledge stated the establishment of a national homeland in Palestine for the Jews. However, this pledge did not fully align with the Zionist project, as it did not specify transforming all of Palestine into a national homeland for the Jews. Nevertheless, Britain’s practical policy convinced the Jews to hope for the continuation of their dream of seizing all of Palestine.
Thirdly: The third milestone was in 1918, when the Jewish Agency was established and represented Jews at the Versailles Peace Conference. The agency supervised the displacement of Jews from Russia and Ukraine in successive waves starting in the mid-19th century. Then, the League of Nations Covenant adopted by France included the mandate system in Article 22. The mandate was a cover for Britain’s efforts to establish Israel.
Fourthly: The fourth milestone was Washington’s endorsement of the project at a massive conference on the outskirts of Washington in 1922.
Fifthly: The fifth milestone was the formation of Zionist gangs to be tools for establishing Israel. These gangs were dispersed with the British Army during World War II for training and acquiring weapons. These gangs were ready to seize Palestine by force.
Sixthly: The sixth milestone was the Partition Plan Resolution 181 on November 29, 1947. Thus, the project moved to the diplomatic level to seek international support, represented in Moscow and Washington, which endorsed the project and the partition of Palestine. Of course, the partition resolution was a test for the Arabs, who rejected it, as did Israel. Israel, through Abba Eban, the Jewish Agency’s delegate to the United Nations General Assembly, rejected the partition resolution as the basis for Israel’s legitimacy. It’s worth noting that Arabs repeat in their summits a naive formula: the establishment of a Palestinian state on the June 4, 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.
On this formula, we have two observations: Firstly, the June 4 borders add about 21% of Palestine’s area to Israel, which is an Arab-free acknowledgment of this area as a reward to Israel. The second observation is that Jerusalem was not divided. Israel divided it when it seized West Jerusalem by terrorism in 1949, then occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, and considered West Jerusalem a part of it, while East Jerusalem is considered occupied Palestinian territory. Thus, the Arab formula for peace solidifies Israel’s position, and therefore, Israel scorned Arab positions on this matter.
Seventhly: The seventh milestone in 1948, when Israel was established on May 15 of that year. Israel defeated six Arab armies and besieged the Egyptian army in Fallujah, Gaza. It refused to lift the siege until Egypt, in the first steps of Israeli blackmail, signed the ceasefire agreement with Israel on February 9, 1949, in Rhodes. Israel seized Umm Rashrash, the Egyptian territory, after signing the ceasefire agreement, and renamed it Eilat. Egypt never demanded it back.
Eighthly: The ninth milestone is the 1967 aggression. However, the 1973 Liberation War did not erase the effects of the 1967 defeat but rather Sadat’s rapprochement with Washington in 1972 before the war turned the military victory into what he considered a complete political and diplomatic defeat because of Sadat’s illusions about Washington and the Zionist project. These illusions are still a cause of division among Egyptians in assessing the peace treaty.
Since 1979, the Arab-Israeli conflict has turned into a mere Palestinian-Israeli dispute. In this climate, Israel, with Washington’s help, succeeded in penetrating the Arab world, so Egypt and Jordan were joined by another group of countries within the framework of Israeli hegemony, including Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Sudan.
Therefore, Israel was severely alarmed by the Palestinian resistance operations on October 7, 2023.
