One of the most misunderstood aspects of the history of Zionism is the assumption that, from the beginning, its founders unanimously demanded the creation of a Jewish majoritarian state.
When the First Zionist Congress met in Basel in 1897, it adopted a program calling for the establishment of a “publicly and legally assured home” for the Jewish people in Palestine.
The reference to a “home” rather than a “state” was no accident or slip of the tongue.
There were a number of reasons for this wording.
Part of the reason was diplomatic. Openly calling for a Jewish state would have alarmed the Ottoman Empire, which then controlled Palestine. The Ottoman authorities were already becoming concerned about growing Jewish immigration and, from time to time, sought to restrict land purchases and settlement by foreign Jews.
Many of the Jews arriving in Palestine during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were fleeing persecution and discrimination in the Russian Empire. Some were committed Zionists, but many were motivated primarily by the search for safety and economic opportunity rather than by a fully developed political programme for Jewish statehood.
But the reference to a “home” rather than a “state” also reflected a genuine lack of consensus within the Zionist movement itself.
Some Zionists favoured an eventual Jewish-majority state. Others contemplated some form of binational arrangement in which Jews and Arabs would share political power. Others envisaged a cultural and spiritual centre for Jewish life. Still others had no particular constitutional arrangement in mind beyond a society in which Jewish security was publicly and legally assured.
The language of “home” or “homeland” was deliberately broad enough to encompass these competing visions.
After the conclusion of the First World War, the 1917 Balfour Declaration also spoke of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, not a Jewish state. Yet it is clear that the Declaration promised the Jews more than it promised the Arabs. The Declaration contained no reference to an Arab national home. Instead, it stated that nothing should be done to prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.
Many members of the old Jewish communities of Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed and Tiberias—whose families had lived in Palestine for generations or even centuries—were not enthusiastic supporters of political Zionism. They spoke Arabic, maintained relationships with their Arab neighbours, and often felt little need for a Jewish state to protect them.
Over the following decades, however, as both Zionism and Arab nationalism grew, events pushed many Jews already residing in Palestine towards the conclusion that political sovereignty was necessary.
An important turning point was the Hebron massacre of August 1929. For centuries, a Jewish community had existed in Hebron. Most were not political Zionists. They believed that longstanding friendships and local ties would protect them in the midst of growing tensions.
That confidence was shattered when violence erupted following inflammatory and false rumours surrounding Jewish intentions towards Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.
The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, played a significant role in spreading and amplifying fears that Jews intended to seize or threaten Muslim holy sites. During the violence that followed, 67 Jews were murdered in Hebron and the ancient Jewish community was effectively destroyed.
While some Arab families risked their own lives to shelter Jewish neighbours, saving many lives the lesson many Jews drew from Hebron was stark. They had believed that because they were not political Zionists and had lived peacefully alongside Arabs for generations, their security was not at risk. Instead, they discovered that growing Arab-Jewish tensions offered little protection for long-established Jewish communities.
Increasingly, many concluded that Jews would need their own institutions and, ultimately, political sovereignty to guarantee their security.
The events of the 1930s reinforced these views.
As Nazi persecution intensified, Jews desperately sought places of refuge. The Evian Conference of 1938, convened by President Roosevelt to address the refugee crisis, exposed the unwillingness of the world to accept significant numbers of Jewish refugees.
Country after country expressed sympathy but maintained restrictive immigration policies. The United States and Britain maintained highly restrictive immigration quotas. The message received by many Jews was that even as persecution intensified, there were few doors open to them.
Then came the Holocaust.
Six million Jews perished and when the war ended in 1945, the surviving Jews discovered that liberation from Nazi death camps did not necessarily mean freedom. Many had lost their families, homes and communities. Returning home was often impossible or dangerous. Even after the war, antisemitic violence continued in some places.
As late as 1947, approximately 250,000 Jewish displaced persons remained in camps in Germany, Austria and Italy. They were no longer prisoners of the Nazis, but many still had nowhere to go.
Immigration to Palestine remained heavily restricted under the British White Paper of 1939 despite the plight of Holocaust survivors. British authorities intercepted many refugee ships attempting to reach Palestine and interned some passengers in camps in Cyprus. Immigration restrictions also remained in place in the United States and elsewhere. Some Jews remained in displaced persons camps until around 1950.
For many this became one of the most powerful arguments for a Jewish state. The lesson they drew was simple: if hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors could not find a country willing to admit them, then Jews needed a country of their own.
Support for a Jewish majoritarian state was also contributed to by Arab rejection of any legal recognition of Jewish self-determination in Palestine. The Arabs rejection any partition whatsoever in Palestine- even the 1937 Peel Commission recommendation which would have given the Jews just 20% of the land for their state. Neither were the Arabs interested in sharing power in a binational state or confederation.
The 1947 UN partition vote (Resolution 181) was the moment the international community endorsed Jewish statehood. For many Jews, this transformed Zionism from an aspiration into a legal right under international law—a shift that further solidified the state-necessary consensus.
Today the term ‘Zionism’ is widely associated with support for a Jewish majoritarian state. This association is commonly made by Zionists and anti-Zionists alike.
But whether one supports or opposes a Jewish majoritarian state, it is important to understand that Zionism did not begin as a unanimous movement for such a state. Early Zionists held a wide variety of views about what a Jewish homeland might look like.
Over time, however, events such as the Hebron massacre, the failure of the Evian Conference, the Holocaust, the continued internment of displaced persons, the restrictions on Jewish immigration, and Arab rejections of any legally recognised right of Jewish self determination in Palestine, convinced many Jews that a homeland without Jewish sovereignty was insufficient.
In their view, only a state could guarantee that Jews would never again be dependent on the goodwill of others for their security would be sufficient.
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