A bandoning the I ron W all : I srael and “T he M iddle E astern M uck ”

Z ionists arrived in Palestine in the 1880s, and within several decades the movement's leadership realized it faced a terrible predicament. To create a permanent Jewish political presence in the Middle East, Zionism needed peace. But day-today experience and their own nationalist ideology gave Zionist leaders no reason to expect Muslim Middle Easterners, and especially the inhabitants of Palestine, to greet the building of the Jewish National Home with anything but intransigent and violent opposition. The solution to this predicament was the Iron Wall — the systematic but calibrated use of force to teach Arabs that Israel, the Jewish " state-on-the-way, " was ineradicable, regardless of whether it was perceived by them to be just. Once force had established Israel's permanence in Arab and Muslim eyes, negotiations could proceed to achieve a compromise peace based on acceptance of realities rather than rights. This strategy of the Iron Wall served Zionism and Israel relatively well from the 1920s to the end of the twentieth century. Converging streams of evidence now suggest, however, that Israel is abandoning that strategy, posing the question of whether Israel and Israelis can remain in the Middle East without becoming part of it. At first, Zionist settlers, land buyers, propagandists and emissaries negotiating with the Great Powers sought to avoid the intractable and demoralizing subject of Arab opposition to Zionism. Publicly, movement representatives promulgated false images of Arab acceptance of Zionism or of Palestinian Arab opportunities to secure a better life thanks to the creation of the Jewish National Home. Privately, they recognized the unbridgeable gulf between their image of the country's future and the images and interests of the overwhelming majority of its inhabitants. 1 With no solution of their own to the " Arab problem, " they demanded that Britain and the League of Nations recognize a legal responsibility to overcome Arab opposition by imposing Jewish settlement and a Jewish polity in Palestine. By the 1920s, however, it was obvious that Arab opposition to Zionism was broad and deep, especially within Palestine. Arab demonstrations and riots erupted regularly. In addition to " Muslim-Christian Associations, " a number of clan-based