Israel: did it go wrong?
Omar Bartov's book has been discussed here previously, but I thought this review by Martin Shaw was worth sharing because it gets a bit deeper into Bartov's argument (i.e., what actually went wrong according to Bartov.)
I will note first in the interest of fair disclosure I haven't read the book because I'm not willing to spend over $20 for a book which is 220 pages long (w/out the front matter and index.)
Shaw has a fair amount to say and the review is worth reading in full, I'll just leave a couple comments.
>Yet if Bartov is right that Zionism was an emancipatory ideology for many Jews, from the moment it fixed its colonization project on Palestine, it was also a threat of elimination for Palestinians.
This is a key point and if Bartov didn't address it in his book, it's hard to understand how he could have missed it. Whether you think Zionism was justified or not, it was a clear threat to the status of the Palestinians and it was totally unreasonable to expect them to accept it, in any form. Once Palestinian resistance materialized (as it did quite quickly,) the Zionists were faced with a choice between abandoning the endeavor or figuring out how to overcome Palestinian resistance. We all know how that ended.
Beyond the structural reasons for the conflict, I think Zionism's religious roots, the belief that the Land of Israel was promised to the Jewish people by God, and the attachment to the whole land of Israel are significant factors in the development and continuation of the conflict that certainly did not begin in 1948. (And while they did not always dominate Zionist/Israeli policy, they have never been limited to the Revisionists/Zionist right.)
>Bartov’s argument that a constitution and bill of rights might have enabled Israel to overcome the effects of the Nakba is even more difficult to credit. He acknowledges that it constituted “ethnic cleansing,” but still seems unable, as he was when he debated it with me in the Journal of Genocide Research in 2010, to acknowledge the full implications for Israel of its being founded on the destruction of another society.
Shaw rightfully rejects Bartov's contention that a constitution and bill of rights would have prevented Israel from going down the path it has, but his argument here is centered around the Nakba and its consequences. Now, regardless of whether you think what "went wrong" took place in 1948 or 1967, I don't think an Israeli constitution would have made much difference. A constitution is only worth as much as the judges who interpret it and the government which enforces it (the US Supreme Court is of course an excellent example of this). A relatively progressive constitution could have made a difference at the margins, but I don't think much more than that.
If I had to answer what went wrong, it wouldn't be the lack of a constitution, but rather 1) Israel's preference to maintain its gains in the 1948-49 war and prevent the return of the refugees rather than exploring the possibility that compromise could lead to a lasting peace, and 2) the decisions to launch the Six Day War and to retain and begin settling the WB and Gaza afterwards. Whether there was a real chance for alternate decisions to be taken is of course open to debate.
Regarding prescriptions for the future, Shaw is certainly correct in his criticisms of the the idea that Germany will impose some kind of solution on Israel and that Trump's Gaza plan will help advance a just settlement. However, when he compares Israel to Nazi Germany and says "[i]t is not fanciful to believe that this axis will also need to suffer defeat" I think he is being just as unrealistic as Bartov. Of Israel's 4 neighbors, 2 are US client states and 2 are semi-failed states. Perhaps in 20-30 years there could be some constellation of Arab/Muslim states that could inflict a significant military defeat on Israel, but I would hope that Palestinians won't have to wait that long.