Territorial partition of Palestine

The article explores attitudes of nations and states to territory and boundaries. These attitudes are divided into two categories. First, expressive arguments for maintaining or acquiring territory invoke a higher principle of ideology, faith, history, nature, language, race, community, or culture to prove that this territory ‘belongs’. For example, ‘historical rights’ are presented to prove that the state is entitled to a certain territory. Second, instrumental arguments in which territory and boundaries are regarded as dependent variables. These arguments invoke functional ‘needs’ such as strategy, defence, economic viability, social development, transport and communication to prove that territory is required. The value of territory is thus defined as a means to other collective goals.

To investigate these attitudes, a concrete case-study is presented: was the Zionist movement willing to trade territory for other values when confronted with this decision in 1937? In that year, a British Royal Commission proposed that the territory of western Palestine be divided between Arabs and Jews and that an independent Jewish state be established on a territory of 5000 sq.km. The proposal resulted in a heated controversy within the Zionist movement: should the Jews accept a state on merely one fifth of their homeland?

Five positions regarding this partition proposal are placed on a continuum: strong opposition, opposition, undecided, support, strong support. They are further examined according to their ‘expressive’ and ‘instrumental’ contents.

The resolution of the Zionist Congress in August 1937 was to adopt partition on principle and to negotiate with the British government the precise terms for establishing a Jewish state. This decision is presented as a victory of the instrumentalist pragmatic approach, according to which territory was a means for accomplishing other goals. The choice parameters of the 1937 decision typify the dilemma that later confronted the State of Israel, as well as other nation-states in similar situations.