Yassmina Orban

900160365

Dr. Walid Kazziha

Midterm Paper

27th June 2020

3. The policy of the Iron Wall by Israel has to a large extent been successful. Do you believe

that such a policy can be overcome by the Palestinians. What are some of the conditions

that are required to be satisfied to affect such a change? ( You have to discuss not only

what is to be done but also how and who is capable of doing it)

“There can be no voluntary agreement between ourselves and the Palestine Arabs. Not

now, nor in the prospective future” (Jabotinsky, 1923). Zionism is considered to be one of the

most successful national liberation movements as it aimed at building an independent Jewish

state in Palestine, and in 1948, this goal was achieved with the creation of the Israeli state.

Violence, since the beginning, has always been an indispensable part of Zionism making the

Arab-Israeli conflict an inevitable outcome of the Zionist project. According to Avi Shlaim, the

Zionist movement has had a clear strategy for dealing with Arabs, one that was greatly

dependent on military power and the use of force as methods to achieve its political ends, which

is the Iron Wall. In this paper, I will argue that the Iron Wall has been systematically repressing

Palestinian resistance; consequently, I believe that this could only be overcome through

anything, but peace.

 As unfortunate as it can be, the Iron wall has been a successful strategy used against

Palestinians in an effort to subordinate them and suppress any potential resistance or power they

would have. Similar to almost every single kind of colonialism, the Zionist project has worked to

slowly but steadily replace the Palestinians, create a division; therefore, an apartheid with the

indigenous people, and eventually eliminate them. The Iron Wall provides us with a better

understanding of why and how things are the way they are with more insights given to Israel’s

foreign and defense policies. For years, Arab resistance has been the most threatening obstacle to

Zionism and the Zionist statehood. Jabotinsky sees the Palestinian resistance as only a natural

reaction since no people would ever allow anyone to come and build a state on their land. A

Jewish state could only be built unilaterally by a military force, behind an Iron wall of Jewish

military strength. This would make Arabs lose hope of defeating Israel on a battlefield and only

then they will decide to engage in discussions resulting in agreements. These negotiations with

the Palestinians and the Arabs are the second state of the strategy; however, they were almost

never reached.

To come back to the questions asked, although not happening anytime soon with the

current political order and the Arab conflicts, Palestinians can theoretically overcome the Iron

Wall. However, what has been taken by force can only be brought back by force. I have always

felt so strongly about the Palestinian cause but saw it as only naïve to think that peaceful

negotiations could ever bring back decades of injustice, brutal murders and seizure of Palestinian

land. The Iron Wall has worked to deny the Palestinians their rights to self-determination and

denied them the existence of their civil rights. Israel has been in a position of power for so many

years that the Arabs were left with very few choices; for example, Sadat chose to see his position

during Camp David as that of weakness although Israel for the very first time felt challenged by
an Arab state. This is one of the conditions that would bring change for the political order, a

change in the power dynamics. Israel would never feel the need to negotiate if it has the upper

hand. The peaceful resistance that the PLO has been practicing is one that led to nothing but the

normalization of the current state, the acceptance of the enemy. The fact that the Zionist state

does not feel the need to negotiate nor reach a compromise calls for a militarily collective action

which might be the only way to bring back Palestine Hamas, or similar forms of resistance, can

be the only effective methods to disrupt the enemy. Unfortunately, the Arab states have almost

nothing that could be threatening to Israel, ever their military power. All Arab nations are

signatories to the Non-Proliferation treaty making Iran the only threatening Muslim country in

the face of Israel, making it smart to resort to Iran for assistance. How can Hamas be viewed as a

terrorist group while Israel that terrorizes millions of Palestinians, kills the disabled, children,

women and innocent people be considered a state? Shlaim has long been a proponent of the two-

state solution; however, with the current order, this solution can never be feasible. The mere

existence of Israel is in itself acceptance of the atrocities that are happening on daily basis. In

few days, Israel is about to annex the West Bank under its full authority, which is illegal under

International Law, so how can “peaceful negotiations” and legal diplomatic actions still be on the

table?
References:

Shlaim, Avi. The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World.

https://youtu.be/iPQuXa0O7uA

Shlaim, Avi. The Iron Wall Revisited.