From the 1880s until today, Zionist leaders have pursued a highly unusual, if not unique, policy toward their Palestinian enemy: wanting it not to suffer economically but to become prosperous, to adopt middle-class values, to settle into bourgeois good citizenry, and perhaps even to thank its Jewish neighbors. Whence come this strange idea and how successful has it been?
I deem this strange because conflict nearly always includes an element of economic warfare: to weaken, demoralize, and punish the enemy, to turn the population against its rulers or to incite a palace revolt. To take a recent example, after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the West instantly minimized trade with Russia to weaken its war effort. That is the near-universal norm.
Founded on the assumption that Palestinian economic self-interest would push other concerns aside, enrichment hopes that gains in welfare will reconcile Palestinians to Jewish immigration and the creation of a Jewish homeland.
The Zionist movement and Israel, however, from the start adopted the opposite approach, seeking to enhance Palestinian economic welfare. This, what I call the policy of enrichment, represents the deepest, most powerful, and most enduring of Israeli approaches to its Palestinian foe. Founded on the assumption that Palestinian economic self-interest would push other concerns aside, enrichment hopes that gains in welfare will reconcile Palestinians to Jewish immigration and the creation of a Jewish homeland. From this emerged the Zionist hallmark, the unique idea that the movement’s progress depended not on the universal tactic of depriving an enemy of resources, but on the opposite one of helping Palestinians to develop economically.
Thus, the first modern Zionist manifesto, published in 1882 by the BILU group of immigrants to Palestine, included a promise “to help our brother Ishmael [i.e., the Palestinians] in the time of his need.” A.D. Gordon, Zionism’s early advocate of manual labor, argued that Jews’ attitude toward Palestinians “must be one of humanity, of moral courage which remains on the highest plane, even if the other side is not all that is desired. Indeed, their hostility is all the more reason for our humanity.” Theodor Herzl’s 1902 novel Altneuland, included a single Muslim Palestinian, a wealthy merchant who expressed a happy appreciation for “the beneficent character of the Jewish immigration.”
David Ben-Gurion expected that Palestinians, grateful for the many benefits Jews brought them, would “welcome us with open arms, or at least will reconcile themselves to our growth and independence.” Moshe Dayan used his power over Israel’s initial decisions in the West Bank and Gaza after the Six-Day War to impose a benevolent regime, hoping (in the words of Shabtai Teveth, a contemporary observer) that “establishing mutual co-existence between Jews and Arabs” would create “a relationship of good-neighbourliness” and with that, a reduction in hostility. Shimon Peres envisioned “a Jordanian-Palestinian-Israeli ‘Benelux’ arrangement for economic affairs ... allowing each to live in peace and prosperity"; this then became the premise of Israeli diplomacy in the Oslo Accords.
Three decades later, Israeli Jews largely execrate those accords and the concept of enriching Palestinians. Nonetheless, helping West Bankers and Gazans to prosper remains government policy. In particular, the security establishment and the mainstream Right have adopted it.
The security establishment. Major General Kamil Abu Rukun, head of the Israeli Defense Ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (known as COGAT), justifies humanitarian aid to Gaza because it “helps our security.” An unnamed Israeli security official observed in early 2022 that “Gaza without an economy is less stable than Gaza with an economy.” IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot argued for Israel helping Gaza in five areas: electricity, water, sewage, food, and healthcare. One IDF official had bigger plans: “We’d like to see a Gazan economy with its own manufacturing. Developments in agriculture and fishing, and future development of industry, of bigger projects.”
If the Palestinians are ever to accept the Jewish state, Israelis need to abandon their odd, old, naïve mentality of enrichment and adopt the normal one of economic warfare.
The mainstream Right. Avigdor Liberman wants “to help Gaza succeed” and “replace jihad with prosperity.” Nir Barkat seeks to triple Palestinian incomes because “eventually, if it’s good for them, it’s good for us.” Yisrael Katz hoped to raise $5 billion in Chinese or Saudi funding for a mega-project of his own devising, namely an artificial island off the Gaza coast complete with seaport, airport, electricity generator desalination plant, and resort.
Benjamin Netanyahu has directly and indirectly turned large sums over to the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. Qatar’s government provided the largest sums. In 2012, the emir of Qatar celebrated his visit to Gaza with a pledge of $400 million to Hamas. In 2013, he pledged $250 million on the occasion of the Arab League summit in Doha. News dribbled out of further grants: $31 million in 2016, $20 million in 2019, and $50 million in 2020. Qatari sources report a pledge of $500 million to Gaza in 2021 and total aid to Gaza as of September 24, 2023, of “more than $2.1 billion.”
Arguably, Netanyahu’s record of conciliation is more insidious than his predecessors'; they acknowledged their views and methods, whereas he said one thing and did another, confusing the electorate.
The eccentric policy of enrichment has obviously failed, with Palestinian attitudes remaining toxic, their actions violent. No less obviously, this strain of Zionism has deep roots and will be enormously difficult to dislodge. But eventually, if the Palestinians are ever to accept the Jewish state, Israelis need to abandon their odd, old, naïve mentality of enrichment and adopt the normal one of economic warfare; to give up on managing their conflict and instead winning it.
