ZIONISM AND ISRAEL.

This article focuses on the relationship developed between Zionism and Israel and the Arab peoples. The most obvious, and politically the most consequential, peculiarity of Zionist nationalism is that it achieved sovereignty for a people in a land which it had not effectively occupied since ancient times. Historically perhaps, it is just as important a peculiarity that Zionist nationalism, quite unlike other European nationalist ideologies, is not only deeply involved with religious traditions but is in substance little more than a modern political transformation of a traditional religious idea. When Zionism emerged as a modern political movement late in the nineteenth century, it produced hardly any ideas of strategy or tactics, hardly any definitions of ends and means which were not paralleled in the doctrines of its Jewish and Christian proto-Zionist precursors. The most obvious, and politically the most consequential, peculiarity of Zionist nationalism is, as we have noted, that it achieved sovereignty for a people in a land which it had not effectively occupied since ancient times.