Did Zionism necessitate the displacement of Palestine’s Arab population. The simple and short answer is no.
I previously expanded on Zionism and the Jewish identity, connecting our history, diaspora, religion, and culture with, what I like to call, passive vs. active Zionism. However, has active Zionism, we recognize from the 1800’s, inadvertently cause the displacement of Arabs in Palestine, commonly known as the Nakba?
While Zionists expressed (at least outwardly and officially) a clear will to divide the land by land purchase and Jewish settlement, local Arab leaders and the Arab league, who spoke on behalf of locals (but not necessarily to their benefit), rejected any and all notion of land share in Palestine.
The stated goals of Jewish self determination was not detrimental to Arab self determination. The stated goals of Palestinian Arab self determination demanded no Jewish self determination and definitely, no Jewish state in the land of Palestine. At the time of the Partition Plan Jews were living in a state of depression in refugee camps across Europe, denied entry to Palestine due to Arab violence and pressure. Jews in Palestine were running a multi front battle against the colonial forces of the British empire, and local and foreign Arab forces, hell bent on ending Jewish settlement and refugees return to their ancestral land. The plan was not perfect, but was their only chance.
The Partition Plan was accepted by the Jewish Agency for Palestine, while Arab leaders and governments rejected it, stating an unwillingness to accept any form of territorial division, excusing it under the claim that it violated the principles of national self-determination, even though, Jewish land was already purchased, and partition was following a natural division by land ownership, more often than not, malaria plagued areas. (See partition vs malaria maps).
“A hundred years ago, Palestine was a place that was impossible to live in,” says Alexander. Malaria killed thousands of people each year and 20 percent of the population suffered from the disease. Entire regions were abandoned due to malaria. Some people in the Zionist movement believed the disease would wipe out the Jewish community in Palestine. During World War I malaria was a bitter enemy of General Allenby’s Egyptian Expeditionary Force in Palestine. “This is one the most malaria-afflicted countries in the world,” wrote Allenby’s chief medical officer. In 1918 alone, more than 28,000 cases of malaria were reported among British soldiers in the Expeditionary Force.
Palestinian national identity was yet to form a cohesive voice of the collective, and so it is difficult to speculate in retrospect why Arabs in Palestine, or those who represented them, rejected any notion of land share and instead opted for a brutal civil war that resulted in, not only great human life cost on all sides, but also the displacement of 70,000 Jews and 500,000 Arabs inside Israel proper, and 200,000 Arabs outside Israel’s border.
There was no national identity and no cohesion between the inhabitants other than to their own religion, individual group, or tribe. There was no notion of a Palestinian entity or nation; the population was, as previously mentioned by Kligler in his 1930 textbook, “of mixed peoples, many religions, and all gradations of civilisation” who happened to be in Palestine at that moment. — American Entomologist, Volume 63, Issue 4, Winter 2017, Pages E1–E14
Even Palestinian president, Abbas, admitted, in a rare moment of reflection, that rejection the partition plan was a mistake.
Hence the notion Displacement of Arab Palestinians being Inherent or necessary for Zionism (Jewish self determination), is false and borders on a revisionist view of history. The partition map was based on previously malaria riddled lands, Zionists purchased and recovered. Had Arabs said yes to that map, and had they not waged war, there would have been no displacement at all.