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Introduction  

Modern Arab and Palestinian nationalism arose amid the upheavals of the late Ottoman and colonial periods. These national movements – like Jewish Zionism, their interlocutor and adversary – have deep historical roots and complex motives. This essay examines Arab and Palestinian nationalism from an anarchist perspective, tracing its development from the Ottoman era through its zenith and decline by the late 1960s. It contrasts this with the parallel evolution of Jewish national consciousness and Zionism, emphasizing that simplistic “settler vs. native” binaries distort history. Drawing on historical evidence, we argue that mischaracterizing Zionism as a purely settler-colonial project erases Jewish historical experiences and can fuel antisemitic narratives. At the same time, we critique how Arab and Palestinian nationalism – though anticolonial in intent – often mirrored the oppressive structures of statism and was riven by internal class and power conflicts. By exploring the roles of empires (Ottoman, British), the impact of Nazi and Soviet geopolitics, and the suppression of grassroots movements by nationalist elites, we highlight the anarchist insight that all nation-states (whether Jewish or Arab) impose hierarchies that ultimately betray ordinary people. The analysis concludes on the eve of the Six-Day War, when secular Arab nationalism faltered and political Islam began its ascent – a transition that sets the stage for the next chapter of struggle. 

Jewish National Consciousness Before Zionism  

Continuity of Identity in Exile: Jewish peoplehood did not emerge suddenly with Zionism; it evolved over two millennia of dispersion following the loss of ancient Israelite statehood. Despite the absence of a sovereign territory, Jews across the diaspora maintained a strong sense of collective identity and connection to their ancestral land. Historians have often marveled at the persistence of Jewish national self-consciousness despite endless exiles. Religious tradition reinforced this continuity: prayers each Passover ending with “Next Year in Jerusalem” kept alive the hope of return, and holy days commemorating Zion tied far-flung communities to a shared homeland. Crucially, Jews enjoyed communal autonomy under various imperial systems, which preserved a proto-national cohesion. Under the Ottoman millet system, for example, Jewish communities governed many of their own affairs – running schools, courts, and charities – under the leadership of the Hakham Bashi (Chief Rabbi) who sat on the Sultan’s council. Similarly, in Christian Europe, self-governing kehillot (Jewish town councils) managed community life and negotiated with rulers. Such autonomy meant Jews functioned as a distinct people within larger states, with their own laws, taxes, and social services. These arrangements nurtured what historian Simon Dubnow later termed Autonomism – the idea of Jews as a “world-nation” in diaspora entitled to cultural self-rule. Dubnow argued that Jewish nationhood had progressed to a unique “third stage” of purely cultural-historical nationhood, rendering the Jews “indestructible” as a people even without a polity. In short, long before political Zionism, Jews already saw themselves as a nation in exile. Symbols of exile, like Rome’s Arch of Titus (depicting Roman soldiers parading the Temple’s Menorah after the sack of Jerusalem in 70 CE), reinforced this collective memory and yearning for restoration. Thus an exilic national consciousness persisted into the 19th century, acknowledged even by secular observers who described the Jews as “a nation dispersed in exile.” Zionism would later emerge to channel this latent nationhood into a political project, but it did not invent Jewish peoplehood; it built upon an identity millennia in the making. 

Relief on Rome’s Arch of Titus (1st century CE) showing Roman soldiers carrying the Temple Menorah after Jerusalem’s fall. Such images of exile became enduring symbols of Jewish communal memory and the hope of return.  

Proto-Zionist Currents: Prior to Herzl, various religious and intellectual currents kept the idea of return alive. Messianic movements from the Middle Ages through the 18th century inspired some Jews to move to the Land of Israel for religious reasons. In the 1800s, figures like Rabbi Judah Alkalai and Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer began to call for a practical restoration of Jewish life in Palestine, blending traditional messianism with modern nationalism. Meanwhile, thinkers like Moses Hess (in Rome and Jerusalem, 1862) argued that Jews constituted a nation and would inevitably re-center in their ancient homeland. These early voices were responses to rising European nationalism and antisemitism. They laid intellectual groundwork for Zionism by reframing the age-old hope of return in modern political terms. Importantly, however, other Jewish responses to antisemitism existed besides Zionism. Bundists in Eastern Europe sought Jewish cultural autonomy and socialism in the diaspora, while Dubnow’s Autonomists envisioned trans-national self-rule without a territorial state. Thus, at the turn of the 20th century, Jewish nationalism had multiple expressions: territorial Zionism, diaspora autonomism, and socialist internationalism all competed for allegiance. The eventual triumph of Zionism was not predetermined; it was propelled by historical crises – pogroms and genocide – that convinced many Jews that only a sovereign refuge could ensure survival. 

The Emergence of Zionism: Streams, Intentions, and Consequences  

Origins and Ideological Streams: Zionism arose in late-19th-century Europe as a response to persistent antisemitism and the failures of emancipation. In 1897 Theodor Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress in Basel, declaring the goal of establishing “a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured by public law.” From the outset, Zionism was diverse. Political Zionism, led by Herzl, focused on diplomatic efforts to obtain a charter for Jewish settlement. Practical Zionists like the Lovers of Zion began small-scale immigration and farm colonies in Ottoman Palestine in the 1880s. Labor Zionism (Berl Katznelson, David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir and others) emerged in the early 20th century, marrying Jewish nationalism with socialist ideals – its adherents pioneered kibbutzim (collective farms) and the Histadrut labor federation to build an egalitarian Hebrew worker’s movement. By contrast, Revisionist Zionism, founded by Vladimir Jabotinsky in the 1920s, was maximalist and militarist: it insisted on the Jewish right to all of Mandatory Palestine (and even Transjordan) and formed its own militia (the Irgun) to that end. Religious Zionism, spearheaded by Rabbi Yitzhak Reines and later Rabbi Abraham Kook, supported the Zionist project as part of a divine plan, seeking a state guided by Jewish law. Each stream had distinct visions – Labor Zionists imagined a binational workers’ federation or at least cooperation with Arabs, while Revisionists prepared for inevitable conflict. Crucially, early Zionism was not monolithic in its attitude toward the Arab population. Some Zionist thinkers, like Ahad Ha’am, warned of Arab rights and spoke against dispossession; even socialist Zionists often harbored a naïve hope for coexistence through class solidarity. Others, like Jabotinsky, candidly acknowledged that Arab resistance was natural and that Jewish statehood would require an “Iron Wall” of strength. This ideological heterogeneity means Zionism cannot be reduced to a caricature – at least not in its intentions. While later events pushed the movement toward ethnonational exclusivism, many early Zionists did not initially seek to expel or dominate Palestinian Arabs. Rather, they were groping with a dilemma: how to establish a safe haven and revitalize a nation in a land already inhabited by another people. 

Waves of Immigration and Motivations: Between 1882 and 1940, five major aliyot  (immigration waves) brought Jews to Palestine. These migrants were driven by harsh conditions in their old countries as much as by Zionist ideology. The First Aliyah (1882–1903) consisted largely of pious families fleeing pogroms in the Russian Empire; they established agricultural villages with religious underpinnings. The Second Aliyah (1904–1914) was socialist in character – young idealists escaping czarist pogroms (like the 1903 Kishinev massacre) who founded kibbutzim and the city of Tel Aviv. The Third and Fourth Aliyot (1919–1920s) included many middle-class Polish Jews uprooted by post-WWI chaos and American immigration quotas, as well as more labor radicals. The Fifth Aliyah (1933–1939) was a desperate influx of Jews fleeing Nazi Germany and Central Europe. By 1939, the Yishuv (Jewish community in Palestine) had swelled to about 450,000 – roughly one-third of the country’s population – despite British limits. For most of these immigrants, Palestine was not one option but the refuge available. Countries like the United States, Canada, and Britain infamously shut their doors to Jews in the 1930s (as at the 1938 Evian Conference). Palestine, under the British Mandate’s Balfour pledge, offered a rare visa. Even so, thousands had to resort to “illegal” immigration when Britain capped Jewish entries with the 1939 White Paper. Thus Zionism was fueled in practice by refugee flight and survivalism as much as by ideology. Events like the 1903 Kishinev pogrom and the Farhud of 1941 (a pogrom in Baghdad) loomed large. The Farhud in particular shattered the sense of safety of Iraqi Jews – over 180 were killed in two days of mob violence – presaging the eventual exodus of 130,000 Iraqi Jews to Israel in the 1950s. Each persecution – whether tsarist pogroms, Nazi genocide, or Middle Eastern antisemitic riots – strengthened the Zionist case that Jews needed a state of their own. Anarchists can empathize with these persecuted people seeking security, even as we critique the state-centric solution they pursued. 

Zionism and Settler-Colonialism – Intentions vs. Consequences: Was Zionism a settler-colonial movement? The answer requires nuance. Colonialism usually implies a metropole sending settlers to exploit another land and its natives, often backed by a chartered company or imperial army. Superficially, Zionist Jews in Palestine looked like European colonists: mostly of European origin, establishing enclaves, and eventually displacing indigenous Arabs. Indeed, the process resulted in classic settler-colonial outcomes – by 1948, a European-derived population had asserted sovereignty and hundreds of thousands of natives were expelled. Anarchists must acknowledge this reality of Palestinian dispossession. However, the motivations and context of Zionism differed in crucial ways from, say, the French in Algeria or the British in Kenya. Most Zionist immigrants were stateless refugees, not emissaries of a great power. They did not have a “mother country” to which they could return or which could recall them. Many were escaping societies that had violently rejected them (Russia, Poland, Germany, Iraq). As such, they experienced themselves as an exiled indigenous people returning to their ancestral homeland, however long removed. The language of Zionism reflected this: aliyah means “ascent” – a return upward to Zion – not conquest abroad. This does not negate Palestinian indigenous rights, but it complicates the binary. From the Zionist perspective, both Jews and Arabs could claim indigeneity of different kinds: one by ancient attachment and mythic history, the other by continuous residence and recent memory. Anarchism, which rejects nationalist claims of any exclusive ownership, would question both claims – but it should at least recognize the sincerity of each side’s narrative. 

It is also notable that Zionist settlement in its early decades relied on purchase of land more than military seizure. By 1947, Jewish institutions (like the Jewish National Fund) had legally bought roughly 6–7% of the land of Palestine, often from absentee landlords at exorbitant prices. These lands were concentrated in relatively under-populated regions (e.g. malarial swamps in the Jezreel Valley) because fertile, crowded areas were rarely for sale. The tragedy was that such purchases still led to dispossession: tenant farmers were evicted once title changed. But from a moral standpoint, Zionists argued (not unreasonably) that buying land and improving it was not the same as stealing it at gunpoint. Only when the British Mandate collapsed into warfare (1947– 48) did outright conquest become the primary means of acquisition. And even then, Zionists saw 1948 not as an imperial venture but as a desperate war of survival following the Holocaust. They recalled that Britain had armed Arab forces (like Transjordan’s Arab Legion) but embargoed weapons to Jews – and that most Western countries shut out Jewish refugees before and during the Holocaust. Zionist militias scrambled to import arms from Czechoslovakia (with covert Soviet blessing) just to avoid annihilation. All these factors complicate the label “settler-colonial” when applied as an essential quality of Zionism. Anarchists need not romanticize Zionism – it undoubtedly created a new colonial reality for Palestinians – but to frame it inherently as a Euro-imperialist plot is to ignore the existential context that drove it. As one scholar put it, calling Zionist Jews “colonizers” begs the question: colonizers on behalf of which empire? By 1948, the British Empire was actively undermining the emergence of a Palestinian state, secretly backing King Abdullah of Jordan to annex the Arab areas rather than allow a Palestinian state under the Mufti. Zionists ended up fighting British troops in the last years of the Mandate (the Irgun’s 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel being a prime example of anti-colonial insurgency). This is a far cry from settlers loyal to a motherland. 

But even before the 1948 war, the groundwork for Palestine’s partition had already been laid by Britain. In 1921, the British carved off all the territory east of the Jordan River—roughly 78% of the original Mandate—to create the Emirate of Transjordan, ruled by Abdullah, a Hashemite prince from the Hijaz. This was a strategic move to reward wartime allies and stabilize British influence, but it also fundamentally reshaped the geography of the conflict. Jewish settlement was explicitly banned in Transjordan, and most Zionist leaders accepted this as a fait accompli, narrowing their ambitions to the western 22% of the Mandate. Thus, when people refer to Israel being established on “78% of Palestine,” they mean 78% of the western portion of the Mandate—not the total land originally promised under Balfour. In effect, Palestine was partitioned twice: first in 1921 by Britain, and then again by war in 1948. Neither outcome resulted in a Palestinian Arab state.

None of this is to absolve Zionism of its colonial consequences. The project was nationalist and thus entailed for most Zionists, ultimately, a quest for statehood in a land inhabited by others. From the Balfour Declaration onward, Palestinian Arabs correctly perceived that Zionism, if successful, could lead to their subjugation or displacement. By the 1930s, some Zionist leaders were already resigned to confrontation. In 1937, David Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary, “We must expel Arabs and take their places,” though at that point he thought it would happen “quietly and without bloodshed” (through purchase and voluntary emigration). The right-wing Revisionists were more openly belligerent. By 1948, facing pan-Arab invasion, even mainstream Labor Zionists adopted methods of war that mirrored settler colonies elsewhere: Plan Dalet (Plan D) authorized Jewish forces to secure the territory of the nascent state, which in practice meant emptying hostile Arab villages. Israeli historians like Benny Morris and Ilan Pappé have documented that numerous mass expulsions occurred during the 1948 war, not all as a byproduct of combat. For instance, the Lydda and Ramle expulsions (July 1948) were deliberate Israeli operations that drove out some 50,000 civilians. Pappé has controversially labeled Plan D a “blueprint for ethnic cleansing,” though other scholars dispute that it was centrally planned so from the start. What is undeniable is that the war created an enormous refugee crisis. Over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs – more than half the Arab population of Palestine – were uprooted in 1947–49. Some fled battle zones out of fear or at the instruction of Arab authorities; many others were directly expelled by Haganah, Irgun, or Lehi fighters. About 400 Arab villages were systematically destroyed or repurposed in the new State of Israel to prevent return. This Nakba (“catastrophe”) is central to Palestinian nationalism – a trauma of dispossession and erasure that any honest anarchist analysis must acknowledge. Zionist aspirations for self-determination had, by 1948, resulted in another people’s statelessness. 

Palestinian refugees fleeing with their belongings, 1948. Over 700,000 Palestinians were displaced during the Nakba; many villages were razed or emptied. This massive exodus created a permanent refugee population and a narrative of indigenous loss at the heart of Palestinian nationalism.   

Yet alongside the Nakba, history witnessed a parallel tragedy that is often forgotten: within a few years of Israel’s creation, around 800,000 Jews from Arab and Muslim countries also became refugees. From Iraq to Morocco, ancient Jewish communities – some predating Islam – faced escalating persecution and expulsions after 1948. In Iraq, for example, where 150,000 Jews had lived, the government in 1950–51 passed laws freezing Jewish property and stripping citizenship, prompting the airlift of almost the entire community to Israel (Operation Ezra and Nehemiah). Egypt in 1956 expelled its Jews amid the Suez Crisis; Libya’s Jews fled after pogroms; Yemen’s Jews were airlifted in 1949 (Operation Magic Carpet).

This exodus also occurred within Palestine itself. In the areas that came under Jordanian or Arab control—such as the Old City of Jerusalem, Hebron, and the Gush Etzion settlements—Jewish communities were expelled or destroyed. In East Jerusalem, around 2,000 Jews were expelled from the Jewish Quarter, which was then looted and largely demolished; 58 synagogues and religious schools were desecrated or destroyed under Jordanian rule. In Hebron, a once-thriving community that had already been ravaged during the 1929 massacre, the remaining Jews were again forced out, marking the end of centuries of continuous Jewish presence. At Gush Etzion, a bloc of four kibbutzim south of Jerusalem, over 240 Jewish defenders were killed or captured by Arab forces in May 1948; the settlements were razed and survivors taken as prisoners of war. These communities, many centuries old, vanished alongside their Arab neighbors in a war of mutual unmaking.

In total, roughly 850,000 Mizrahi (Eastern) Jews were displaced from the broader Middle East and North Africa in the 1940s–60s. Most went to Israel, where they arrived often penniless, their properties confiscated by Arab governments. This “population exchange” between Jews and Palestinians was not symmetrical – Palestinian Arabs lost a homeland, whereas Jewish refugees moved to a homeland-in-the-making – but the numbers were of similar magnitude. Anarchists should resist any narrative that treats one people’s displacement as more valid or tragic than the other. Both the Nakba and the Jewish exodus were the result of nation-state logic: the idea that only homogeneous nations should inhabit a land. Arab nationalists in Iraq or Egypt made their states too “Arab” (and Muslim) for Jews to belong; Zionists made their state too “Jewish” for most Arabs to remain. Each fed the other: as the Palestinian refugee crisis festered, Arab regimes scapegoated local Jews as fifth-columnists, driving them out; as those Jews poured into Israel, they cemented Israel’s resolve never to allow an Arab return. 

From an anarchist perspective, the cycle of expulsions underscores how states and ethnonationalist ideologies manufacture mutually exclusive identities and zero-sum outcomes. A stateless, voluntarist approach would ask: could communities of Jews and Arabs have coexisted without either sovereign enforcing ethnic supremacy? History offers only fleeting glimpses of such coexistence (as we will explore later), because the era of decolonization was also an era of triumphant nation-states. Nevertheless, it remains crucial to note that framing Zionism solely as “settler-colonial” obscures this multifaceted reality. It erases the narrative of Jewish indigeneity and trauma, casting Israelis only as white colonialists, when in fact a majority of Israel’s Jews today descend from non-European lands (Mizrahi and Sephardi communities). Such reductionism not only falsifies history but can fuel antisemitism by depicting Jews as foreign invaders everywhere (Europe saw them as Asiatic invaders; anti-Zionists see them as European invaders in Asia). As we shall argue, some anarchists have fallen into this trap of analogy, to the detriment of truth and solidarity. 

Arab Nationalism: Unity, Division, and the Palestinian Question  

Origins of Arab Nationalism: Arab nationalism as an organized ideology took shape in the late Ottoman period, incubated by Westernizing reforms and indigenous cultural revival. In the 19th century, Arabic-speaking intellectuals in Beirut, Damascus, and Cairo began celebrating a shared Arab heritage (often inspired by Christian Arab thinkers like Butrus al-Bustani and Nasif al-Yaziji). Secret societies such as al-Fatat and al-‘Ahd were formed by young Arab officers and officials, demanding greater autonomy or independence from Istanbul. During World War I, Britain’s promises of postwar Arab independence (via the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence) encouraged the Arab Revolt of 1916 led by Sharif Hussein of Mecca and his son Faisal. The Arab Revolt, though later betrayed by imperial deals, became a foundational mythos: Arab peoples rising in unison to throw off Turkish rule. In the interwar period, thinkers like Sati’ al-Husri propagated the idea of One Arab Nation with many states artificially carved by colonialism. By the mid-20th century, Pan-Arabism had become a powerful current, crystallized by Egypt’s charismatic leader Gamal Abdel Nasser. Nasser’s vision (often termed Nasserism) sought to merge Arab countries into a single socialist-leaning republic, restoring the unity lost to Ottoman collapse and European mandates. The flag of the 1916 Arab Revolt – horizontal black, green, and white stripes with a red triangle – was adopted by many Arab states’ flags as a symbol of this aspiration. By the 1950s–60s, Arab nationalism was the dominant political force from Algeria to Iraq, uniting disparate societies under a common anti-colonial, anti-Western banner. 

Unity and Contradictions: Despite its rhetoric of brotherhood, Arab nationalism was plagued by internal contradictions from the start. One major fault line was monarchist vs. republican leadership. The Hashemite monarchs (in Jordan and Iraq) championed Arab unity insofar as it enhanced their dynastic power – King Abdullah I of Jordan, for instance, dreamt of a “Greater Syria” under his crown. Republican revolutionaries like Nasser or the Ba’athists in Syria/Iraq, however, saw those kings as reactionary and scheming. This led to rivalry and even assassination: Abdullah was shot dead in 1951 by a Palestinian nationalist for his perceived betrayal of Palestine and collusion with Zionists. Another tension was secular vs. Islamist visions of Arab identity. While Nasser and the Ba’ath were avowedly secular (even suppressing the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups), many ordinary Arabs remained deeply religious and saw Islam as inseparable from their identity. Sayyid Qutb, an ideologue of the Brotherhood, condemned Arab nationalism as “spiritual decadence”, accusing it of supplanting Muslim unity with a tribal loyalty. For Qutb and like-minded Islamists, the Prophet Muhammad could have preached Arabism if ethnic unity was the goal, but instead he preached Islam – implying that nationalism was a shallow import from Europe, even a form of idolatry. This ideological rift would later explode (post-1967) when secular nationalism lost prestige and political Islam surged. Yet even in the heyday of Arab nationalism, Qutb’s critique signaled an undercurrent of dissent: that Arabism without Islam was a soulless mimicry of the West.

Finally, there was the contradiction of state sovereignty vs. supra-national unity. Every Arab leader paid lip service to unity, but few were willing to dissolve their own power for a pan-Arab state. Attempts at union often failed spectacularly. The United Arab Republic (UAR) – the 1958 merger of Egypt and Syria – collapsed after three years, undone by Syrian resentment at Egyptian domination. A proposed federation of Iraq and Jordan in 1958 crumbled when Iraq’s monarchy was overthrown. Muammar Qaddafi of Libya repeatedly sought unity deals (with Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, etc.) in the 1970s, but none materialized beyond ink on paper. Pan-Arab ideology thus coexisted with fierce inter-Arab competition. For example, Nasser’s Egypt and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan vied for influence over the Palestinians in the 1960s – one reason the Arab League created the PLO in 1964 was to keep Palestinian nationalism under collective Arab control rather than Jordanian or Egyptian hegemony. Earlier, in the 1948 war, the Arab armies coordinated poorly, each pursuing its own interest: King Abdullah prioritized taking the Arab parts of Palestine for Jordan (even negotiating secretly with Zionist leaders), whereas Egypt’s King Farouk sent forces into coastal Palestine partly to thwart Abdullah. The result was what historian Avi Shlaim termed a “general land grab” by the war’s end: Israel expanded beyond the UN partition lines to 78% of Palestine, and Abdullah grabbed the East Bank (West Bank) for himself. Palestinians were the losers of this intra-Arab power play. In short, Arab nationalism was a double-edged sword – it inspired genuine solidarity and anti-imperialist fervor, but it also provided cover for dynastic and state aggrandizement that often betrayed the Palestinian cause. An anarchist view highlights this hypocrisy: ruling classes co-opt lofty ideals to mask realpolitik. Just as European elites invoked “civilization” to justify colonialism, Arab elites invoked “Arab unity” while backstabbing each other and subjugating smaller peoples. 

Palestinian Nationalism under Pan-Arabism: Palestinian nationalism initially developed within this pan-Arab context, and in many ways was subordinated to it until the 1960s. Under Ottoman and British rule, most Palestinian Arabs identified simply as Arabs or southern Syrians;  Palestine as a distinct political entity was a newer concept. The elite families in Jerusalem were oriented toward broader Arab or Muslim loyalties. During the British Mandate (1920–1948), local patriotism grew in reaction to Zionism and British policies, but the leadership (notably Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti) framed the struggle in both Palestinian and pan-Arab terms. The Arab Higher Committee he led in the 1930s lobbied Arab states for support, emphasizing that Palestine was an Arab land being wrested away. In 1947–48, Palestinians had no independent army or government; they relied on the Arab League’s states to fight for them – a dependency that ended in disaster. After 1948, Palestine ceased to exist as a territorial unit: the West Bank was annexed by Jordan, Gaza occupied by Egypt, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were in refugee camps across the Arab world. In this period (1949–1967), Palestinian nationalism was largely eclipsed by pan-Arabism. Arab leaders spoke often of liberating Palestine, but mostly to rally their own masses or needle their rivals. Egypt’s Nasser became the spokesperson for Palestine, while in practice he kept Gaza under tight Egyptian control (no independent Palestinian government was allowed there aside from a short-lived nominal All-Palestine Government in 1948 that Egypt soon sidelined). Jordan granted West Bank Palestinians citizenship but also dissolved their political organizations and integrated the territory economically – essentially treating Palestine as part of Jordan. Many Palestinians appreciated the relative normalcy this brought, but others resented Hashemite domination and the erasure of Palestinian identity. The assassination of King Abdullah in Jerusalem (1951) by a Palestinian is often cited as revenge for his thwarting of Palestinian statehood. During the 1950s, a new generation of Palestinians, often educated in Cairo or Beirut, became inspired by anti-colonial movements worldwide and impatient with waiting for Arab states to liberate their homeland. 

The turning point came with the humiliating Arab defeat in the Six-Day War (June 1967), which we treat as the bookend of this essay. But already in 1964, under Nasser’s auspices, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was founded in Cairo. The PLO’s first chairman, Ahmad Shuqayri, was essentially a yes-man for the Arab League, which sought to preempt independent Palestinian action by creating a controlled framework. In its early years, the PLO reflected Arab governments’ agendas more than a grassroots Palestinian will. The Palestinian National Charter of 1964 even deferred to the Arab states regarding the means of liberation. Anarchists would note this as an example of nationalism from above: Arab regimes “inventing” a structure for a people’s struggle to ensure it served their geopolitical interests. Indeed, Palestinian nationalism in this era was often imposed on (and hijacked from) organic grassroots struggles. One stark instance was the 1936–39 Revolt in Palestine: it began as a spontaneous popular uprising – a general strike by urban workers and a rural insurgency of peasants against landlords, British authorities, and Zionists. But the Arab Higher Committee (led by Husseini) co-opted the strike, and when peasant bands grew too autonomous or radical, the elite leadership preferred to cut a deal with Britain rather than fully back a social revolution. The revolt was eventually crushed by the British (with over 5,000 Arabs killed), and it left the Palestinian Arab community internally wrecked – not least because al-Husseini’s partisans used the chaos to settle scores with rival families. During the revolt, the Husseini-led militants targeted leaders and clan elders aligned with the rival Nashashibi clan, assassinating scores of them as “traitors.” As one account notes, al-Husseini “used the opportunity to declare war on his Arab political enemies, like the Nashashibi clan, engaging in a spree of murder that claimed thousands of Palestinian lives”. 

This internecine terror decapitated moderate Palestinian leadership and deepened clan hatreds at the worst possible time. The British, for their part, exploited the rift: they recruited “Peace Bands” led by Fakhri al-Nashashibi – essentially pro-British Palestinian militias – to hunt rebel cells. By 1939, the Nashashibi vs. Husseini feud had contributed to the revolt’s collapse. The rivalry of the Jerusalem notable families – Husseinis vs. Nashashibis – had plagued Palestinian politics throughout the Mandate. These families had competed for Ottoman administrative posts and continued to do so under the British, undermining a unified front. As the Britannica observes, the “traditional rivalry” between the two clans “inhibited the development of effective Arab leadership”. The British cynically abetted this disunity: they appointed Hajj Amin al-Husseini as Grand Mufti and head of the Supreme Muslim Council in 1921, elevating him above other notables. Husseini then monopolized religious funds and institutions, entrenching his faction. The Nashashibis formed opposition organizations (such as the National Defense Party) and were more open to compromise with the British and Jews, which in turn made the Mufti paint them as sell-outs. This fragmentation left the Palestinian Arabs without a coordinated strategy as Zionist immigration mounted. By 1947, on the eve of Partition, the community was still divided and ill-prepared for war; many rural Palestinians mistrusted the urban effendis, and vice versa. Such divisions were not simply matters of ego or family pride – they also reflected class tensions, to which we now turn. Palestinian nationalism, like all nationalisms, did not arise in a social vacuum; it was shaped by who gained or lost in the changing political economy of Palestine. 

Class Struggle Under National Struggle: Effendis, Fellahin, and Labor Zionists  

An anarchist critique emphasizes that nationalism often obscures underlying class relations. In Mandate Palestine, profound class cleavages existed both in Arab and Jewish society, affecting the course of the conflict. 

Effendis and Fellahin – Class Betrayals in Palestinian Society: Under late Ottoman rule, much of the cultivable land in Palestine was owned by absentee landlords or local notable families – the effendi class. Peasants (fellahin) traditionally farmed plots under a quasi-feudal tenancy system, with loose rights. In 1858 the Ottoman Land Code introduced private title registration; many peasants, fearing taxes or conscription, did not register their lands, which allowed urban speculators and notables to register large tracts in their own names. By the British Mandate, a significant portion of land was concentrated in the hands of a few Arab families (some residing in Beirut, Damascus, or Cairo). When Zionist agencies came offering high prices, these landowners often eagerly sold. Studies show roughly 73% of land acquired by Jews (1880s–1948) was bought from large landowners, not small farmers. For example, the Sursuq family of Beirut sold tens of thousands of dunams in the Jezreel Valley in 1910, leading to the eviction of 8 villages. Even relatives of the Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini quietly sold land to the Zionists. Notable mayors like Raghib al-Nashashibi of Jerusalem reportedly profited from sales, even as they led nationalist rallies. Each sale meant fellahin families were kicked off ancestral lands by the new Jewish owners – fueling outrage and radicalization. Many dispossessed peasants drifted to cities (joining an underclass of porters and day-laborers) or swelled the ranks of militant bands during the 1936 revolt, harboring as much anger at their own elite as at the Jewish settlers. Indeed, early in the revolt some rebel leaders targeted landlords who had sold land; a few were assassinated or had their fields burned. The nationalist effendis quickly refocused the anger solely on Jews, but the class resentment never vanished. This dynamic shows how nationalist discourse was used to mask economic exploitation: the same effendi who one day sold peasants’ livelihood to the Zionists might the next day pen a fiery article about defending Arab patrimony from Jewish colonization. As one observer put it, the landlords “played a double game: profiting from land sales while publicly fanning nationalist flames to deflect blame”. The true winners were few: some Palestinian grandees got cash windfalls; the Jewish institutions got land; the British got stability (temporarily). The losers were the peasants. An anarchist lens therefore sees the 1930s Palestine rebellion not just as an anti-colonial fight but as a social revolt against an indigenous elite complicit in dispossession. Tragically, nationalism co-opted that revolt; by framing it purely as Arabs vs. Jews, the role of Arab oligarchs in the tragedy was obscured (though not to the peasants themselves). 

“Hebrew Labor” – Separatism in the Yishuv: On the Jewish side, class and nation intertwined differently. Many of the Zionist immigrants were motivated by socialist ideals – they sought to escape the exploitative conditions of European capitalism and create an egalitarian society. The dominant labor Zionist ethos held that Jews could only become a “normal” nation by producing their own food and goods, rather than serving as middlemen or intellectuals in gentile economies. This led to the doctrine of “Avodah Ivrit” (Hebrew Labor), which urged Jewish enterprises in Palestine to hire only Jews. The idea was twofold: (1) to build a self-sufficient Jewish working class that could undergird nationhood; (2) to avoid replicating a colonial model of a small settler elite relying on cheap native labor. Some Zionist thinkers genuinely believed that by not exploiting Arab labor, they remained morally distinct from European colonists. However, this economic separatism had a dark side: it left no place for Arab workers in the emerging modern economy of the Yishuv. By the 1920s, the Histadrut (General Federation of Hebrew Workers) became a powerful institution that not only organized Jewish labor but also ran businesses (the Solel Boneh construction firm, cooperative farms, etc.). It actively boycotted Arab labor and products, enforcing a social closure. “Hebrew labor” campaigns picketed Jewish-owned farms that employed cheaper Arab farmhands, pressuring them to hire Jews at higher wages. This succeeded in creating a predominantly Jewish workforce in the Jewish sector – which did improve solidarity and living standards among Jews – but it meant that the burgeoning Zionist economy largely excluded Palestinian Arabs (except in some secondary roles or in joint marketplaces for goods). As a result, Arab and Jewish workers seldom united, even when they shared the same class interests. An anarcho-syndicalist might lament that there was no united front of Palestinian Arab peasants and Jewish kibbutzniks against the land-selling effendis and British bosses – instead, each national group mobilized only internally. There were a few attempts: in the 1920s, the Communist Party of Palestine (which included Jews and Arabs) tried to bridge the divide, but it was marginal and suppressed by the British. The Histadrut’s policies foreclosed broad class alliances. As labor historian Zachary Lockman noted, the mandatory period saw the “divide-and-rule” of workers along ethnic lines, with even left-wing Zionists prioritizing nation-building over class unity. The net effect: when an Arab fellah was evicted because his landlord sold to the JNF and a Jewish collective farm took over, he “found no place in the new Jewish economy and thus little choice but to resist it”. His natural allies might have been Jewish laborers (who had no ill will toward him personally), but structural segregation kept them apart. Each community’s leadership, when faced with internal dissent, would invoke the external threat to “rally the ranks”. Indeed, during tense periods, both Zionist and Arab leaders harshly clamped down on dissidents: the Yishuv leadership ostracized communists and anti-militarist groups, while Arab notables denounced social radicals as traitors to the national cause. 

British Imperialism: Catalyst and Context: Overarching these local class dynamics was the role of the British Mandate authority – the colonial referee that often tilted the scales. It is important to stress how British policy shaped the socio-economic battlefield on which Jews and Arabs confronted each other. Britain’s infamous “divide and rule” approach included denying democratic institutions that could have fostered cross-communal politics. As mentioned, Britain’s cornerstone policy was to prevent any elected assembly in Palestine until Jews were a majority, as Avi Shlaim recounts. This ensured that Jews and Arabs met each other more on the streets (and battlefields) than in town halls. The British also alternated favor between the communities: at times encouraging Jewish growth (to fulfill the Balfour Declaration) and at times curtailing it to appease Arabs (as with the 1939 White Paper). This inconsistency kept both sides insecure and militant. Economically, British investment in infrastructure (roads, ports, power) tended to favor the Jewish sector plugged into global trade, exacerbating Arab relative deprivation. Yet British officials would also curry favor with conservative Arab landlords, propping them up as intermediaries and thereby stifling emergent Arab populist leaders. In the countryside, British tax foreclosure sales in the Depression led to more land passing from indebted Arab peasants to moneyed buyers (often ending in Jewish hands). One could argue that the Mandate’s very existence “framed the conflict as a zero-sum” competition. Certainly, by keeping power in colonial hands, the British prevented any binational workers’ movement from effectively challenging the status quo. When workers did unite – such as during the 1936 Jaffa port strike, where Arab and Jewish dockworkers briefly cooperated – the authorities quickly intervened to split them (in that case by channeling Jewish trade to Haifa). Thus, the imperial context made it exceedingly hard for class solidarity to overrule nationalist loyalties. Anarchists hold empire to account for this: if people had self-governance from below rather than being chess pieces of imperialists, they might have found more common ground. As it happened, by 1948 Britain left behind a powder keg: two nationalist movements primed to fight, and the indigenous social fabric (especially of Palestinian Arabs) weakened by a decade of repression and internecine purges. 

Aftermath of 1948: Two Refugee Peoples and the Cold War Context  

War and Population Exchange (1947–49): The first Arab–Israeli war’s outcome we have already outlined – the establishment of Israel on 78% of the western portion of former Mandatory Palestine (after Britain had earlier partitioned off Transjordan), the Nakba for Palestinians, and the parallel exodus of Jews from Arab lands. By early 1949, an armistice left Israel with its enlarged borders, Jordan in control of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), and Egypt controlling the Gaza Strip. No Palestinian Arab state was created; the UN’s partition plan for a “Palestine Arab State” was dead. Palestinians now largely existed as refugees or second-class residents under other states’ rule. About 150,000 Arabs remained inside Israel’s new boundaries, mostly rural communities in Galilee and the Negev. Israel placed them under military rule until 1966, restricting their movement and political activity. Though they were citizens, in practice Jewish immigrants (including recent refugees from Europe and Arab countries) enjoyed far superior rights and resources. Meanwhile, in the West and East Banks of the Jordan, around 400,000 refugees languished in camps – tents and later cinderblock shanties administered by UNRWA. The Arab states refused to resettle or grant citizenship to most Palestinian refugees (except in Jordan), calculating that keeping their cause alive would pressure Israel and rally Arab unity. Syrian and Lebanese camps became hotbeds of anger, but those governments policed them strictly. The Arab League maintained a stance that the Palestinians should eventually return to their homes in Israel; integration into host countries was discouraged. This cynical policy turned Palestinians into political pawns – a permanent underclass whose misery could be wielded but not alleviated. Anarchists would view this as another statist cruelty: nation-states jealously guarding citizenship while using refugees as tools. By contrast, little solidaristic aid was given to help refugees build new lives. On the Israeli side, the young state was inundated with a roughly equal number of Jewish refugees – Holocaust survivors from Europe and Jews expelled or pressured out from Arab countries. Israel, unlike the Arab regimes, did integrate its refugees (there was nowhere else for them to go). But this came with its own form of oppression: austerity and militarization. The population doubled in 3 years, necessitating food rationing, shanty towns (ma’abarot) for Oriental Jews treated as second-class by Ashkenazi officials, and the conscription of virtually all able-bodied adults. The Israeli state forged a melting pot that often melted Mizrahi cultural identities under European-dominated norms. So, by the mid-1950s, the stage was set for further conflict: Palestinians languished under disenfranchisement and humiliation, while Israelis hunkered down in a garrison state mentality, convinced (not without reason) that their neighbors sought their destruction. 

Nazi and Soviet Legacies: Both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union profoundly shaped this landscape. The Nazi genocide not only wiped out one-third of world Jewry but indelibly validated the Zionist argument that Jewish statelessness was untenable. After news of the Holocaust spread in 1945, even many Jewish anarchists who had previously opposed Zionism as bourgeois nationalism conceded that, in the bleak reality, a Jewish haven was needed. This led to painful reckonings: famous anarchist Emma Goldman, who before WWII lambasted Zionism as a project of wealthy Jews “to protect the privileges of the few”, by 1948 had softened enough to express support for the desperate DPs (displaced persons) seeking entry to Palestine (though she still feared a Jewish state might rely on imperialism). Goldman’s prediction that a Jewish state would provoke endless conflict with Arabs proved prescient, yet anarchists understood why many Jews felt no alternative. Meanwhile, Nazi propaganda had a corrosive effect on Arab nationalism. The most prominent Arab Palestinian leader, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, spent WWII in Berlin as an ally of Hitler – broadcasting anti-Jewish radio messages and helping recruit Balkan Muslims into the SS. Although Palestinian Arabs had no role in the Holocaust, al-Husseini’s association with the Nazi regime later allowed Zionists (and Western supporters) to smear the entire Palestinian national movement as tainted with fascism. In truth, al-Husseini was driven mainly by anti-British and anti-Zionist goals (he sought Axis help to prevent a Jewish state), but he undeniably shared Nazi antisemitic tropes in his propaganda. This Nazi collaboration tarnished the Palestinian cause in the eyes of many, including some anarchists at the time who saw the Mufti as betraying universalist principles by allying with fascists. It also hardened Jewish attitudes: survivors arriving in Palestine had little empathy for Arabs who, fairly or not, they associated with enemies or passive bystanders during their extermination. Thus, the Nazi shadow deepened the chasm of distrust and dehumanization between the two peoples. 

The Soviet Union’s role in the conflict was paradoxical and influential. In 1947–48, Stalin’s USSR unexpectedly supported the creation of Israel – voting for UN partition and facilitating arms shipments (via Czechoslovakia) that proved crucial to Israel’s survival. Stalin likely calculated that a postcolonial Jewish state would weaken British imperial influence and possibly tilt socialist. Indeed, Israel’s early leadership was dominated by the socialist Mapai party, and kibbutzim were admired by the Soviet press. However, when Israel aligned with the Western camp in the Cold War (after 1948) and especially after 1956, the Soviets switched to championing Arab states and Palestinians as anti-imperialist forces. The Soviet Union then became the chief supplier of arms and aid to countries like Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and to the PLO and other guerrilla groups in later years. Throughout the 1960s, Moscow poured propaganda fuel on the conflict, portraying Israel as a Western colonial excrescence and itself as the “consistent advocate of the Arab people”. KGB disinformation in the 1970s even tried to link Zionists to Nazi practices, further stoking global anti-Zionism (which sometimes shaded into antisemitism). The proxy war dimension meant that Palestinian nationalism took on a strongly leftist, anticapitalist coloration – not purely as indigenous development but also under Soviet influence. The PLO’s rhetoric of liberation and socialism, its embrace of Marxist groups like the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), and its ties to Non-Aligned and Eastern Bloc nations all bore the Soviet imprimatur. For anarchists, this alignment was double-edged. On one hand, it gave the Palestinian struggle a more secular, progressive veneer (e.g. the PLO in the 1960s–70s spoke of a democratic secular state in Palestine with equality for all, influenced by Marxist internationalism). On the other hand, it bound the movement to statist and authoritarian patrons – hardly a recipe for true liberation. The Soviet Union, an authoritarian state, was supporting Arab regimes that were often autocratic one-party states (Nasser’s Egypt, Ba’athist Syria/Iraq) or royal dictatorships (South Yemen excepted). So while Soviet backing strengthened the Palestinians militarily and diplomatically, it also entrenched a top-down, militarist approach within the PLO, at odds with anarchist principles of grassroots self-management. It’s telling that, under Soviet tutelage, the PLO built a large bureaucracy and armed forces in exile, but made little progress in developing libertarian socialist structures in the refugee camps or occupied territories. That work would fall to local committees and eventually to the spontaneous First Intifada (1987), which was much more horizontal. 

In summary, the Nazi and Soviet interventions were pivotal in shaping the conflict’s narrative and arsenal: Nazis injected toxic antisemitism that linked Arab anti-Zionism with European Jew-hatred, and Soviets globalized the conflict as part of East vs. West, arming one side and then the other. An anarchist analysis notes that both Nazis and Soviets exemplified statist extremes (fascism and state-socialism) that instrumentalized the Middle East for their agendas – whether ideological (anti-Jewish conspiracy theories) or geopolitical (superpower rivalry). The peoples of the region were caught in these machinations, further distanced from an autonomous resolution of their grievances. 

Toward an Anarchist Perspective: Beyond Rival Nationalisms  

By the late 1960s, Arab nationalism – especially in its pan-Arab form – was faltering. The crushing Israeli victory in 1967 discredited Nasser and the idea that Arab states united could militarily defeat Israel. In the decade that followed, Islamist movements began to gain ground by offering an alternative narrative (framing the 1967 defeat as a spiritual failure). But that is a story for another time. Here, we conclude by synthesizing an anarchist critique of the nationalist era we’ve examined, highlighting lessons and suggesting a different path. 

The Perils of Statist Nationalism: Both Zionism and Arab/Palestinian nationalism, despite arising as liberation movements (one from antisemitic persecution, the other from colonial domination), ended up establishing or aspiring to nation-states that deploy coercion. From an anarchist viewpoint, the tragedy is that these movements replicated the logic of their oppressors: building armies, bureaucracies, and borders. As one anarchist commentator put it, “freeing Palestine doesn’t mean oppressing Jews, and remembering the Holocaust doesn’t justify oppressing Palestinians”. Anarchism refuses to choose between competing nationalisms; it sides with people against structures of domination. In this case, that means siding with the ordinary Palestinian fellah and the ordinary Jewish Holocaust survivor both, against the politicians and generals who would pit them as enemies. The history we have traced shows that no state and no nationalism has been “purely good” for the common people. Zionism gave persecuted Jews a state, but that state privileged Jews over others and militarized them. Arab nationalism gave colonized Arabs pride and occasionally reform, but it also enabled new autocrats and suppressed dissent. Palestinian nationalism provided a banner for a dispossessed people to rally around – a necessity, many would argue, in the face of erasure – yet its official leadership too often sought to become a state elite at the expense of their people’s freedom (e.g. the post-Oslo Palestinian Authority’s corruption and security forces). 

Erasure of Histories: A core anarchist critique is that the nationalist lens erases complex histories and humanizes only one side. We have seen how some leftist analyses flatten Zionism into a stereotype, denying the deep historical wounds (exile, pogroms) that propelled it. This erasure is not just bad history; it becomes antisemitic when it delegitimizes Jewish people’s very identity and connection to the land. Similarly, Arab nationalist narratives have often erased or minimized the presence and rights of Jews (e.g. the trope that Jews are merely Khazars or European colonists with no Middle Eastern roots). Anarchism demands we reject such one-sided narratives. The fact is that both Jews and Palestinian Arabs have authentic claims of belonging in the country historically known as Palestine/Land of Israel. Both also have histories of oppression – the Jews globally, the Palestinians locally – that fuel their national onsciousness. Recognizing this does not mean endorsing nationalism as the solution; rather, it means any just solution must honor and accommodate both identities instead of one triumphing over the other. Many Leftist approaches (arguing Israel is an illegitimate settler state that should be “returned” wholesale to Palestinians) may sound radical and anti-colonial, but it effectively calls for one nationalism to win and another to disappear. This is anathema to anarchism’s spirit of pluralism and solidarity. It also ironically aligns with the old statist thinking: redraw borders, swap who’s on top, and call it justice. We’ve seen that movie – it never ends well for the common folk. 

Dual Power and Grassroots Alternatives: What might an anarchist approach entail instead? It would mean fostering decentralized, voluntary forms of co-existence that bypass exclusive sovereignty. Interestingly, history offers hints of this in the region. In Ottoman times, cities like Haifa, Jaffa, and Safed had mixed, nearly autonomous populations living under a relatively loose imperial oversight; communities ran their own affairs in relative harmony. One could imagine a modern revival of this via libertarian municipalism or federated communes – essentially, a patchwork of self-governing cantons where Jews, Arabs, and others share cities and villages without a nation-state imposing identities. During the First Intifada (1987–93), Palestinians in the occupied territories formed neighborhood committees, strike committees, and underground schools – a kind of grassroots self-management in defiance of both the Israeli occupier and the exiled PLO leadership. These had anarchistic elements: horizontal coordination, popular legitimacy, mutual aid networks (e.g. communal kitchens when Israel imposed curfews). On the Israeli side, though its ethos was often nationalist, the kibbutz movement showed that non-hierarchical communal living is possible on a wide scale (at its height, kibbutzim were a significant sector). The flaw was that kibbutzim were ethnically exclusive and tied to state-building; but if one could generalize their cooperative model and include Palestinians, it might prefigure a stateless society. 

From Land Monopoly to Land Commoning: One concrete anarchist proposal aligns with the indigenous concept of “land back” but extends it to all inhabitants: decommodify the land and return it to those who live and work it, regardless of ethnicity. As others rightly note, land monopoly (by states or absentee owners) is a pillar of oppression. In Palestine/Israel, this means undoing both the Zionist principle of exclusive Jewish land trusts and the idea of an exclusive Arab patrimony. Instead, imagine land held in common by federations of local communities. Palestinian refugees could come back not to drive others out, but to join in stewarding the land with those now present. Jewish villagers could remain not as colonial garrisons but as neighbors in a shared commune. Utopian? Certainly – given the current scars and mistrust, any such coexistence is hard to envision. But recall that national borders and ethnic divisions were violently imposed by empires and states; they are not eternal. Anarchism invites us to transcend the narratives of victim vs. victimizer that keep people in warring camps, and instead focus on the real binary: the people vs. power. In this conflict, power was embodied in the British Empire, in the Zionist state apparatus, in the Arab regimes, in the PLO elite – and it is still embodied in the Israeli occupation and the Palestinian Authority’s police. The people – Jews and Arabs alike – have been the cannon fodder, the displaced, the taxed, the silenced, and the lied-to. 

Solidarity Across the Divide: Throughout the 20th century, there were always a few brave souls who reached across the divide. In the 1950s, a group of Jewish Israeli communists (Matzpen, later) began dialogue with Palestinian nationalists about a binational solution and class struggle. In the 1980s and 90s, groups like “Anarchists Against the Wall” (in Israel) joined Palestinian villagers to resist the separation barrier. These efforts, while small, embody the anarchist ethos: direct action, mutual aid, and rejection of nationalist chauvinism. They keep alive an alternative vision: that Israelis and Palestinians can see each other not as eternal enemies but as potential comrades against all forms of domination – be it military occupation, capitalism, or theocratic patriarchy. It is telling that even today, one can find joint grassroots initiatives (food cooperatives, environmental campaigns) bringing together young people of both nations who are disillusioned with their leaders. They face hostility from both Israeli and Palestinian authorities for “normalizing” or “treason,” yet they persist, knowing that someone must plant seeds for a future beyond endless war. 

Conclusion: Toward a Stateless Land for All Peoples 

History up to 1967 demonstrated that no nationalist program fulfilled its promises without inflicting grave injustice. Jewish nationalism (Zionism) achieved a state but at the cost of mimicking settler-colonial structures and subjugating Palestinians. Arab nationalism lifted pride but failed to liberate Palestine and often subordinated Palestinian needs to broader Arab interests or elite scheming. The prism of nation-states turned neighbors into threats: after 1948, every Jew in Israel was a potential soldier to the Palestinians, and every Palestinian was a potential terrorist to Israelis. Anarchists argue that the nation-state model itself is the culprit. It “hardens identities into battle lines,” as one might say. We see this clearly: the British drew lines on maps and labeled people, then Israelis and Arabs fortified those lines with barbed wire and walls. But lines can change. The Six-Day War of 1967 would ironically reunite most of historic Palestine under Israeli rule – setting the stage for a new chapter of occupation and resistance, and for the rise of Islamism as a force among Palestinians frustrated with secular nationalism’s failure. That next era will witness the PLO’s guerrilla heyday, the Lebanese war, intifadas, Hamas – and new geopolitical twists as the Cold War ends. As secular pan-Arab dreams faded, many Arabs turned inward to Islamic identities, changing the discourse of the conflict from one of competing nationalisms to competing religious-national visions (Islamism vs. Zionism). 

On the eve of that shift, our analysis implores: do not cheer for one flag or the other. Instead, anarchists should uphold the flag of humanity and freedom – envisioning a Holy Land neither “Arab” nor “Jewish” but simply a place where people live in communities, manage their affairs, and welcome the stranger as their traditions (both Islamic and Jewish) command. Practically, this means opposing the Israeli state’s oppressive policies and cautioning that a future Palestinian state should not become another hierarchical regime. It means supporting the “land back to the people” principle, but specifying all the people – Israelis and Palestinians – through federated stewardship, not a transfer of domination from one nation to another. It means calling out antisemitism when it masquerades as anti-Zionism, and opposing anti-Arab racism when it hides behind security rhetoric. In concrete terms, anarchists can advocate steps that de-escalate nationalism: open borders (so refugees can return and settlers are not expelled, but movement is free); dismantling of all segregation walls; local peace committees for conflict resolution; and economic cooperatives bridging communities. These incremental moves build dual power – the power of ordinary people cooperating across divides, undermining the narratives of hate. 

As the 1960s closed, Palestinian nationalism transformed – secularism waned and Islamism rose, a topic beyond our current scope. But this transformation was itself a response to the failures we’ve dissected. The PLO’s nationalism, largely secular and leftist, had reached an impasse by the late 1970s, leading many younger Palestinians to seek hope in political Islam (Hamas being founded in 1987). Similarly, Arab nationalism’s eclipse after Nasser’s death (1970) and the Egypt-Israel peace of 1978 left a void that Islamists filled with a pan-Islamic vision. In the next era, the conflict would be increasingly cast in religious civilizational terms – a dangerous regression from the secular frameworks of mid-century. Yet, perhaps in the long run, this too will falter, as people tire of theocratic violence just as they tired of secular autocrats. 

History is not over. As we look back to learn, we must also look forward with hope. The statist paradigms are breaking down: Arab nation-states have seen the Arab Spring question their legitimacy; Israel’s ethnocracy faces demographic and moral crises; Islamism too faces backlash from those who don’t want a new tyranny. These cracks may allow new ideas to emerge – including anarchist or libertarian socialist ideas – about how to live together without domination. The road will be long and fraught. But as one slogan puts it, “No war but class war”. In the context of Israel-Palestine, that means recognizing that the elites on both sides benefit from keeping peoples divided and fearful. Only by rejecting their game – by Israelis and Palestinians seeing each other as fellow workers, neighbors, and humans – can the cycle be broken. 

As of 1967, we stand at a cliffhanger. Secular Arab nationalism lies in tatters after a stunning military defeat; Palestinian guerillas of the PLO are rising to take their cause into their own hands, even as political Islam begins whispering its alternative. The Israeli state, triumphant and intoxicated with a sense of divine destiny after 1967, will soon face a new kind of asymmetric struggle. The next chapters will test whether nationalism mutates or new paradigms emerge. Anarchists, armed with historical memory, will continue to insist on the seemingly impossible: a just peace with no masters, no slaves, no settlers, no natives – only equal inhabitants. The dream of “a land of all its people” (to borrow a phrase from Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish) lives on in the margins, waiting for its moment. 

Sources: This analysis has drawn on a range of historical accounts and primary sources to ground its critique. Key insights on Jewish nationhood in diaspora were informed by Simon Dubnow’s theory of Autonomism and historians like Yosef Yerushalmi, who highlight the tenacity of Jewish identity. The discussion of Zionism’s motives vs. outcomes integrates perspectives from Zionist and revisionist historiography: for instance, Avi Shlaim’s work on British policy confirms that the Mandate’s “cornerstone” was denying democracy to Palestinians until Jews were a majority, and Benny Morris/Ilan Pappé’s research documents Plan Dalet and the 1948 expulsions. The Hashemite role is drawn from archival studies; as Shlaim notes, Britain secretly backed King Abdullah’s annexation of the West Bank, seeing a Palestinian state under the Mufti as undesirable. For Arab nationalism, works like Adeed Dawisha’s Arab Nationalism in the 20th Century and primary sources (e.g. speeches of Nasser, Qutb’s writings) illuminate the ideological divides. The essay also used Britannica and academic sources on the Husseini–Nashashibi feud, which Britannica concisely states impeded effective Palestinian leadership. Socio-economic data on land sales and labor dynamics came from Mandate records and scholars such as Kenneth Stein (land statistics) and Zachary Lockman (on labor). The Nazi influence on the conflict was referenced through documentation of Husseini’s collaboration (e.g. Wikipedia summary of his meeting with Hitler). For the Cold War and Soviet angle, sources note the millions the USSR spent on the PLO and Arab regimes, fueling a proxy war. Lastly, anarchist interpretations were bolstered by citing anarchist writings (Emma Goldman’s letters, contemporary anarchist analyses of binational federations , etc.). The goal has been to weave these sources into a coherent narrative that challenges conventional pro-Israel or pro-Palestine tropes, instead urging a radical rethinking beyond the nation-state framework. Our conclusion is a dive into deeper waters: only by dismantling the nation-state paradigm itself, in favor of egalitarian and decentralized coexistence, can Israelis and Palestinians find a path to mutual liberation. The coming rise of Islamism will pose new challenges to that vision – but also perhaps create new unlikely alliances. History is open, and anarchists will be there to push it, however slowly, toward freedom without borders.