Jabotinsky doctrine?! And the Palestinian doctrine!!

Jabotinsky's doctrine was called the "Iron Wall" after Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the Ukrainian Zionist, leader of the Zionist Etzel gangs and one of the most important founders of the Jewish National Fund and the Jewish Legion, who participated in the First World War alongside Britain. He is one of the opponents of the East Africa project as a solution to the Jewish question, and an advocate of not limiting Israel's borders on Palestine but to go beyond it.

This doctrine emerged when Jabotinsky wrote an article and published it in Russian in November 1923 under the title “The Iron Wall.” It later became a law. Some people think that the wall means dividing borders, but it is not so. Rather, it is much deeper and represents the ideology of the military and political doctrine of the extreme Zionist right that is now applied on the ground. It means Jewish immigration and a settlement majority, building a state allied with a superpower, and pushing the Arabs and Palestinians to lose hope of defeating Israel and subjecting them to Israel’s acceptance. Since there is no room for the Palestinians to accept the presence of the Zionists on their land, Jabotinsky said that we will not seek to reach an agreement with the Palestinians as long as they have a glimmer of hope to get rid of us. Therefore, it is necessary to use all means of self-military, material, and international force to subjugate the Palestinians. If military and material force does not succeed, more force will succeed until the Palestinians lose any hope of the ability to confront. Jabotinsky continues: “Zionism must gain approval, not from the Arabs of Palestine, because that is impossible, but from the rest of the Arab world, from Syria, Mesopotamia (Iraq), the Hijaz, and perhaps Egypt, if this is possible... All of this is not enough, if we are able to convince the Arabs of Mecca and Iraq that Palestine is not their land, and that it is not important to them. However, for the Arabs of Palestine, it remains their country and their only homeland, the center of their lives and their national self-existence. Therefore, colonization cannot be practiced except by force against the will of the Palestinians. The military force that Jabotinsky talks about is not exclusively a Jewish force, but rather “the military force of a foreign country like Britain.” ".

Israeli leaders adopted this doctrine, just as the Polish Zionist David Ben-Gurion's security doctrine in the 1950s and 1960s was based on it, and he added methods of trickery and deception to it, even though Ben-Gurion considered Jabotinsky his opponent. Accordingly, Israel fought its wars against the Arab armies to force them to abandon their war ambitions under the slogan that wars do not end with good intentions but with victory. With the establishment of the Zionist entity in 1948, the United States of America (which was the first to recognize it and its largest supporter with money and weapons) became a strategic ally, which was translated into reality by supporting Israel in the tripartite aggression of 1956, the 1967 aggression, 1973, and 1982. It also supports all of its steps, including non-recognition of a Palestinian state.

There were successive military campaigns and plans based on Jabotinsky's doctrine, including the Breaking Bones, Breaking Waves, and Lawn Mowing Campaigns, the Gideon Plan of former Israeli Chief of Staff Ghazi Eisenkot, the Tnuva Plan of Aviv Kochavi, and the Ma'alot Plan of current Chief of Staff Herzi Halevy, which stipulates superiority over enemies by possessing Modern weapons and combat means, and climbing step by step to new heights, and its four items: the first is taking care of individuals and the army, then Iran and the multiplicity of fronts, then maneuvering and defending the borders, and the fourth is improving the military and organizational culture.

All Zionists competed to see who would kill the most Palestinians and commit the most horrific massacres and crimes. They used their destructive capabilities, along with the American capabilities of military equipment, which led to the rise of more than 100,000 martyrs since the Nakba in 1948. Israel still holds hundreds of their bodies in Israeli cemeteries and refrigerators.

Data indicate that the prisoner movement presented 233 martyrs, including 79 who were martyred under Israeli torture, 74 who died due to deliberate medical negligence, and 7 who were assassinated by direct live bullets.

Despite all these sacrifices and despite all the atrocities, the Palestinian people remained steadfast on their land and dedicated themselves to defending it and themselves. Their resistance developed and established a new reality that Israel cannot deny or ignore, which is that every aggression has a price and pain is matched by pain.

The Palestinian people always affirm their determination to persevere and confront with their modest capabilities, no matter how great they are. Sacrifices, which thwarted the doctrine of Jabotinsky and his iron wall, and its secrets of military and combat plans. On the other hand, spontaneous military and combat plans emerged in response to their crimes, and despite their modest nature, they were creative, painful, and fulfilled their purpose. We mention, for example, a memorandum of protest from the notables of Jerusalem against Jewish immigration that was presented to the Grand Vizier in Istanbul in 1891, demanding that he intervenes to prevent immigration, this was followed by an armed attack by the people of the village of Hadera and the town of Petah Tikva on the emerging Jewish settlements. After the issuance of the Balfour Declaration in 1917, in which the British government pledged to work to establish a national homeland for the Jews in Palestine, a revolution was launched that began in Jerusalem in 1920, and in 1929 another revolution was launched to protect Al-Aqsa Mosque from Zionist incursions, and in 1935 Izz cells emerged. The Qassam religion and the armed Green Palm, then came the war of the Arab armies in 1948, the launch of the Palestinian revolution and guerrilla operations from the border in 1965, the Samu mine in 1966, the war of the Arab armies in 1967, the Battle of Karama in 1968, the invasion of the Litani in 1978, the siege of Beirut in 1982 to expel the Palestinian resistance, then the first and second intifadas. 

Between them is the uprising of the tunnel inside occupied Palestine, the confrontations between Jerusalem and the Al-Murabitun in Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Gaza wars (2008-2023), and every time Israel escalated its attacks, the resistance took more comprehensive and more violent forms. The manifestations of Palestinian resistance and individual operations in the depths of occupied Palestine diversified, and resistance brigades were formed for a generation. The youth, and the Palestinian people united in the trenches of resistance, and the absolute conviction of the ability to continue confronting Zionist projects and defeating Israel was firmly established, and that it was a matter of time.

On the other hand, Israeli society is in a state of anxiety about its fate and lacks confidence in the capabilities of its army, and internal disputes threaten to disintegrate their social fabric, which could lead to civil war. The bottom line is that Jabotinsky's doctrine is fleeting, while the Palestinian's doctrine remains.