The arrival of Zionist settlers to Palestine in the late 19th century is widely seen as the start of the
Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
[46]: 70
[181][182] Israeli historian
Benny Morris quotes
David Ben-Gurion as stating in 1938 that "When we say that the Arabs are the aggressors and we defend ourselves—that is only half the truth. As regards our security and life we defend ourselves... But the fighting is only one aspect of the conflict, which is in its essence a political one. And
politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves." Morris goes on to say that "Ben-Gurion, of course, was right. Zionism was a colonizing and expansionist ideology and movement", and that "Zionist ideology and practice were necessarily and elementally expansionist." Morris describes the Zionist goal of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine as
necessarily displacing and dispossessing the Arab population.
[183] The practical issue of establishing a Jewish state in a majority non-Jewish and Arab region was a fundamental issue for the Zionist movement.
[183] Revisionist Zionist
Ze'ev Jabotinsky described th
e notion of "transfer" (the Zionist euphemism for ethnic cleansing of the Arab Palestinian population)[184] as a "brutal expulsion" which could resolve this challenge.
[185] The idea of transfer was not unique to Revisionist Zionism, in fact, as explained by Morris, "the idea of transferring the Arabs out... was seen as the chief means of assuring the stability of the 'Jewishness' of the proposed Jewish State".
[183]
According to Morris, the idea of
ethnically cleansing the land of Palestine was to play a large role in Zionist ideology from the inception of the movement. He explains that "transfer" was "inevitable and inbuilt into Zionism" and that a land which was primarily Arab could not be transformed into a Jewish state without displacing the Arab population.
[186] Further, the stability of the Jewish state could not be ensured given the Arab population's fear of displacement. He explains that this would be the primary source of conflict between the Zionist movement and the Arab population.
[185]