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Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs: From Peace to War
Translated and condensed from an acclaimed Hebrew study, this is a major revisionist work by one of Israel's leading journalists and author of a multivolume biography of David Ben-Gurion.
In the 42 years between 1921 and 1963--during which he served as labor leader, Zionist statesman, and Prime Minister of an independent Israel--Ben-Gurion's influence grew to have a decisive effect upon Jewish policy. Israel came to view the Arabs, to a great extent, through the eyes of David Ben-Gurion. From the outset, he was one of the few leaders of Labor Zionism who sought to anchor the Jewish right to Palestine in something other than historical argument and nationalist myth, Shabtai Teveth writes. But his views have been misinterpreted, derived almost exclusively from his public pronouncements. Teveth delves below the surface of Ben-Gurion's public and diplomatic stance, examining his diaries and letters and the minutes of closed meetings. On the basis of this new edvidence, Teveth gives us a fresh understanding of the man who has long been regarded as harsh and uncompromising, showing that Ben-Gurion was in fact the ultimate pragmatist, playing the roles of peacemaker and militant alternately and at times even simultaneously.
About the Author:
Shabtai Teveth is a Research Fellow at the Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies and at the Weizmann Zionist Research Center at Tel-Aviv University. He is also the author of The Tanks of Tammuz, The Cursed Blessing, and Moshe Dayan: A Biography.
In the 42 years between 1921 and 1963--during which he served as labor leader, Zionist statesman, and Prime Minister of an independent Israel--Ben-Gurion's influence grew to have a decisive effect upon Jewish policy. Israel came to view the Arabs, to a great extent, through the eyes of David Ben-Gurion. From the outset, he was one of the few leaders of Labor Zionism who sought to anchor the Jewish right to Palestine in something other than historical argument and nationalist myth, Shabtai Teveth writes. But his views have been misinterpreted, derived almost exclusively from his public pronouncements. Teveth delves below the surface of Ben-Gurion's public and diplomatic stance, examining his diaries and letters and the minutes of closed meetings. On the basis of this new edvidence, Teveth gives us a fresh understanding of the man who has long been regarded as harsh and uncompromising, showing that Ben-Gurion was in fact the ultimate pragmatist, playing the roles of peacemaker and militant alternately and at times even simultaneously.
About the Author:
Shabtai Teveth is a Research Fellow at the Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies and at the Weizmann Zionist Research Center at Tel-Aviv University. He is also the author of The Tanks of Tammuz, The Cursed Blessing, and Moshe Dayan: A Biography.
234 pages, Hardcover
First published May 2, 1985
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November 30, 2025
If you read widely on this period of history, you will see Teveth’s work cited repeatedly and now I know why. It is an excellent book, and an important one. The core argument is that, upon arriving in Palestine during Ottoman times, Ben Gurion could plainly see (like anyone with more than three brain cells) that there was a fundamental conflict between the Zionist goal of turning Palestine into a Jewish country, and the interests of the local population.
Then, between the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and the outbreak of the Arab revolt in 1936, for strategic reasons he asserted in public that in fact that was no such conflict and the interests of the two populations were entirely compatible. The Yishuv was too weak to stand on its own; it needed “British bayonets” (to use the expression repeated in the book) to secure its future, which was dependent in large part of British sympathy that would be undermined with an open declaration that the Yishuv sought to damage the indigenous society. It would also have been unwise to make it clear to the Palestinians that there was no hope of mutual coexistence, unless of course they would happily agree to become a subjugated and irrelevant minority in their own land. So, Ben Gurion pretended that all was well and that everyone could live together in peace.
By 1936, there was little point pretending since the conflict between the two communities was open and unmistakable. Moreover, at that point the Yishuv was sufficiently strong - militarily, economically, politically, etc. - that it had less need of British goodwill. So the mask could start to come off.
What came next was no secret (to name just the highlights): a horrific anti-Arab and anti-British terror campaign, the Nakba (including Ben Gurion’s wordless hand wave ordering Rabin and Allon to force tens of thousands of civilians from Lyd and Ramle on a death march in the summer heat of the desert) and the subjugation of the leftover rump of Palestinians in Israel under nearly 20 years of martial law that ended just as the indefinite occupation of the West Bank and Gaza began.
Ben Gurion was a remarkable man, a visionary with the intelligence, the foresight and the strategic gifts necessary to transform the Yishuv from the curiosity it was upon his arrival in Palestine into an overwhelmingly Jewish state with a dominant army just 40 years later.
He was also a war criminal who ordered and celebrated atrocities against people whose only crime was to be indigenous to the land that zionists had decided to appropriate as their own. That sort of thing doesn’t seem to bother people nearly as much as it should, but this book is a useful and insightful reminder of what kind of a person David Ben Gurion really was.
Then, between the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and the outbreak of the Arab revolt in 1936, for strategic reasons he asserted in public that in fact that was no such conflict and the interests of the two populations were entirely compatible. The Yishuv was too weak to stand on its own; it needed “British bayonets” (to use the expression repeated in the book) to secure its future, which was dependent in large part of British sympathy that would be undermined with an open declaration that the Yishuv sought to damage the indigenous society. It would also have been unwise to make it clear to the Palestinians that there was no hope of mutual coexistence, unless of course they would happily agree to become a subjugated and irrelevant minority in their own land. So, Ben Gurion pretended that all was well and that everyone could live together in peace.
By 1936, there was little point pretending since the conflict between the two communities was open and unmistakable. Moreover, at that point the Yishuv was sufficiently strong - militarily, economically, politically, etc. - that it had less need of British goodwill. So the mask could start to come off.
What came next was no secret (to name just the highlights): a horrific anti-Arab and anti-British terror campaign, the Nakba (including Ben Gurion’s wordless hand wave ordering Rabin and Allon to force tens of thousands of civilians from Lyd and Ramle on a death march in the summer heat of the desert) and the subjugation of the leftover rump of Palestinians in Israel under nearly 20 years of martial law that ended just as the indefinite occupation of the West Bank and Gaza began.
Ben Gurion was a remarkable man, a visionary with the intelligence, the foresight and the strategic gifts necessary to transform the Yishuv from the curiosity it was upon his arrival in Palestine into an overwhelmingly Jewish state with a dominant army just 40 years later.
He was also a war criminal who ordered and celebrated atrocities against people whose only crime was to be indigenous to the land that zionists had decided to appropriate as their own. That sort of thing doesn’t seem to bother people nearly as much as it should, but this book is a useful and insightful reminder of what kind of a person David Ben Gurion really was.
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