“Zionism without Zion”? Territorialist Ideology and the Zionist Movement, 1882–1956

This article focuses on territorialism from its beginnings in the 1880s, through its conversion into an organized political power in the early twentieth century, and up to its decline in the 1950s. Because territorialist ideology is multilayered, this article focuses on two central pairs of issues that stand at the heart of territorialism and Jewish discourse in the first half of the twentieth century. The first is the idea of the negation of exile and the catastrophic worldview that characterized territorialist thinking. The second is the position of the territorialists toward the Land of Israel and the native Arab population already residing there. In exploring these two issues, we examine the sources of the territorialist idea and argue that they constitute a mirror image of the Zionist movement.