• Defiant Israel
How far Zionism is a religious and how far a secular movement the Zionists have never been able to agree among themselves. There can, however, be no doubt that the current exhibition of Israeli in- transigence over Jerusalem is almost wholly political in aims and origin. The new city of Jerusalem is the one Jewish-held enclave in the still Arab mountain-backbone of Palestine. As a present capital it is a liability, strategically vulnerable and economically isolated. But as a springboard pointing east its potential value is obvious, and the vehemence with which Israel now opposes the internationalisation of the city—an integral part of all partition schemes—is some indication of the ease with which other curbs on her expansion are capable of being repudiated when the time is ripe. It is a pity that the inevitable delay in drafting the statute for Jerusalem is giving Israeli politicians an opportunity to work themselves up into a state of unrestrained defiance of the rest of the world. Many Zionists will admit that Zion, sliced arbitrarily in' two, as it is at present, is not (to use one of their favourite words) " viable." To become viable it must be made wholly Jewish, wholly Arab or international. Since either of the first two solutions is in- tolerable, the third is left. And since this third solution was agreed to by a larger and more spontaneous majority of the General Assembly than that which- carried the rigged vote of partition on which Israel's international standing is based, the present Israeli truculence is ungracious as well as illogical. No harm would be done if the Trusteeship Council were to remind Israel of her acute economic dependence on the world's goodwill.
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