ABSTRACT
One of the most profound dichotomies between the formal ideology of the Right and its collective Weltanschauung lies in its attitude towards what in Zionist and Israeli jargon is referred to as ‘the Arab problem’. This tension results basically from the fact that the formal ideology offered a political solution of an Utopian character, which proved irreconcilable with the bi-national reality in Eretz Israel. It was Jabotinsky himself who foresaw that the situation in Eretz Israel would involve a lengthy, and at times even violent national conflict, resulting from a situation which he himself defined as ‘tragic’. The fact that the situation indeed proved to be tragic and violent, and the realization that the formal solutions offered by Revisionism were impractical, intensified, particularly within the Right, the feeling that this subject confronted Zionism with its most difficult and crucial dilemma. As a result, its collective Weltanschauung, and in its wake the ideology of several of the radical groups within the Right, took an even more extremist turn in terms of their responses and the nature of their suggested solutions. For the Right (and not merely the Right), the Arab problem became not only a critical political question, but an existential cultural problem which was to occupy a central place in its world view. Many of the fundamental characteristics of the political culture of the Zionist Right originated in, and were moulded and internalized as a result of the Arab problem and its intellectual and ideological responses to this challenge.
