ABSTRACT
Territory played a central role in both national and statist drives. This chapter focuses on actual implementation and explores the application of those dynamics into state building. It presents the territorial variable in two contexts: state formation and the construction of state borders. Territoriality in Zionism had several connotations: sanctity, physical, national and statist. All played a part in the transformation from a Diaspora to a territorial community – the Yishuv, and henceforth to territorial statehood. The transfer of the institutions from the Diaspora to Palestine was accompanied by a concomitant shift in power from a Diaspora-based leadership to one based in Palestine. This relocation of authority implied a political process. There is no case study that can better prove the preference given to the birth of the state over all other considerations than the case of Jerusalem. No area has greater religious and historical significance in Judaism and for the Jewish people than Jerusalem.
