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"From the extreme ultranationalist Right to the very moderate Left, all of the different versions of Zionism share two common tenets: First, the Jews must realize and maintain their right to national self-determination, and second, this must be done in the Land of Israel. However, the versions of Zionism differ with regard to the institutional, demographic, and territorial dimensions of Jewish self-determination. In this book, I have invoked considerations of distributive justice and considerations of remedial justice in order to examine the desirable dimensions of Jewish self-determination in the Land of Israel in the past, present, and future.

In chapter 1, I argued that the historical developments between the 1880s and the late 1940s, which determined the details of the institutional, territorial, and demographic dimensions of the Zionist aspiration to realize Jewish self-determination in Palestine, also had normative consequences. While justifications for the Zionist aspiration did exist in the 1880s, at this point in time, any such justifications had not yet become incontrovertible. Historically, this is clearly reflected by the fact that there was a rivalry between Zionism and the Bund regarding the solution for "the Jewish problem," which neither side seemed to win. During the 1930s and 1940s, following the Nazi rise to power, the Arab revolt, and the Holocaust, the justifications for Zionism became indisputable. The fact that the justice of Zionism did not seem unquestionable until the 1930s meant that the Zionist movement had to be modest in its aspirations for Jewish self-determination in Palestine. And indeed such modesty was reflected in the ambitions actually voiced by the Zionist movement at that time. The Nazi rise to power in Germany and the rise of fascism in various parts of Europe, however, rendered the Zionist aspiration to establish a Jewish state in Palestine conclusively just. This was granted international recognition by the UN Resolution for the Partition of Palestine of November 1947. The Arab rejection of this resolution and the war which the Arab states subsequently launched against the Jewish community in Palestine further enhanced the justice of the establishment of the State of Israel.

However, Israel has since then deviated from the justifiable aspirations of Zionism. These deviations have been in the institutional, territorial, and demographic dimensions of Jewish self-determination. In 1948, although Israel fought a just war for its independence, a huge number of Palestinians became refugees. This wreaked havoc on Palestinian society. Since the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel has been establishing more and more Jewish settlements in the territories occupied in this war and has been oppressing the Palestinians living there. Moreover, in all of the years of its existence, Israel has interpreted its Jewishness as entitling the Jews to hegemony and even exclusivity in almost all spheres, especially those pertaining to public life.

It is important to realize that, if the moral theses developed in this book are correct, then the practical measures they entail must be implemented as soon as possible, not only because they are correct, but also because failure to do so will have negative repercussions for the future of the Jewish-Arab conflict. It is morally incumbent upon the parties to the conflict to terminate it as soon as possible. Israel's establishment of Jewish settlements in Palestinian territories beyond Israel's pre-1967 borders, as well as many of the discriminatory practices against Israeli Arabs within these borders, are justified neither by the Jews' right to self-determination nor by the nature and history of the Jewish-Arab conflict. As such, they constitute an additional source of frustration and rage for the Palestinians and for Israeli Arabs, and help to perpetuate the conflict. Admittedly, the resolution of the conflict also depends on the conduct of the Palestinians and their recognition of the justified right of Jews to national self-determination in a land which also happens to be their own homeland. Nonetheless, each party to the dispute is duty-bound to refrain from inflammatory and provocative practices that perpetuate the dispute and that cannot be regarded as being legitimate means of self-defense. The occupation and settlement activity beyond Israel's pre-1967 borders and the inequality between Jews and Arabs within these borders constitute such inflammatory or provocative practices.

Moreover, Israel must bring all of this to an end not only because the occupation of the West Bank and the inequality between Jews and Arabs in Israel are bad in and of themselves and corrupt Israel's present and future moral standing, but also because these practices render Israel's good faith in relying on the justice of Zionism's past questionable.

Let me explain this last point. According to the argument presented in chapter 2, the Jews' historical right to select the site for the realization of their self-determination in the Land of Israel ought to have been suspended since our non-ideal world lacks the appropriate institutions for specifying and enforcing the principles of ideal justice. However, due to the need to rescue themselves from persecution at the end of the nineteenth century and in the first half of the twentieth century, the Jews nevertheless had a remedial justification for realizing their primary right to self-determination and for determining its site in their historic homeland. As I explained in chapter 2, the basic rationale of the defense of necessity, which justifies acts that are normally prohibited, is that of the lesser evil. It is justifiable for a mortally wounded person to break into a pharmacy and steal medicines that will save his life, because the wrong which breaking into the pharmacy causes, namely, the damage to the pharmacy, is clearly a lesser evil than that which would result if he refrained from breaking into the pharmacy. Breaking into the pharmacy constitutes a lesser evil because the damage caused by the break-in is to property and not to life. Moreover, the break-in is a one-time event which does not create a permanent state of affairs. The damage is reversible since the owner of the pharmacy can easily be compensated for it. As emphasized in chapter 2, the Jews' return to Palestine is not such a clear-cut case. It was intended to save Jewish lives and restore Jewish dignity. However, the Jews couldn't just break in as it were for the purpose of picking up a particular kind of medicine and then leaving. They had to take possession of part of the pharmacy itself. To make things worse, Israel has taken possession of the whole pharmacy, and instead of being compensated, the pharmacist has been humiliated and oppressed. In order for the irreversible consequences of the Jews' return to be less damaging to the Palestinians, Israel should not have established settlements in the occupied territories, since they make it exceedingly difficult to terminate Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories. Also, Israel should have ended its discriminatory practices within the State of Israel long ago. Together with the countries of the world, and especially the European nations, Israel should have searched for ways to compensate the Palestinians for the price they have paid for the realization of Zionist ideology.

The fact that Israel has not stopped its policies of territorial expansion and discriminatory practices undermines its capacity to now invoke the necessity defense in good faith. As I hope I have shown, and as many early Zionist leaders, such as Pinsker, Herzl, Weizmann, Jabotinsky, and Ben-Gurion also believed, this defense is crucial for the justification of Zionism.

In this sense, the State of Israel's current actions and policies do not only undermine its moral standing in the present and in the future. They also affect the legitimacy of relying on the justice of the Zionist past. For someone like myself, whose life has to a great extent been shaped by Zionism and who wholeheartedly believes in the moral possibility of a just Zionism, this is indeed tragic."