Indigenism, Zionism, Palestinism: Hasolel and the Claim to Hebrew Indigeneity

This paper explores formative moments in the shaping of Zionism, the Jewish Yishuv in Palestine, and the early crystallization of the Arab-Jewish conflict there through the lens of a now largely forgotten group that formulated a unique Zionist position. "Hasolel" (The Pavers) as it was known, was established by native-born Palestinian Jews who translated its members` biographical fact into a claim and conception of indigeneity that became the central pillar of a particular Zionist outlook and a new identity they sought to forge. As natives, one programmatic statement declared, "we have spent the bulk of our lives among […] our racial brothers, and the splendor of the Hebrew-Arab East courses through our veins." Indigeneity, in other words, was a central characteristic of the Jewish nation they sought to establish and a determining factor in the critical question of its eastern or western character.

A significant voice in the Yishuv in the immediate post-World War I years, Hasolel`s complex notion of indigeneity became the basis for a range of political claims and efforts to shape relations between the Yishuv and the British imperial power, between Palestine and Diaspora Jews, between Jews and Arabs as two peoples indigenous to Palestine, and between discrete Jewish ethnic and immigrant groups.

This paper seeks to explore Hasolel`s claim to, and conception of, indigeneity and to uncover the implications it had for broader questions of Jewish ethnicity and national identity.