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socialist society in Palestine, based on the collectivist principles
embodied in the kevutzot (see *Kibbutz Movement). In
1919 Ben-Gurion opened the founding conference of *Aḥdut
ha-Avodah in PetaḥTikvah. He also participated in the world
delegation of Po’alei Zion which prepared a blueprint for the
future development of Ereẓ Israel. After the Jerusalem riots
of Passover 1920, Ben-Gurion traveled to London, where
he and Shelomo *Kaplansky headed the Political Bureau of
Po’alei Zion, which established contacts with the British Labour
Party.
Building the Histadrut
On his return to Palestine at the end of 1921, Ben-Gurion
was elected as the first secretary of the *Histadrut, which had
been founded in 1920 – a position which he was to hold for
the next 14 years. He was active on all levels – the struggle for
the improvement of workers’ conditions, the organization of
strikes, the employment of Jewish workers in all sections of
the economy, including government works, and provision for
the unemployed. Since Ben-Gurion’s objective was to turn
the Histadrut into an instrument for settlement, as well as an
economic and political body, he proposed that it become a
cooperative “workers’ society” (ḥevrat ovedim), which would
undertake agricultural settlement, the promotion of industry
and construction, as well as providing workers with all the financial
and welfare services that they required. A version of
this vision was adopted by the second Histadrut conference
in 1923. In the early 1920s Ben-Gurion tried to develop economic
relations between the Histadrut and the Soviet trade
unions and economic bodies, in the hope that such relations
would facilitate the operation of the He-Ḥalutz movement in
the Soviet Union and Jewish emigration from there to Palestine.
He visited the Soviet Union in 1923, when the Histradrut
participated in the Moscow Agricultural Exhibition, but his
efforts to gain Soviet support failed.
During the 1920s the non-socialist middle class within
the Zionist Movement and in the yishuv gained in strength,
and the *Revisionist movement declared its opposition to the
idea of an all-embracing socialist workers’ organization. The
Revisionist leader Ze’ev *Jabotinsky called for the “breaking”
of the Histadrut (“ja brechen”). Ben-Gurion’s reaction was to
strive to unite the various Zionist workers’ parties, with the
goal of attaining hegemony for the labor movement in the
World Zionist Organization. In 1930 he was instrumental is
getting Aḥdut ha-Avodah and *Ha-Po’el ha-Ẓa’ir to unite into
a single party that assumed the name *Mapai – an acronym for
Mifleget Po’alei Ereẓ Yisrael. In the next four years Ben-Gurion
concentrated on efforts to prevent the Revisionists from gaining
ascendancy in the Zionist Movement. At the 18th Zionist
Congress in 1933, in which the workers parties comprised
close to 50% of the delegates, Ben-Gurion became a member
of the Zionist and *Jewish Agency Executive. In an attempt to
prevent a split in the Zionist movement, he reached a tentative
agreement with Jabotinsky which would establish a modus
vivendi on labor matters between the Histadrut and the
ben-gurion, david
Revisionist workers. To Ben-Gurion’s great regret, however,
this agreement was rejected by the members of the Histadrut.
Ben-Gurion regarded the rejection as a “grave error” but accepted
the verdict. In 1935 Ben-Gurion was elected chairman
of the Zionist Actions Committee and the Jewish Agency, and
during the next 11 years, he and the president of the Zionist
Organization, Chaim *Weizmann, were to run all Zionist affairs.
These two very different leaders frequently clashed over
both strategy and tactics, but together they saw the movement
through its most fateful years. After 1946 Ben-Gurion bore
most of the burden on his own.
In the 1930s Ben-Gurion held talks with various leaders
of the Arab national movement, but finally reached the conclusion
that an agreement with the Arabs would be attained
only after the latter became convinced that they could not defeat
the Zionist endeavor by force of arms.
Toward the Founding of the Jewish State
Together with Weizmann and Moshe *Sharett, who after the
murder of Chaim *Arlosoroff was appointed head of the Political
Department of the Jewish Agency, Ben-Gurion accepted
the plan for the partition of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish
state, as recommended by the Peel Commission Report in
June 1937, believing that even a small Jewish state was better
than none, and that the Zionists should accept whatever was
offered. This position was opposed by Berl *Katznelson and
Yiẓḥak *Tabenkin. When the British government abandoned
the partition plan, Ben-Gurion participated in the St. James
Round Table Conference held by the British in London in 1939,
with separate Jewish and Arab delegations, since the Arabs refused
to sit with the Jews. Following these talks, and with the
clouds of war already looming on the horizon, the British declared
their White Paper policy, which called for limited Jewish
immigration to Palestine in the next five years, with future
immigration dependent on Arab consent, and restrictions on
Jewish land acquisitions. Ben-Gurion condemned the White
Paper as a betrayal, and called for active resistance to its implementation,
by means of intensified “illegal” immigration
and enhanced land settlement in restricted areas. Upon the
outbreak of World War II Ben-Gurion declared that the yishuv
would fight on the side of the British against the Nazis as if
there were no White Paper, and continue to fight against the
White Paper as if there were no war against the Nazis. Active
protests against the British policy continued until June 1940,
when Italy entered the war, opening a second front against
the British in the Mediterranean. Many members of the yishuv
joined the British army, and in September 1944 the Jewish
Brigade was formed. But at the same time Ben-Gurion
started to plan for the struggle that would follow the war, and
turned to the United States for moral and material support.
In May 1942, while in New York and contrary to Weizmann’s
wishes, he was instrumental in drawing up the *Biltmore Program,
which called for the opening of Palestine to free Jewish
immigration and settlement, and defined the Zionist goal
as the establishment of a Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine
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