"A land without a people for a people without a land" is a widely cited phrase associated with Zionism, the movement to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
The phrase was first used by Christian Zionists in the early 19th century, and Anita Shapira writes that it "was common among Zionists at the end of the nineteenth, and the beginning of the twentieth century." Israel Zangwill made prominent use of the phrase.
Its historical significance is a matter of contention, with some historians claiming that the phrase never came into widespread use among Jewish Zionists.Alan Dowty, The Jewish State, A Century Later (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), p. 267.
History
A sermon of the British Methodist minister Richard Watson, who died in 1833, included:Though Israel is scattered, yet shall he be gathered. All the Scriptures go to this. And this is supported by two singular facts : One, that the Jews have always been a distinct people ; the other, that their country is unprotected, and waiting for them. There is a people without a country, and a country without a people. The phrase in the form "It is a country without a people ... They are a people without a country. How wonderful the correspondence!" appeared in a newspaper of the Episcopal Church in Philadelphia in 1936.
Another early use of the phrase was by Christian clergyman and Restorationist Rev. Alexander Keith, D.D. Following an expedition to Ottoman Palestine in 1839, Keith published a retrospective of his journey—The Land of Israel—in 1843. Keith wrote of the Jews: Therefore, are they wanderers throughout the world, who have nowhere found a place on which the sole of their foot could rest—a people without a country; even as their own land, as subsequently to be shown, is in a great measure a country without a people.
Its most common paraphrase, "A land without a people and a people without a land", appeared soon thereafter in print in an 1844 review of Keith's book in a Scottish Free Church magazine.
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, in July 1853, who was President of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews wrote to Prime Minister Aberdeen that Greater Syria was "a country without a nation" in need of "a nation without a country... Is there such a thing? To be sure there is, the ancient and rightful lords of the soil, the Jews!"Garfinkle, Adam M., "On the Origin, Meaning, Use and Abuse of a Phrase". Middle Eastern Studies, London, Oct. 1991, vol. 27 In May of the following year, he wrote in his diary "Syria is 'wasted without an inhabitant'; these vast and fertile regions will soon be without a ruler, without a known and acknowledged power to claim dominion. The territory must be assigned to some one or other... There is a country without a nation; and God now, in His wisdom and mercy, directs us to a nation without a country". Shaftesbury's allusion is to Isaiah 6:11, "Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate". In 1875, Shaftesbury told the annual general meeting of the Palestine Exploration Fund that "We have there a land teeming with fertility and rich in history, but almost without an inhabitant – a country without a people, and look! scattered over the world, a people without a country".
Variant phrasings in use in the pre-Zionist and pre-state eras include "a country without a people for a people without a country," "a land without a nation for a nation without a land." According to Edward Said, the phrasing was "a land without people for a people without a land."Said, Edward, (New York: Times Books, 1979), The Question of Palestine, p. 9.
Use of the phrase Use of the phrase by Christian Zionists and proponents of a Jewish return to the land
The Blackstone Memorial, an 1891 statement of support for making Palestine a Jewish state, was signed by hundreds of prominent Americans and received wide attention. Although the Memorial did not contain the phrase "land without a people", shortly after returning from his trip to Palestine in 1881 Blackstone wrote, in the context of his concern over the fate of the Jews of Russia, "And now, this very day, we stand face to face with the awful dilemma, that these millions cannot remain where they are, and yet have no other place to go... This phase of the question presents an astonishing anomaly – a land without a people, and a people without a land".
John Lawson Stoddard, a popular speaker and author of travel books, published an 1897 travelogue in which he exhorts the Jews, "You are a people without a country; there is a country without a people. Be united. Fulfil the dreams of your old poets and patriarchs. Go back, go back to the land of Abraham".John L. Stoddard. Lectures: Illustrated and Embellished with Views of the World's Famous Places and People, Being the Identical Discourses Delivered During the Past Eighteen Years under the Title of the Stoddard Lectures, Vol. 2. 1897, as cited in Garfinkle
According to Adam Garfinkle what Keith, Shaftesbury, Blackstone, Stoddard and the other nineteenth century Christians who used this phrase were saying was that the Holy Land was not the seat of a nation in the way that Japan is the land of the Japanese and Denmark is the land of the Danes. The Arabic-speaking Muslim and Christian inhabitants of the "Holy Land" did not, in the view of European and American Christians of that era, appear to constitute a people or nation defined by their attachment to Palestine, they appeared, rather, to be part of the larger Arab, Armenian or Greek peoples.
Use of the phrase by Israel Zangwill Israel Zangwill, who was initially a mainstream Zionist but later rejected Palestine as a destination, was one of the most prolific users of the phrase. In 1901 in the New Liberal Review, Zangwill wrote that "Palestine is a country without a people; the Jews are a people without a country".Israel Zangwill, "The Return to Palestine", New Liberal Review, Dec. 1901, p. 615 In a debate at the Article Club in November of that year, Zangwill said "Palestine has but a small population of Arabs and fellahin and wandering, lawless, blackmailing Bedouin tribes."Israel Zangwill, The Commercial Future of Palestine, Debate at the Article Club, 20 November 1901. Published by Greenberg & Co. Also published in English Illustrated Magazine, Vol. 221 (Feb 1902) pp. 421–430. "Restore the country without a people to the people without a country. (Hear, hear.) For we have something to give as well as to get. We can sweep away the blackmailer—be he Pasha or Bedouin—we can make the wilderness blossom as the rose, and build up in the heart of the world a civilisation that may be a mediator and interpreter between the East and the West." In 1902, Zangwill wrote that Palestine "remains at this moment an almost uninhabited, forsaken and ruined Turkish territory".
However, within a few years, Zangwill's views changed and his use of the phrase took on a much different tone. Having "become fully aware of the Arab peril," he told an audience in New York, "Palestine proper has already its inhabitants. The pashalik of Jerusalem is already twice as thickly populated as the United States," leaving Zionists the choice of driving the Arabs out or dealing with a "large alien population."I. Zangwill, The Voice of Jerusalem, MacMillan, 1921, p. 92, reporting 1904 speech. He moved his support to the Uganda scheme, leading to a break with the mainstream Zionist movement by 1905.H. Faris, Israel Zangwill's challenge to Zionism, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Spring, 1975), pp. 74–90 In 1908, Zangwill told a London court that he had been naive when he made his 1901 speech and had since "realized what is the density of the Arab population", namely twice that of the United States. In 1913 he went even further, attacking those who insisted on repeating that Palestine was "empty and derelict" and who called him a traitor for reporting otherwise.Simon (1937), pp. 313–314. He continued, "Well, consistency may be a political virtue, but I see no virtue in consistent lying."
According to Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Zangwill told him in 1916 that, "If you wish to give a country to a people without a country, it is utter foolishness to allow it to be the country of two peoples. This can only cause trouble. The Jews will suffer and so will their neighbours. One of the two: a different place must be found either for the Jews or for their neighbours".Cited in Yosef Gorny, Zionism and the Arabs, 1882–1948 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), p. 271
In 1917 he wrote "'Give the country without a people,' magnanimously pleaded Lord Shaftesbury, 'to the people without a country.' Alas, it was a misleading mistake. The country holds 600,000 Arabs."I. Zangwill, The Voice of Jerusalem, MacMillan, 1921, p. 96
In 1921 Zangwill wrote "If Lord Shaftesbury was literally inexact in describing Palestine as a country without a people, he was essentially correct, for there is no Arab people living in intimate fusion with the country, utilizing its resources and stamping it with a characteristic impress: there is at best an Arab encampment, the break-up of which would throw upon the Jews the actual manual labor of regeneration and prevent them from exploiting the fellahin, whose numbers and lower wages are moreover a considerable obstacle to the proposed immigration from Poland and other suffering Jewish centers".Zangwill, Israel, The Voice of Jerusalem, Macmillan, New York, 1921, p. 109-110
Use of the phrase by leading Zionists In 1914 Chaim Weizmann, later president of the World Zionist Congress and the first president of the state of Israel said: "In its initial stage Zionism was conceived by its pioneers as a movement wholly depending on mechanical factors: there is a country which happens to be called Palestine, a country without a people, and, on the other hand, there exists the Jewish people, and it has no country. What else is necessary, then, than to fit the gem into the ring, to unite this people with this country? The owners of the country must, therefore, be persuaded and convinced that this marriage is advantageous, not only for the [Jewish] people and for the country, but also for themselves".
In 1916, Herbert Bentwich, one of the founders of the British Zionist Federation, wrote "...'a place in the sun' must be found for the Jewish people ; what place so good and so suitable for the people without a land as the land without a people!" In 1924, Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of the Revisionist Zionist movement, told an audience in Berlin that "one must go before the nations of the world with a great demand: Give the land without a people to the people without a land! ... The Arabs cannot claim the right of a national majority, because the land is still unpopulated (unbevölkertes)." In 1927, Nahum Sokolov, who was president of the World Zionist Executive, told a meeting in Paris that the Jewish National Fund seeks to give "une terre sans peuple a un peuple sans terre". In 1930, Menachem Ussishkin opened a new building for the Jewish National Fund (which he headed) with the words "From this building calls will come to Jewry to hasten to redeem the land without people for a people without land." Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel for several long periods beginning in 1996, wrote in his book A Durable Peace that the phrase represented "a reasonable assessment of the well-known and well-documented situation in Palestine in their day".
Use by the Jewish National Fund