The phrase "historical homeland" is associated in Hebrew with the concept of the "historical Eretz-Israel," which includes both banks of the Jordan. The emphasis on the Jewish character of the state could mean denying citizenship to the Arabs. On the other hand, the same points, read differently, could mean the setting up of a Palestinian state, federated with Israel, or at least an autonomous "Palestinian Arab entity," which would safeguard the Jewish character and the security of Israel, and leave a bond between Israel and the rest of Palestine. It could also mean giving the West Bank back to King Hussein, with boundary changes and some special status for the West Bank.

Which interpretation is right? Nobody, perhaps not even Dayan himself, knows for sure. While many believe that Dayan would really like to create a kind of Arab canton under Israeli suzerainty in the West Bank, thus keeping Israel itself Jewish but opening new territory for Jewish colonization, there were passages in the Dayan speech which went back to the way of thinking of the old Arab-fighter.

A few days before, the writer Yishar Smilansky, a prominent member of the Rafi party, had sharply attacked the poets who are clamoring for annexation and "the whole Eretz-Israel." Dayan, in this speech, vigorously disagreed with Smilansky, justifying the arguments of the Greater Israel proponents. In a revealing passage he said: "I myself have been brought up on the slogan ‘dunam after dunam, goat after goat,' and not on the slogan ‘In blood and fire did Judea fall, in blood and fire will Judea rise again.' But the fact is that since 1936 all that we achieved was secured through the force of arms."

"Dunam after dunam," as we have seen, was the motto of the socialist Zionist colonizing movement, the "practical" Zionism to which Dayan's family belonged, while the song of "blood and fire" was sung by the Irgun and the Revisionists, who opposed this brand of Zionism. (1936 was the year the Arab rebellion broke out.) By

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