The Kibbutz Movement and the Struggle for Jewish Control of Land: 1967 and Afterwards

This article examines the reciprocal relations between the growth and crises of the kibbutz movement since 1967, on the one hand, and Israel’s continuous effort to promote Jewish control of land, on the other. It focuses on test cases that mark turning points in the development of the Israeli-Arab conflict. The first and most central to the analysis is the Six Day War, followed by colonization according to the Allon Plan. The second is the peace agreement with Egypt, followed by the transfer of the Jewish colonization effort from agricultural settlements to “community settlements” (yishuvim kehilati’im) on both sides of the Green Line. And the third is the Oslo Accords, followed by the cessation of the efforts to promote “self-labor” in agriculture.
The primary analysis presented here shows that these reciprocal relations, which have not yet received systematic scholarly attention, were influential in both directions. The kibbutz movement was dependent upon the effort to promote Jewish control of land. The movement’s recovery and prosperity after the 1967 war were related to its renewed position on the frontier, following the Israeli occupation of the new territories. The crisis of the kibbutz movement starting in the 1980s and the privatization process that came in its wake were largely the result of political developments that had reduced the amount of agricultural land available for Jewish settlement and had again separated the Palestinian workers from the Israeli economy. During the 1960s and 1970s the movement attained considerable influence over the scope of the Jewish colonization effort, and along with it, over the course of the conflict. Its interest in promoting opportunities for communal agricultural settlement was reflected in the effective political activity of its leaders, in particular the representatives of Hakibbutz Hameuchad. It was very influential in the creation of the security policy prior to the Six Day War, in the management of the war itself, and later in the implementation of the Allon settlement plan and the institutionalization of the occupation.