"When the Jewish state is established - it is very possible that the result will be transfer of Arabs"
About this Quote
The intent sits in the conditional. “When” signals confidence that a Jewish state is coming; the remaining ambiguity is about consequences, not about the goal. By framing Arab removal as a likely outcome, Sharett normalizes it in advance, preparing an internal audience for measures that might otherwise read as ethically explosive. It’s also a kind of political insurance: if transfer happens, it can be narrated as reluctant acceptance of circumstance rather than deliberate design.
Context matters because Sharett wasn’t a fringe firebrand; he was a senior Zionist leader and later Israel’s foreign minister, a figure associated with diplomacy. That makes the sentence more revealing, not less. It captures a recurring tension inside Zionist politics of the period: the pursuit of international legitimacy alongside the demographic arithmetic of building a Jewish-majority state in a land with a large Arab population. The line exposes how the problem was often managed rhetorically first - by making displacement sound like weather - before it was managed on the ground.
Quote Details
| Topic | Human Rights |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Sharett, Moshe. (2026, January 15). When the Jewish state is established - it is very possible that the result will be transfer of Arabs. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/when-the-jewish-state-is-established-it-is-very-162963/
Chicago Style
Sharett, Moshe. "When the Jewish state is established - it is very possible that the result will be transfer of Arabs." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/when-the-jewish-state-is-established-it-is-very-162963/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"When the Jewish state is established - it is very possible that the result will be transfer of Arabs." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/when-the-jewish-state-is-established-it-is-very-162963/. Accessed 7 Feb. 2026.



