Ben-Gurion and the Zionist Right

Mapai was established in the early 1930s by the merger of two Labor parties, largely at Ben-Gurion's initiative. The idea behind it was to create a political instrument that would organize, represent, and dominate the other Yishuv entities and the entire Zionist Labor Movement, from the General Federation of Labor (the Histadrut) and the National Committee (the elected representative body of the Yishuv) to the various organs of the World Zionist Organization. The union came about roughly a year after the 1929 Arab violence, the gravest crisis that Zionism had experienced to that point. The outcome elevated Ben-Gurion to the Jewish Agency Executive a year after Hitler's rise to power and to the chair of the Executive in 1935. Therefore, his actions in this position of leadership should be viewed within the much broader context of the global and regional events of the time. One such event was the ascendancy of Hajj Amin el Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, to a key position – although not an exclusive one for the time being – in local Arab public circles.

These and other factors led to the eruption of the 1936–1939 “Arab uprising,” which contributed mightily to the establishment of fighting organizations and the development of a security consciousness in the Yishuv. The “uprising” was not solely the Mufti's handiwork.