The issue isn't Zionism, it's Israel. Israel has betrayed the Zionist ideal.
To begin with: If we're to apportion fault for the dislocation of Palestinians, why not start with Czar Alexander III & the May Laws, which forced Jewish dislocation from many parts of Russia & inspired over two million to emigrate. And inspired the first, pre-Zionist, aliyah to Palestine. Then the Nazis....
One people is dislocated; they dislocate another in turn.
In short, I see Zionism as roughly analogous to a man stealing food to feed his family who might otherwise starve. I don't expect the storekeeper to be happy about this, but what alternatives did the man have? In post-war Europe the Allies saw that even the direst rumors of mass murder were but pallid intimations of the true scale of death. And what did they do? Nothing. The British maintained White Paper restrictions while the US continued to limit immigration. Jew-hatred reached its zenith in post-war Europe while stateless Jews lived in DP camps into the 1950s.
What King ibn Saud told FDR—that Arabs should not pay for European crimes—is true. But there was never going to be a Jewish state in central Europe.
So, a Jewish state in part of Palestine. But, to the analogy again: Instead of making restitution to the storekeeper, the man tries to steal his whole shop. Israel betrayed Zionism by adopting Jabotinsky's Iron Wall, which assumes (as Jabotinsky admitted) that one Arab is any Arab, & Palestinian Arabs would stop resisting & be just as happy in Aman or Casablanca or Cairo as Hebron or Nablus. Long after seeing proof that is not true, Israel continues to press forward.
That is not Zionism, or at least not Zionism as it ought to have been implemented.
Final point: as a thought experiment, imagine Israel suddenly bereft of Jews & only Palestinians remain. What happens? While they aren't the part of the immediate problem, Jordan & Egypt have demonstrated an unwillingness to forebear a Palestinian state on their borders just as Israel has. That's never part of the conversation, but my question is, should it be, & to what degree?
