1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight

The Palestinian exodus (Arabic: الهجرة الفلسطينية al-Hijra al-Filasteeniya) refers to the refugee flight of Palestinian Arabs during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. It is called the Nakba (Arabic: النكبة), meaning "disaster" or "cataclysm", by Palestinians.

During the war of 1948, many fled or were expelled from their homes in the part of the land that would become the State of Israel to other parts of the land or to neighbouring countries.

The UN estimates their number at 711,000 [1] while the Israeli estimate of the refugees is 420,000 and the Palestinian estimate is 900,000. The degree to which the flight of the refugees was voluntary or involuntary is hotly debated. Some cases of expulsion are well-documented, such as in Lydda and Ramle. So is the attempt by some Jewish leaders in Haifa to stem the flight [2], and that some Arab leaders called for evacuation of civilian Arabs from the war zone. How much each factor has contributed is disputed.

On 5th May 1949, the UNGA debated accepting Israel into the UN, and Israel promised to abide by both UN General Assembly (GA) and Security Council (SC) resolutions [3]. However, at the Lausanne Conference, 1949 Apr-Sept of the same year, Israel's offer was to take back around 1/5th of the refugees in return for recognition by its neighbours, and this was rejected.

The exodus, and the resulting Palestinian refugee problem remain a central and controversial topic in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

History

Ruins of the former Arab village of Bayt Jibrin, inside the green line west of Hebron.

The history of the Palestinian exodus is closely tied to the events of the war in Palestine, which lasted from 1947 to 1949. Many factors played a role in bringing it about. What exactly those factors were, and how each of them contributed to the course events took, remains a hotly debated issue.

For more information on the historical context, see 1948 Arab-Israeli war, Zionism, Palestinian nationalism, and Jewish exodus from Arab lands.

First stage of the flight, December 1947 - March 1948

In the first few months of the civil war the climate in Palestine became volatile. Hostilities between Jews and Arabs increased and general lawlessness spread as the British declared that their mandate would end in May 1948. Strategically, the period was marked by Arab initiatives and Jewish reprisals (Morris, 2003, p. 65), although the Irgun and Lehi reverted to their 1937-1939 strategy of placing bombs in crowded places such as bus stops and markets, and their attacks on British forces reduced British troops' ability and willingness to protect Jewish traffic (Ibid, p. 66). General conditions deteriorated: the economic situation became unstable and unemployment grew (Gelber, p. 75). Rumours spread that the Husaynis were planning to bring in bands of fallahin to take over the towns (Gelber, p. 76). Some Palestinian leaders set a bad example by sending their own families abroad (Gelber, pp. 76-77). The Arab Liberation Army embarked on a systematic evacuation of non-combatants from several frontier villages in order to turn them into military strongholds (Gelber, p. 79). By the end of March 1948 around 100,000 Palestinians had fled to other parts of Palestine such as Nazareth, Nablus and Bethlehem or had left the country altogether (Morris, p. 67) to settle in Transjordan or Egypt. Many of these were Palestinian and Arab leaders, middle and upper-class Palestinian families from urban areas. Around 22 March the Arab governments agreed that their consulates in Palestine would only issues visas to old people, women and children and the sick (Ibid, p. 134). On 29-30 March the Haganah Intelligence Service (HIS) reported that 'the AHC was no longer approving exit permits for fear of [causing] panic in the country' (Ibid, p. 137 quoting Haganah Archive (HA) 105\257).

During this period there was no official Yishuv policy favoring expulsion and Jewish leaders anticipated that the new Jewish state would have a sizable Arab minority. The Haganah was instructed to avoid spreading the conflagration by indiscriminate attacks and to avoid provoking British intervention (Morris, 2003, pp. 68-86). On 18 December, 1947 the Haganah approved an aggressive defense strategy, which in practice meant 'a limited implementation of "Plan May" (Tochnit Mai or Tochnit Gimel), which, produced in May 1946, was the Haganah master plan for the defence of the Yishuv in the event of the outbreak of new troubles... The plan included provision, in extremis, for "destroying Arab transport" in Palestine, and blowing up houses used by Arab terrorists and expelling their inhabitants. (Ibid, p. 75). In early January the Haganah adopted Operation Zarzir, a scheme to assassinate leaders affiliated to Amin al-Husayni, placing the blame on other Arab leaders, but in practice few resources were devoted to the project and the only attempted killing was of Nimr al Khatib (Ibid, p. 76).

Palestinian belligerency in these first few months was 'disorganised, sporadic and localised and for months remained chaotic and uncoordinated, if not undirected' (Morris, 2003, p. 86). Husayni lacked the resources to mount a full-scale assault on the Yishuv and restricted himself to sanctioning minor attacks and to tightening the economic boycott (Ibid, p. 87).

Throughout this period both Arab and Jewish leaders tried to limit the hostilities (Morris, 2003, pp. 90-99).

The only official expulsion at this time took place at Qisarya, south of Haifa, where Palestinian Arabs were evicted and their houses destroyed on 19 February - 20 February 1948 (Morris, 2003, p. 130).

Overall Morris concludes that the 'Arab evacuees from the towns and villages left largely because of Jewish - Haganah, IZL or LHI - attacks or fear of impending attack' but that only 'an extremely small, almost insignificant number of the refugees during this early period left because of Haganah or IZL or LHI expulsion orders or forceful "advice" to that effect' (Morris, 2003, pp. 138-139).

Second stage of the flight, April 1948 - June 1948

The fighting in these months was concentrated in the Jerusalem - Tel Aviv area, where consequently, most depopulations took place. The Deir Yassin massacre in early April, and the exaggerated rumours that followed it, helped spread fear and panic among the Palestinians (Morris, 2003, p. 264).

By the estimates of Morris, 250,000 to 300,000 Palestinians became refugees during this stage (Ibid, p. 262).

Third stage of the flight, July-October 1948

The largest single expulsion of the war began in Lydda and Ramla July 14. 60,000 inhabitants of the two cities were forcibly expelled on the orders of Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Rabin. Rabin wrote in his memoirs:

What would they do with the 50,000 civilians in the two cities ... Not even Ben-Gurion could offer a solution, and during the discussion at operation headquarters, he remained silent, as was his habit in such situations. Clearly, we could not leave [Lydda's] hostile and armed populace in our rear, where it could endanger the supply route [to the troops who were] advancing eastward. ... Allon repeated the question: What is to be done with the population? Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture that said: Drive them out! ... 'Driving out' is a term with a harsh ring ... Psychologically, this was one of the most difficult actions we undertook. The population of [Lydda] did not leave willingly. There was no way of avoiding the use of force and warning shots in order to make the inhabitants march the 10 to 15 miles to the point where they met up with the legion. (Soldier of Peace, p. 140-141)

Additionally, widespread looting and several cases of rape ([4]) took place during the evacuation. In total, about 100,000 Palestinians became refugees in this stage according to Morris (2003, p. 448).

Fourth stage of the flight, October 1948 - November 1948

This period of the exodus was characterized by Israeli military accomplishments, which were met with resistance from the Palestinian Arabs who were to become refugees. The Israeli military activities were confined to the Galilee and the sparsely populated Negev desert. It was clear to the villages in the Galilee, that if they left, return was far from imminent. Therefore far fewer villages were spontaneously depopulated than previously. Most of it was due to a clear, direct cause: expulsion and deliberate harassment, as Morris writes 'commanders were clearly bent on driving out the population in the area they were conquering' (2003, p. 490).

Operation Hiram, which was the Israeli military operation that conquered the upper Galilee, is one of the examples in which a direct expulsion order was given to the commanders: 'Do all you can to immediately and quickly purge the conquered territories of all hostile elements in accordance with the orders issued. The residents should be helped to leave the areas that have been conquered.' (October 31 1948, Moshe Carmel)

Altogether 200,000 to 230,000 Palestinians left in this stage, according to Morris (Ibid, p. 492).

Contemporary mediation and the Lausanne Conference

UN mediation

The United Nations was involved in the conflict from the very beginning. In the autumn of 1948 the refugee problem was a fact and possible solutions were discussed. Count Folke Bernadotte said on September 16:

No settlement can be just and complete if recognition is not accorded to the right of the Arab refugee to return to the home from which he has been dislodged. It would be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine, and indeed, offer the threat of permanent replacement of the Arab refugees who have been rooted in the land for centuries (Bowker, 2003, pp. 97-98).

UN General Assembly Resolution 194, which was passed on December 11, 1948, and reaffirmed every year since, was the first resolution that called for Israel to let the refugees return:

the [Palestinian] refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.

The Lausanne Conference of 1949

See also main article Lausanne Conference, 1949

In 1949 at the Lausanne conference, Israel proposed allowing 100,000 refugees to return, this number included an alleged 25,000 who had already returned surreptitiously and 10,000 projected family-reunion cases. The offer was conditional on a full peace treaty that would allow Israel to keep all the territory it had captured and on the Arab states agreeing to absorb the remaining refugees. The offer was rejected by the Arab states (Morris, 2003, pp. 549-587). Safran concluded that "The Arab states, who had refused even to negotiate face-to-face with the Israelis, turned down the offer because it implicitly recognized Israel's existence". (Nadav Safran, Israel: The Embattled Ally, Harvard University Press, p 336)".

Causes of the Palestinian exodus

Historians have given over the years different reasons and assigned different responsibilities to the Palestinian exodus. This topic remains controversial today, more than half a century after the events. The answers given to these questions could have important consequences for the future of these refugees and their descendants, as well as to other Arabs and Jews in Israel.

The following theories were proposed:

• The 'Arab leaders' endorsement of the refugee flight' was the official line taken by the governments of Israel and mainstream Israeli Historians, assigning the main responsibility for the exodus to calls made by local and foreign Arab leaders.
• The 'Transfer principle' Theory, proposed by the Israeli 'New Historians' (mainly Benny Morris), contends that displacement of population was a consequence of a common line of thought in Zionist politics that emphasized the transfer of Palestinian Arabs as a precondition to the establishment of a Jewish state.
• The 'Master Plan' theory, proposed by Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi, claims that the Palestinian exodus was planned and organised in advance by Jewish authorities.
• The 'Two-stage explanation' is a theory brought forth by Yoav Gelber, which distinguishes between two phases of the exodus. Before the Arab invasion, it explains the exodus as a result of the crumbling Arab social structure, and after the invasion as a result of actions by the Israeli army during the campaign in the Galilee and Negev.

The "Arab leaders' endorsement of flight" Theory

Claims by Israeli government sources

Israeli official sources have long claimed that the refugee flight was in large part instigated by Arab leaders. For example, Yosef Weitz wrote in October 1948: 'The migration of the Arabs from the Land of Israel was not caused by persecution, violence, expulsion [but was] deliberately organised by the Arab leaders in order to arouse Arab feelings of revenge, to artificially create an Arab refugee problem.' (Jewish National Fund official Yosef Weitz, 1948)

In a 1959 paper, Walid Khalidi attributed the "Arab evacuation story" to Joseph Schechtman, who wrote two 1949 pamphlets in which 'the evacuation order first makes an elaborate appearance'.

In his book Palestine 1948, Yoav Gelber explains why he believes that Arab authorities did not prompt the Palestinian population to flee but on the contrary tried to stop it. Referring to historiographic work of Schechtman, he writes that the exodus greatly astonished the Yishuv's leaders and that 'attempting to explain the phenomenon they raised several conjectures that later become pillars of the Israeli argumentation on the issue' (Gelber, p. 84).

Benny Morris concluded that during the period preceding the 1948 war, and particularly during the invasion of Palestine by Arab armies, there were calls by the Arab High Committee for elements of the Palestinian population to leave their homes:

At the same time, it turns out that there was a series of orders issued by the Arab Higher Committee and by the Palestinian intermediate levels to remove children, women and the elderly from the villages. So that on the one hand, the book reinforces the accusation against the Zionist side, but on the other hand it also proves that many of those who left the villages did so with the encouragement of the Palestinian leadership itself. Benny Morris - From an Ha'aretz interview prior to the publication of Morris' latest findings in The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, 2003.

Morris, however, did not find any blanket call for evacuation, such as Weitz claims had existed. On that matter he writes:

Had such a blanket order (or series of orders) been given, it would have found an echo in the thousands of documents produced by the Haganah's Intelligence Service, the IDF Intelligence Service, the Jewish Agency's Political Department Arab Division, the Foreign Ministry Middle East Affairs Department; or in the memoranda and dispatches of the various British and American diplomatic posts in the area (in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Amman, Beirut, Damascus, and Cairo); or in the various radio monitoring services (such as the BBC's). Any or all of these would have produced reports, memoranda, or correspondence referring to the Arab order and quoting from it. But no such reference to or quotation from such an order or series of orders exists in the contemporary documentation. This documentation, it should be noted, includes daily, almost hourly, monitoring of Arab radio broadcasts, the Arab press inside and outside Palestine, and statements by the Arab and Palestinian Arab leaders. (Tikkun, Jan/Feb 1990, p80)

The Israeli historian Shmuel Katz, who was a participant in these events as Irgun propaganda chief, in his book 'Battleground' writes:

"the Arab refugees were not driven from Palestine by anyone. The vast majority left, whether of their own free will or at the orders or exhortations of their leaders, always with the same reassurance-that their departure would help in the war against Israel. The Arabs are the only declared refugees who became refugees not by the action of their enemies or because of well-grounded fear of their enemies, but by the initiative of their own leaders." (Katz, 1973, pp. 72)

The American journalist Kenneth Bilby, who had covered Palestine for years, claimed that the Arab leaders' rationale for the flight was:

"Let the Arabs flee into neighboring countries. It would serve to arouse the other Arab countries to greater effort, and when the Arab invasion struck the Palestinians could return to their homes and be compensated with the property of Jews driven into the sea." (New Star In The Near East, New York, 1950).

Further quotations:

• "'Doesn't he have anything more important to do?' was Ben-Gurion's reaction when told, during his visit to Haifa on 1 May 1948, that a local Jewish leader was trying to convince the Arabs not to leave. 'Drive them out!' was Ben-Gurion's instruction to Yigal Allon, as recorded by Yitzhak Rabin in a censored passage of his memoris published in 1979, with regard to the Arabs of Lydda after the city had been taken over on 11 July 1948." (Ben-Ami, Shlomo (2006). Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy. Oxford University Press, p. 44.)

• An interview frequently cited in Zionist historiography was with Monsignor George Hakim, then Greek Catholic bishop of Galilee, in the southern Lebanese weekly newspaper Sada al Janub, August 16, 1948: "The refugees were confident that their absence would not last long, and that they would return within a week. Their leaders had promised them that the Arab armies would crush the "Zionist gangs" very quickly, and that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile." Erskine Childers investigated these claims, and wrote in the Spectator May 12, 1961: "I wrote to His Grace, asking for his evidence of such orders. I hold signed letters from him, with permission to publish, in which he has categorically denied ever alleging Arab evacuation orders; he states that no such orders were ever given. He says that his name has been abused for years; and that the Arabs fled through panic and forcible eviction by Jewish troops."[5]. Hakim later commented on this use of his words: "There is nothing in this statement to justify the construction which many propagandists had put on it... At no time did I state that the flight of the refugees was due to the orders, explicit or implicit, of their leaders, military or political, to leave the country... On the contrary, no such orders were ever made... Such allegations are sheer concoctions and falsifications. ...as soon as hostilities began between Israel and the Arab States, it became the settled policy of the Government to drive away the Arabs..." (quoted in E. B. Childers, The Wordless Wish, in I. Abu-Lughod (ed) Transformation of Palestine, Northwestern University Press (1971), 197-198.)

• The Jewish Haganah broadcast a warning to Arabs in Haifa on 21 April: "that unless they sent away 'infiltrated dissidents' they would be advised to evacuate all women and children, because they would be strongly attacked from now on" ('British Proclamation In Haifa Making Evacuation Secure', The Times, Thursday, April 22, 1948; pg. 4; Issue 51052; col D ). Commenting on the use of "psychological warfare broadcasts" and military tactics in Haifa , The Post-Zionist New Historian Benny Morris writes:

  Throughout the Haganah made effective use of Arabic language broadcasts and loudspeaker vans. Haganah Radio announced that 'the day of judgement had arrived' and called on inhabitants to 'kick out the foreign criminals' and to 'move away from every house and street, from every neighbourhood occupied by foreign criminals'. The Haganah broadcasts called on the populace to 'evacuate the women, the children and the old immediately, and send them to a safe haven'... Jewish tactics in the battle were designed to stun and quickly overpower opposition; demoralisation was a primary aim. It was deemed just as important to the outcome as the physical destruction of the Arab units. The mortar barages and the psychological warfare broadcasts and announcements, and the tactics employed by the infantry companies, advancing from house to house, were all geared to this goal. The orders of Carmeli's 22nd Battalion were 'to kill every [adult male] Arab encountered' and to set alight with firebombs 'all objectives that can be set alight. I am sending you posters in Arabic; disperse on route' (Morris, 2003, pp. 191-192).

Claims by Arab leaders

After the war, a few Arab leaders tried to present the Palestinian exodus as a victory by claiming to have planned it.

An oft-quoted example from the untranslated Arabic memoirs of Khalid al-`Azm, who was prime minister of Syria from December 17 1948, to March 30 1949, (after most of the exodus had already taken place), gives a different explanation, however. In his memoirs, Al-Azm listed a number of reasons for the Arab defeat in an attack on the Arab leaders, including his own predecessor, Jamil Mardam Bey:

Fifth: the Arab governments' invitation to the people of Palestine to flee from it and seek refuge in adjacent Arab countries, after terror had spread among their ranks in the wake of the Deir Yassin event. This mass flight has benefited the Jews and the situation stabilized in their favor without effort.
...
Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homeland, while it is we who constrained them to leave it. Between the invitation extended to the refugees and the request to the United Nations to decide upon their return, there elapsed only a few months.
-Al-`Azm, Mudhakarat (al-Dar al Muttahida lil-Nashr, Beirut, 1972), Volume I, pp 386-7. scan

However, as Yehoshua Porath argues 'Neither . . . is the admission of the Syrian leader Khalid al-Azm that the Arab countries urged the Palestinian Arabs to leave their villages until after the victory of the Arab armies final proof that the Palestinian Arabs in practice heeded that call and consequently left.' [6]. In his re-examination of the Palestinian exodus Benny Morris is even more skeptical, concluding:

The former Prime Minister of Syria, Khalid al'Azm, in his memoirs Mudhakkirat Khalid al'Azm, I, 386, wrote: 'We brought destruction on 1 million Arab refugees by calling upon them and pleading with them repeatedly to leave their lands and homes and factories.' (I am grateful to Dr Gideon Weigart of Jerusalem for this reference.) But I have found no contemporary evidence of such blanket, official 'calls' by any Arab government. And I have found no evidence that the Palestinians or any substantial group left because they heard such 'calls' or orders by outside Arab leaders. The only, minor, exceptions to this are the traces of the order, apparently by the Syrians, to some of the inhabitants of Eastern Galilee to leave a few days prior to, and in preparation for, the invasion of 15-16 May. This order affected at most several thousand Palestinians and, in any case, 'dovetailed' with Haganah efforts to drive out the population in this area. (Morris, 2003, p. 269).

Morris goes on to speculate that, although al-`Azm may have been referring to the minor Syrian order mentioned above, it is more probable that 'he inserted the claim to make some point within the context of inter-Arab polemics (i.e., blaming fellow Arab leaders for the exodus).'

The Arab National Committee in Jerusalem, following the March 8, 1948, instructions of the Arab Higher Committee, ordered women, children and the elderly in various parts of Jerusalem to leave their homes:

"Any opposition to this order...is an obstacle to the holy war...and will hamper the operations of the fighters in these districts" (Morris, Middle Eastern Studies, January 1986).

Morris also documented that the Arab Higher Committee ordered the evacuation of "several dozen villages, as well as the removal of dependents from dozens more” in April-July 1948. "The invading Arab armies also occasionally ordered whole villages to depart, so as not to be in their way" (The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 592).

The Secretary of the Arab League Office in London, Edward Atiyah, wrote in his book, The Arabs:

"This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boastings of an unrealistic Arabic press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab States and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re­enter and retake possession of their country. But it was also, and in many parts of the country, largely due to a policy of deliberate terrorism and eviction followed by the Jewish commanders in the areas they occupied, and reaching its peak of brutality in the massacre of Deir Yassin.

There were two good reasons why the Jews should follow such a policy. First, the problem of harbouring within the Jewish State a large and disaffected Arab population had always troubled them. They wanted an exclusively Jewish state, and the presence of such a population that could never be assimilated, that would always resent its inferior position under Jewish rule and stretch a hand across so many frontiers to its Arab cousins in the surrounding countries, would not only detract from the Jewishness of Israel, but also constitute a danger to its existence. Secondly, the Israelis wanted to open the doors of Palestine to unrestricted Jewish immigration. Obviously, the fewer Arabs there were in the country the more room there would be for Jewish immigrants. If the Arabs could be driven out of the land in the course of the fighting, the Jews would have their homes, their lands, whole villages and towns, without even having to purchase them. And this is exactly what happened." ("The Arabs", 1955, pp. 182-183)”

Edward Atiyah himself in the Spectator 23 June 1961 dismissed that his book could be used as evidence of "Arab orders". He wrote:

....there is no suggestion whatever in what I wrote that the exodus of the Arab refugees was a result of a policy of evacuating the Arab population. What I said is something quite different from the Zionist allegation that the Arab refugees were ordered or ever told by their leaders to evacuate which is the main point in the whole controversy. (Quoted in Broadcasts, p.80.)

Unlike Israel's efforts for Jewish immigrants and refugees fleeing foreign countries, Arab governments did not provide homes, funds, or improve conditions for Arab Palestinian refugees after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The Arab League claims their reasons for limited assistance and instructions to bar the granting of citizenship to Palestinian Arab refugees (or their descendants) is "to avoid dissolution of their identity and protect their right to return to their homeland". Many critics find the lack of Arab effort to relieve the refugee crisis as a way of using the Palestinians as political pawns, and/or to promote anti-Israel sentiment.

Claims by Arabs who fled

A leading Palestinian nationalist of the time, Musa Alami, revealed the attitude of the fleeing Arabs:

"The Arabs of Palestine left their homes, were scattered, and lost everything. But there remained one solid hope: The Arab armies were on the eve of their entry into Palestine to save the country and return things to their normal course, punish the aggressor, and throw oppressive Zionism with its dreams and dangers into the sea. On May 14, 1948, crowds of Arabs stood by the roads leading to the frontiers of Palestine, enthusiastically welcoming the advancing armies. Days and weeks passed, sufficient to accomplish the sacred mission, but the Arab armies did not save the country. They did nothing but let slip from their hands Acre, Sarafand, Lydda, Ramleh, Nazareth, most of the south and the rest of the north. Then hope fled (Middle East Journal, October 1949)."

Criticisms of the "endorsement of flight" theory

Erskine Childers, an Irish nationalist and author, examined the British record of the radio broadcasts by the Arab leaders at the time, and claimed not to find evidence of such orders. "There was not a single order, or appeal, or suggestion about evacuation from Palestine from any Arab radio station, inside or outside Palestine, in 1948. There is repeated monitored record of Arab appeals, even flat orders, to stay put."

The "Transfer principle" Theory

The idea that 'transfer ideology' is responsible for the exodus was first brought up by several Palestinian authors, and supported by Erskine Childers in his 1971 article, "The wordless wish". However, historian Benny Morris became in the 1980s the most well-known advocate of this theory. In his book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem he presented the prevalent idea of population transfer within Zionist thinking as the 'ultimate cause' for the Palestinian exodus. According to Morris, the demographic reality of Palestine, in which most residents were non-Jewish Arabs, had long been a major obstacle to the establishment of a Jewish national state. He also notes that the attempt to achieve a demographic shift through aliyah (Jewish immigration to the land of Israel) had not been successful (due both to higher Arab birth rate and immigration [7] and to restrictions by the mandatory administration. As a result, some Zionist leaders adopted the transfer of a large Arab population as the only viable solution. (Morris, 2003, p. 69)

The idea of population transfer was first placed on Palestine's political agenda in 1937 by the Peel Commission. The commission recommended that Britain should withdraw from Palestine and that the land be partitioned between Jews and Arabs. It called for a "transfer of land and an exchange of population", including the removal of 250,000 Palestinian Arabs from what would become the Jewish state (Arzt, 1997, p. 19), along the lines of the mutual population exchange between the Turkish and Greek populations after the Greco-Turkish War of 1922. This solution, writes Morris, was embraced by Zionist leaders, including David Ben-Gurion, who wrote:

... and [nothing] greater than this has been done for our case in our time [than Peel proposing transfer]. ... And we did not propose this - the Royal Commission ... did ... and we must grab hold of this conclusion [i.e, recommendation] as we grabbed hold of the Balfour Declaration, even more than that - as we grabbed hold of Zionism itself we must cleave to this conclusion, with all our strength and will and faith (quoted in Morris, 2001, p. 42).

However, while Ben-Gurion was in favor of the Peel plan, he and other Zionist leaders considered it important that it be publicized as a British plan and not a Zionist plan. To this end, Morris quotes Moshe Sharett, director of the Jewish Agency's Political Department, who said (during a meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive on 7 May 1944 to consider the British Labour Party Executive's resolution supporting transfer):

Transfer could be the crowning achievements, the final stage in the development of [our] policy, but certainly not the point of departure. By [speaking publicly and prematurely] we could mobilizing vast forces against the matter and cause it to fail, in advance. ... What will happen once the Jewish state is established - it is very possible that the result will be the transfer of Arabs (quoted in Morris, 2001, p. 46).

All of the other members of the JAE present, including Yitzhak Gruenbaum (later Israel's first interior minister), Eliahu Dobkin (director of the immigration department), Eliezer Kaplan (Israel's first finance minister), Dov Joseph (later Israel's justice minister) and Werner David Senator (a Hebrew University executive) spoke favorably of the transfer principle (Morris, 2001, p. 47).

Morris concludes that the idea of transfer was not, in 1947-1949, a new one. He writes:

Many if not most of Zionism's mainstream leaders expressed at least passing support for the idea of transfer during the movement's first decades. True, as the subject was sensitive they did not often or usually state this in public (Morris, 2001, p. 41; see Masalha, 1992 for a comprehensive discussion).

Other authors, including Palestinian writers and Israeli New Historians, have also described this attitude as a prevalent notion in Zionist thinking and as a major factor in the exodus. Israeli historian and former diplomat Shlomo Ben-Ami wrote:

The debate about whether or not the mass exodus of Palestinians was the result of a Zionist design or the inevitable concomitant of war should not ignore the ideological constructs that motivated the Zionist enterprise. The philosophy of transfer was not a marginal, esoteric article in the mindset and thinking of the main leaders of the Yishuv. These ideological constructs provided a legitimate environment for commanders in the field actively to encourage the eviction of the local population even when no precise orders to that effect were issued by the political leaders (Ben-Ami, Shlomo Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy, 2005, Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 0-297-84883-6).

While not discounting other reasons for the exodus, the 'transfer principle' theory suggests that this prevalent 'attitude of transfer' is what made it easy for local Haganah and IDF commanders to resort to various means of expelling the Arab population, even without a 'master plan' or a blanket command given by Israeli authorities. Morris sums it up by saying that the circumstances, 'had prepared and conditioned hearts and minds (...) so that, when it occurred, few Jewish voices protested or doubt; it was accepted as inevitable and natural by the bulk of the Jewish population' (Morris, p. 60). Morris also points out that "[if] Zionist support for 'Transfer' really is 'unambiguous'; the connection between that support and what actually happened during the war is far more tenuous than Arabs propagandists will allow" (Morris, p.6).

Historian Christopher Sykes saw the causes of the Arab flight differently:

It can be said with a high degree of certainty that most of the time in the first half of 1948 the mass-exodus was the natural, thoughtless, pitiful movement of ignorant people who had been badly led and who in the day of trial found themselves forsaken by their leaders. Terror was the impulse, by hearsay most often, and sometimes through experience as in the Arab port of Jaffa which surrendered on the 12th of May and where the Irgunists, to quote Mr. John Marlowe, 'embellished their Dir Yassin battle honours by an orgy of looting'.
   "But if the exodus was by and large an accident of war in the first stage, in the later stages it was consciously and mercilessly helped on by Jewish threats and aggression towards Arab populations. (Cross Roads to Israel, 1973)

The 'transfer principle' theory came under attack from several historians, notably Efraim Karsh, who claimed that 'Morris engages in five types of distortion: he misrepresents documents, resorts to partial quotes, withholds evidence, makes false assertions, and rewrites original documents" (Karsh, Efraim, 'Benny Morris and the Reign of Error', The Middle East Quarterly, Vol. 4 No. 2, 1999). To the point in question, Karsh argued that transferist thinking was a fringe philosophy within Zionism, and had no significant effect on expulsions. The debate is still going strong today.

The "Master Plan" Theory

File:WalidKhalidi.jpg

Palestinian Historian Walid Khalidi, who had proposed the 'Master Plan' Theory

Based on the aforementioned alleged prevalent idea of transfer, and on actual expulsions that took place in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, Walid Khalidi, a Palestinian historian, introduced a thesis in 1961 according to which the Palestinian exodus was planned in advance by the Zionist leadership. He based that thesis on Plan D, a plan devised by the Haganah high command in March 1948, which stipulated, among other things that if Palestinians in villages controlled by the Jewish troops resist, they should be expelled (Khalidi, 1961). Plan D was aimed to establish Jewish sovereignty over the land allocated to the Jews by the United Nations (Resolution 181), and to prepare the ground toward the expected invasion of Palestine by Arab states after the imminent establishment of the state of Israel. In addition, it was introduced while Jewish-Palestinian fighting was already underway and while thousands of Palestinians had already fled. Nevertheless, Khalidi argued that the plan was a master-plan for the expulsion of the Palestinians from the territories controlled by the Jews. He argued that there was an omnipresent understanding during the war that as many Palestinian Arabs as possible had to be transferred out of the Jewish state, and that that understanding stood behind many of the expulsions that the commanders on the field carried out.

Khalidi and Ilan Pappé (A History of Modern Palestine, p. 131) are among the scholars to defend this thesis. Others are skeptical of their conclusion: they emphasize that no central directive has surfaced from the archives and that if such an omnipresent understanding had existed, it would have left a mark in the vast amounts of documentation the Zionist leadership produced at the time. Furthermore, Yosef Weitz, who was strongly in favor of expulsion, had explicitly asked Ben-Gurion for such a directive and was turned down. Finally, settlement policy guidelines drawn up between December 1947 and February 1948, meant to handle the absorption of the anticipated first million immigrants, planned some 150 new settlements, about half of them in the Negev, with the rest along the lines of the UN partition map (29 November 1947) for the north and centre of the country.

Benny Morris, in particular, disagrees with the "Master Plan" theory but argues transfer was inevitable. He writes:

My feeling is that the transfer thinking and near-consensus that emerged in the 1930s and early 1940s was not tantamount to pre-planning and did not issue in the production of a policy or master-plan of expulsion; the Yishuv and its military forces did not enter the 1948 War, which was initiated by the Arab side, with a policy or plan for expulsion. But transfer was inevitable and inbuilt into Zionism - because it sought to transform a land which was 'Arab' into a 'Jewish' state and a Jewish state could not have arisen without a major displacement of Arab population; and because this aim automatically produced resistance among the Arabs which, in turn, persuaded the Yishuv's leaders that a hostile Arab majority or large minority could not remain in place if a Jewish state was to arise or safely endure. By 1948, transfer was in the air. The transfer thinking that preceded the war contributed to the denouement by conditioning the Jewish population, political parties, military organisations and military and civilian leaderships for what transpired. Thinking about the possibilities of transfer in the 1930s and 1940s had prepared and conditioned hearts and minds for its implementation in the course of 1948 so that, as it occurred, few voiced protest or doubt; it was accepted as inevitable and natural by the bulk of the Jewish population. (Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, p. 60)

Supporters of the "Master Plan" theory argue that the missing central directives have not been found because they were deliberately omitted or because the understanding of the significance of expulsion was so widespread that no directive was necessary. They claim that the Zionist leadership in general and Ben-Gurion in particular were well aware of how historiography worked. What would be written about the war and what light Israel would be presented in was so important that it was worth making an intentional effort to hide those of their actions that might seem reprehensible.

The Two-Stage Theory

Yoav Gelber has a different approach. [8] Underlining the importance of the consequences of the debate he writes: 'Since the abortive talks at Camp David in July 2000, the Palestinian refugee problem has re-emerged as the hard core of the Arab-Israeli conflict. For five decades, the Israelis have swept the problem under the carpet, while the Palestinians have consistently developed their national ethos around their Right of Return'

Gelber describes the "master plan thesis" as propaganda in which Palestinian historians 'have composed a false narrative of deliberate expulsion, stressing the role of Deir Yassin and Plan Dalet in their exodus', but he also dismisses the "call of flight from Arab leadership thesis": 'Later, this guess would become the official line of Israeli diplomacy and propaganda. However, the documentary evidence clearly shows that the Arab leaders did not encourage the flight.'

Gelber distinguishes two main phases during the exodus: before and after the intervention of Arab armies in May 1948.

First Stage: The Crumbling of Arab Palestinian social structure

Gelber describes the exodus before May 1948 as being mainly due to the inability of the Palestinian social structure to withstand a state of war:

Mass flight accompanied the fighting from the beginning of the civil war. In the absence of proper military objectives, the antagonists carried out their attacks on non-combatant targets, subjecting civilians of both sides to deprivation, intimidation and harassment. Consequently, the weaker and backward Palestinian society collapsed under a not-overly-heavy strain. Unlike the Jews, who had nowhere to go and fought with their back to the wall, the Palestinians had nearby shelters. From the beginning of hostilities, an increasing flow of refugees drifted into the heart of Arab-populated areas and into adjacent countries... The Palestinians’ precarious social structure tumbled because of economic hardships and administrative disorganization. Contrary to the Jews who built their “State in the Making” during the mandate period, the Palestinians had not created in time substitutes for the government services that vanished with the British withdrawal. The collapse of services, the lack of authority and a general feeling of fear and insecurity generated anarchy in the Arab sector.

According to Gelber the disintegration of the civil structure built by the British amplified the problem: 'Thousands of Palestinian government employees — doctors, nurses, civil servants, lawyers, clerks, etc. — became redundant and departed as the mandatory administration disintegrated. This set a model and created an atmosphere of desertion that rapidly expanded to wider circles. Between half to two-thirds of the inhabitants in cities such as Haifa or Jaffa had abandoned their homes before the Jews stormed these towns in late April 1948.'

Second Stage: Israeli army victories and expulsions (after May 1948)

During the second phase of the war, after the Arab invasion, Gelber considers the exodus to have been a result of Israeli army's victory and the expulsion of Palestinians. He writes:

"The position of these new escaping or expelled Palestinians was essentially different from that of their predecessors of the pre-invasion period. Their mass flight was not the result of their inability to hold on against the Jews. The Arab expeditions failed to protect them, and they remained a constant reminder of the fiasco. These later refugees were sometimes literally deported across the lines. In certain cases, IDF units terrorized them to hasten their flight, and isolated massacres — particularly during the liberation of Galilee and the Negev in October 1948 — expedited the flight."

Morris agrees that such expulsions occurred. For example, concerning whether in Operation Hiram there was a comprehensive and explicit expulsion order he replied :

Yes. One of the revelations in the book is that on October 31, 1948, the commander of the Northern Front, Moshe Carmel, issued an order in writing to his units to expedite the removal of the Arab population. Carmel took this action immediately after a visit by Ben-Gurion to the Northern Command in Nazareth. There is no doubt in my mind that this order originated with Ben-Gurion. Just as the expulsion order for the city of Lod, which was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, was issued immediately after Ben-Gurion visited the headquarters of Operation Dani [July 1948]. [9]

Other historians, such as Karsh, deny the expulsion [10], but they refer only to the first phase of the war which is not contested by Gelber or Morris.

Gelber also underlines that Palestinian had certainly in mind the opportunity they would have to return their home after the conflict and that this hope must have eased their flight: 'When they ran away, the refugees were confident of their eventual repatriation at the end of hostilities. This term could mean a cease-fire, a truce, an armistice and, certainly, a peace agreement. The return of escapees had been customary in the Middle East's wars throughout the ages'.

Results of the Exodus

"Absentee" property

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Palestinian refugees - Area of UNWRA operations.

In 1950, the Absentee Property Law was passed in Israel. It provided for confiscation of the property and land left behind by departing Palestinians, the so-called "absentees". Arabs who never left Israel, and received citizenship after the war, but stayed for a few days in a nearby village had their property confiscated. (Fischbach, 1999, p. 23; p. 39) About 30,000-35,000 Palestinians became "present absentees" - persons present at the time but considered absent (Benvenisti, 2002, p. 201).

How much of Israel's territory consists of land confiscated with the Absentee Property Law is uncertain and much disputed. According to the Israeli Custodian of Absentee Property, including the Gaza Strip and The West Bank it could amount to up to 70% of the territory:

The Custodian of Absentee Property does not choose to discuss politics. But when asked how much of the land of the state of Israel might potentially have two claimants - an Arab and a Jew holding respectively a British Mandate and an Israeli deed to the same property - Mr. Manor [the Custodian in 1980] believes that 'about 70 percent' might fall into that category (Robert Fisk, 'The Land of Palestine, Part Eight: The Custodian of Absentee Property', The Times, December 24, 1980).

The Jewish National Fund's estimate was considerably higher at 88% including the Gaza Strip and the West Bank:

Of the entire area of the State of Israel only about 300,000-400,000 dunums...are state domain which the Israeli government took over from the mandatory regime. The JNF and private Jewish owners possess under two million dumums. Almost all the rest [i.e. about 88% of the 20,255,000 dunums within the armistice lines] belongs at law to Arab owners, many of whom have left the country. The fate of these Arabs will be settled when the terms of the peace treaties between Israel and her Arab neighbours are finally drawn up. The JNF, however, cannot wait until then to obtain the land it requires for its pressing needs. It is, therefore, acquiring part of the land abandoned by the Arab owners, through the government of Israel, the sovereign authority in Israel. (Jewish National Fund, Jewish Villages in Israel, p.xxi, quoted in Lehn and Davis, The Jewish National Fund, Keegan Paul International, 1988, page 132; parenthetical comments by Lehn & Davis)

The absentee property played an enormous role in making Israel a viable state. In 1954, more than one third of Israel's Jewish population lived on absentee property and nearly a third of the new immigrants (250,000 people) settled in urban areas abandoned by Arabs. Of 370 new Jewish settlements established between 1948 and 1953, 350 were on absentee property (Peretz, Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, 1958).

Palestinian refugees

See also main article Palestinian refugee

Although there is no accepted definition of who can be considered a Palestinian refugee for legal purposes, UNRWA defines them as 'persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict'. UNRWA's definition of a refugee also covers the descendants of persons who became refugees in 1948. Under this definition, the total number of Palestinian refugees is estimated to have grown form 914,000 in1950 to 4.9 million [11], one third of whom live in the West Bank and Gaza; slightly less than one third in Jordan; 17% in Syria and Lebanon (Bowker, 2003, p. 72) and around 15% in other Arab and Western countries. Approximately 1 million refugees have no form of identification other than an UNWRA identification card (Bowker, 2003, pp. 61-62).

The Nakba's role in the Palestinian narrative

The Nakba or Al-Nakba (Arabic: النكبة, pronounced An-Nakba) is a term meaning "cataclysm" or "catastrophe". It is the term with which Palestinians usually refer to the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, or more specifically, the Palestinian exodus.

The term "Nakba" was coined by Constantin Zureiq, a professor of history at the American University of Beirut, in his 1948 book Ma'na al-Nakba (The Meaning of the Disaster). After the Six Day War in 1967 Zureiq wrote another book, The New Meaning of the Disaster, but the term Nakba is reserved for the 1948 war.

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Naji al-Ali's Handala

Together with Naji al-Ali's Handala (the barefoot child always drawn from behind), and the symbolic key for the house in Palestine carried by so many Palestinian refugees, the 'collective memory of' the Nakba 'has shaped the identity of the Palestinian refugees as a people' (Bowker, 2003, p. 96).

The events during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War had a great influence on the Palestinian culture. Countless books, songs and poems have been written about it. The exodus is usually described in strongly emotional terms. For example, at the controversial 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, prominent Palestinian scholar and activist Hanan Ashrawi referred to the Palestinians as "a nation in captivity held hostage to an ongoing Nakba [catastrophe], as the most intricate and pervasive expression of persistent colonialism, apartheid, racism, and victimization."

May 15, the day Israel declared independence, is considered an important day in the Palestinian calendar and is known as Nakba Day to Palestinians. It is traditionally observed as a day of remembrance (Bowker, 2003, p. 96).

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Cairo 1998: Yasser Arafat attends the Arab League meeting to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Al-Nakba.

References

• Arzt, Donna E. (1997). Refugees into Citizens: Palestinians and the End of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Council on Foreign Relations. ISBN 0-87609-194-X
• Atiyah, Edward Selim, The Arabs, London, Penguin Books, 1958
• Beit-Hallahmi, Benny (1993). Original Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel. Oliver Branch Press. ISBN 1-56656-131-0
• Benvenisti, Meron (2002) Sacred Landscape. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-23422-7
• Bowker, Robert (2003). Palestinian Refugees: Mythology, Identity, and the Search for Peace. Lynne Rienner Publishers. ISBN 1-58826-202-2
• Finkelstein, Norman (2003). Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, 2nd Ed. Verso. ISBN 1-85984-442-1
• Fischbach, Michael R. (2003). Records of Dispossession: Palestinian Refugee Property and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-12978-5
• Gelber, Yoav (2006). Palestine 1948. War, Escape and the Emergence of the Palestinian Refugee Problem. Sussex Acadam Press. ISBN 1-84519-075-0.
• Kanaaneh, Rhoda A. (2002). Birthing the Nation: Strategies of Palestinian Women in Israel. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-22944-4
• Khalidi, Walid (1959). Why Did the Palestinians Leave? Middle East Forum, July 1959. Reprinted as 'Why Did the Palestinians Leave Revisited', 2005, Journal of Palestine Studies, XXXIV, No. 2., pp. 42-54.
• Khalidi, Walid (1961). Plan Dalet, Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine. Middle East Forum, November 1961.
• Lehn, Walter & Davis, Uri (1988). The Jewish National Fund. London : Kegan Paul.
• Morris, Benny (2001). Revisiting the Palestinian exodus of 1948. In The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (pp. 37-59). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-79476-5
• Morris, Benny (2003). The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-00967-7
• Masalha, Nur (1992). Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of "Transfer" in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948. Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies. ISBN 0-88728-235-0
• Peretz, Don (1958). Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. Washington: Middle East Institute.
• Plascov, Avi (1981). Palestinian Refugees in Jordan, 1948-1957. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-7146-3120-5
• Quigley, John B. (2005). The Case For Palestine: An International Law Perspective. Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-3539-5
• Rogan, Eugene L., & Shlaim, Avi (Eds.). (2001). The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-79476-5
• Joseph B. Schechtman, The Refugees In the World (New York, 1963)
• Schulz, Helena L. (2003). The Palestinian Diaspora. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-26821-4
• Sternhell, Zeev (1999). The Founding Myths of Israel: Nationalism, Socialism, and the Making of the Jewish State. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-00967-8

See also

• 1948 Arab-Israeli War
• History of Palestine#Post-Mandate
• Jewish exodus from Arab lands
• Jewish refugees
• List of villages depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war
• New Historians
• Palestinian infiltration
• Palestinian refugee
• Plan Dalet

External links

• The Peel Commission Report from the United Nations
• Interview with Israeli historian Benny Morris
• UN report on pre-war non-Jewish population
• PalestineRemembered.com: Online community for all Palestinian Refugees
• 50th anniversary of the Nakba (Palestinian cataclysm) Website
• Detailed information from Palestinian perspective incl. maps in Hebrew
• 'San Francisco Chronicle' article describing two Palestinian friends' differing opinions on the 'Right of Return'
• Link to commentaries by Efraim Karsh, an opponent of the Israeli New Historians, in which he disputes the accuracy of the Palestinian refugee narrative.
• Historical narrative from pro Israeli perspective.
• History of Zionism, including internal debate on the Arab of Palestine issue
• The Big Arab Lie, an article by David Meir-Levi