Palestinian exodus: Encyclopedia II - Palestinian exodus - History

Palestinian exodus - History

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.

Palestinian exodus - Transfer principle

Zionist Jews strove to create a Jewish state built on Jewish traditions and culture in Palestine, which Jews considered their ancestral homeland and where a Jewish minority had lived for centuries. The demographic reality of Palestine, in which most residents were non-Jewish Arabs, was for them a major obstacle to the establishment of such a state.

The most important means to achieve a demographic shift was through aliyah, Jewish immigration to the land of Israel. However, the Palestinian Arab population had a much higher birthrate than the Jewish counterpart, as well as some immigration [6]. Even with Jewish immigration, the Arab population greatly outnumbered the Jewish one. It was therefore clear that it would not be possible to bring about a Jewish majority in any part of Palestine, with the exceptions of the Haifa area, Jerusalem, and some northern districts. Furthermore, Jewish immigration was restricted by both the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate, and relatively few diaspora Jews actually wished to, or were able to, immigrate to Palestine, most preferring to move to North America.

While a few Palestinian Arabs were amenable to Jewish immigration, most were not, and incidences of violence between the communities occurred, including the Hebron Massacre of 1929 and the bombing campaigns of the Irgun the decade after. Prior to, during and after World War II, when Jews were desperate to flee the resurgence of European anti-Semitism culminating in the ascention of Nazi Germany and Hitler's "final solution", their attempts to immigrate to Palestine were frustrated by the British mandatory authorities. The Arabs were adamant that the Jews not be permitted establish a state in the region, while the Zionists were determined to do so. The only viable solution, according to the United Nations, seemed to be a partition of Palestine. Yet however the land was partitioned, the part belonging to Jews would probably contain an Arab majority or at least a very large Arab minority. For some of the Zionist leadership, the "transfer" of a large Arab population appeared to be the only solution.

In 1937 the Peel Commission placed transfer on the political agenda. 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 225,000 Palestinian Arabs from what would become the Jewish state, along the lines of the exchange between the Turkish and Greek populations after the Greco-Turkish War of 1922. This was a huge step forward for the Zionists. David Ben-Gurion did not spare the superlatives when he wrote in his diary:

Clearly, the idea of transfer was not, in 1947-1949, a new one. Benny Morris 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 sensitve they did not often or usually state this in public" (Morris, 2001, p. 41; see Masalha, 1992 for a comprehensive discussion).

Despite the fact that the notion of transfer or population exchange had been proposed by the Peel Commission and that David Ben-Gurion had spoken in favor of it at the plenum of the Zionist Congress, the subject was still very sensitive with respect to the Palestinian Arabs [7]. There were attendees at the Twentieth Zionist Congress in 1937 who opposed it [8], but the final resolutions of the Congress noted the "historic connexion of the Jewish people with Palestine, and its inalienable right to its homeland" and affirmed "that the field in which the Jewish National Home was to be established was understood at the time of the Balfour Declaration to be the whole of the historic Palestine, including Transjordan" ('Zionists And Palestine Decision To-Day, For And Against Partition', The Times, Wednesday, 11 August, 1937; p. 12; Issue 47760; col C).

According to Morris, Ben-Gurion, while in favor of the Peel plan, considered it important that it be publicized as a British plan and not a Zionist plan. At a meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive on 7 May 1944 to consider the British Labour Party Executive's resolution supporting transfer as a solution to the problems of Palestine Ben-Gurion said

At the same meeting Moshe Sharett, director of the Jewish Agency's Political Department, declared:

The other members of the JAE 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) all spoke favorably of the transfer transfer principle (Morris, 2001, p. 47).

In his speech to the UN General Assembly's Political and Security Committee on May 12, 1947, Ben Gurion said:

Moshe Sharett also spoke at the same meeting of the UN; in his address he stated that:

Palestinian exodus - Alleged Master Plan

From the aforementioned prevalent idea of transfer, and from the actual expulsions that took place in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, Walid Khalidi, a Palestinian historian, introduced in 1961 a thesis 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, and which stipulated, among other things that if Palestinians in villages occupied by the Jewish troops resist, they should be explled (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 Arab invasion to Palestine after the imminent establishment of the state of Israel, and it was introduced while the Jewish- Palestinian fighting was already raging, while thousands of Palestinians had fled away already, Khalidi nevertheless argued that the plan was a master-plan for the expulsion of the Palestinians from the territories occupied 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.

Other historians are sceptical of that 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. He writes:

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 explusion 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.

Additionally, some historians have interpreted clauses from Plan Dalet as the central directive, the "master plan" - specifically the section instructing commanders to destroy and depopulate villages containing a population that was hostile or difficult to control.

Palestinian exodus - First stage of the flight December 1947 - March 1948

During these months 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. War appeared inevitable. Middle and upper-class Palestinian families from urban areas withdrew to settle in neighbouring countries such as Transjordan and Egypt. Perhaps as many as 75,000 left in those months. There was also cases of outright explusions such as in Qisarya where roughly 1000 Palestinian Arabs were evicted in February. Irgun and Lehi played an important role in intimidating the Palestinian Arab population.

Most of the refugees from this period probably thought that they soon would return, just as they had done after the Great Arab Uprising of 1936-1939.

This first flight contributed to the demoralization of the Palestinians and left them virtually without any leadership.

Palestinian exodus - 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.

By the estimates of Morris, 250,000 to 300,000 Palestinians became refugees during this stage.

Palestinian exodus - 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:

Additionally, widespread looting and several cases of rape (12 total throughout the war, per Benny Morris[9]) took place during the evacuation. In total, about 100,000 Palestinians became refugees in this stage according to Morris.

Palestinian exodus - 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.

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:

Altogether 200,000 to 230,000 Palestinians left in this stage, according to Morris.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki