1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight

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The Palestinian Exodus (Arabic: الهجرة الفلسطينية al-Hijra al-Filasteeniya) is the refugee flight of some 711,000 Palestinian Arabs (UN estimate) during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, and is called the Nakba (Arabic: النكبة), meaning "disaster" or "cataclysm", by Palestinians. The Israeli estimate of the refugees is 520,000 and the Palestinian estimate is 900,000. They fled or were expelled from their homes in the part of Palestine that would become the State of Israel to other parts of Palestine or to neighbouring countries.

Typical ruins of a former Arab village. This one is Bayt Jibrin, west of Hebron.

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 flight ), and that some Arab leaders called for evacuation of civilian Arabs from the war zone. How much each factor has contributed, is disputed.

In 1949 at the Lausanne conference, Israel proposed allowing 100,000 refugees to return, this number including 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.

Demographics

The refugee population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is 1.65 million according to UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, with the entire local population estimated at 3.76 million by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. Although there is no accepted definition of who can be considered Palestinian refugees 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. The number of registered Palestine refugees has subsequently grown from 914,000 in 1950 to more than four million in 2002, and continues to rise due to natural population growth." Under UNWRA's definition the total number of Palestinian refugees is estimated at 4.9 million , 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 and its 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.

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 Nakba is perhaps the most important symbol of Palestinian discourse.

Nakba Day (May 15th, the day Israel declared independence) is considered an important day in the Palestinian calendar, and is traditionally observed as a time to learn about the history of Palestine and to remember the event.

According to Palestinian author Dr. Ghada Karmi: "the majority of accounts of the Holocaust are in English, as opposed to accounts of the Palestinian Nakba, or “Catastrophe” (the creation of Israel in 1948) which are written mostly in Arabic. This ensures that everyone in the world knows about the pain and suffering of the Jewish people during World War II, whether they are in Europe, America, or even Asia, because English is the language of the decision-makers in the world. The number of Palestinian narratives that are written in English, on the other hand, can be literally counted on the fingers of one hand”. . At the World Conference Against Racism in 2001, prominent Palestinian scholar and activist Hanan Ashrawi referred to the Palestinians as

...a nation in captivity held hostage to an ongoing Nakba "

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, 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

Alleged "Master Plan"

in 1959 Walid Khalidy a Palestinian historian, introduced 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 Hagana 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. 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, such as Benny Morris and others 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.

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.

Benny Morris, in particular, disagrees with the "Master Plan" theory. 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 miltary forces did not enter the 1948 War, which was initiated by the Arab side, with a policy or plan for expulsion. (Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, p. 60)

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.

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.

Jews also fled their homes in fear of violence, and others were expelled.

Jews fled from mixed neighborhoods such as the border areas between Jaffa and Tel Aviv, as well as from Jaffa itself. On January 5, 1948 it was decided to evacuate Jewish mothers and children from the Etzion block, with the aid of the British. On On January 16, 1948 35 Jews on their way to help the Gush were killed in an ambush. On March 1948 a convoy was ambushed in the outskirts of Bethlehem on it's way to provide military and medical help to the Gush. This have led to the continued attacks by the Arab forces until The Final Massacre On the 13th of May in which the defenders of Kfar Etzion surrendered to the Arab Legion and local Palestinian forces: the inhabitants were killed or taken prisoner and carried across the Jordan. Their settlements were completely demolished. The settlements Neveh Ya'akov and Atarot north of Jerusalem, also captured, were totally obliterated. All the residents of the Jewish quarter in the Old City in Jerusalem, conquered by local forces with the aid of the Arab Legion, were taken captive. No Jew was allowed to return to the Old City -- not even the ultra-Orthodox who detested Zionism and were prepared to live under Arab rule.

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 hostile and armed populace in our rear, where it could endanger the supply route advancing eastward. ... Allon repeated the question: What is to be done with the population? Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which 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 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 (12 total throughout the war, per Benny Morris ) took place during the evacuation. In total, about 100,000 Palestinians became refugees in this stage according to Morris.

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:

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.

Did Arab leaders endorse or call for the refugee flight?

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 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)

During the period preceding the 1948 war, and particularly during the invasion of Palestine by Arab armies, it is claimed that the Arab High Command called 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.

When asked whether in Operation Hiram there was a comprehensive and explicit expulsion order Morris 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 .

The claim that Arab leaders endorsed the refugee flight has always been rejected by Palestinian writers and by some Israeli and Jewish writers. In the 1980s, when the Israeli archives about the war were opened to researchers, the Israeli New Historians also began to question the theory. For example, concerning the alleged evacuation order, or orders, issued by Arab leaders, Benny Morris wrote in 1990:

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)

After the war, a few Arab leaders tried to present the Palestinian exodus as a victory by claiming to have planned it. None of them provided any evidence for this claim. An oft-quoted example from the untranslated Arabic memoirs of Khalid al-`Azm, who was prime minister of Syria from December 17, 1949 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 stablized 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, Professor Emeritus of Middle East History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 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." . 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)."

Contemporary 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.

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 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.

"Absentee" property

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". Even 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. About 32,000 Palestinians became "present absentees" - persons that were present at the time but considered absent.

How much of Israel's territory consists of land confiscated with the Absentee Property Law is uncertain. According to the Israeli Custodian of Absentee Property, it could amount 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 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 is considerably higher at 88%:

Of the entire area of the state of Israel only about 300,000-400,000 dumums ... are state domain which the Israeli government took over from the mandatory regime . The JNF and private Jewish owners possess under two million dumum . Almost all the rest belongs at law to Arab owners, many of whom have left the country. (Jewish National Fund, Jewish Villages in Israel, p.xxi, quoted in Lehn and Davis, The Jewish National Fund)

The absentee property played an enormous role in making Israel a viable state. In 1954 about one third of Israel's population lived on absentee property. Of 370 new Jewish settlements established between 1948 and 1953, 350 were on absentee property. As Moshe Dayan put it in an often quoted speech before students at the Israeli Institute of Technology in 1969:

We came here to a country that was populated by Arabs, and we are building a Hebrew, Jewish state. In a considerable portion of localities we purchased the land from the Arabs. Instead of Arab villages Jewish villages were established. You even do not know the name of the villages and I do not blame you, because those geography books no longer exist. Not only the books, but the villages no longer exist. Nahalal was established in the place of Mahalul, Gevat in the place of Jibta, Sarid in the place of Hanifas and Kefar Yehoshu'a in the place of Tel Shaham. There is not a single settlement that was not established in the place of a former Arab village. (Dayan, March 19, 1969; as quoted in Haaretz, April 4, 1969)

Treatment of Palestinian refugees by Arab nations

In February 1954, Jordan amended its Nationality Law to include "any Arab person born in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan or in the occupied part of Palestine and emigrated from the country or left - including the children of this emigrant wherever they were born - who would submit a written application and renounce their former nationality" (quoted in Plascov, 1981, p. 47). The Arab League promoted the extension of full civil rights to Palestinian refugees but advised that host governments should not offer nationality because this could weaken the political rights of refugees (Schulz, 2003, p. 235).

To date, no Arab country with the exception of Jordan has granted citizenship to Palestinian refugees living on its soil or their descendants. In Lebanon, Palestinians largely continue to live in refugee camps, often under harsh conditions, denied any benefits of citizenship and subject to restrictions on employment.

References

Arzt, D. E. (1997). Refugees into Citizens: Palestinians and the End of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Council on Foreign Relations. ISBN 087609194X
Bowker, R. (2003). Palestinian Refugees: Mythology, Identity, and the Search for Peace. Lynne Rienner Publishers. ISBN 1588262022
Finkelstein, N. (2003). Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, 2nd Ed. Verso. ISBN 1859844421
Kanaaneh, R. A. (2002). Birthing the Nation: Strategies of Palestinian Women in Israel. University of California Press. ISBN 0520229444
Morris, B. (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 0521794765
Morris, B. (2003). The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521009677
Masalha, N. (1992). Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of "Transfer" in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948. Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies. ISBN 0887282350
Plascov, A. (1981). Palestinian Refugees in Jordan, 1948-1957. London: Routledge. ISBN 0714631205
Rogan, E. L., & Shlaim, A. (Eds.). (2001). The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521794765
Schulz, H. L. (2003). The Palestinian Diaspora. London: Routledge. ISBN 0415268214

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