The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (46 page)

The Israeli attacks on Gaza and Lebanon in the summer of 2006 indicate that the storm is already raging. Organisations such as Hizbullah and Hamas, which dare to question Israel’s right to impose its unilaterial will on Palestine, have faced Israel’s military might and, so far (at the time of writing) are managing to withstand the assualt. But it is far from over. The regional patrons of these resistance movements, Iran and Syria, could be targeted in the future; the risk of even more devastating conflict and bloodshed has never been so acute.

1
. Central Zionist Archives, minutes of the meeting of Jewish Agency Executive, 12 June 1938.

2
. While some are convinced it was painted red at the front as a show of solidarity with Socialism.

3
. One historian, Meir Pail, claims the orders were sent a week later (Meir Pail,
From Hagana to the IDF
, p. 307).

4
. The documents from the meeting are summarized in the IDF Archives, GHQ/Operations branch, 10 March 1948, File 922/75/595 and in the Hagana Archives, 73/94. The meeting is reported by Israel Galili in the Mapai center meeting, 4 April 1948, which is to be found in the Hagana Archives 80/50/18. The composition of the group and its discussions are the product of a mosaic reconstruction of several documents as will be explained in the next chapters. In chapter four the messages that went out on March 10 and the meetings prior to the finalizing of the plan are also documented. For a similar interpretation of Plan Dalet, which was adopted a few weeks before that meeting, see Uri Ben-Eliezer,
The Emergence of Israeli Militarism, 1936–1956
, p. 253; he writes: ‘Plan Dalet aimed at cleansing of villages, expulsion of Arabs from mixed towns’. For the dispatch of the orders see also Meir Pail, p. 307 and Gershon Rivlin and Elhanan Oren,
The War of Independence: Ben-Gurion’s Diary
, vol. 1, p. 147. The orders dispatched can be found in the Hagana Archives 73/94, for each of the units: orders to the brigades to move to Position D –
Mazav Dalet
– and from the brigade to the Battalions, 16 April 1948.

5
. Simcha Flapan,
The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities
, p. 93.

6
. David Ben-Gurion, in
Rebirth and Destiny of Israel
noted candidly that: “Until the British left [May 15, 1948] no Jewish settlement, however remote, was entered or seized by the Arabs, while the Haganah ... captured many Arab
positions and liberated Tiberia, and Haifa, Jaffa, and Safad ... So on the day of destiny, that part of Palestine where the Haganah could operate was almost clear of Arabs.” Ben-Gurion,
Rebirth and Destiny of Israel
, p. 530.

7
. The Eleven composed what I call in this book the Consultancy – see chapter three. It is possible that other people, apart from this caucus of decision-makers, were present, but as bystanders. As for the senior officers, there were twelve orders sent to twelve Brigades on the ground, see 922/75/595 ibid.

8
. Walid Khalidi,
Palestine Reborn
; Michael Palumbo,
The Palestinian Catastrophe: The 1948 Expulsion of a People from their Homeland
and Dan Kurzman,
Genesis 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War
.

9
. Avi Shlaim, ‘The Debate about the 1948 War’ in Ilan Pappe (ed.),
The Israel/Palestine Question
, pp. 171–92.

10
. Benny Morris,
The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949
.

11
. He makes this claim in the Hebrew version of the book published by Am Oved, Tel-Aviv in 1997, p. 179.

12
. Morris in the same place talks about 200–300,000 refugees. There were in fact 350,000 if one adds all of the population from the 200 towns and villages that were destroyed by 15 May 1948.

13
. Walid Khalidi (ed.),
All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948
.

1
. State Department, Special Report on ‘Ethnic Cleansing’, 10 May 1999.

2
. United Nations, Report Following Security Council Resolution 819, 16 April 1993.

3
. Drazen Petrovic, ‘Ethnic Cleansing – An attempt at Methodology’,
European Journal of International Law
, 5/3 (1994), pp. 342–60.

4
. This is actually taken directly from Petrovic, ibid., p. 10, note 4, who himself quotes Andrew Bell-Fialkow’s ‘A Brief History of Ethnic Cleansing’.

5
. The most important meetings are described in
chapter 4
.

6
. Ben-Gurion Archives, The Correspondence Section, 1.01.1948–07.01.48, documents 79–81. From Ben-Gurion to Galili and the members of the committee. The document also provides a list of forty Palestinian leaders that have been targeted for assassination by the Hagana forces.

7
.
Yideot Achronot
, 2 February 1992.

8
.
Ha’aretz
, Pundak, 21 May 2004.

9
. I will detail how it worked in the following chapters, but the authority to destroy is the order sent on 10 March to the troops, and the specific orders authorizing executions are in IDF Archives, 49/5943 doc. 114, 13 April 1948.

10
. See the sources below.

11
. Nur Masalha,
Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of ‘Transfer’ in Zionist Political Thought, 1882–1948
and
The Politics of Denial: Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem
.

12
. Alexander Bein (ed.),
The Mozkin Book
, p. 164.

13
. Baruch Kimmerling,
Zionism and Territory: The Socio-Territorial Dimensions of Zionist Politics
; Gershon Shafir,
Land, Labour and the Origins of the Israel-Palestinian Conflict, 1882–1914
and Uri Ram, ‘The Colonialism Perspective in Israeli Sociology’ in Pappe (ed.),
The Israel/Palestine Question
, pp. 55–80.

14
. Khalidi (ed.)
All That Remains
, and Samih Farsoun and C. E. Zacharia,
Palestine and the Palestinians
.

1
. See, for instance, Haim Arlosarov,
Articles and Essays
, Response to the 1930 Shaw Commission on the concept of strangers in Palestine’s history, Jerusalem 1931.

2
. A very good description of this myth can be found in Israel Shahak,
Racism de l’état d’Israel
, p. 93.

3
. Alexander Schölch,
Palestine in Transformation, 1856–1882: Studies in Social, Economic and Political Development
.

4
. Neville Mandel,
Arabs and Zionism before World War I
, p. 233.

5
. Reported in Alharam of the same date.

6
. The warning came in a story published by Ishaq Musa al-Husayni,
The Memories of a Hen
published in Jerusalem, first as a series of articles in the newspaper
Filastin,
then as a book in 1942.

7
. For a general analysis, see Rashid Khalidi,
Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness
, and more specifically see
Al-Manar
, vol. 3, issue 6, pp. 107–8 and vol. 1, issue 41, p. 810.

8
. See Uri Ram in Pappe (ed.),
The Israel/Palestine Question
and David Lloyd George,
The Truth about the Peace Treaties
.

9
. The most notable of these works is Zeev Sternahal,
The Founding Myths of Israel: Nationalism, Socialism, and the Making of the Jewish State
.

10
. The Balfour Declaration was a letter dated November 2, 1917, from British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour, to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community. The text of the Balfour Declaration, agreed at a Cabinet meeting on October 31, 1917, set out the position of the British Government: ‘His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to
facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.’

11
. Yehosua Porath,
The Emergence of the Palestinian Arab National Movement, 1919–1929
.

12
. Eliakim Rubinstein, ‘The Treatment of the Arab Question in Palestine in the post-1929 Period’ in Ilan Pappe (ed.),
Arabs and Jews in the Mandatory Period –A Fresh View on the Historical Research
(Hebrew).

13
. On Peel see Charles D. Smith,
Palestine and the Arab–Israeli Conflict
, pp. 135–7.

14
. Barbara Smith,
The Roots of Separatism in Palestine: British Economic Policy, 1920–1929
.

15
. This connection is made by Uri Ben-Eliezer,
The Making of Israeli Militarism
.

16
. John Bierman and Colin Smith,
Fire in the Night: Wingate of Burma, Ethiopia and Zion
.

17
. Hagana Archives, File 0014, 19 June 1938.

18
. Ibid.

19
. The Bulletin of the Hagana Archives, issues 9–10, (prepared by Shimri Salomon) ‘The Intelligence Service and the Village Files, 1940–1948’ (2005).

20
. For a critical survey of the JNF see Uri Davis,
Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within
.

21
. Kenneth Stein,
The Land Question in Palestine, 1917–1939
.

22
. This correspondence is in the Central Zionist Archives and is used in Benny Morris,
Correcting A Mistake
, p. 62, notes 12–15.

23
. Ibid.

24
. Hagana Archives, File 66.8

25
. Hagana Archives, Village Files, File 24/9, testimony of Yoeli Optikman, 16 January 2003.

26
. Hagana Archives, File 1/080/451, 1 December 1939.

27
. Hagana Archives, File 194/7, pp. 1–3, interview given on 19 December 2002.

28
. See note 15.

29
. Hagana Archives, S25/4131, 105/224 and 105/227 and many others in this series each dealing with a different village.

30
. Hillel Cohen,
The Shadow Army: Palestinian Collaborators in the Service of Zionism
.

31
. Interview with Palti Sela in the Hagana Archives, File 205.9, 10 January 1988.

32
. See note 27.

33
. Hagana Archives, Village Files, 105/255 files from January 1947.

34
. IDF Archives, 49/5943/114, orders from 13 April 1948.

35
. See note 27.

36
. Ibid., File 105.178.

37
. Quoted in Harry Sacher,
Israel: The Establishment of Israel
, p. 217.

38
. Smith,
Palestine and the Arab–Israeli Conflict
, pp. 167–8.

39
. Yossef Weitz,
My Diary
, vol. 2, p. 181, 20 December 1940.

40
. Ben-Gurion’s
Diary
, 12 July 1937, and in
New Judea
, August– September 1937, p. 220.

41
. Shabtai Teveth,
Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs: From Peace to War
.

42
. Hagana Archives, File 003, 13 December 1938.

43
. On British policy see Ilan Pappe,
Britain and the Arab–Israeli Conflict, 1948–1951
.

44
. Interview of Moshe Sluzki with Moshe Sneh, in Gershon Rivlin (ed.),
Olive-Leaves and Sword: Documents and Studies of the Hagana
, and Ben-Gurion’s
Diary
, 10 October 1948.

45
. See Yoav Gelber,
The Emergence of a Jewish Army
, pp. 1–73.

46
. Michael Bar-Zohar,
Ben-Gurion: A Political Biography
, vol. 2, pp. 639–66 (Hebrew).

47
. See Pappe,
Britain and the Arab–Israeli Conflict
.

48
. Yehuda Sluzki,
The Hagana Book
, vol. 3, part 3, p. 1942.