What was the Arab reaction to the announcement of the creation of
the state of Israel?
"The armies of the Arab states entered the war immediately after
the State of Israel was founded in May. Fighting continued, almost all
of it within the territory assigned to the Palestinian state...About 700,000
Palestinians fled or were expelled in the 1948 conflict." Noam
Chomsky, "The Fateful Triangle."
Was the part of Palestine assigned to a Jewish state in mortal danger
from the Arab armies?
"The Arab League hastily called for its member countries to send
regular army troops into Palestine. They were ordered to secure only the
sections of Palestine given to the Arabs under the partition plan. But
these regular armies were ill equipped and lacked any central command to
coordinate their efforts...[Jordan's King Abdullah] promised [the Israelis
and the British] that his troops, the Arab Legion, the only real fighting
force among the Arab armies, would avoid fighting with Jewish settlements...Yet
Western historians record this as the moment when the young state of Israel
fought off "the overwhelming hordes' of five Arab countries. In reality,
the Israeli offensive against the Palestinians intensified." "Our
Roots Are Still Alive," by the Peoples Press Palestine Book Project.
Ethnic cleansing of the Arab population of Palestine
"Joseph Weitz was the director of the Jewish National Land Fund...On
December 19, 1940, he wrote: 'It must be clear that there is no room for
both peoples in this country...The Zionist enterprise so far...has been
fine and good in its own time, and could do with 'land buying' - but this
will not bring about the State of Israel; that must come all at once, in
the manner of a Salvation (this is the secret of the Messianic idea); and
there is no way besides transferring the Arabs from here to the neighboring
countries, to transfer them all; except maybe for Bethlehem, Nazareth and
Old Jerusalem, we must not leave a single village, not a single tribe'...There
were literally hundreds of such statements made by Zionists." Edward
Said, "The Question of Palestine."
Ethnic cleansing - continued
"Following the outbreak of 1936, no mainstream (Zionist) leader
was able to conceive of future coexistence without a clear physical separation
between the two peoples - achievable only by transfer and expulsion. Publicly
they all continued to speak of coexistence and to attribute the violence
to a small minority of zealots and agitators. But this was merely a public
pose..Ben Gurion summed up: 'With compulsory transfer we (would) have a
vast area (for settlement)...I support compulsory transfer. I don't see
anything immoral in it,'" Israel historian, Benny Morris, "Righteous
Victims."
Ethnic cleansing - continued
"Ben-Gurion clearly wanted as few Arabs as possible to remain in
the Jewish state. He hoped to see them flee. He said as much to his colleagues
and aides in meetings in August, September and October [1948]. But no [general]
expulsion policy was ever enunciated and Ben-Gurion always refrained from
issuing clear or written expulsion orders; he preferred that his generals
'understand' what he wanted done. He wished to avoid going down in history
as the 'great expeller' and he did not want the Israeli government to be
implicated in a morally questionable policy...But while there was no 'expulsion
policy', the July and October [1948] offensives were characterized by far
more expulsions and, indeed, brutality towards Arab civilians than the
first half of the war." Benny Morris, "The Birth of the Palestinian
Refugee Problem, 1947-1949"
Didn't the Palestinians leave their homes voluntarily during the
1948 war?
"Israeli propaganda has largely relinquished the claim that the
Palestinian exodus of 1948 was 'self-inspired'. Official circles implicitly
concede that the Arab population fled as a result of Israeli action - whether
directly, as in the case of Lydda and Ramleh, or indirectly, due to the
panic that and similar actions (the Deir Yassin massacre) inspired in Arab
population centers throughout Palestine. However, even though the historical
record has been grudgingly set straight, the Israeli establishment still
refused to accept moral or political responsibility for the refugee problem
it- or its predecessors - actively created." Peretz Kidron, quoted
in "Blaming the Victims," ed. Said and Hitchens.
Arab orders to evacuate non-existent
"The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) monitored all Middle
Eastern broadcasts throughout 1948. The records, and companion ones by
a United States monitoring unit, can be seen at the British Museum. 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 a repeated monitored record of Arab appeals, even flat orders, to the
civilians of Palestine to stay put." Erskine Childers, British
researcher, quoted in Sami Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest."
Ethnic cleansing- continued
"That Ben-Gurion's ultimate aim was to evacuate as much of the
Arab population as possible from the Jewish state can hardly be doubted,
if only from the variety of means he employed to achieve his purpose...most
decisively, the destruction of whole villages and the eviction of their
inhabitants...even [if] they had not participated in the war and had stayed
in Israel hoping to live in peace and equality, as promised in the Declaration
of Independence." Israeli author, Simha Flapan, "The Birth of
Israel."
The deliberate destruction of Arab villages to prevent return of
Palestinians
"During May [1948] ideas about how to consolidate and give permanence
to the Palestinian exile began to crystallize, and the destruction of villages
was immediately perceived as a primary means of achieving this aim...[Even
earlier,] On 10 April, Haganah units took Abu Shusha... The village was
destroyed that night... Khulda was leveled by Jewish bulldozers on 20 April...
Abu Zureiq was completely demolished... Al Mansi and An Naghnaghiya, to
the southeast, were also leveled. . .By mid-1949, the majority of [the
350 depopulated Arab villages] were either completely or partly in ruins
and uninhabitable." Benny Morris, "The Birth of the Palestinian
Refugee Problem, 1947-1949.
After the fighting was over, why didn't the Palestinians return to
their homes?
"The first UN General Assembly resolution--Number 194- affirming
the right of Palestinians to return to their homes and property, was passed
on December 11, 1948. It has been repassed no less than twenty-eight times
since that first date. Whereas the moral and political right of a person
to return to his place of uninterrupted residence is acknowledged everywhere,
Israel has negated the possibility of return... [and] systematically and
juridically made it impossible, on any grounds whatever, for the Arab Palestinian
to return, be compensated for his property, or live in Israel as a citizen
equal before the law with a Jewish Israeli." Edward Said, "The
Question of Palestine."
Is there any justification for this expropriation of land?
"The fact that the Arabs fled in terror, because of real fear of
a repetition of the 1948 Zionist massacres, is no reason for denying them
their homes, fields and livelihoods. Civilians caught in an area of military
activity generally panic. But they have always been able to return to their
homes when the danger subsides. Military conquest does not abolish private
rights to property; nor does it entitle the victor to confiscate the homes,
property and personal belongings of the noncombatant civilian population.
The seizure of Arab property by the Israelis was an outrage." Sami
Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest."
How about the negotiations after the 1948-1949 wars?
"[At Lausanne,] Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinians were
trying to save by negotiations what they had lost in the war--a Palestinian
state alongside Israel. Israel, however... [preferred] tenuous armistice
agreements to a definite peace that would involve territorial concessions
and the repatriation of even a token number of refugees. The refusal to
recognize the Palestinians' right to self-determination and statehood proved
over the years to be the main source of the turbulence, violence, and bloodshed
that came to pass." Israeli author, Simha Flapan, "The Birth
Of Israel."
Israel admitted to UN but then reneged on the conditions under which
it was admitted
"The [Lausanne] conference officially opened on 27 April 1949.
On 12 May the [UN's] Palestine Conciliation ,Committee reaped its only
success when it induced the parties to sign a joint protocol on the framework
for a comprehensive peace. . Israel for the first time accepted the principle
of repatriation [of the Arab refugees] and the internationalization of
Jerusalem. . .[but] they did so as a mere exercise in public relations
aimed at strengthening Israel's international image...Walter Eytan, the
head of the Israeli delegation, [stated]..'My main purpose was to begin
to undermine the protocol of 12 May, which we had signed only under duress
of our struggle for admission to the U.N. Refusal to sign would...have
immediately been reported to the Secretary-General and the various governments.'"
Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, "The Making of the Arab-Israel Conflict,
1947-1951."
Israeli admission to the U.N.- continued
"The Preamble of this resolution of admission included a safeguarding
clause as follows: 'Recalling its resolution of 29 November 1947 (on partition)
and 11 December 1948 (on reparation and compensation), and taking note
of the declarations and explanations made by the representative of the
Government of Israel before the ad hoc Political Committee in respect of
the implementation of the said resolutions, the General Assembly...decides
to admit Israel into membership in the United Nations.'
"Here, it must be observed, is a condition and an undertaking to
implement the resolutions mentioned. There was no question of such implementation
being conditioned on the conclusion of peace on Israeli terms as the Israelis
later claimed to justify their non-compliance." Sami Hadawi, "Bitter
Harvest."
What was the fate of the Palestinians who had now become refugees?
"The winter of 1949, the first winter of exile for more than seven
hundred fifty thousand Palestinians, was cold and hard...Families huddled
in caves, abandoned huts, or makeshift tents...Many of the starving were
only miles away from their own vegetable gardens and orchards in occupied
Palestine - the new state of Israel...At the end of 1949 the United Nations
finally acted. It set up the United Nations Relief and Works Administration
(UNRWA) to take over sixty refugee camps from voluntary agencies. It managed
to keep people alive, but only barely." "Our Roots Are Still
Alive" by The Peoples Press Palestine Book Project.