Israeli-Palestinian Conflict - Palestinian Exodus
The Palestinian
Exodus (Arabic: الهجرة الفلسطينية al-Hijra al-Filasteeniya) is the
refugee flight of some 711,000 Palestinian Arabs (UN estimate[1]) 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.
The degree to which the flight of the refugees was voluntary or
involuntary is hotly debated, with some citing attempts by the
surrounding Arab governments to evacuate women and children, and the
attempt by some Jewish leaders, especially in Haifa, to stem flight, and
others citing a score of the well-documented direct expulsion of the
residents of some towns and villages, including Lydda and Ramle.
In 1949 at the Lausanne conference, Israel proposed to allow 100,000
refugees to return, this number including an alleged 25,000 who had
returned already surreptitiously and 10,000 projected family-reunion
cases. The offer was conditional on a full peace treaty that allowed
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 (The CIA World Factbook estimates the populations of the West
Bank and Gaza Strip as of July 2005 at 2,385,615 and 1,376,289
respectively). There are also approximately 500,000 to 800,000
Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan (Bowker, 2003, p. 72).
The Palestinian population of Israel was previously estimated at 840,000
or 990,000 including the population of East Jerusalem, which was annexed
by Israel in 1967 (Artz, 1997, p. 50). The Israeli Central Bureau of
Statistics most recent estimate is 1.19 million [2]. The Palestinian
population in Israel is 76% Muslim, 15% Christian and 9% Druze (Kanaaneh,
2002, p. 5). The fertility rates in Israel by religion in 1995 were Jews
(3.64), European/American born Jews (2.63), Asian/African born Jews
(5.86), Muslim (7.96), Christian (4.85) and Druze (6.58) (Kanaaneh,
2002, p. 57). At current growth rates the total Palestinian population
will increase to around 9 million by 2010 (Bowker, 2003, p. 62).
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
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).
Nakba
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.
The term Nakba was coined by Constantine Zurayk, a professor of history
at the American University of Beirut, in his 1948 book Ma'nat al-Nakba,
The Meaning of the Disaster. Zurayk wrote a continuation book, The New
Meaning of the Disaster (also in Arabic) in 1967 but the term Nakba is
reserved for the 1948 war.
Together with Naji Ali's Handala (the bare foot kid 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) is considered an important day on the Palestinian
calendar, and is traditionally observed as a time to learn about the
history of Palestine and to remember the event.
History
The history of the Palestinian Exodus is closely tied to the events of
the war in Palestine that lasted from 1947 to 1949. Many factors must
have played a role forming it. But what they are and how they affected
it is still today a very debated issue.
Transfer principle
From the start of the Zionist endeavour in Palestine, Zionist Jews
wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine built on Jewish traditions
and culture. The demographic reality of Palestine, which was populated
mostly by Arabs, was the major obstacle to the establishment of a Jewish
state.
The most important means to achieve that change 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.[3] Even with Jewish immigration, the Arab
population firmly outnumbered the Jewish one and no part of Palestine,
with the exception the Tel Aviv area, Jerusalem, and some northern
districts, would be able to produce a Jewish majority. To make matters
worse, Jewish immigration was restricted by both the Ottoman Empire and
the British while Arab immigration was unchecked, and relatively few
diaspora Jews actually wished to immigrate to Palestine, most preferring
to move to North America.
The only viable solution seemed to be a partition of Palestine. But
however the land was partitioned, the part belonging to Jews would
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.
The idea of transfer was not, in 1947-1949, when it actually happened, a
new one. In June 12, 1895 Theodore Herzl wrote in his diary:
We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned
to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border
by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying
it any employment in our country ... Both the process of expropriation
and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and
circumspectly.
In 1937 the Peel Commission placed transfer on the political agenda. It
recommended that Britain should withdraw from Palestine and that the
land should be partitioned between Jews and Arabs. It also recommended
that 225,000 Arabs should be transferred out of the proposed Jewish
state. This was a huge step forward for the Zionists. Until then,
transfer hadn't been discussed as an option with outsiders but now "the
Royal Commission" had proposed a solution to the Zionist problem. David
Ben-Gurion didn't spare the superlatives when he wrote in his diary:
... 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
Despite the fact that the notion of transfer had been proposed by a
royal commission and that David Ben-Gurion had seen fit to speak of it
in the plenum of the Zionist Congress, the subject was still very
sensitive.
To Zionists it was of uttermost importance that the transfer plans not
be publicized as a Zionist plan as that would lower international
support for Zionists.
When I heard these things ... I had to ponder the matter long and hard
... [but] I reached the conclusion that this matter [had best] remain
[in the Labor Party Program] ... Were I asked what should be our
program, it would not occur to me to tell them transfer ... because
speaking about the matter might harm [us] ... in world opinion, because
it might give the impression that there is no room in the Land of Israel
without ousting the Arabs [and] ... it would alert and antagonize the
Arabs ... (Ben-Gurion 1944)
Moshe Sharett, director of the Jewish Agency's Political Department,
declared:
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. (Sharett, 1944)
Alleged "Master Plan"
From the aforementioned prevalent transfer thinking and from the actual
expulsions that took place in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, some historians
have concluded that the Palestinian Exodus was a preplanned act, despite
the lack of central expulsion orders found in any archives.
They argue 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. Then, too, Yosef Weitz, strongly in favor of expulsion, had
explicitly asked Ben-Gurion for such a directive and was turned down.
Last, 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 that contained
a hostile and/or difficult to control population.
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 to end their mandate in May 1948. War was
seemingly inevitable. Middle and upper-class 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
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 to 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, 250,000-300,000 Palestinians became refugees
during this stage.
Third stage of the flight, July-October 1948
The largest single expulsion of the war began in Lydda and Ramla July
14, in which 60,000 inhabitants 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 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 [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 (12 total
throughout the war, per Benny Morris[4]) 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 was met with resistance from the Palestinian Arabs
to be made refugees. The Israeli military activities limited itself 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 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 200,000-230,000 Palestinians left in this stage, according to
Morris.
Did Arab leaders endorse or call for the refugee flight?
From Israeli official sources it has long been 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)
During the period preceding the 1948 war and particularly during the
invasion of Arab powers into Palestine, it is claimed that the Arab High
Command called for portions 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 [July 1948].
[5]
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 opened to
researchers, the Israeli New Historians began to question this view. 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 (a period after most of
the exodus was complete), has 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." [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)."
Contemporary mediation
The UN was from the very beginning involved in the conflict. In the
autumn of 1948 the refugee problem was a fact and how it should be
settled was 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 [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.
"Absentee" property
In 1950, The Absentee Property Law was passed in Israel. It was the law
that made it domestically legal in Israel to confiscate the property and
land that the departed Palestinians had left behind them, 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, 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 quite a bit 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 [2 percent]. The JNF and private Jewish owners
possess under two million dumum [10 percent]. Almost all the rest [i.e
88 percent of the 20,225,000 dunums within the 1949 armistice lines]
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 1948-1953, 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.
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_exodus
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