The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

The first part of the chapter, “The Methodology of Cleansing,” begins with a recap of the chronology of the 1948 conflict and its origins, including the British decision to leave Mandatory Palestine and to turn over the issue to the UN in February 1947; the UN’s adoption of the partition resolution on November 29, 1947; the beginning of the Zionists’ ethnic cleansing operations in December 1947 with retaliatory attacks on Palestinian villages and neighborhoods; the arrival of the first Arab volunteer armies in Palestine on January 9, 1948; the beginning of coerced expulsions of Palestinians in the middle of February 1948; and the adoption of Plan Dalet on March 10, 1948, which would result in the dispossession of a quarter of a million Palestinians by the end of April. The Arab League decided to intervene militarily on April 30, 1948. On May 15, 1948, after the departure of the British, the Jewish Agency declared the establishment of the Jewish state (recognized officially by the US and USSR), and the Arab armies entered Palestine.

According to Pappé, the official Zionist strategy was determined by 1) the fragmentation of Palestinian leadership and military, and the disorganization within the Arab world; and 2) the Zionist impulse to seize the unique historical opportunity to “de-Arabize” Palestine as soon as the British left the country. By March 1948, the Zionists dropped the pretext of acting in retaliation and openly declared their intention to expel the Palestinians from the country.

In the subsection titled “Defining the Space,” Pappé lays out the Zionists’ definition of a geographically viable state (comprising roughly 80% of the country) and the discrepancy between this goal and the UN map. The Zionists opened negotiations with the Jordanian King Abdullah, agreeing to let him have parts of Mandatory Palestine if he promised to keep his army—the best-trained army in the Arab world at the time—out of the conflict.

The next subsection, “Creating the Means,” describes the military force built by the Zionists, which by 1948 included a fighting force of 50,000 troops, a small air force and navy, units of tanks, armored cars, and heavy artillery. In addition to the main Zionist army, the Hagana, two extremist Jewish military groups emerged: the Irgun (or Etzel) and the Stern Gang (Lehi). The Zionists also had special commando units called the Palmach. The Field Guard (Hish) was a less combatant group that played a role in the occupation of Palestinian villages. The Hagana also had an intelligence unit, founded in 1933. The Palestinian paramilitary, on the other hand, was made up of no more than 7,000 troops, eventually supplemented by 3,000 volunteers from the Arab world. In organization and equipment, moreover, the Palestinian force was far inferior to that of the Zionists. By the end of the summer, the Israeli army swelled to 80,000, while the Arab regular force never exceeded 50,000.

Pappé highlights the Zionists’ awareness of their military superiority despite the bleak way they presented the situation in public. Though the Zionists were intent on expelling as many Palestinians as possible from very early on, the ethnic cleansing plan evolved incrementally in response to the situation on the ground. This ethnic cleansing plan was developed in private in conjunction with a public plan to encourage massive Jewish immigration into Palestine.

The next subsection, “Choosing the Means: Worrisome Normality (December 1947),” describes the response of the Arab Higher Committee to the UN’s partition resolution, including a three-day strike that spilled into the Jewish business area in Jerusalem. Though this strike included some violence (most notoriously, the ambushing of a Jewish bus by the Abu Qishq gang), the Palestinians did not seem to want to continue protesting or fighting. Rather, the Palestinians gave every indication that they preferred to accept their “dismal” situation as the new normality. At the same time, the Arab League Council urged an all-Arab volunteer force, the Arab Liberation Army (ALA, Jaish al-Inqath in Arabic), to defend the Palestinians from the Zionists, and this demonstration of force—however limited—soon provided the Hagana with further pretexts for their military operations. As tensions escalated, the Zionists began distinguishing between operations guided by “retaliation” (tagmul) and those guided by “initiative” (yotzma).

The second part of the chapter, “The Changing Mood in the Consultancy: From Retaliation to Intimidation,” describes the shift that occurred in December 1947 when some Consultancy members, especially Ezra Danin and Yehoshua Palmon, began calling for a more aggressive policy “despite the fact that there were no offensive initiatives or tendencies on the Palestinian side” (74). This call to arms came amidst reports that Palestinian urban elites were starting to move to their residences abroad. Another approach was urged by Eliyahu Sasson, who attempted to convince Consultancy not to make the whole Arab population their enemies but to implement a “divide and rule” policy.

In the next section, “December 1947: Early Actions,” Pappé shows that the Consultancy decided against accepting even collaborative Arab individuals into their state, adopting a policy of “engagement” over “retaliation.” The Hagana began with threats, entering villages, looking for “infiltrators,” and warning against cooperation with the Arab Liberation Army. Any resistance would be met by firing at random and usually killing several villagers (“violent reconnaissance”). The Zionists conducted several massacres at this stage, including those at Deir Ayyub, Beit Affa, and Khisas.

The Jewish forces then began to attack urban areas, beginning with Haifa. A special unit of the Hagana called Hashahar (Dawn) employed terrorist tactics such as sending cars full of explosives to Palestinian garages and detonating them. One Irgun attack on Arab workers at a petroleum refinery motivated a Palestinian counterattack in which 39 Jewish workers were killed. The Hagana responded by attacking the village of Balad al-Shaykh and massacring many of the inhabitants. Soon after, the Hagana attacked the Arab neighborhood of Wadi Rushmiyya and expelled its inhabitants. According to Pappé, this event marked the “official beginning of the ethnic cleansing operation in urban Palestine” (79). The British, still in Palestine at the time and responsible for maintaining order, did nothing to prevent these attacks. In January 1948, more Palestinian neighborhoods, such as Hawassa, were destroyed by the Zionists. As the Zionist special forces Irgun and Stern Gang continued to carry out terrorist attacks, the Palestinians appealed to the British High Commissioner Sir Alan Cunningham in January 1948. Their pleas were ignored. With prosperous Palestinian elites fleeing from urban sites like Haifa, the local Palestinian economy suffered.

The next section, “The Long Seminar: 31 December-2 January,” discusses a seminal meeting held in Ben-Gurion’s house to address Yossef Weitz’s plans for expelling the Palestinians from the country more aggressively. Shortly after the long seminar, the Zionists adopted an “aggressive defense” approach that accepted collateral damage. The conflict quickly escalated, with Jerusalem falling largely into Jewish hands by February following the destruction of Palestinian suburbs such as Lifta. Nevertheless, some Zionist figures, notably Eliahu Sasson, feared that the current policy would alienate surrounding Arab majority countries. Ben-Gurion, however, understood that time was of the essence, realizing that the mood of the UN and other Western powers may soon shift against the Zionists and that the weakness of the Palestinian paramilitary and the ALA was something to take advantage of right away.

On January 9, the first large ALA unit crossed into Palestine, ambushing a unit of 35 Jewish troops outside of Kefar Etzion. The death of these 35 troops became the origin of the “lamed-heh” (“thirty-five” in Hebrew characters) retaliatory operations championed later by the Zionists. The term tihur (“cleansing”) entered use in Consultancy meetings as well as in the orders of the Hagana high command.

The next section, “February 1948: Shock and Awe,” begins by highlighting the discrepancies between the reality of the situation and how the Zionists presented matters in public, where they always cast Palestinians and Arab individuals as the aggressors. The Zionists developed their arsenal, acquiring arms from abroad and developing biological weapons under Ephraim Katzir. In mid-February, the Consultancy discussed the growing presence of the ALA and decided to become even more aggressive in its policies. Attacks on Palestinian urban areas were conducted, chiefly under the supervision of Yigael Yadin. Three villages around Caesarea were an early target for these operations, chosen because they were defenseless. Around this time, Atlit was also attacked and Sa’sa was raided by Moshe Kalman. On February 19, another long seminar was held. The Zionist leadership decided at this meeting to move cautiously to ensure the continued passivity of the Palestinians, who still did not seem interested in fighting. Some actions, such as the attack on Qira in late February, were not always explicitly authorized by the Zionist leadership, though they were implicitly and retroactively supported.

The final section of the chapter, “March: Putting the Finishing Touches to the Blueprint,” focuses on the events leading up to the development and implementation of the master plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, known as Plan Dalet or the Yehoshua Plan (after Yehoshua Globerman). According to Pappé, Plan Dalet introduced “clear-cut operational orders for action” (102), though some historians deny this. Pappé notes that there were sometimes discrepancies between the official plan and operational orders.

In April-May 1948, Ben-Gurion seemed “much more preoccupied with domestic Zionist politics” than with military operations (105). In his diary and conversations with his inner circle, there was no trace of the fear he propagated in public.

In the first section of the chapter, “Operation Nachshon: The First Plan Dalet Operation,” Pappé explains how concerns for Jewish settlements in densely populated Arab areas and in the Jerusalem area, where many Orthodox and Mizrahi Jewish settlers had limited commitment to Zionism, led to the early Plan Dalet operations known as Operation Nachshon in the Jerusalem rural area. The Palestinian paramilitary, led by Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, put up more resistance than expected, but the campaign was over by April 9, when al-Husayni was killed in battle while defending Qastal. The expulsion of the Palestinians that followed was accompanied in some cases by massacres. One massacre, discussed in its own subsection, was the massacre of Deir Yassin. This village had signed a pact of non-aggression with the Hagana, but this did not prevent the Hagana from sending the Irgun and Stern Gang to occupy the village on April 9. During the occupation, many villagers were murdered, and some women were raped before being killed. Other Palestinian villages had a similar fate. Two notable exceptions were Abu Ghawsh and Nabi Samuil, who were spared because they had a friendly relationship with the Stern Gang.

The next section, “The Urbicide of Palestine,” covers the Zionist attacks on major Palestinian urban centers in April. These attacks began with Tiberias, which fell on April 18. Many Palestinians fled or were evacuated. The British played an ambivalent role in this and other occupations, doing little to protect the city and encouraging the people to evacuate. In the following subsections, Pappé gives special attention to the “de-Arabisation [sic]” of the Palestinian urban centers. In Haifa, the evacuation was particularly chaotic and resulted in many deaths, and the British forces in the city did nothing to help the Palestinians. At Safad, the Syrian officer Ihasn Qam Ulmaz led the fight against the Palmach before being killed. In Jerusalem, eight neighborhoods and 39 villages were cleansed, and the British again failed to aid the Palestinians, though they did save Shaykh Jarrah from destruction. Acre and Baysan were occupied in May, and Jaffa was taken on May 13 following a three-week-long siege in which Christians and German Templars fought against the Jewish forces.

In the next section, “The Cleansing Continues,” Pappé describes another Consultancy meeting on April 7 during which Zionist leaders laid out a plan to cleanse all the villages on the Tel-Aviv-Haifa road, the Jenin-Haifa road, and the Jerusalem-Jaffa road. The fact that all this happened before the volunteer Arab army entered the country undermines the myth that the Palestinians only ran away when the Arab invasion began. In the subsequent subsections, Pappé highlights several actions during this phase of the conflict. Sirin was taken on May 12 despite their good relationship with the Jewish Agency. In Marj Ibn Amir, where three Jewish children were killed on the kibbutz of Mishmar Ha-Emek in the ALA resistance against the Zionist forces. Moshe Kalman led a massacre at Ayn al-Zaytun. Pappé makes note of several tactics and patterns that emerged during this phase of the conflict, including the “shoot and cry” approach adopted by some soldiers who repented for their war crimes even as they committed them (129), and the widespread tendency of the Zionists to dehumanize the Palestinians.

The next section, “Succumbing to a Superior Power,” describes how some ethnic minorities in Palestine—especially the Druze, but also the Circassians—began to join the Jewish forces as they gained the upper hand. During the occupation of Ghuwayr, the Zionists had begun allowing the Druze to stay behind; and they chose to spare villages that were home to the cooperative Zu’biyya clan.

In the next section, “Arab Reactions,” Pappé describes the resistance put up by Fawzi al-Qawuqji in Galilee. After some minor successes, al-Qawuqji attempted to negotiate with the Consultancy and eventually met with Yehoshua Palmon in late March, but they did not come to terms. Afterward, though, he never put up a serious offensive. The Muslim Brotherhood soon arrived from Egypt in the south, but they were more enthusiastic than effective. Overall, Arab dissent did not move far beyond rhetoric, hoping that the UN would eventually intervene. The Arab League Council, a body with limited power, only decided to send troops to Palestine at the end of April, and even then, only Syria was ultimately willing to “engage in proper military preparations” (137). King Abdullah of Jordan, meanwhile, used the presence of his army (the Arab Legion) in Palestine primarily to strengthen his negotiating position with the Zionists. His motivation to help the Palestinians was limited. In a meeting between Shlomo Shamir, a high-ranking Jewish officer, and the British officers of the Arab Legion, the Zionists grudgingly agreed to let Jordan have the West Bank. Overall, the Palestinian leadership remained fragmented, despite some efforts to organize the military.

The next section, “Towards the ‘Real War,’” discusses unsuccessful efforts by the US to halt the disastrous partition plan and extend negotiations in March 1948—efforts prevented by the strong Zionist lobby in the US. In May, the US position was undermined by the declaration of a Jewish state by the Zionist leadership. This Jewish state was promptly recognized by the US. In two subsections, Pappé tackles the failure of the British to prevent the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians despite their continued presence in Palestine and their responsibility to maintain law and order until May, as well as the UN’s failure to supervise the partition and keep the peace.