More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
the Jordanians and the Jewish state: the Jordanians were to annex most of the areas allocated to the Arabs in the partition resolution, and in return would not join the military operations against the Jewish state. The British gave the scheme their blessing.
Abdullah did everything he could to be seen to be taking a serious part in the overall Arab effort against the Jewish state, but in practice his main objective was to secure Israeli consent for the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank.
Already by 12 March 1948, the State Department had drafted a new proposal to the UN, which suggested an international trusteeship over Palestine for five years, during which the two sides would negotiate an agreed solution. It has been suggested that this was the most sensible American proposal ever put forward in the history of Palestine, the like of which, alas, was never repeated. In the words of Warren Austin, the US ambassador to the United Nations: ‘The USA position is that the partition of Palestine is no longer a viable option.’
However, while logic was one aspect to take into consideration, the wish not to antagonise a powerful domestic lobby was another, and in this case a superior one. Had it not been for highly effective pressure by the Zionist lobby on President Harry Truman, the course of Palestine’s history could have run very differently. Instead, the Zionist sections of the American Jewish community learned an important lesson about their ability to impact American policy in Palestine (and later beyond, in the Middle East as a whole). In a longer process that continued through the 1950s and early 1960s, the
...more
To the local UN emissaries’ credit, it can be said that they at least sensed things were going from bad to worse and were tying to push for a re-evaluation of the partition policy, but they took no action beyond watching and reporting the beginning of the ethnic cleansing.
Weapons were scarce since the Arab armies’ main suppliers were Britain and France, who had declared an arms embargo on Palestine. This crippled the Arab armies but hardly affected the Jewish forces, who found a willing furnisher in the Soviet Union and in its new Eastern bloc.
The Consultancy went on meeting, but less regularly as the Jewish state had become a fait accompli with a government, cabinet, military command, secret services, etc., all in place.
The extra zeal thus infused into the troops produced one of the swiftest depopulation operations in one of the densest Arab areas of Palestine. Within twenty-nine hours of the end of the Mandate, almost all the villages in the north-western districts of the Galilee – all within the designated Arab state – had been destroyed, allowing a satisfied Ben-Gurion to announce to the newly assembled parliament: ‘The Western Galilee has been liberated’
My maternal grandmother was a teenager when Israeli troops entered Bassa and ordered all the young men to be lined up and executed in front of one of the churches. My grandmother watched as two of her brothers, one 21, the other 22 and recently married, were executed by the Hagana.
Only for three days, between 15 and 18 May, did Syrian artillery, tanks and infantry, with the occasional help of their air force, constitute any kind of threat to the Israeli forces. A few days later their efforts had already become more sporadic and less effective. After the first truce, they were on their way back home.
We will establish a Christian state in Lebanon, the southern border of which will be the Litani River. We will break Transjordan, bomb Amman and destroy its army, and then Syria falls, and if Egypt will still continue to fight – we will bombard Port Said, Alexandria and Cairo. This will be in revenge for what they (the Egyptians, the Aramis and Assyrians) did to our forefathers during Biblical times.
Its members were now free to turn their attention to other issues more in line with the qualifications of the Orientalist section of the Consultancy, such as advising the leader on what to do with the small communities of Palestinians that had been left in the mixed towns. The solution they came up with was to have all these people moved into one particular neighbourhood in each town, deprive them of their freedom of movement, and put them under a military regime.
it may be useful to add that, during the month of May, the definitive infrastructure of the IDF was decided upon and, within it, the central place of the military regime (referred to in Hebrew as Ha-Mimshal Ha-Tzvai) and Israel’s internal security services, the Shabak. The Consultancy was no longer needed. The machinery of ethnic cleansing was working on its own, propelled by its own momentum.
Article 9: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile. Article 13/2: Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country. Article 17/2: No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property. From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted as General Assembly Resolution 217 A (III), 10 December 1948, the day before Resolution 194 declared the unconditional right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes.
Their destruction appeared to have come as a genuine shock to nearby kibbutzim when they learned how these friendly villages had been savagely assaulted, their houses destroyed and all their people expelled.1 On the land of Huj, Ariel Sharon built his private residence, Havat Hashikmim, a ranch that covers 5000 dunam of the village’s fields.
They later reported to the Prime Minister that villagers were trying to return to their homes, so they had decided to instruct the army to prevent this at all costs. To make sure that the more liberal-minded among his government members would not object to this policy, Ben-Gurion demanded prior approval, and was duly given carte blanche to proceed on 16 June 1948.
The latter’s artillery bombarded whatever was in range, and the Egyptian air force attacked Tel Aviv four or five times, scoring a direct hit on Ben-Gurion’s home on 4 June that caused only limited damage. The Israeli air force retaliated by shelling the Arab capitals, resulting in a considerable number of casualties, but the Arab effort to salvage Palestine was already running out of steam, mainly due to the Legion’s insistence that East Jerusalem should remain part of Jordan.
The Egyptians were also able to hold on to the Palestinian town of Isdud on the coast and some inner enclaves in the Naqab (the Negev), as well as the villages south-west of Jerusalem, for quite some time.
During the truce, the army embarked on the massive destruction of a number of expelled villages: Mazar in the south, Fayja near Petah Tikva, Biyar ’Adas, Misea, Hawsha, Sumiriyya and Manshiyya near Acre. Huge villages such as Daliyat al-Rawha, Butaymat and Sabbarin were destroyed in one day; many others were erased from the face of the earth by the time the truce ended on 8 July 1948.
Operation ‘Yitzhak’ was launched on 1 June 1948 to attack and occupy Jenin, Tul-Karem and Qalqilya and capture the bridges on the Jordan River.
in the military archives one can find orders for the arial bombardment of Jenin and Tul-Karem, as well as other villages on the Palestine’s border. From July onwards, aeroplanes were used remorselessly in the cleansing operations, helping to force the villagers into a mass exodus – and indiscriminately targeting anyone unable to take cover in time.
weapons and lack of ammunition. One of the ALA battalions was the Hittin battalion. The commander at one point sent the following message to al-Qawqji: ‘The battalion’s equipment is not usable because of the amount of dirt in it. This includes rifles, machine guns and vehicles.’
Today Majd al-Krum is strangulated by Israel’s discriminatory policy, which does not allow Palestinian villages to expand naturally, but at the same time continues building new Jewish settlements around it. This is why ever since 1948 the village has had a strong political cadre of nationalist and communist resistance, which the government then punished further by demolishing houses, the rubble of which the villagers have left in place in commemoration of their past resilience and heroism, and which is still visible today from the Acre–Safad highway.
Mghar is also still there, spread out within a scenic canyon in the descending valley that connects the lower Galilee with the Lake of Tiberias. Here the Jewish occupying force was faced with a village where Christians, Muslims and Druze had coexisted for centuries. The military commander interpreted Plan Dalet as calling for the expulsion of only the Muslims. To make sure this was done swiftly, he executed several Muslims on the village’s piazza in front of all the villagers, which effectively ‘persuaded’ the rest to flee.
Like many villagers in the vicinity of Nazareth, the people of Saffuriyya fled to the city. Today sixty per cent of Nazareth’s residents are internal refugees.
In 1950, after the intervention of the Pope in Rome, the Christians were offered the opportunity to move back but refused to do so without their Muslim neighbours.
As in other places in Palestine, it is worthwhile to dwell a little on the local history of the village as it demonstrates how not only houses or fields were destroyed in the Nakba but a whole community disappeared, with all its intricate social networks and cultural achievements. Thus in Mujaydil the Israeli army obliterated a piece of history that included some fine architectural specimens and a series of significant social developments.
Mujaydil was a unique place in many other aspects. Apart from its religious buildings and modern infrastructure it had a relatively large number of schools. In addition to the two schools associated with the churches, there was also a state school, the Banin School, known for the magnificent trees that provided shade for the pupils during their breaks, for the well situated in the middle of the school yard and for the fruit trees that surrounded it.
Mujaydil was taken in the military operation to take over Nazareth and the villages around it, which was codenamed ‘Dekel’, Hebrew for palm tree. It is actually pine trees and not palms that today cover many of the destroyed Palestinian villages, hiding their remains under vast ‘green lungs’ planted by the Jewish National Fund for the purpose of ‘recreation and tourism’.
The order for Operation Kippa introduces yet another Hebrew synonym for cleansing. We have already encountered tihur and biur, and now Platoon D of the Alexandroni Brigade was ordered to execute a ‘cleaning’ operation (nikkuy),11 all terms that fit the accepted international definitions of ethnic cleansing.
One United Nations emissary was different. Count Folke Bernadotte had arrived in Palestine on 20 May and stayed there until Jewish terrorists murdered him in September for having ‘dared’ to put forward a proposal to re-divide the country in half, and to demand the unconditional return of all the refugees. He had already called for the refugees’ repatriation during the first truce, which had been ignored, and when he repeated his recommendation in the final report he submitted to the UN, he was assassinated.
Still, it is thanks to Bernadotte that in December 1948, the UN General Assembly posthumously adopted his legacy and recommended the unqualified return of all the refugees Israel had expelled, one of a host of UN resolutions Israel has systematically ignored. As president of the Swedish Red Cross, Bernadotte had been instrumental in saving Jews from the Nazis during the Second World War and this was why the Israeli government had agreed to his appointment as a UN mediator: they had not expected him to try to do for the Palestinians what he had done for the Jews only a few years before.
Yaacov Shimoni functioned as a liaison between the two branches of the government. As both an Orientalist and a European Jew, Shimoni was pre-eminently suited to help propagate Israel’s case abroad. In July he was eager to see a more accelerated pace on the ground: he believed there was a window of opportunity for completing the uprooting and occupation before the world turned its attention once more to Palestine.
It was called St Yohan de Tire during the time of the Crusaders, when it became a significant site for both Christian pilgrims and the local churches. Since then, with its Muslim majority, Tirat Haifa had always had a small community of Christians, both groups respecting the village’s Christian heritage and its overall Muslim character.
Throughout my childhood, the remains of the village’s old stone houses lay scattered around the cubic grey apartment blocks of the Jewish development town that had been built on the village site. After 1967 the local municipality demolished most of them, more out of profit-seeking real-estate zeal than as part of the ideological memoricide that had remained a priority for the Israelis.
The Hagana intelligence file described the village as ‘moderate’, but already back in the early 1940s an ominous detail had been inserted into the file that hinted at its future fate. The file stated that the village had some Samaritans in it who may originally have been Jews, but who, in the 1940s, had converted to Islam. For the Zionist historian and leading politician of the Zionist movement, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, this was enough to show that there had been continuity of Jewish presence along Palestine’s coast.
The original villagers were expelled and the governmental ‘naming committee’, a body in charge of replacing Palestinian names with Hebrew ones, decided to call the occupied village Ein Hod. One of the five families of the Abu al-Hija clan found refuge in the countryside nearby a few miles to the east and settled there. Stubbornly and courageously refusing to move, they gradually created a new village under the old name of Ayn Hawd. The success of this branch of the Abu al-Hija clan is quite remarkable. They looked for refuge first in the nearby village of Tirat Haifa, only to discover that
...more
the High Command reported to the UN truce observers that the operation against the three villages was a policing activity, even choosing Operation Policeman as the codename for the whole assault.
Elderly members of these villages, ever since 1948, had been trying to maintain the maqam of Shaykh Shehadeh. Aware of these efforts and in an attempt to stop this journey of memory and worship, the Israeli authorities declared the maqam a holy Jewish site. One of the refugees from the village, Ali Hamuda, almost single-handedly safeguarded the maqam and kept its Muslim character alive. Although he was fined and threatened with arrest for having renovated it in 1985, he persisted in keeping the place of his worship sacred and the memory of his village alive.
The people of Ayn Ghazal who had stayed put rejoiced when they heard a second truce had come into effect. Even those who had been guarding the village since May thought they could now relax their guard. These were also the days of the annual Ramadan fast and on 26 July most of the villagers had come out onto the street in the afternoon to break the fast and were gathering at the few coffeehouses in the village centre when an aeroplane appeared and dropped a bomb that scored a direct hit on the crowd. The women and children fled in panic while the men stayed behind and, soon enough, saw the
...more
One might wonder why newspaper reports of a massacre on this scale did not provoke an outcry in the United States. For those who have been shocked by the callousness and inhumanity that US troops have sometimes displayed towards Arabs in the operation in Iraq, the reports from Lydd may seem strangely familiar. At the time, American reporters like Wheeler were astonished by what ironically he called the Israeli ‘Blitzkrieg’, and by the resoluteness of the Jewish troops. Like Bilby’s description (‘ruthlessly brilliant’), Wheeler’s account of the Israeli army’s campaign sadly neglected to provide
...more
Ramla, or Ramleh as is it is known today, the home town of one of the PLO’s most respected leaders, the late Khalil al-Wazir, Abu Jihad, lay nearby. The attack on this town with its 17,000 inhabitants had started two days earlier on 12 July 1948, but the final occupation was only completed after the Israelis had taken al-Lydd.
Rabin estimated that a total of 50,000 people had been ‘transferred’ in this inhuman way. Again, the inevitable question present itself: three years after the Holocaust, what went through the minds of those Jews who watched these wretched people pass by?
The attack on Nazareth started 9 July, the day after the first truce ended. When the mortar bombardment on the city began, the people anticipated forced eviction and decided they would prefer to leave. However, Madlul Bek ordered them to stay. Telegrams between him and commanders of the Arab armies that Israel intercepted reveal that he, and other ALA officers, were ordered to try to stop expulsions by all means: the Arab governments wanted to prevent more refugees streaming into their countries. Thus we find Madlul turning back some people who were already making their way out of the city.
...more
As with so many of the villages mentioned, the Nakba hit when prosperity had just arrived. A new school and a new irrigation system were the signs of its recently won affluence, but these were all lost to the Hittin residents after 17 July 1948, when a unit of Brigade Seven entered the village and began cleansing it in a particularly brutal manner. Many people escaped to nearby villages that would be occupied in October, when they would be uprooted a second time. This brought to an end Operation Palm Tree, which expelled all the villages around Nazareth.
There were 90,000 Bedouin in 1948, divided between 96 tribes, already in the process of establishing a land-ownership system, grazing rights and water access. Jewish troops immediately expelled eleven tribes, while they forced another nineteen into reservations that Israel defined as closed military areas, which meant they were allowed to leave only with a special permit. The expulsion of Negev Bedouin continued until 1959.30
The second truce was violated the moment it came into effect. In its first ten days Israeli forces occupied key villages north of Haifa, another pocket they had left alone for a while, as they had to the villages south of the city along the coast. Damun, Imwas, Tamra, Qabul and Mi’ar were thus taken. This completed the occupation of the Western Galilee.
By the end of July, the Israelis started strengthening the siege around this pocket to force it to surrender. The Egyptians, however, held on until the end of the year. The disintegration of the Egyptian forces left the northern Negev, from the slopes of Mt Hebron to the Mediterranean Sea near Gaza, at the mercy of the Israeli troops. The belt of villages that had been settled centuries ago on the edge of the arid Negev desert were now stormed, occupied and expelled in quick succession. Only the Gaza Strip and the West Bank were successfully protected by Egyptian and Jordanian troops
...more
because of its apprehension that the UN would demand an explanation for their occupation, an apprehension that proved totally unfounded. Inexplicably, the issue of Israel’s legal (read: ‘illegal’) status in UN-designated Arab Palestine was never raised during the momentary interest the international community briefly displayed in the fate of post-mandatory Palestine and that of its indigenous population. Until Israel was accepted as a full member of the UN, in May 1949, the designation of these areas alternated between ‘administered’ and ‘occupied’. In May 1949, all distinctions disappeared,
...more
These Iraqis were among the few of Palestine’s neighbours who actually fought and succeeded in rescuing whole Palestinian villages.
