Vertreibung und Flucht der Palästinenser 1948

de:Palästinensisches Flüchtlingsproblem

The Palestinian Exodus is the name given to the Palestinian refugee flight during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, numbering some 700,000 people. Their homes and villages have either been destroyed or expropriated to Israeli Jews and most of them have never been allowed to return. Today the refugees and their descendants amount to some 5.5-6.5 million Palestinians. Why and how they left is still today a contested issue.

Was the Arab side responsible for the exodus?

The official Israeli position has always been that it was the surrounding Arab nations who caused the refugee crisis by declaring war on Israel: "The migration of the Arabs of 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, Oct 1948). It has been claimed that during the period preceeding the 1948 war and particularly during the invasion of Arab powers into the newly-declared Israel, the Arab High Command called for the Palestinian population to leave their homes.

Although always rejected by Palestinian writers and some others, this view has long been the accepted narrative in Israeli government discourse and, until the 1980s, in most books written from a Zionist viewpoint. However, the work of the Israeli New Historians starting in the 1980s began to question this view. For example, concerning the alleged evacuation order or orders issued by Arab leaders, Benny Morris wrote:

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]

In "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem", Morris also notes Haganah intelligence reports from May 5-6 referring to a Jordanian campaign calling the Palestinians to stay put and for those who left to return, and other documents describing muftis urging their populations to hold their ground and even threatening those who leave with punishments.

In some cases the forced expulsion of Palestinians has been admitted by the participants. Perhaps the most famous example of such an admission was in a passage of Yitzhak Rabin's memoirs that was deleted by the government censors but given to the New York Times [Oct 23, 1979]. In this passage Rabin described how the 50,000 residents of Lydda and Ramle were expelled on Ben Gurion's orders.

Ethnic cleansing?

Palestinian sources view the exodus as the work of an organised Zionist expulsion. This view was first formulated by Walid Khalidi in "Plan Dalet: Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine" in 1961. For the Yishuv in Palestine, the Arab population in Palestine was a great hinderance for a Jewish state because it would certainly contain a very large Arab minorty (the land alloted by the UN partition plan in 1947 contained 40% arabs).

"In the area allocated to the Jewish State there are not more than 520,000 Jews and about 350,000 non-Jews, mostly Arabs. Together with the Jews of Jerusalem, the total population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment, will be about one million, including almost 40% non-Jews. such a [population] composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish State. This [demographic] fact must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. With such a [population] composition, there cannot even be absolute certainty that control will remain in the hands of the Jewish majority .... There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60%." (Ben-Gurion, speaking to the Central Committee of the Histadrut, 1947)

There was a strong majority among the Zionist leadership in favour of transfer of Arabs out of Jewish state.

"I support compulsory [Palestinian Arab population] transfer. I do not see in it anything immoral." (Ben-Gurion, 1938)

According to Palestinians, the expulsion idea was there from the beginning but the Zionists decided to be quiet about it.

"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." (Sharett, 1944)

On December 19, 1947, Ben-Gurion advised the Haganah on rules of engagement with the Palestinian population:

"we adopt the system of aggressive defense ; with every Arab attack we must respond with a decisive blow: the destruction of the place or the expulsion of the residents along with the seizure of the place." (Ben-Gurion, 1947)

Born of War

"the Palestinian refugee problem was born of war, not by design, Jewish or Arab." ("The Birth...", p. 286, Morris)

Is an often cited quote which offers a third explanation for the refugee problem. The New Historians with Benny Morris in its lead are the main proponents for this view. They argue that, while there was regular expulsions taking place, most Palestinians left for other reasons. Of about 369 Arab localities in Israel within its 1949 borders, 228 left under attack by Jewish troops, 41 were expelled, 90 left in panic as a neighbouring town fell or because of rumours of Jewish atrocities (this was especially true after the Deir Yassin massacre), only six left after Arabs called them to leave and the reason for the remaining 45 is unknown (The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, Morris). An integillence service report dated 30 June 1948 titled "The emigration of Palestinian Arabs in the period 1/12/1947-1/6/1948" states that 55% of the emigration was caused by "Haganah/IDF", 15% from the underground gangs, 2% to explicit expulsion orders and 1% to their psychological warfare. Furthermore 22% supposedly left to "fear" and a "crisis of confidence". From this report Morris concludes that there was no "campaign aimed at the wholesale expulsion of the native Palestinian population".

Another reason for the flight was the poor condition that the Palestinian society was in. It was deeply divided between rural and urban population, between Christians and Muslims and various elite clans. The Palestinian population consisted mostly of illiterate peasantry and there was, as opposed to the Yishuv, no national unity among them. For some, exile may have become an attractive option, at least until Palestine calmed down.

After the exodus

The assets (including land and houses) of Palestinians who were deemed by Israel to have abandoned them, which included those who left the area that became Israel and also many who remained, was administered by the Custodian of Absentee Property, from which the great majority was passed to the Jewish National Fund or the Israel Lands Authority. In practice this meant it became only available for the use of Jews. Much the same thing happened to the lands held by vacated villages.

The reason why most of the Palestinian people departed from Israel is still relevant today. If they left of their own free will, then Israel claims that they have less just cause to demand to return to their land than if they were driven from it.

See also: Palestinian refugee, New Historians.