The following article is taken from the book, "Still on Vacation? The Evictions of the Palestinians in 1948". If you would like more information on this publication, please contact the webmaster at webmaster@birzeit.edu

by Sharif Kanaana, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Birzeit University

Introduction
The topic of this paper is the "exodus" of the Palestinian Arabs in 1948. More specifically I will concern myself with whether it is possible to discern some broad patterns in their exodus. This concern is motivated by two factors: one is the desire-inherent to the human mind to lend order and coherence to a messy and unruly topic like the exodus of Palestinians in 1948, second, is the assumption that patterns detected in the exodus would reflect patterns inb the causes behind it and the circumstances leading to it. I use the term "exodus" advisedly, in order to avoid loaded terms which would betray my stand from the beginning. That will become clear as I proceed further in my presentation. My concern, thus, is not with the literature produced during the last few years by the so-called "revisionists" or "new historians", although I will refer to it occasionally.

In this paper I will be dealing with three major issues: namely, I will talk briefly about the magnitude of the Palestinian refugee problem, then summarize the types of questions still being argued concerning this problem, and finally talk, in much more detail, about patterns in the exodus of the Palestinian refugees. Back to top

Magnitude of the Palestinian Exodus:
What is the size of this exodus we are talking about, in terms of numbers? The idea here is not to argue about the figures, and about whose figures are more correct. The idea is simply to get a feeling about the size of the problem. I usually use round figures which are easy to remember and I am willing to concede to anyone who may argue that these figures are off by five or ten percent, because the issue of absolute numbers is not a major concern of this paper.

In terms of area, at the end of the 1948 war Israel ended up with a little over 80 percent of the country's surface area. This was about 12 times what the Jewish people actually owned at the beginning of the war,and about one-and-half times what was alIotted to the Jewish State by the 1947 UN Partition Plan. What is now known as the West Bank and Gaza Strip make up the under 20 percent of the country remaining then in Arab hands.

In terms of population, about a million and quarter Palestinian Arabs lived in Palestine toward the end of 1947. About 300 thousand of them lived in what became later known as the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the rest in the area which later became Israel. Of the latter group about 150 thousand stayed on in Israel, the others --around 800 thousand-became refugees outside Israel. In addition, about 30 thousand of those who stayed in Israel were "Internal Refugees", that is Palestinian citizens of Israel who were not allowed to go back to their homes after the war.

Thus, roughly, about 70 percent of the whole Palestinian people became refugees. This is still today about the same ratio of refugees to non-refugees among the estimated 4.5-5 million Palestinians. We are, thus, talking about 3.15-3.5 million Palestinian refugees, today.

In terms of localities --that is, towns and villages-- Palestinian Arabs, before the war, lived in about 850 localities, 5 of which were mixed, Arab-Jewish towns. About 300 localities were in what later became the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and about 550 were in the part which later became Israel. Of the latter, Arabs continued to live in about one hundred. The other 450 towns, villages, and bedouin settlements became empty and the great majority were physically destroyed. Back to top

State of the Argument.
All this, however, happened over 40 years ago, why are we still pre-occupied with it 40 years later? Some historians and social scientists may claim that the reason is the search for the truth, for its own sake, independent of the consequences. The real reason, however, is that the Israeli-Arab conflict is still alive and awaits resolution. Everyone concerned with this resolution --Arabs, Jews or mediators from the East or the West-- are now talking about two major issues upon which the resolution, supposedly, hinges. These are territorial compromise and Israeli security requirements. There is a tendency these days to think that these two issues can be reconciled; Israel may agree to withdraw from parts of the occupied territories in return for peace agreements, secure borders, and international guarantees of its security. Palestinians are willing to establish their independent state on any part from which Israel withdraws. Everyone, however, is avoiding the mention of what is suspected to be the stickiest issue in any peace talks, which is what to do with the over three million Palestinian refugees who, surely, are going to demand the right and/or receive compensation. At the political and propaganda levels the argument over what to do with the refugees is still the same today as it was 40 years ago when it first started. There is a tacit assumption shared by both groups, Arabs and Jews, that the party which caused the Palestinians to leave is to bear the price for solving the refugee problem. Each side claims the other is guilty. Zionist and Israeli leaders have- always claimed that Arab leaders including Palestinians called upon the Palestinian people to leave their towns and villages and move to safer places in Palestine or other Arab countries. They go even as far as claiming that orders to that effect were issued to Palestinians over many Arab radio stations.

Zionists and Israelis who make this claim add that the motives behind issuing such orders were:

1. To convince the world that the UN Partition Plan, which was accepted, at the time, by the Zionists and rejected by Arabs, was not a viable solution to the Palestine question

2. To embarrass the Zionists, and later Israel by making them appear as if they were driving out the Arab population.

3. To have the Palestinians avoid needless losses which may have resulted from remaining in battle zones, and to clear the way for the invading Arab armies who were supposed to destroy the newly born Jewish State and to throw the Jews into the sea in a matter of days or weeks

This being the case, Israel has always argued, Palestinian refugees should be settled in the Arab countries who created the problem to start with, and should, therefore, bear the consequences.

The Arab countries, on the other hand, have always claimed the Palestinian people were driven out of their homes and their country by the force of arms, within the frame of a pre-planned and well orchestrated comprehensive zionist plan to rid the country of its native population. Palestinian refugees, thus, according to this view, have the right to return to their towns and villages in occupied Palestine, and Israel should bear the cost of resettling them and compensating them for their lost and damaged property.

These views, on either side, were argued in international circles and publicised worldwide. The Israeli-Zionist propaganda machine being a lot more powerful, the Israeli claims have become better known and more widely accepted, at least in the Western world. Since the early sixties several historians, social scientists and journalists have attempted to investigate such propagandist claims in an academic, scientific and, supposedly, objective manner.

Researchers like Walid Khalidi (1959, 1961) and Erskine Childers (1961), and others after them were, in my opinion, quite successful in refuting the Israeli claim that Arab leaders called on the Palestinians to leave their homes. Actually, the opposite was found to be true; it was established that official and unofficial bodies from the Arab world, including Palestinian groups, took a hostile stand toward those who left their homes, called upon Palestinians to stay in their homes and keep their jobs and went as far as threatening those-who would leave with severe punishment. Back to top

Refuting Israeli claims about the causes of the Palestinian exodus did not, however, mean that Arab claims were established. The Arab claims were related to the plans, strategies and tactics used by the Jewish military organizations, and later the Israeli Army, during the war. The investigation of such issues was impossible without access to classified materials. Access to such material became possible only toward the beginning of this decade when Israeli, British and American state, party, military and political papers were declassified which made millions of documents, relevant to the 1948 war and to the circumstances surrounding the Palestinian exodus, available to researchers. This gave rise to what is now known as the "revisionist" or "new history". The "revisionists", with the kind of material available to them, were able to shed light on both sides of the argument. I will take as an example here the work of Benny Morris, possibly the best known among the "New Historians". In his articles (1986 a,b) and his recent book, The birth of the Palestinian refugee problem, 1947-1949 (1988), Morris concurs with the findings of researchers like Khalidi and Childers concerning the lack of evidence in support of the Israeli claims about the causes of the Palestinian exodus

When it comes to the Arab accusations of the Jewish military organizations and the Israeli army Morris gives the argument a new and interesting twist. The results of his research show that the main cause for the exodus is Israeli military action, but he emphasizes over and over again that there was no overall plan to expel the Arabs. Decisions to expel the Arabs, or to force them to flee, from each locality were, supposedly, taken independently and spontaneously, according to the military and strategic requirements of that specific case. And Benny Morris was able to find a justification for every case that was --and he hints, should have been-evacuated due to direct or indirect Israeli military activity. The justifications given vary from case to case but they can be summarised as follows:

1. The one most frequently used justification was that after conquering a new territory, it was unwise for the Israeli forces to leave ''hostile" or "potentially hostile" population behind their front lines.

2. Sometimes it was decided before an attack was mounted that a locality or a group of localities had to be "pacified", and "pacification" is defined as "depopulation and destruction" of a town or village. This, however, Morris explains, was not done for the purpose of expelling Palestinians, it was rather "governed by military considerations and was geared to achieving military ends", (p. 62).

3. In some cases, massacres were committed and the remaining population expelled. In such cases it is explained that the massacre was the result of the town or village putting up stiff resistance. Thus, when talking about Deir Yassin massacre Morris states "Altogether some 250 Arabs, mostly non-combatants, were murdered; there were also cases of mutilation and rape. The surviving inhabitants were expelled to Arab-held East Jerusalem." So far a simple descriptive statement. But somehow, Morris does not seem to be able to resist the temptation to offer some sort of rationalization or justification for the behavior of the Jewish militias. "The weight of the evidence", he adds, "suggests that the dissident troops did not go in with the intention of comitting a massacre but lost their heads during the battle, which they had found unexpectedly tough-going." (pp. 113-114). Back to top

4. In some cases Morris even decided that the evacuation of an Arab village or town served the interests of both sides, Arabs and Jews. Thus, when discussing the fall of Lydda and Ramleh, he states that "from the start, the operations against the two towns were designed to include civilian panic and flight." Then Morris proceeds to describe how the two towns were shelled and bombed for several days and how some of their civilian population started to flee. The two towns surrendered and the Hagana forces entered them. In Lydda there was supposedly sniping by armed Lydda town's people, following a fire fight between the Israeli forces and three Arab Legion armoured cars in which 3 Israeli soldiers were killed. A massacre then followed in which over 250 Lydda men, women and children were killed, and many wounded. All able bodied menfolk of both towns were detained, and the rest of the population placed under curfew, and the "troops were in the midst of preparations to expel the inhabitants." Morris (pp. 208-9) describes the situation of the inhabitants at this stage as follows: "Within a 72-hour period, they had undergone the shock of battle and unexpected conquest by the Jews, abandonment by the Arab Legion, a slaughter (in Lydda), a continuous curfew with house-to-house searches, a roundup of able-bodied males and the separation of families, lack of food and medical attention, the flight of relatives, continuous isolation in their houses and general dread of the future." After all this Morris makes the very clever and perceptive observation that "During the night of 12-13 July, most of the remaining inhabitants of the two towns probably decided that it would be best to leave and not to continue living under Jewish rule." (p.209). And from that observation he goes on to draw the conclusion to the effect that the Jewish forces were not to blame for the evacuation of the inhabitants of Lydda and Ramleh because, in his words: ''Thus, at this point, there was dovetailing, as it was, of Jewish and Arab interests and wishes - an IDF bent on expelling the population and a population ready, perhaps even eager, to move to Arab-held territory." It turns out that after negotiations between the two "interested" parties the Arabs were able to strike a winning deal by refusing to leave without taking with them their detained menfolk. Finally, the Jewish negotiators gave in and agreed to the release of the detainees and all the remaining inhabitants of Lydda and Ramleh left their homes happily ever after.

5. Occasionally, Morris resorted to the field of psychology and came up with some very creative and imaginative explanations. And although he admitted from the very beginning of his book (pp. 1-3) that he did not use any sources from the Arab world nor did he interview any Arabs who lived through the experience of the first Israeli-Arab war and the Palestinian exodus. Still, in the tradition of the best of orientalists, he felt that he knew how the Arabs felt, thought, and consequently acted or reacted, even I when these thoughts were unconscious. In short, I he discovered that he was an expert on Arab | psychology. Thus, on p.24 of his book he explains that Arab leaders, according to British sources, believed that the Zionists wanted to conquer large areas of Arab lands beyond the borders of Mandate Palestine and expel the Arab inhabitants out of their state. Morris then adds: "Such Arab prognoses were to be in the nature of self-fulfilling prophecies. In 1948, Arabs were to be squeezed out of Jaffa and Haifa, and the Jews were to behave, at least in part, as the Arab leaders expected and said they would behave." This, as I understand the term "self-fulfilling prophecy"would mean that it was the Arab expectations which caused the Zionists to behave toward them the way they did, and therefore, one cannot blame them for what they did. Back to top

In another place (p.288), Morris becomes even more fancy in his psychologization. In attempting to explain the flood of Arab refugees during the period of April-May 1948, he resorts to the following convoluted argument. In April-May, and indeed, again in October, the "atrocity factor" played a major role in certain areas of the country in encouraging flight. Now since this was the period during which Jewish forces carried out several massacres in Arab villages including Deir Yassin near Jerusalem, Nasr-el-Din near Tiberias and Ein ez-Zeitun near Safad, Morris-'s statement sounds quite plausable. But as one reads on, one finds out that the meaning of the statement is not as straight forward as it appears. Morris continues his explanation as follows: "Arab villagers and towns'people prompted by the fear that the Jews, if victorious, would do to them what, in the reverse circumstances-, victorious Arab fighters would have done... to defeated Jews, took to their heels." Morris then bends over backward to be "fair" and "objective" and thus adds "The actual atrocities committed by the Jewish forces (primarily at Deir Yassin) reinforced such fears considerably," Jewish atrocities, however, according to Morris, do not seem to be enough, on their own, to reinforce Arab fears, thus he adds: "Especially when amplified and magnified loudly and persistently in the Arab media, particularly by AHC spokesmen, for weeks thereafter.

6. Finally, if no other excuse is available, Jewish atrocities can always be blamed on "local commanders and troops" who, so to speak, did not know any better. Thus, after talking about several massacres committed in northern Galilee villages including, according to his own accounts, the murder of 52 men in Sa'sa' and 94 people at Saliha, and several smaller massacres, Morris finds it necessary to explain that "All the atrocities were initiatives of local commanders and troops; none were ordered, initiated or condoned by brigade, Operation Hiram or Northern Front headquarters." Morris then goes on with his apology to say; "The perpetrators of at least some of the crimes were subsequently - if lightly - punished." (p.230). Well, what more would one expect! In addition to all this, Morris goes on to explain that these atrocities alone could not have caused the wave of refugees which resulted from Operation Hiram because, according to Morris, "the atrocities were limited in size, scope and time." (p.231)

Thus, after giving us a full and very detailed account of the events which amount, cumulatively, to the Palestinian Arab exodus, what conclusions does Morris draw concerning the responsibility for "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem"? In presenting his conclusions, both in the introduction and conclusion to his book, Morris starts out with a bland statement, intended to sound cool, balanced and objective which in a sense says that neither side is really to blame, it is simply the nature of war. Thus, in the introduction he states: "It cannot be stressed too strongly that, while this is not a military history, the events it describes... occurred in war time and were a product, direct and indirect, of that war." (p.3). His 10-page conclusion to the book starts out: "The Palestinian refugee problem was born of war, not by design, Jewish or Arab. It was largely a byproduct of Arab and Jewish fears and of the protracted, bitter fighting that characterized the first Israeli-Arab war." (p. 286). But then he goes on to qualify these statements, and his modifiers and qualifiers lead the reader a long ways toward where to place the blame. In fact the whole book can be seen as a series of objective sounding descriptions of war events followed by interpretive and suggestive qualifiers and modifiers. Thus, after making the fair-sounding statement in his introduction, which we quoted above, he goes on to alert the reader by saying: "Throughout, when examining what happened in each area at different points in the war, the reader must recall the nature of the backdrop." And what is the nature of the backdrop according to Morris? Well, it consists of four points which the reader is exhorted to bear in mind, throughout his reading of the book. These are: 1) "The continuing clash of arms between Palestinian militia-men and, later, regular Arab armies and the Yishuv ..." 2) "The intention of the Palestinian leadership and irregulars and, later, of most of the Arab states' leaders and armies in launching the hostilities... to destroy the Jewish State and possibly also the yishuv;" 3) "The fears of the Yishuv that the Palestinians and the Arab states, if given the chance, intended to re-enact a Middle Eastern version of the Holocaust;" and 4) "The extremely small dimensions... of the Yishuv in comparison with the Palestine Arab community and the infinitely larger surroundinq Arab hinter land." Back to top

From such qualifiers and from the justifications and rationalizations which we have previously seen, and from the tone of his language throughout the book, such as referring invariably to Jewish "reprisal" or "retaliatory" attacks, the reader gets a clear message of the conclusions the author wants him to draw. The implied causal chain becomes something like this:

The Yishuv had no intention to drive any Arabs out of the country nor did they harbor any evil or hostile intentions toward them. The Arabs being backward, highly conservative and xenophobic, resented the yishuv as a foreign element and began to fear encroachment and even displacement (p.4). They became hostile to the point of starting anti-Jewish riots and pogroms (p.5) and later wanted to destroy the new Jewish state and the Yishuv, and were about to commit a Middle East Version of the Holocaust, only three years after the European one (p.3). The Yishuv had no alternative but to enter the war against the Arabs in order to defend itself and, later, to defend the Jewish state in the face of the hostilities launched by the Palestinian armed militia-men and irregulars in November-December 1947 and the Arab regular armies in May 1948, (p.3). And although the Jewish forces did launch some retatiatory offensives and even occasionally resorted to the "pacification" of some towns or villages for purely military considerations the majority of the Arabs fled either because they were cowardly and suffering from a "psychosis of flight", (p.287) or because they were paranoid enough to scare themselves into panicky flight by projecting their own hostilities and evil intentions on the Jews (p.288).

Benny Morris' book is thus, in my opinion, a piece of Israeli-Zionist propaganda despite all the dates, figures, quotes, footnotes and all the other elaborate scholarly paraphernalia. As far as the causes of the Palestinian refugee problem it is actually a lot more dangerous than the previous line of Israeli propaganda, because it is more sophisticated, articulate and deviously hides its thesis behind a facade of objective, scientific and academic sounding style and research methodology. Actually, I believe, the data he presented in his book supports neither his explicitly stated nor his insinuated conclusions. His book seems to be a good metaphor of the Israeli Zionist campaign in 1948 as he describes it in the book - both achieved their desired goals, supposedly, without planning for it.

It is extremely tempting to argue with Morris' conclusions using his own data. It is also tempting to point out the inconsistencies between the conclusions he reached and the whole history and philosophy of the Zionist movement, although at another level, as I have just pointed out, he fits very well in the history of Zionist thought.

Patterns:
I have, so far, discussed the history of the argument concerning the causes of the Palestinian refugee problem and the assumed implications of the causes to the possible resolutions of the problem, ending with Benny Morris' contribution to the argument. As I said before, it is tempting to get involved in this argument. but I will resist the temptation. The reason is that in order to join in on this argument, one must accept two basic assumptions without which it makes no sense to argue. I,for one, do not accept these assumptions. The two assumptions are:

1. One must believe that by establishing the cause or the responsibility for a political military problem, in a logical, academic way, one can influence, or contribute toward the resolution of the problem. But throughout history, at least in political-military issues, if not everything else, might-made-right, and the weak and the defeated pays the price of his weakness. And here I will allow myself to digress by saying that the whole history of the Zionist movement, the establishment of Israel, and the support it still receives from the Western World, is one of the most flagrant cases of might-makes-right in the whole history of mankind. It is amusing to realize that might-makes-right even when might is saying: "Might is wrong." What I mean to say is that Palestinians have been losing their lives, their children, their homes, their lands,their country, and have been screaming to get the attention of the world for about a century now, but to no avail. But when a group of Israeli or western historians start to say that Israel bears part of the blame for what happened to the Palestinians then that is called the "New History" and the Western world is willing to listen, take notice and even hold seminars and conferences on the topic.

2. The second assumption one needs to make in order to argue the causes is that Palestinians may or may not have lost the right to their homes, property, lands and country, depending on the causes behind their exodus. I personally do not accept this assumption but tend to believe that no one had any legal, ethical, or moral right to prevent them from returning at the end of the war, to their homes, lands and property independent of the causes of their absence, be it eviction, fear of war, instructions from Arab leaders or going on a vacation until the war was over. Ultimately, Palestinians are refugees today because the Zionist program required lands in order to gather and settle Jews on it. Again it is a case of might-makes-right and there is no use in arguing the causes. Back to top

For the rest of my presentation, then, I will describe a process rather than argue causes or assign responsibilities. The method I will use to describe the long and complicated process resulting in the present distribution of the Palestinian people, is by attempting to detect systematic patterns or regularities which can organize and summarize large numbers of individual facts. These patterns are not discreet or independent from each other but may interact and some at the macro-level may subsume micro-level patterns. Clearly, my perspective on the 1948 war is a long one going at least as far back as the last quarter of last century. I will, then, start with some of the broadest patterns, of which the 1948 war is only a detail, then zoom in on some micro-patterns within the 1948 war.

Numbers in time: The picture is often given as if the Palestinian exodus took place only during the 1948 war and that it happened suddenly and all at one time, that it took the Zionist leadership by surprise, and that they could not have stopped it even had they wanted to do so. This is good for absolving the Zionists from the responsibility for what happened but it is far from the truth. The 1948 Palestinian exodus is only a link in a long chain, still going on today and will, most probably, continue for the foreseeable future.

Looking at the long term trend in the relative numbers between Jews and Arabs in Palestine, in a mechanical manner and without assigning any blame or responsibility, we can see a clear unidirectional trend starting in the eighties of last century and continuing up to this day. The trend is clearly in the steady increase in the percentage of Jews and the steady decrease in the percentage of Arabs. This trend came as the result of two sub-trends' that is the continuous increase of Jews (beyond what is expected by natural growth), through immigration' and the continuous decrease (beyond what is expected by natural growth) of the Arabs. This means that the trend has not been the result of only one side gaining, or only one side losing, or both sides winning or losing at different rates, but that it has been a process of a win-lose game, a process of displacement. The process, of course, did not always proceed at the same rate, although it took always the same general direction. The rise in number of Jews took some sudden up-swings such as in the period immediately after the 1st World War, in the late thirties after the coming of the Nazi regime in Germany to power, in the early fifties shortly after the establishment of the Jewish State, and, of course, right now with the expected flood of Russian Jews and with the well-orchestrated wave of "anti-Semitism" in different parts of the world. Again the Arab exodus extended over a long period of time. Since before the turn of the century, and especially in the 20's and 30's the Jewish National Fund (JNF) was able to buy large tracts of land from absentee landlords and, with the help of the British police force, drive tenant farmers from villages on such lands. In this manner between 60-70 Palestinian villages were emptied and destroyed before 1948. Large numbers of Palestinians left the country during the difficult days of the Arab revolt between 1936-39. The height of the Palestinian exodus was reached during the 20 months of the 1948 war, but the exodus did not stop with the end of the 1948 war; eviction and expulsion of individuals, partly evacuated villages, and whole villages, continued well into the late fifties and resulted in over 20 villages being emptied and destroyed after the end of the 1948 war. The 1967 war resulted in another wave of refugees, some of them for the second time, and a stream of emigrants has continued to trickle across the borders to the Arab countries, the United States, Europe and Latin America since then. This stream has increased significantly since the beginning of the Intifada.

The recent flood of Jewish immigrants from Russia, Ethiopia and other countries, which is expected to accelerate in the near future is expected to generate an Israeli onslaught on Arab lands in the West Bank and Gaza, and to squeeze out a large number of the population. Back to top

Geographical Pattern: When the Zionist movement first started, it was a secular nationalist movement not attached to any specific geographical area. Later, however, Zionist leaders reached the conclusion that concentrating their ideology around Palestine would get them the support of more Jews, Christians and Colonialists. At the time there was only a very small number of Jews in Palestine. These were religious Jews who lived around the holy shrines in the holy cities of Jerusalem, Hebron Tiberias, Safad and a few other locations. It is interesting to notice that, on the other hand, in its attempt to acquire lands and to establish settlements, the Zionist movement did not concentrate its effort at the beginning either on the holy cities or on the core of the religious-historical Jewish claim, the mountains of "Judea" and "Samaria" where the Jewish State once existed. These efforts were rather concentrated on the fertile plains and valleys in the coastal plains, Marj Ibn Amer and the Jordan Valley to the north of Beisan, and the Hula Plains, none of which was ever part of the ancient Jewish State. This process continued all the way up to, through, and past, the 1948 war.

The military efforts were first concentrated on occupying Arab towns and villages in these same areas and "cleaning" them from their Arab population, and gradually moved to the foot-hills of the "Judean and "Samarian' mountains, and when, toward the end of the war they occupied the Galilee area, they, uncharacteristically, allowed a large concentration of Arab villages to survive only in the central mountainous area. The exception to this rule were the villages in the Jerusalem corridor which were eliminated early in the war. It is interesting again, to notice that the pattern emerging at the end of the 1948 war was a lot more consistent with two Jewish Agency Partition Plans proposed consecutively in 1936 and 1946,-than with the United Nations 1947 Partition Plan. Both Zionist plans excluded "Judea" and "Samaria" from the Jewish State, as did the UN Plan, but unlike the latter the two Jewish Agency plans included the Galilee within the Jewish State,(see Gilbert 1984, pp. 26, 35).

Ben Gurion is known among Zionists to have been a pragmatist. As part of his pragmatism he is said to have advocated accepting a partition plan which would give the Jews a small state, free of Arabs, and then canceling the partition agreement and expanding into the whole country (Morris 1988, 2). Ben Gurion was the first Israeli Prime Minister and Defense Minister. He accepted the UN Partiion Plan, got a small Jewish State' freed it from Arabs, and started the process of expanding into the whole country but stayed within the limits of the 1936 and 1946 Jewish Agency Partition Plans. Was that the Zionist definition of "the whole country"? It seems not. Apparently the 1936 and 1946 proposals represented only a stage within an older design.

In 1919 the Zionist Organization submitted to the Paris Peace Conference a territorial plan for the Jewish National Home promised in 1917 in the Balfour Declaration, (Gilbert 1984, 9). The plan was rejected at the time by the Peace Conference, but apparently, it still serves as the blue print for the "Greater Israel" toward which the whole Zionist project is keyed. This blue print includes all of Mandate Palestine (including, of course, the West Bank and Gaza, Southern Lebanon, the Golan Heights, and the part of Jordan lying West of the Hedjaz Railway which ran from Damascus through Deraa, Amman, Ma'an and on to Mecca. In 1967 and later in 1982 Israel occupied all the lands included in this plan minus the Jordanian part, plus the Sinai desert. It is interesting to notice that the Sinai was not included in the plan and was later returned to Egypt, in return for a peace agreement. Judging by the geographical pattern, emerging from this master plan, neither the Syrians, Lebanese or Palestinians can hope for a similar deal, and the Jordanians are advised to take Mr. Sharon's threats very seriously.

We may now look at some patterns related specifically to the 1948 war. We should, however, keep in mind what was mentioned previously, namely, that 1948 was only a station along a very long process which started toward the end of last century and is still going on today. The scale of the Zionist activities in 1948 may have been larger, and the pace may have been faster, but the philosophy and the goals and even the strategies and the tactics have not changed much since the beginning of the Zionist movement.Back to top

Medium Range
I have already suggested that it is possible to detect both special and temporal patterns in the war activities of 1948 and consequently in the process of the Palestinian exodus. A major variable in the creation of these patterns seem to be the distinction apparently drawn by the Zionists between the areas specified by the UN Partition Plan for the Jewish State and those for the Palestinian state. Temporally' the Jewish forces seem to have been concerned first with securing the areas of the Jewish State and two important areas from the Palestinian state, namely, the corridor leading from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem, and the corridor connecting Eastern Galilee and the Jordan Valley with Western Galilee and the coastal plain. This was achieved by early June 1948, barely a couple of weeks after the official establishment of the State. It came in two sub-"stages; first came the large mixed cities and population centers, such as Tiberias, Haifa,Yafa, Safad, Acre, and the Arab neighborhoods of West Jerusalem. Once these were secured, the Jewish forces moved on to take the rest of the towns and villages within the United Nations Partition line and the two high priority areas from the Arab state. Only after this was achieved did the Israeli forces embark on the conquest of the rest of the areas across the United Nations line. This stage extended until the last part of July 1949. Again two sub-stages can be distinguished; conquest and cleaning up. During the first sub-stage about 55% of the areas assigned to the Palestinian state were conquered. The other 45%, or about 20% of the whole country, consisting of what is now known as the West Bank and Gaza Strip, stayed in Arab hands until occupied by Israel during the 1967 war. This took place mainly in October-November 1948 during which the Israeli forces occupied the Galilee Pocket and the area south of the Jerusalem corridor. The second sub-stage which took place during the first half of 1949, consisted of clearing the borders, mainly with Egypt and Lebanon through expulsion of whole, or partially evacuated, border villages across the borders or, in a few cases, to remaining Arab villages inside Israel.

In addition to the temporal and special patterns described so far there seems to be another pattern related to the distinction apparently drawn by the Israelis between the areas designated for the Jewish State versus those designated for the Palestinian or Arab State. The pattern involves the number and location of-Arab communities remaining within the state of Israel after the war and the characteristics of these communities, independent of the reasons for their survival. Within the UN line very few Arab localities remained; about 20 of them or about one out of every 20 Arab localities survived. No pattern seems to appear in the geographical or topographical distribution of these villages.

They do, however, seem to share some common characteristics. One thing they seem to share is what they were not; they were not main stream Arab Moslem villages - about half of them were semi-settled Bedouin tribes, two were Druze Arab villages, three were Circassian, one of Albanian origin, and one Ghawarni. (One case, Freideis, seems to be an exception). Another shared characteristic was that each one of them had a large number of individuals who collaborated with the Israeli armed forces and assisted them against surrounding Arab villages. In addition, several of them purchased Arab lands for the Jews. Many of them such as the Druze, the Sharkas, and the Bedouins still serve in the Israeli Army.

The areas across the UN line, conquered by the Israelis in 1948 (that excludes the towns and villages in the Triangle, which were ceded to Israel during the Armistice agreement with Jordan in 1949) fall into two geographical areas, each manifesting a pattern of its own.

The first area is the fertile, agriculture plane lying between the Jerusalem corridor and the Negev. In this area, similar to most areas within the UN line, no Arab communities survived the war. All the communities in this area were main stream Moslem Arab villages.

The other area across the UN line, conquered by Israeli forces is the Galilee. Unlike any other area in Israel, most of its Arab localities (about two-thirds of them) survived The Galilee is quite unique. Besides the West Bank, which was not taken by Israel in 1948, it is the only almost totally mountainous area in Mandate Palestine.Back to top

The Galilee was densely populated and almost totally Arab. Many of these localities were Druze and Christians including the town of Nazareth.

The Galilee villages that were destroyed were either Moslem or Christian or both but not Druze. Again they were either villages which put up some resistance or those that lie at a short distance from the Lebanese border. Many of the latter were evicted after the end of the war. Moslem inhabitants generally were sent across the Lebanese border, and Christians were generally transferred to surviving Arab villages which remained in Israel

Short Term Patterns:
We may now get down to the patterns involved in the exodus from individual communities. The actual flight of the Palestinians from their homes, their towns and their villages can be divided into two general forms: 1) flight without being faced with immediate danger to their lives and 2) escape in the face of what was perceived by the Palestinians to be an imminent danger of death to individuals or to members of their families.

The first type is the flight of the rich, the educated, the skilled, who took the time,shortly after the beginning of the hostilities in December 1947 and January 1948, to arrange their affairs, and did not expect to suffer very much if they were to spend a few months or even years outside the country until the war was over. But they generally arranged their affairs with the assumption that theywere to return home sometime. These came generally from the coastal cities like Haifa, Acre, and Jaffa, and a few individuals or families from different parts of the country. These usually left as individuals or nuclear families, and never in units larger than extended families, and no whole community was ever evacuated completely, mainly, or even substantially, in this manner. This type of exodus can be seen as actually exodus from the country, from Palestine to other Arab countries or other parts of the world. I would estimate the number of people in this category to be between 80-100 thousand, or between one tenth and one eighth of the total Palestinian exodus.

The second general type is the flight under war conditions. This broad pattern includes the rest of the Palestinian exodus. It came without previous planning or preparation and usually with no intention to leave the country This generally took place in the face of what was perceived to be a situation where death to the individual and/or members of his family was highly probably or, often, certain, independent of whether the reality of the situation justified that feeling or not. The exodus in these cases was due to one of three situations: 1) an attack by the Jewish forces, usually involving shelling, mortar barrages and aerial bombardment; 2) a forceful expulsion or viction, or 3) a massacre. The Israelis use different combinations of these methods on different localities which resulted in subtypes within this second major pattern of flight, i.e., flight under immediate danger. Back to top

The first level division is between the Galilee and the rest of the country. The entire Galilee pocket was conquered at one time then they dealt with each community individually. Most of the Galilee villages stayed on. In these cases the Israeli forces simply came into each village, collected all the arms owned by the village people, gathered all the able-bodied men of the village, loaded them on trucks and took them away. These usually were detained for several months. Then some of them were driven out across the Lebanese or Jordanian borders and the rest allowed to return to their villages.About one third of the villages from the Galilee pocket, however, were emptied of their inhabitants and destroyed. These were villages which either resisted occupation, had a history of conflict with neighboring Jewish settlements, or were close to the Lebanese border. In the so-called "hostile" or "anti-Yishuv" villages as Morris calls them, the Israeli forces came into the village after it had surrendered, gathered all the inhabitants of the village, selected a number of young men usually ranging between 10-50 and shot them in the presence of the others. The rest were forced to cross the borders to Lebanon or Jordan, with soldiers shooting over their heads. One such village, for example, is Sa'sa', where the villagers had white flags flying on top of the houses signalling surrender. There was no resistance, and the Israeli forces were met with food sacrifices. The troops executed some 30-50 men and evicted the rest of the population, (see Morris 1988, pp. 230-1).

Villages near the border but not "hostile" or "anti-Yishuv" were "cleaned" several months after they had surrendered. Most of these villages were Christian; few were Moslem. In such villages the inhabitants were asked to leave their villages and go across the Lebanese borders if Moslems, or to other Arab villages remaining in Israel if Christians. When the orders were not carried out fast enough a dozen or-so men were killed and the rest of the population trucked to their destination. One such village was Kufr Bir'em. Kufr Bir'em was a "peaceful" all Maronite village. The village had previously refused to allow Kawukji and his "Liberation Army" forces to enter it. When the Israeli forces came, they offered no resistance, raised white flags, surrendered, and were allowed to stay put. Several months later they were asked to leave the village and camp in the surrounding fields. They were told that they would be allowed to return in few days. When a few days later, they asked to be allowed to return they were forced to move to the closest village, Jish. A few days later they were ordered to gather in the Jish village square. This done, the soldiers killed a few men and loaded the rest of the men on trucks, took them near Jenin and forced them to cross the border to the Jordanian side. These men went from Jordan to Syria, and from Syria to Lebanon, and from Lebanon crossed the border back into Israel, and in a few days, they were back with their families. The people of Birtem continued to demand to go back to their village and petitioned the High Court of Justice several times. On September 16, 1953 while the Bir' em petition was awaiting the decision of the High Court of Justice, Israeli Air Force planes flew over the "abandoned" village and bombed it down to the ground, only the village church was left standing. Several years later they were allowed to bury their dead in the village cemetery and today 40 years later they still do so. They also celebrate Christmas in the Church and hold wedding celebrations in the Church yard. (See Segev 1986, p. 59).

We turn now to the patterns of exodus in areas other than the Galilee pocket, which are distinguished from the Galilee by one basic distinction, which is, that each locality, city,town or village, was conquered separately, oneat a time. Only about twenty localities survived in the whole country outside the Galilee and the Triangle. Over 350 localities were destroyed. Although in all these cases each community or locality was attacked and conquered separately, two general patterns emerge; one is for the large cities and can be called the Maxi-Massacre Pattern, the other is for villages, and may be called the Mini-Massacre Pattern.Back to top

The Cities: In the cities the process worked in a sort of feedback circuit. The process went some thing like this: one of the suburbs or neighboring villages was attacked by shelling and mortar barrages, which caused its inhabitants to escape to the city, which usually started the process of demoralization in the city causing some of the city people to leave. This was followed by shelling, mortar barrages and occasional aerial bombardment of the city itself which lasted for few days or few weeks and caused further demoralization and evacuation. This then was followed by a large scale massacre in a neighborhood or nearby village, which sent a wave of panic and confusion and mass flight from the city. At this stage the Arab city usually asked for talks, for a truce, and then finally to surrender. All of these requests were refused. The Israeli forces then pushed into the city, and a small size massacre was carried out which made the remaining people leave. The fall of the city together with the nearby massacre usually sent panic in all the surrounding towns and villages as the Israeli forces moved on to conquer each of them separately. This pattern was used for all the big cities; for Tiberias with a massacre at Nasr-el-Din, for Safad with a massacre at Ein ez-Zeitun, for Haifa with a massacre of Hawwasa and Balad esh- Sheikh, for Jaffa with a massacre at El-Manshiya, for Lod and Ramleh with a massacre at Lod, for West Jerusalem with a massacre at Deir Yassin, and finally for Bethlehem and Hebron with a massacre at Dawaima except that in this case the Arab Legion moved in at the last minute and stopped the process.

The villages: Finally, we have the pattern used in conquering the villages in the whole country outside the Galilee, and which accounts for the great majority of the Palestinian exodus. The process consisted usually of four stages; harrassment, attack, cleaning up, and chasing away. Harrassment usually started with occasional shelling, or bombardment, and blowing up of a few houses at the edges of the village. This usually lasted from one to three months and caused increasingly larger number of families to move their women and children to a safer place outside the village such as a cave or under a tree, or in the fields on the side of the village from which no Jewish attacks were expected, and from which it would have been possible to escape to areas not already occupied. The elderly, the sick, and the able bodied men stayed in the village. Continuous movement and contact between the members of the family at home and those in the camp went on all the time. This style of life was not actually alien to Palestinian peasant villagers; it was actually similar to the style of life used under normal conditions during the harvesting season, especially when we remember that the conquest of all Palestinian villages, governed by this pattern, took place during the harvesting season from May to October 1948.Back to top

The next stage, the final attack, consisted or heavy shelling, mortar barrages, and in some villages, aerial bombardment. This usually lasted for 2-4 days, depending on the size of the village and the degree of resistance, and resulted in the complete evacuation of all women and children, to the fields and orchards of the village or those of a neighboring village. Only very old men and women hoping Israeli soldiers would not harm them, and the village fighting men, stayed on. At this stage the Jewish forces usually made their final push, almost invariably, from three directions, leaving the fourth open, and captured the village. The third stage started immediately after capturing the village, and consisted of gathering all the remaining inhabitants, killing any young village militia men captured and a few of the elderly, in the presence of the others, and then ordering the rest to leave. This usually was enough to get them to leave. In some cases some of the elderly were loaded on trucks, and taken to be dumped at a distance from the village. After this, some of the men would try to enter the village at night to get food supplies and other items, and others ventured back to try to harvest any unharvested crops. Many of those were killed, which usually convinced the villagers to stop this process, which the Israelis called "infiltration", and caused them to seek more substantial accommodations. In many villages, they were followed by Israeli forces and harrassed until they moved far away from the village. Individual families usually drifted from place to place for several months or years before they settledusually in, or close to, a larger town or in a refugee camp. Here is how one elderly lady remembers the flight from the fillage of Eshdud in 1948:

"Three days before we left Eshdud people came running to us saying: "Your children died, your children died" others said: "No, your children ran away, "managed to escape" and some said: "The house fell on top of them." Then everybody went home, and I was left all alone in the house, sitting by myself; then my man came home, and we went down to look for the children among the heaps of dirt debris. We found the house had fallen on top of them, the roof of the house,and nearby there was another house with seven people sleeping in it... The airplane came and bombed it, all of them died. These were from the Mana'meh clan. We lost five - my eldest son, Atiyeh, and the second, Ramadan, and the third, 'Abdullah, and our daughter in law, Fathiyeh, and her little daughter who was still on her arms [nursing]... What was I to say or to do, my children were gone, and our daughter and her daughter all gone, I lost my mind and started talking to myself: "ye Wardiyeh, ya Wardiyeh" [her own name]. On the third day I went out of the house I found people loading up, and I had no idea what all the confusion was about, I asked: "What is going on?" and people answered: "Get going, flight", where could we go? It was suggested to go to Hamama. I, for one, saddled a donkey and put a comforter on top of it and took my little daughter in my arms and left. My husband stayed in the village. He said: "I am not leaving", and so I left. I left with my husband's brother, and my husband said to his brother: "Brother, take good care of my daughter and my wife." We got to the orchards of Hamama. We stayed there for a couple of nights. After that people started to say, "flight" again [i.e., not safe there]. There were many people, as many as the grains of sand,... It would have been impossible to count them or determine their numbers. There were old people and there were children; the children were screaming and the elderly were shouting, and grown up men were beating their heads and faces in agony [i.e., like women] we had no bread to eat, no nothing. I for one, by Allah, went for about four days without food. I did not have on me even piastre or even half, I left everything at home. We started walking along the sea shore. We walked and walked until we reached the trees by eshSheikh 'Ijeen L a neighborhood in Gaza].

There, I found my husband among the people, so he went and got some food for me and my daughter. Then some men came and put us every three-four families in one tent... We divided the tent with blankets and slept each in one corner of the tent. Then they started to distributed small tents for individual families. My husband came to me and said: "They have distributed small tents, come let us go to our tent" Back to top