The Myth That Palestinians Left Their Homes During the 1948 War Because Their Leaders Asked Them to Do So

A frequently asked question by Zionists is: Isn’t it true that Palestinians fled their homes during the 1948 war on the orders of their leaders? For the time being, let us assume that Palestinian refugees were not driven from their homes by terror, but left of their own volition.

Numerous Palestinians have the following questions:

Is that a reasonable justification for seizing their homes, farms, and businesses?

Is that a sufficient reason to prevent them from returning to their homes?

Is this a sufficient reason to revoke their citizenship in the country in which they were born?

Let us rephrase the questions. For an extended period of time, the Zionist movement urged Jews from Europe and the Middle East to immigrate to Israel:

Is this a reasonable justification for seizing their homes, farms, and businesses in their respective countries?

Is that a sufficient reason to prevent their return to their homes if they so choose?

Is this a sufficient reason to revoke their citizenship in the countries in which they were born?

The just and equitable response to each of these questions is a resounding NO. Nobody, under any circumstances, has the right to usurp another citizen’s political and civil rights.

Neither the Israeli Army’s boot camps nor Israeli schools are willing to inform their subjects of the truth. The reality is that the vast majority of Palestinians were driven from their homes, farms, and businesses by terror. The destruction and ethnic cleansing of Imwas is a minor example. It should be noted that the Israeli Army’s treatment of ‘Imwas was a carbon copy of the Israeli Army’s treatment of over 450 Palestinian towns during the 1948 war.

Ethnic cleansing and destruction of ‘Imwas, June 17, 1967. Note the Israeli officer to the left directing Palestinians out of their village.

‘Imwas – عِمواس : General view of the beautiful village in 1958 – before destruction.

Imwas – عِمواس : General View Of The Village One Year After Destruction in 1968. Note The Old Road On The Left & Abu Ubaydah’s Shrine, Picture Taken By Pierre Medebielle.

Since Zionism’s inception, its leaders have emphasized the importance of establishing a “Jewish State” based on a “Jewish majority” through mass immigration of Jews to Palestine, primarily European Jews fleeing anti-Semitic Tsarist Russia and Nazi Germany. When it became clear that a “Jewish majority” could not be achieved through Jewish immigration and natural growth, Zionist leaders (such as Ben Gurion, Moshe Sharett, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and Chaim Weizmann) concluded that “population transfer” was the only way to resolve what they dubbed the “Arab Problem.”

The plan to cleanse Palestine of its indigenous people became known as the “transfer solution” year in and year out. The following Zionist quotes and actions demonstrate this:

David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, articulated the “transfer solution” succinctly as follows:

– On June 12th, 1938, at a joint meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive and the Zionist Action Committee:

With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement] …. I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see anything immoral in it.” (Righteous Victims p. 144).

-On December 30, 1947, in a speech to the Histadrut’s Central Committee, he stated:

“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%.” (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 176 & Benny Morris p. 28).

-Additionally, Ben-Gurion stated to the Mapai Council on February 8, 1948:

“From your entry into Jerusalem, through Lifta, Romema [East Jerusalem Palestinian neighborhood]. . . there are no [Palestinian] Arabs. One hundred percent Jews. Since Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, it has not been Jewish as it is now. In many [Palestinian] Arab neighborhoods in the west one sees not a single [Palestinian] Arab. I do not assume that this will change. . . . What had happened in Jerusalem. . . . is likely to happen in many parts of the country. . . in the six, eight, or ten months of the campaign there will certainly be great changes in the composition of the population in the country.” (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 180-181).

–On April 6th, 1948, in a speech to the Zionist Action Committee, he stated:

“We will not be able to win the war if we do not, during the war, populate upper and lower, eastern and western Galilee, the Negev and Jerusalem area ….. I believe that war will also bring in its wake a great change in the distribution of Arab population.” (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 181)

– Ben Gurion stated in a speech to the Jewish Agency on June 12, 1948:

“I am for compulsory transfer; I don’t see anything immoral in it.” For tactical reasons, he was against proposing it at the moment, but “we have to state the principle of compulsory transfer without insisting on its immediate implementation.” (Simha Flapan, p.103).

-Zionism has always been predicated on the concept of “transferring” European Jews to Palestine and “exporting” the Palestinian people. Ben-Gurion, the first Israeli Prime Minister, articulated this central Zionist tenet eloquently in 1944, when he stated:

“Zionism is a TRANSFER of the Jews. Regarding the TRANSFER of the [Palestinian] Arabs this is much easier than any other TRANSFER. There are Arab states in the vicinity . . . . and it is clear that if the [Palestinian] Arabs are removed [to these states] this will improve their condition and not the contrary.” (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p.159)

For the sake of argument, let us assume for a moment that the preceding evidence is nothing more than Arab propaganda. We invite the reader to consider what one of Israel’s Prime Ministers, Yitzhak Rabin, wrote in his diary shortly after the invasion of Lydda and al Ramla on July 10th-11th, 1948:

“After attacking Lydda [later called Lod] and then Ramla, …. What would they do with the ä 50,000 civilians living in the two cities ….. Not even Ben-Gurion could offer a solution …. and during the discussion at operation headquarters, he [Ben-Gurion] remained silent, as was his habit in such situations. Clearly, we could not leave [Lydda’s] hostile and armed populace in our rear, where it could endanger the supply route [to the troops who were] advancing eastward. Ben Gurion would repeat the question: What is to be done with the population?, waving his hand in a gesture which said: Drive them out! [garesh otem in Hebrew]. ‘Driving out’ is a term with a harsh ring,…. Psychologically, this was on of the most difficult actions we undertook”. (Soldier Of Peace, p. 140-141 & Benny Morris, p. 207).

Residents of al-Ramla being ethnically cleansed based on the orders from Rabin; July 1948

Later, Rabin emphasized the operation’s cruelty, which was reflected in his soldiers’ reactions. On October 22, 1979, he mentioned during an interview (which is still censored in Israeli publications) with David Shipler of the New York Times:

“Great Suffering was inflicted upon the men taking part in the eviction action [They] included youth movement graduates who had been inculcated with values such as international brotherhood and humaneness. The eviction action went beyond the concepts they were used to. There were some fellows who refused to take part. . . Prolonged propaganda activities were required after the action. . . to explain why we were obliged to undertake such a harsh and cruel action.” (Simha Flapan, p. 101)

Prior to the 1948 war, the twin cities of Lydda and al-Ramla accounted for nearly 20% of the total urban population in central Palestine, including Tel-Aviv. At the moment, at least 500,000 former residents and their descendants live in abhorrent refugee camps in and around Amman (Jordan) and Ramallah (the occupied West Bank), for example. Rabin claimed that the decision to ethnically cleanse the twin cities was agonizing; however, his guilty conscience did not prevent him from issuing a similar order against three nearby villages 19 years later (they were ‘Imwas, Yalu, and Bayt Nuba ). Ismail Shammout, a renowned Palestinian artist from Lydda, depicted the exodus from Lydda and al- Ramla firsthand. What happened was that when Israel occupied Lydda and Ramla on July 11-12, 1948, they were surprised to discover that over 60,000 Palestinian civilians did not flee their homes. Ben Gurion then instructed the wholesale expulsion of all civilians (including men, women, children, and the elderly) during the sweltering Mediterranean summer. The orders to ethnically cleanse both cities were approved by Yitzhak Rabin, Israel’s future Prime Minister. Many of the refugees (at least 400, according to Palestinian historian ‘Aref al-‘Aref) died of thirst, hunger, and heat exhaustion after Israeli soldiers stripped them of their valuables on their way out. The quotes above demonstrate conclusively that the Palestinian version of events is the true version, as are numerous other versions concerning numerous other cities and villages. It must be noted that the Zionist account of this war crime was purposefully suppressed until Yitzhak Rabin revealed it in his biography and in an interview with the New York Times (which was censored in Israel at the time), but it was later confirmed in declassified Israeli and Zionist archives.

The exodus out of Lydda, July 1948.

From the following:

Zionist Ethnic Cleansing quotes 

It will be conclusively established that the Palestinian version of events is the true version, as opposed to the numerous other versions concerning numerous other cities and villages. It should be noted that the Zionist account of this war crime was purposefully suppressed until Yitzhak Rabin revealed it in his biography and in an interview with the New York Times (which was censored in Israel at the time), but it was later confirmed in declassified Israeli and Zionist archives.

To absolve themselves of any responsibility for war crimes, Zionists created a myth that Palestinians were ordered to abandon their homes by their leaders. There was no such call; the Israeli foreign ministry invented it. The Israeli foreign office’s position on the UN’s brief attempt to broker peace in the immediate aftermath of the 1948 war was that the refugees fled. However, because that particular peace process (which lasted only a few months in the first half of 1949) was so brief, Israel was not required to provide evidence in support of this claim, and for many years, the refugee crisis was largely overlooked on the international stage.

The request for proof started in the 1960s, and was recently discovered By Haaretz (Israeli newspaper) reporter, Shay Hazkani.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.haaretz.com/amp/.premium-ben-gurion-grasped-the-nakba-s-importance-1.5243033

As Hazkani’s research shows, the US government began pressuring Israel during the Kennedy administration to allow the return of the 1948 refugees to Israel. Since 1948, the official US position has been one of support for the Palestinian right of return. Undoubtedly, the Americans had already pressed Israel to repatriate the refugees in 1949 and imposed sanctions on the Jewish state for failing to do so. However, this was a temporary actions by the US, and as the Cold War intensified, the Americans abandoned the issue until John F. Kennedy came to power.  It is important to note that Kennedy was also the last president to refuse vast military aid to the state of Israel; after his assassination, aid restrictions where lifted , an intriguing state of affairs that prompted film director Oliver Stone to allude to an Israeli connection to Kennedy’s assassination in his film “JFK”.

The Kennedy administration’s first notable act on this front was to take an active role in a UN General Assembly debate on the subject in the summer of 1961. Prime Minister Ben-Gurion went into a state of panic. He was convinced that, with the backing of the United States, the UN could compel Israel to repatriate the Palestinian refugees. He wished for Israeli academics to conduct research demonstrating that Palestinians left voluntarily, and approached the Shiloah Institute, Israel’s leading center for Middle Eastern studies at the time. Ronni Gabai was tasked with the assignment. He concluded, using his access to classified documents, that expulsions, terror, and coercion were the primary causes of the Palestinian ethnic cleansing. What he did not discover was evidence of an Arab leadership call for Palestinians to flee to make way for invading armies. However, here is where deception palys a role. The conclusion just mentioned appeared in Gabai’s doctoral dissertation on the subject and is the one he recalls sending to the foreign ministry. And yet, Hazkani discovered a letter from Gabai to the foreign ministry summarizing his research and citing the Arab call to leave as the primary reason for the palestinian exodus in his research.

Hazkani interviewed Gabai, who is adamant to this day that he did not write this letter and that it did not reflect his research. Someone, whose identity we have yet to ascertain, sent a different summary of the research. Ben-Gurion, in any case, was not pleased. He felt that the summary (he did not read the entire research) was insufficiently poignant. He commissioned a second study from a researcher he knew, Uri Lubrani, who later became one of Mossad’s Iran experts. Lubrani handed the task to Moshe Maoz, who has since established himself as one of Israel’s foremost orientalists. Maoz delivered the research, and in September 1962, Ben-Gurion received what he dubbed “our White Paper”, which establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that the Palestinians fled because they were told to. Moaz later earned a PhD from Oxford under the supervision of the late Albert Hourani (on a completely unrelated subject), but stated in an interview that his research was influenced less by the documents he saw and more by the political task he received.

Gabai’s documents from early 1961 were declassified in the late 1980s, and several historians, including Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe, saw for the first time definitive evidence for what drove the Palestinians out of Palestine. Israeli historians agreed that there was no call for people to flee from Arab and Palestinian leaders. Their research, which has been dubbed the work of the “new historians,” confirmed Gabai’s conclusion that Palestinians lost their homes and homeland primarily as a result of expulsion, coercion, and terror.

As will be demonstrated below, this version of events has been definitively refuted by Israeli declassified documents. According to Benny Morris, an Israeli historian:

‘In general, during the first months of the war until April 1948 the Palestinian leadership struggled, if not very manfully, against the exodus: “The AHC [Arab Higher Committee] decided …. to adopt measures to weaken the exodus by imposing restrictions, penalties, threats, propaganda in the press [and] on the radio …. [The AHC] tried to obtain the help of neighboring countries in this context….. [The AHC] especially tried to prevent the flight of army-age young males,” according to IDF intelligence’. (Benny Morris, p. 60)

‘Whatever the reasoning and attitude of the Arab states’ leaders, I have found no contemporary evidence to show that either the leaders of the Arab states or the Mufti [Hajj Amin al-Husseini] ordered or directly encouraged the mass exodus during April [1948].

It may be worth noting that for decades the policy of the Palestinian Arab leaders had been to hold fast to the soil of Palestine and to resist the eviction and displacement of Arab communities’.(Benny Morris, p.66)

‘In Kafr Saba [early May 1948], the locals, under threat from Haganah attack, wanted to leave, but were ordered to stay by the ALA [Arab Liberation Army] garrison. According to Haganah sources, the ALA, with the population of Ramallah about to take flight, blocked all roads into the Triangle: “The Arab military leaders are trying to stem the flood of refugees and taking stern and ruthless measures against them.” Arab radio broadcast, picked up by the Haganah, conveyed orders from the ALA to all Arabs who had left their homes to “return within three days. The commander of Ramallah assembled the mukhtars [official leaders] from the area” and demanded they strengthen morale in the their villages. The local ALA commanders turned back trucks which were coming to take families out of Ramallah. …. Haganah intelligence on May 6 reported that “Radio Jerusalem in its Arabic broadcast (14:00 hours, 5 May) and Damascus [Radio] (19:45 hours, 5 May) announced in the name of the Supreme Headquarters: ‘Every Arab must defend his home and property …. Those who leave their places will be punished and their m homes will be destroyed.’. The announcement was signed by [Fawzi al-Qawukji.’] (Benny Morris, p. 68-69)

Simha Flapan (an Israeli writer and politician) similarly stated in declassified Israeli documents and the November 6, 1948 edition of the Israeli newspaper Davar.:

“. . . after April 1948, the flight acquired massive dimensions. Abdal-Rahman Azzam Pasha, secretary general of the Arab League, and King Abdullah both issued public calls to the Arabs not to leave their homes. Fawzi al-Qawukji, commander of the Arab Liberation Army, was given instructions to stop the flight by force and to requisition transport for this purpose.The Arab government decided to allow entry only to women and children and to send back all men of military age (between eighteen and fifty). Mohammad Adib al-Umri, deputy director of Ramallah broadcasting station, appealed to the Arabs to stop the flight from Jenin, Tulkarm, and other towns in the Triangle that were bombed by the Israelis. On May 10, Radio Jerusalem broadcasted orders on its Arab program from Arab commanders and AHC to stop the mass flight from Jerusalem and the vicinity.”(Simha Flapan, p. 86-87)

Original letter sent by the Arab Higher Committee to the Egyptian government urging it to refuse entry for refugees unless in emergency situations

The various National Committees imposed flight bans. The Ramle National Committee stationed pickets at the town’s exits to prevent Arabs from leaving. Residents of villages east of Majdal (Beit Daras, Sawafirs, etc.) were warned not to enter with their belongings. On 15 May 1948, Faiz Idris, the AHC’s “inspector for public safety,” issued an order ordering militia men to assist the invading Arab armies and fight “the Fifth column and the rumor mongers, who are causing the flight of the Arab population” (Benny Morris, p. 69).

On 10-11 May [1948], the AHC [Arab Higher Committee] appealed to officials, doctors, and engineers who had fled the country to return. On 14-15 May, the AHC repeated the appeal, warning that officials who did not return would lose their “moral right to hold these administrative jobs in the future.” Arab governments began barring refugee entry – as occurred, for example, on the Lebanese border in the middle of May (Benny Morris, p. 69).

Safad’s fall and the subsequent flight of its residents shocked the [Palestinian] Arab villagers of the Hula Valley, to the north.

Yigal Allon (Israel’s former Foreign Minister) launched a psychological warfare campaign (e.g. “If you don’t flee immediately, you will all be slaughtered, your daughters will be raped”), and almost all the villagers fled to Syria and Lebanon. (Victims of Righteousness, p.213)

According to a Jewish Agency report from the Arab section dated January 3, 1948, at the start of the flight:

The Arab exodus from Palestine continues, mainly to the countries of the West. Of late, the Arab Higher Executive has succeeded in imposing close scrutiny on those leaving for Arab countries in the Middle East.” Prior to the declaration of the “Jewish state,” the Arab League’s political committee, ä meeting in Sofar, Lebanon, recommended that the Arab states ” the doors to . . . women and children and old people if events in Palestine make it ä necessary.”(Simha Flapan, p. 85)

Plan Dalet:

On March 10, 1948, a gathering of Zionist political and military leaders in Tel Aviv, including Ben-Gurion, formally adopted Plan Dalet (or Plan D). Military operational orders specified which Palestinian population centers should be targeted and detailed a strategy for their forcible depopulation and destruction. It called for:

Mounting operations against enemy population centers located inside or near our defensive system in order to prevent them from being used as bases by an active armed force. These operations can be divided into the following categories:

Destruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris), especially those population centers which are difficult to control continuously

Mounting search and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the village and conducting a search inside it. In the event of resistance, the armed force must be destroyed and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state.

Plan Dalet: Blueprint for Ethnic Cleansing

Professor Erich Fromm, a renowned Jewish author, social psychologist, and thinker, has the following to say about the Zionist argument that Arab refugees left voluntarily:

“It is often said that the Arabs fled, that they left the country voluntarily, and that they therefore bear the responsibility for losing their property and their land. It is true that there are some instances (in Rome and in France during the Revolutions) when enemies of the state were proscribed and their property confiscated. But in general international law, the principle holds true that no citizen loses his property or his rights of citizenship; and the citizenship right is de facto a right to which the Arabs in Israel have much more legitimacy than Jews. Just because the Arabs fled? Since when is that punishable by confiscating of property and by being barred from returning to the land on which a people’s forefathers have lived for generations? Thus, the claim of the Jews to the land of Israel cannot be a realistic political claim. If all nations would suddenly claim territories in which their forefathers had lived two thousand years ago, this world would be a madhouse.”

Dr. Fromm then goes on to say:

“I believe that, politically speaking, there is only one solution for Israel, namely, the unilateral acknowledgment of the obligation of state toward the Arabs; not to use it as a bargaining of the Israeli state to its former inhabitants of Palestine.” (Bitter Harvest p. 95; printed in Jewish Newsletter on Feb. 9th, 1959)

Additional evidence of ethnic cleansing (as if more were required) comes from Glubb Pasha, a British officer in the Jordanian army during the 1948 war who was on the scene and thus in a position to know what was happening. As he stated:

“The story which Jewish publicity at first persuaded the world to accept , that the [Palestinian] Arab refugees left voluntarily, is not true. Voluntary emigrants do not leave their homes with only the clothes they stand in. People who decided to leave house do not do so in such a hurry that they lose other members of their family — husband losing sight of his wife, or parents of their children. The fact is that the majority left in panic flight, to escape massacre. They were in fact helped on their way by the occasional massacres– not of very many at a time, but just enough to keep them running.”(Bitter Harvest,p. 95)

Who shall push who into the sea? Haifa‘s Palestinians are being loading onto ships out of their homes, April 1948

Haifa‘s Palestinians are being loading onto ships out of their homes, April 1948

As Moshe Sharett (Israel’s second prime minister) neared the end of his career in the mid-1950s, he concluded that Israel cannot be ruled without deception, as if it were necessary for the survival of the Jewish state. Just prior to resigning, he wrote:

“I have learned that the state of Israel cannot be ruled in our generation without deceit and adventurism. These are historical facts that cannot be altered. . . In the end, history will justify both the stratagems and deceit and the acts of adventurism. All I know is that I, Moshe Sharett, am not capable of them, and I am therefore unsuited to lead this country”(Simha Flapan, p. 52-53).

In other words, Moshe Sharett is stating that the “Jewish state” is incapable of surviving without lying to its citizens and the rest of the world; indeed, lying to its citizens and the rest of the world has been a matter of national security for the “Jewish state.” In Israel, this art of carefully crafted deception and lies is referred to as Hasbarah.

Finally, it must be emphasized that Israel tried Adolf Eichmann for atrocities committed during his tenure as a Nazi leader; these included charges of forcible expulsion (ethnic cleansing), which were classified as war crimes and crimes against humanity. It’s ironic how frequently Israelis and Zionists interpret war crimes against humanity selectively in order to advance their political agenda.

Links and References

1. In Search of Palestine-Edward Said‘s return home(BBC)