Ruling Palestine

It is clear from the historical record that several major towns were attacked and their Arab populations expelled before
either the declaration of the State of Israel or the entry of Arab armies into the war. Tiberias, for example, was attacked
on 17 April 1948 and its Arab population ‘evacuated’ on 18 April. The Arab quarters of Haifa were attacked between 21 and
22 April and the bulk of their Arab inhabitants evacuated between 22 April and 1 May. Jaffa was attacked between 25 and
27 May and the majority of its inhabitants forced to flee between 25 April and 13 May. Safad was attacked between 9 and
10 May and its Arab population was also forced to flee. A similar fate befell towns and villages in the Western Galilee. As
Morris notes, the Palestinians “never had a chance”. 44
Morris bases his analyses on declassified documents as well as a Haganah Intelligence Service report of 1948, the title of
which he translates from Hebrew as “The Emigration of the Arabs of Palestine in the Period 1/12/1947-1/6/1948”. Based on
this information, he states:
Rather than suggesting Israeli blamelessness in the creation of the refugee problem, the Intelligence Service assessment
is written in blunt factual analytical terms and, if anything, contains more than a hint of ‘advice’ as to how to precipitate
further Palestinian flight by indirect methods, without having recourse to direct politically and morally embarrassing
expulsion orders. 45
The Haganah report lists ten factors that precipitated the Arab ‘exodus’, the top three of which are:
1. Direct, hostile [Haganah/Israeli Defence Forces] operations against Arab settlements.
2. The effect of our [Haganah/IDF] hostile operations on nearby [Arab] settlements … (… especially – the fall of large
neighbouring centres).
3. Operations of the [Jewish] dissidents [the Irgun Z’vai Leumi (‘National Military Organisation’) and Lohamei Herut
Yisrael (‘Freedom Fighters of Israel’), commonly referred to as the Irgun and the Stern Gang: extremist, militaristic
underground groups operating in Mandate Palestine and later ‘co-opted’ into the Haganah].
Based on these findings, it is reasonable to conclude that well over 80 percent of the Arabs who fled from Palestine by the
publication date of the Haganah report, 1 June 1948, did so as a direct or indirect result of Jewish military actions. The vast
majority of Palestinians fleeing their towns and villages did not immediately leave the country, but settled close by, awaiting
an opportunity to return to their homes. The Haganah then resorted to direct expulsions to drive them completely out of the
area.
Military acts to expel Palestinians did not come to a halt with the end of the war and the signing of the Armistice Agreements
in July 1949. In October 1950, Israel expelled the inhabitants of Majdal to Gaza. In the ten-year period between 1949 and
1959, hundreds of thousands of Bedouins were expelled from the Negev and other parts of the country, adding to the
displaced refugee population. Following Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 War, the process of
mass expulsions of Palestinians was to be repeated, although to a lesser extent.
4.2.2 Refugees and their rights under international law
It cannot be understated how crucial the forced exodus of huge numbers of Palestinians was to the success of the Zionist
conquest of Palestine. Were it not for their enforced absence, Israel would not have come into being as the ‘Jewish State’,
nor would it have been able to lay claim to lands and property throughout the country.
International law is clear on the rights of Palestinian refugees. It addresses the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their
homes, to receive restitution of lost property, and to receive compensation in cases where they do not seek to return. UN
General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution 194 (III) (para. 11) of 11 December 1948 is explicit in that it:
44 Ibid. p. 14. Attacks on Lydda and Ramleh on 12-13 July 1948 were similarly unprovoked military offensives designed to expel Palestinians from these
two major cities. Later that autumn, the same pattern was repeated in towns in the Eastern Galilee.
45 See Morris (n. 36 above), Ch. 3, ‘The Causes and Character of the Arab Exodus from Palestine: the Israel Defence Forces Intelligence Service Analysis
of June 1948’, pp. 85, 83-103. Elsewhere, Morris cautions that the report’s findings are limited to the area designated as the ‘Jewish State’ in the UN
Partition Plan, and covers only the period up to 1 June 1948. Despite its shortcomings and a margin of error as high as 10-15%, the report, according
to Morris, is highly revealing. It states that by 1 June 1948, 239 000 out of 342 000 Palestinians had fled, and 180 out of 219 towns and villages had
been emptied of their Arab inhabitants in the area of the proposed Jewish State. In the same period, over 152 000 Palestinians were driven out of,
or forced to flee from, other parts of Palestine. Elsewhere, Morris states that by 2 June 1948, 7 towns and 190 villages with over 335 000 Arabs had
been emptied; ibid. p. 118. Direct expulsions are listed as contributing factor no. 6 in the Haganah report (see following para.).
LAND ACQUISITION, LAND LAWS AND COLONISATION POLICIES WITHIN THE STATE OF ISRAEL (1948-1967) — SECTION 4 35