Why Did The Palestinians Run Away in 1948?
By Prof. Yoav Gelber
Since the abortive talks at Camp David in July 2000, the Palestinian
refugee problem has re-emerged as the hard core of the Arab-Israeli
conflict. For five decades, the Israelis have swept the problem
under the carpet, while the Palestinians have consistently developed
their national ethos around their “Right of Return”.
Assisted by a few Israeli relativist historians, they have composed
a false narrative of deliberate expulsion, stressing the role
of Deir Yassin and Plan Dalet in their exodus.
Unfortunately, saying it endlessly does not make it so. The Palestinian
refugee problem has been a result of Israel's War of Independence
— the equivalent to the Palestinians' Al-Nakbah. That war
consisted of two separate and different campaigns: The first was
an inter-communal civil war between Jews and Palestinians that
took place under British sovereignty and in the presence of British
troops. The second contest began with the invasion of Palestine
by Arab armies on 15 May 1948 and lasted until the conclusion
of armistice agreements in 1949. This was a war between Israel
and a coalition of Arab states, fought by armies using methods
of modern warfare.
The war started because the Palestinians promptly rejected the
UN partition resolution of 29 November 1947. The Arab states backed
them from the beginning and joined in the fighting upon termination
of the mandate, invading the newly established Jewish State. The
Arabs dismissed any compromise that provided for a Jewish State
of any kind, and objected to UN resolutions 181 (Partition) and
194 (among other clauses: the refugees). Only in the wake of their
military defeat, the Arabs have engaged in moral acrobatics by
making these resolutions a cornerstone of their case.
The Palestinians’ subsequent suffering should not be isolated
from their role in that war. As victims, their conduct gives adequate
cause to deny them the adjective "innocent”. Truly,
they have paid a heavy price in 1948 — and ever since. They
have been victims — but of their own follies and pugnacity,
as well as of their Arab allies’ incompetence.
Mass flight accompanied the fighting from the beginning of the
civil war. In the absence of proper military objectives, the antagonists
carried out their attacks on non-combatant targets, subjecting
civilians of both sides to deprivation, intimidation and harassment.
Consequently, the weaker and backward Palestinian society collapsed
under a not-overly-heavy strain. Unlike the Jews, who had nowhere
to go and fought with their back to the wall, the Palestinians
had nearby shelters. From the beginning of hostilities, an increasing
flow of refugees drifted into the heart of Arab-populated areas
and into adjacent countries.
The Palestinians’ precarious social structure tumbled because
of economic hardships and administrative disorganization. Contrary
to the Jews who built their “State in the Making” during
the mandate period, the Palestinians had not created in time substitutes
for the government services that vanished with the British withdrawal.
The collapse of services, the lack of authority and a general
feeling of fear and insecurity generated anarchy in the Arab sector.
When riots broke out, middle class Palestinians sent their families
to neighboring countries and joined them after the situation deteriorated.
Others moved from the vicinity of the front lines to less exposed
areas in the interior of the Arab sector. Non-Palestinian Arabs
returned to Syria, Lebanon and Egypt to avoid the hardships of
war. First-generation rootless emigrants from the countryside
to urban centers returned to their villages. Thousands of Palestinian
government employees — doctors, nurses, civil servants, lawyers,
clerks, etc. — became redundant and departed as the mandatory
administration disintegrated. This set a model and created an
atmosphere of desertion that rapidly expanded to wider circles.
Between half to two-thirds of the inhabitants in cities such as
Haifa or Jaffa had abandoned their homes before the Jews stormed
these towns in late April 1948.
Dependence on towns that had fallen, the quandaries of maintaining
agricultural routine and rumors of atrocities exacerbated mass
flight from the countryside. Many hamlets that the Haganah occupied
were empty. No premeditated deportations had taken place, and
the use of intimidation and other methods of psychological warfare
were sporadic.
The progress of the British evacuation enabled the adversaries
to modify their tactics. Early in April, the Haganah launched
several large-scale operations across the country. By contrast,
the Arab forces remained dispersed and disarrayed. Under the new
circumstances, their traditional patterns of warfare and organization
became anachronistic. Unaware of the difference between anti-colonial
insurrection and a national war, the Palestinian leaders preferred
to conduct the struggle from safe asylum abroad as they had done
during their rebellion against the British in 1936/9. The Arab
states contributed to the chaos by being able neither to determine
Arab Palestine’s political future nor to let the Palestinians
shape their own destiny.
In the last six weeks of the British mandate, the Jews occupied
most of the area that the UN partition plan allotted to their
State. They took over five towns and 200 villages; between 250,000
to 300,000 Palestinians and other Arabs ran away (so far, they
were not driven out) to Palestine's Arab sectors and to neighboring
countries. This rapid and almost total collapse astonished all
concerned. It was unbelievable that plain defeatism lacking any
ulterior motives had prompted this mass flight. The Jews suspected
the flight was nothing but a conspiracy — concocted by the
Palestinian leadership — to embroil the Arab states in the
war. Later, this guess would become the official line of Israeli
diplomacy and propaganda. However, the documentary evidence clearly
shows that the Arab leaders did not encourage the flight. On the
contrary, they tried in vain to stop it. The old Israeli narrative
is as wrong as the new Palestinian one, and the historical picture
is far more complex.
Unlike the pre-invasion period, certain IDF actions on the eve
of and after the invasion aimed at driving out the Arab population
from villages close to Jewish settlements or adjacent to main
roads. These measures appeared necessary in face of the looming
military threat by the invading Arab armies. The Israelis held
the Palestinians responsible for the distress that the invasion
caused and believed they deserved severe punishment. The local
deportations of May-June 1948 appeared both militarily vital and
morally justified. Confident that their conduct was indispensable,
the troops did not attempt to conceal harsh treatment of civilians
in their after-action reports.
Instead of saving the Palestinians, the Arab armies’ invasion
doubled their territorial losses and the number of refugees. Later
waves of mass flight were the result of the IDF’s counter
offensives against the invading forces. The position of these
new escaping or expelled Palestinians was essentially different
from that of their predecessors of the pre-invasion period. Their
mass flight was not the result of their inability to hold on against
the Jews. The Arab expeditions failed to protect them, and they
remained a constant reminder of the fiasco. These later refugees
were sometimes literally deported across the lines. In certain
cases, IDF units terrorized them to hasten their flight, and isolated
massacres — particularly during the liberation of Galilee
and the Negev in October 1948 — expedited the flight.
After the conquest of Galilee, the feasibility of the West Bank's
occupation depended to a large extent on the likely reaction of
the civilian population in this region. Ben-Gurion pondered on
whether the inhabitants would run away as their predecessors had
done before the invasion, or stay put and encumber Israel with
countless political, economic and administrative problems. The
lessons of the campaigns in Galilee and the Negev implied that
the Palestinians might not run away of their own will. Mass flight
meant, therefore, either plenty of atrocities — provoking
domestic and international repercussions — or a large Palestinian
population under Israeli domination, which was equally dreadful.
Mainly to avoid these unattractive options, Ben-Gurion decided
to give up the conquest of the West Bank and to embark on negotiations
with Transjordan.
When they ran away, the refugees were confident of their eventual
repatriation at the end of hostilities. This term could mean a
cease-fire, a truce, an armistice and, certainly, a peace agreement.
The return of escapees had been customary in the Middle East's
wars throughout the ages. When the first truce began in June 1948,
many tried to resettle in their hamlets or at least to gather
the crops. However, they were fated for a surprise.
Their Jewish adversaries belonged to an alien European civilization
whose historical experience and concepts of warfare were different.
Three years after the end of the Second World War, it was inconceivable
that Germans who had been expelled by the Czechs, Poles and Russians
would ever return to the Sudeten, to Pomerania, to Silesia or
to East Prussia. The mass repatriation by the allies of millions
after the war concerned their own nationals. Refugees or deportees
of defeated belligerents resettled to begin anew life elsewhere.
People still remembered the exchange of populations between Turkey
and Greece in the early 1920s. Europe was full of White Russians
who had left their homeland after the revolution and the subsequent
civil war. The vast majority of Israelis did not think that the
Palestinians should fare better and wanted to apply this principle
to the Middle East, naively ignoring its different cultural concepts
and historical experience.
In the summer of 1948, Israel government decided to object to
any repatriation of refugees before peace. Truces and armistices
were considered a part of the war, not of a peace settlement.
Subsequently, Israel took several steps to prevent the return,
primarily the resettlement of evacuees from places that were occupied
or destroyed by the Arabs, demobilized soldiers and new immigrants
in the abandoned Arab towns, neighborhoods and villages. Thus,
the presumably temporary flight turned into a permanent, almost
eternal problem of refugees.
Blaming the Arab League for the refugees' fate, Israel expected
the Arab governments to resettle the Palestinians in their countries
as Germany had absorbed Volksdeutsche after the Second World War
and Israel itself absorbed refugee-immigrants from the Arab countries.
However, the Arab world has insisted on the refugees' "right
of return" as a precondition for any reconciliation with
Israel.
The implied message has been unequivocal: First, the Palestinian
refugees are Israel’s creation and responsibility, and it
should not expect the Arab world to help solving the problem or
share the responsibility for their ultimate fate. Secondly, the
Arabs have not been able to crush Jewish statehood, but Israel
should not expect them to comply with its alien code of behaviour.
Unlike Europe, the pattern in the Middle East has been that war
refugees return to their homes when hostilities end, and hostilities
do not end until they return. Israel has to reckon with this twofold
message. Yet, unless the Jewish State is ready to commit national
suicide — it is difficult to foresee how the problem can
be solved.
This article was originally published in the HistoryNewsNetwork
on June 17, 2002
