The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

by Ilan Pappe

  Until the occupation of Palestine by Britain in 1918, Zionism was a blend of nationalist ideology and colonialist practice. It was limited in scope: Zionists made up no more than five per cent of the country’s overall population at that time. Living in colonies, they did not affect, nor were they particularly noticed by, the local population. The potential for a future Jewish takeover of the country and the expulsion of the indigenous Palestinian people, which historians have so clearly recognised in retrospect in the writings of the founding fathers of Zionism, became evident to some Palestinian leaders even before the First World War; others were less interested in the movement.

  Historical evidence shows that at some time between 1905 and 1910, several Palestinian leaders discussed Zionism as a political movement aiming to purchase land, assets and power in Palestine, although the destructive potential was not fully comprehended at that period. Many members of the local elite saw it as part of the European missionary and colonialist drive – which in part it was, but of course it had an additional edge to it that turned into a dangerous enterprise for the native population.3

  This potential was not often discussed or articulated by the Zionist leaders themselves, but some Palestinian notables and intellectuals must have sensed the looming danger, since we find them trying to convince the Ottoman government in Istanbul to limit, if not totally prohibit, Jewish immigration and settlement into Palestine, which was under Turkish rule until 1918.4

  The Palestinian member of the Ottoman Parliament, Said al-Husayni, claimed on 6 May 1911 that ‘the Jews intend to create a state in the area that will include Palestine, Syria and Iraq’.5 However, Al-Husayni belonged to a family, and a group of local notables, who until the 1930s preached against the Zionist colonization while selling lands to the newcomers. As the Mandatory years went by, the sense of a looming danger, indeed a catastrophe, settled in among the more intellectual sections of the elite,6 but it was never translated into proper preparations for the existential danger awaiting their society.

  Others around Palestine, such as the leading Egyptian literati, saw the movement of Jews into Palestine as an irresponsible attempt on the part of Europe to transfer its poorest and often stateless people into the country, not as part of a master plan aimed at the dispossession of the local people. To them, this movement of wretched people seemed but a minor threat compared with the far more conspicuous attempt European colonial powers and churches were making to take over the ‘Holy Land’ through their missionaries, diplomats and colonies.7 Indeed, prior to the British occupation of Palestine at the end of 1917, the Zionists were vague where their actual plans were concerned, not so much for lack of orientation, but more because of the need to prioritise the concerns of the as yet small Jewish immigrant community: there was always the threat of being thrown out again by the government in Istanbul.

  However, when a clearer vision for the future needed to be spelled out for internal consumption, we find no ambiguity whatsoever. What the Zionists anticipated was the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine in order to escape a history of persecutions and pogroms in the West, invoking the religious ‘redemption’ of an ‘ancient homeland’ as their means. This was the official narrative, and it no doubt genuinely expressed the motivation of most of the Zionist leadership’s members. But the more critical view today sees the Zionist drive to settle in Palestine, instead of other possible locations, as closely interwoven with nineteenth-century Christian millenarianism and European colonialism. The various Protestant missionary societies and the governments in the European Concert competed among themselves over the future of a ‘Christian’ Palestine that they wanted to pry away from the Ottoman Empire. The more religious among the aspirants in the West regarded the return of the Jews to Palestine as a chapter in the divine scheme, precipitating the second coming of Christ and the creation of a pietist state there. This religious zeal inspired pious politicians, such as Lloyd George, the British prime minister during the First World War, to act with even greater commitment for the success of the Zionist project. This did not prevent him from supplying his government at the same time with a host of ‘strategic’, rather than messianic, considerations for why Palestine should be colonised by the Zionist movement, which were mostly infused by his own overriding distrust of, and disdain for, ‘Arabs’ and ‘Mohammedans’, as he called the Palestinians.8

  Recent scholarship also tends to question the more Marxist flavour that the official Israeli historiography has claimed for the early colonization of Palestine by portraying Zionism as a positive endeavour to carry the socialist and Marxist revolutions beyond their less successful attempts in Russia.9 The more critical view depicts this aspiration as doubtful at best and as manipulative at worst. Indeed, much like today’s more liberal-minded Israeli Jews who are ready to drop the principles of democracy when faced with the prospect of a demographic majority of non-Jews in the country, so, it seems, did the socialist Zionists quickly substitute their more universal dreams with the powerful allure of nationalism. And when the main objective became making Palestine exclusively Jewish rather than socialist, it was significantly the Labour movement within Zionism that instituted and implemented the ethnic cleansing of the local population.

  The early Zionist settlers directed most of their energy and resources towards buying up plots of land in an attempt to enter the local labour market and create social and communal networks that could sustain their as yet small and economically vulnerable group of newcomers. The more precise strategies of how best to take over Palestine as a whole and create a nation-state in the country, or in part of it, were a later development, closely associated with British ideas of how best to solve the conflict Britain itself had done so much to exacerbate.

  The moment British Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour gave the Zionist movement his promise in 1917 to establish a national home for the Jews in Palestine,10 he opened the door to the endless conflict that would soon engulf the country and its people. In the pledge he made in his government’s name, Balfour promised to protect the aspirations of the non-Jewish population – a strange reference to the vast native majority – but the declaration clashed precipitately with both the aspirations and natural rights of the Palestinians for nationhood and independence.

  By the end of the 1920s, it was clear that this proposal had a potentially violent core, as it had already claimed the lives of hundreds of Palestinians and Jews. This now prompted the British to make a serious, albeit reluctant, attempt to solve the smouldering conflict.

  Until 1928, the British government had treated Palestine as a state within the British sphere of influence, not as a colony; a state in which, under British tutelage, the promise to the Jews and the aspirations of the Palestinians could both be fulfilled. They tried to put in place a political structure that would represent both communities on an equal footing in the state’s parliament as well as in government. In practice, when the offer was made it was less equitable; it advantaged the Zionist colonies and discriminated against the Palestinian majority. The balance within the new proposed legislative council was in favour of the Jewish community who were to be allied with members appointed by the British administration.11

  As the Palestinians made up the majority of between eighty and ninety per cent of the total population in the 1920s, they understandably refused at first to accept the British suggestion of parity, let alone one that disadvantaged them in practice – a position that encouraged the Zionist leaders to endorse it. A pattern now emerges: when, in 1928, the Palestinian leadership, apprehensive of the growing Jewish immigration into the country and the expansion of their settlements, agreed to accept the formula as a basis for negotiations, the Zionist leadership quickly rejected it. The Palestinian uprising in 1929 was the direct result of Britain’s refusal to implement at least their promise of parity after the Palestinians had been willing to set aside the democratic principal of majoritarian politics, which Britain had championed as the basis for negotiations in all the other Arab
states within its sphere of influence.12

  After the 1929 uprising, the Labour government in London appeared inclined to embrace the Palestinian demands, but the Zionist lobby succeeded in reorienting the British government comfortably back onto the Balfourian track. This made another uprising inevitable. It duly erupted in 1936 in the form of a popular rebellion fought with such determination that it forced the British government to station more troops in Palestine than there were in the Indian subcontinent. After three years, with brutal and ruthless attacks on the Palestinian countryside, the British military subdued the revolt. The Palestinian leadership was exiled, and the paramilitary units that had sustained the guerilla warfare against the Mandatory forces were disbanded. During this process many of the villagers involved were arrested, wounded or killed. The absence of most of the Palestinian leadership and of viable Palestinian fighting units gave the Jewish forces in 1947 an easy ride into the Palestinian countryside.

  In between the two uprisings, the Zionist leadership had wasted no time in working out their plans for an exclusively Jewish presence in Palestine: first, in 1937, by accepting a modest portion of the land when they responded favourably to a recommendation by the British Royal Peel commission to partition Palestine into two states;13 and second, in 1942, by attempting a more maximalist strategy, demanding all of Palestine for itself. The geographical space it coveted may have changed with time and according to circumstances and opportunities, but the principal objective remained the same. The Zionist project could only be realised through the creation in Palestine of a purely Jewish state, both as a safe haven for Jews from persecution and a cradle for a new Jewish nationalism. And such a state had to be exclusively Jewish not only in its socio-political structure but also in its ethnic composition.

  MILITARY PREPARATIONS

  From the outset, the British Mandatory authorities had allowed the Zionist movement to carve out an independent enclave for itself in Palestine as the infrastructure for a future state, and in the late 1930s the movement’s leaders were able to translate the abstract vision of Jewish exclusivity into more concrete plans. Zionist preparations for the eventuality of taking the land by force, should it fail to be granted to them through diplomacy, included the building of an efficient military organisation – with the help of sympathetic British officers – and the search for ample financial resources (for which they could tap the Jewish Diaspora). In many ways the creation of an embryonic diplomatic corps was also an integral part of the same general preparations that were aimed at snatching, by force, a state in Palestine.14

  It was one British officer in particular, Orde Charles Wingate, who made the Zionist leaders realise more fully that the idea of Jewish statehood had to be closely associated with militarism and an army, first of all to protect the growing number of Jewish enclaves and colonies inside Palestine but also – more crucially – because acts of armed aggression were an effective deterrent against the possible resistance of the local Palestinians. From there, the road to contemplating the enforced transfer of the entire indigenous population would prove to be very short indeed.15

  Orde Wingate was born in India in the early twentieth century to a military family and received a very religious upbringing. He began an Arabophile career in the Sudan, where he gained prestige with a particularly effective ambush policy against slave traders. In 1936, he was assigned to Palestine where he quickly became enchanted by the Zionist dream. He decided actively to encourage the Jewish settlers and started teaching their troops more effective combat tactics and retaliation methods against the local population. It is no wonder that his Zionist associates greatly admired him.

  Wingate transformed the principal paramilitary organisation of the Jewish community in Palestine, the Hagana. Established in 1920, its name literally means ‘defence’ in Hebrew, ostensibly to indicate that its main purpose was protecting the Jewish colonies. Under the influence of Wingate, and the militant mood he inspired among its commanders, the Hagana quickly became the military arm of the Jewish Agency, the Zionist governing body in Palestine that in the end developed and then implemented plans for the Zionist military takeover of Palestine as a whole, and the ethnic cleansing of its native population.16

  The Arab revolt gave the Hagana members a chance to practise the military tactics Wingate had taught them in the Palestinian rural areas, mostly in the form of retaliatory operations against such targets as roadside snipers or thieves taking goods from a kibbutz. The main objective, however, seems to have been to intimidate Palestinian communities who happened to live in proximity to Jewish settlements.

  Wingate succeeded in attaching Hagana troops to the British forces during the Arab revolt so that they could learn even better what a ‘punitive mission’ to an Arab village ought to entail. For example, in June 1938 Jewish troops got their first taste of what it meant to occupy a Palestinian village: a Hagana unit and a British company jointly attacked a village on the border between Israel and Lebanon, and held it for a few hours.17

  Amatziya Cohen, who took part in the operation, remembered the British sergeant who showed them how to use bayonets in attacking defenseless villagers: ‘I think you are all totally ignorant in your Ramat Yochanan [the training base for the Hagana] since you do not even know the elementary use of bayonets when attacking dirty Arabs: how can you put your left foot in front!’ he shouted at Amatziya and his friends after they had returned to base.18 Had this sergeant been around in 1948, he would have been proud to see how quickly Jewish troops were mastering the art of attacking villages.

  The Hagana also gained valuable military experience in the Second World War, when many of its members volunteered for the British war effort. Others who remained behind in Palestine continued to monitor and infiltrate the 1200 or so Palestinian villages that had dotted the countryside for hundreds of years.

  THE VILLAGE FILES

  More was needed than just savouring the excitement of attacking a Palestinian village: systematic planning was called for. The suggestion came from a young bespectacled historian from the Hebrew University by the name of Ben-Zion Luria, at the time an employee of the educational department of the Jewish Agency. Luria pointed out how useful it would be to have a detailed registry of all Arab villages, and proposed that the Jewish National Fund (JNF) conduct such an inventory. ‘This would greatly help the redemption of the land,’ he wrote to the JNF.19 He could not have chosen a better audience: his initiative to involve the JNF in the prospective ethnic cleansing was to generate added impetus and zeal to the expulsion plans that followed.

  Founded in 1901, the JNF was the principal Zionist tool for the colonization of Palestine. It served as the agency the Zionist movement used to buy Palestinian land upon which it then settled Jewish immigrants. Inaugurated by the fifth Zionist Congress, it spearheaded the Zionization of Palestine throughout the Mandatory years. From the onset it was designed to become the ‘custodian’, on behalf of the Jewish people, of the land the Zionists gained possession of in Palestine. The JNF maintained this role after the creation of the State of Israel, with other missions being added to its primary role over time.20

  Most of the JNF’s activities during the Mandatory period and surrounding the Nakba were closely associated with the name of Yossef Weitz, the head of its settlement department. Weitz was the quintessential Zionist colonialist. His main priority at the time was facilitating the eviction of Palestinian tenants from land bought from absentee landlords who were likely to live at some distance from their land or even outside the country, the Mandate system having created borders where before there were none. Traditionally, when ownership of a plot of land, or even a whole village, changed hands, this did not mean that the farmers or villagers themselves had to move;21 Palestine was an agricultural society, and the new landlord would need the tenants to continue cultivating his lands. But with the advent of Zionism all this changed. Weitz personally visited the newly purchased plot of land often accompanied by his closest aides, and encouraged the
new Jewish owners to throw out the local tenants, even if the owner had no use for the entire piece of land. One of Weitz’s closest aides, Yossef Nachmani, at one point reported to him that ‘unfortunately’ tenants refused to leave and some of the new Jewish land owners displayed, as he put it, ‘cowardice by pondering the option of allowing them to stay.’22 It was the job of Nachmani and other aides to make sure that such ‘weaknesses’ did not persist: under their supervision these evictions quickly became more comprehensive and effective.

  The impact of such activities at the time remained limited because Zionist resources after all were scarce, Palestinian resistance fierce, and the British policies restrictive. By the end of the Mandate in 1948, the Jewish community owned around 5.8% of the land in Palestine. But the appetite was for more, if only for the available resources to expand and new opportunities open up; this is why Weitz waxed lyrical when he heard about the village files, immediately suggesting turning them into a ‘national project’.23

  All involved became fervent supporters of the idea. Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, a prominent member of the Zionist leadership, a historian and later the second president of Israel, explained in a letter to Moshe Shertock (Sharett), the head of the political department of the Jewish Agency (and later one of Israel’s prime ministers), that apart from topographically recording the layout of the villages, the project should also include exposing the ‘Hebraic origins’ of each village. Furthermore, it was important for the Hagana to know which of the villages were relatively new, as some of them had been built ‘only’ during the Egyptian occupation of Palestine in the 1830s.24