The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

by Ilan Pappe

  Had there not been the tacit understanding between the Hagana and the Irgun, Shaykh Muwannis might have been saved. The heads of the village had made a serious effort to cultivate a cordial relationship with the Hagana in order to prevent their expulsion, but the ‘Arabists’ who had concluded the treaty were nowhere to be found on the day the Irgun showed up and expelled the entire village.41

  In April the operations in the countryside were more closely connected to the urbicide. Villages near urban centres were taken and expelled, and sometimes subjected to massacres, in a campaign of terror designed to prepare the ground for a more successful takeover of the cities.

  The Consultancy met again on a Wednesday, 7 April 1948. It was decided to destroy, and expel the inhabitants from, all the villages on the Tel-Aviv–Haifa road, Jenin–Haifa road and the Jerusalam–Jaffa road. At the end of the day, apart from a tiny handful of villages, no one was spared.42

  Thus, on the day the Irgun wiped out Shaykh Muwannis, the Hagana occupied six villages in the same area within a week: Khirbat Azzun was the first, on 2 April, followed by Khirbat Lid, Arab al-Fuqara, Arab al-Nufay’at and Damira, all cleansed by 10 April, and Cherqis on the 15th. By the end of the month another three villages in the vicinity of Jaffa and Tel-Aviv – Khirbat al-Manshiyya, Biyar ‘Adas and the large village of Miska – had all been taken and destroyed.43

  All of this took place before a single regular Arab soldier had entered Palestine, and the pace now becomes hard to follow, for contemporary as well as for later historians. Between 30 March and 15 May, 200 villages were occupied and their inhabitants expelled. This is a fact that must be repeated, as it undermines the Israeli myth that the ‘Arabs’ ran away once the ‘Arab invasion’ began. Almost half of the Arab villages had already been attacked by the time the Arab governments eventually and, as we know, reluctantly decided to send in their troops. Another ninety villages would be wiped out between 15 May and 11 June 1948, when the first of two truces finally came into effect.44

  Eyewitnesses on the Jewish side recall clearly thinking throughout April that the army could strive for more. In his recent interview with official historians, Palti Sela, whose testimony can be found in the Hagana Archives in Tel-Aviv, used colourful language to reconstruct that atmosphere of extra zeal. Palti Sela was a member of the Jewish forces that occupied and cleansed the town of Baysan, and who were ordered to push out the large Bedouin tribes that had for centuries seasonally resided in the area. He later remarked:

  After we cleansed the area from the Bedouin tribes the pus [he used the Yiddish word for a purulent wound: farunkel] of the Baysan are still infected with two villages, Faruna and Samariyya. They did not seem to be afraid and were still cultivating their fields and continued using the roads.45

  One of the many villages captured during these attacks in the east was that of Sirin. Its story epitomises the fate that befell scores of villages depopulated by Jewish forces in Marj Ibn Amir and the Baysan Valley, where today one searches in vain for any trace of the Palestinian life that once flourished there.

  The Village of Sirin

  Sirin was occupied on 12 May 1948. It lay near Baysan on one of the Jiftiliq’s lands: historically these lands, at times referred to as ‘mudawar’ lands, were nominally under the Ottoman Sultan’s title but were cultivated by Palestinian farmers. Sirin grew into a thriving community around the burial place (maqam) of a Muslim holy man named Shaykh Ibn Sirin. The terrain in that part of Palestine is tough and the summers are unbearably hot. And yet the habitation that developed around the maqam and the nearby springs, three kilomotres away, resembled that of villages endowed with a much better climate and an endless flow of fresh water. Animals carried the water from the wells and diligent farmers used it to turn the rugged land into a small Garden of Eden. Sirin was an isolated community as it was unreachable by car, but outsiders who did frequent the village single out the particular style of the buildings there: Sirin’s houses were made of volcanic black stones mixed with clay, and the roofs were covered with intertwined layers of wood and bamboo.

  Sirin was noted as a fine example of the collective system of land-sharing to which the villagers adhered, dating back to the Ottoman period, and here had survived both the capitalization of the local agriculture and the Zionist drive for land. It boasted three rich bustans (gardens with fruit trees) and olive groves, which spread out over 9000 cultivated dunam of land (out of 17,000). The land belonged to the village as a whole and the size of the family determined its share in the crops and territory.

  Sirin was also a village that had all the right connections. The main family, the Zu’bi, had been promised immunity by the Jewish Agency because they belonged to a collaborative clan. Mubarak al-Haj al-Zu’bi, the mukhtar, a young well-educated man, with close connections to the opposition parties, was a friend of the Jewish mayor of Haifa, Shabtai Levi, from the time they had both worked in Baron Rothschild’s company. He was sure his 700 villagers would be exempt from the fate of the nearby villages. But there was another clan in the village, the hamulla of Abu al-Hija, who were more loyal to the ex-Mufti, al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni, and his national party. According to the 1943 Hagana village file on Sirin, it was the presence of this clan that doomed the village. The file noted that in Sirin ten members of the Abu al-Hija had participated in the 1936 Revolt and that ‘none of them was arrested or killed and kept their ten rifles’.

  The village suffered from time to time from the animosity between the two main hamullas, but, as everywhere in Palestine, matters improved after the Great Revolt, and by the end of the Mandate the village had put behind it the rift that tore it apart during the rebellious days of the 1930s.

  Sirin’s mukhtar hoped that the village’s immunity would be further ensured by the presence of a small Christian clan that had an excellent relationship with the rest of the people. One of them was the village teacher who, in his class of 40 children, educated the next generation without any prejudice to politics or clannish affiliations. His best friend was Shaykh Muhammad al-Mustafa, the imam in the local mosque and the guardian of the Christian church and monastery that were also located inside the village.

  Within a few short hours, this microcosm of religious coexistence and harmony was laid waste. The villagers did not put up a fight. The Jewish troops gathered the Muslims – of both clans – and Christians together and ordered them to start crossing the River Jordan to the other side. They then demolished the mosque, the church and the monastery, together with all the houses. Soon, all the trees in the bustans had withered away and died.

  Today, a cactus hedge surrounds the rubble that was Sirin. Jews never succeeded in repeating the success of the Palestinians in holding on to the tough soil in the valley, but the springs in the vicinity are still there – an eerie sight as they serve no one.46

  The ALA in Marj Ibn Amir

  West of Sirin, in the Marj Ibn Amir (Izrael Valley), Fawzi al-Qawqji did what he could to limit the Jewish takeover, and carried out a few abortive attacks on the main Jewish kibbutz in the area, Mishmar Ha-Emek. In one of the bombardments of the kibbutz by the one cannon he had available, a direct hit killed three children. This awful tragedy is the only hostile event you will find mentioned in official Israeli history books as having taken place in this area.

  The villages nearby did not contribute much to the ALA’s efforts to bring good news back from the front to the Arab League that had sent them. In fact, many of them had signed non-aggression pacts with the kibbutzim in their vicinity. But as the ALA attack on Mishmar Ha-Emek fuelled the vengeful rage of the kibbutzniks, these villages were no longer immune from the growing aggression in the valley. The kibbutzniks urged the troops to continue the ethnic cleansing they had started to the east of the area. Many of the kibbutzim in this part of the Galilee belonged to the Zionist socialist party, Hashomer Ha-Tza‘ir, some of whose members tried to adopt a more humane position. In July, some prominent Mapam members complained to Ben-Gurion about what they saw as an ‘u
nnecessary’ expansion of the cleansing operation. Ben-Gurion was quick to remind these conscientious kibbutzniks that they themselves had been glad to see the first phase initiated in the area back in April.47 Indeed, if you were a Zionist Jew in 1948, this meant one thing and one thing only: full commitment to the de-Arabisation of Palestine.

  Al-Qawqji’s attack on Kibbutz Mishmar Ha-Emek on 4 April was in direct response to the Jewish mass expulsions that had started around 15 March. The first villages to go on that day had been Ghubayya al-Tahta and Ghubayya al-Fawqa, each with more than 1000 inhabitants. Later the same day it was the turn of the smaller village of Khirbat al-Ras. Occupation here, too, carried the by now familiar features of ethnic cleansing: expulsion of the people and destruction of their houses.

  After the Mishmar Ha-Emek incident it was the turn of even larger villages: Abu Shusha, Kafrayn, Abu Zurayq, Mansi, and Naghnaghiyya (pronounced Narnariya): the roads east to Jenin soon filled with thousands of Palestinians whom the Jewish troops had expelled and sent walking, not far from where the bastion of Zionist socialism had its kibbutzim. The smaller village of Wadi Ara, with 250 people, was the last to be wiped out in April.48

  Here, too, the Irgun contributed its share of the continued destruction of Palestine’s countryside. They completed the vengeful attack on the remaining villages in Marj Ibn Amir, while the British Mandate troops were still there: Sabbarin, Sindiyana, Barieka, Khubbeiza and Umm al-Shauf. Some of the people in these villages fled under the heavy mortar fire of the attacking forces, while others who waved white flags signaling surrender were instantly exiled. In Sabbarin, the Irgun bandits, angered by the fact that they encountered some armed resistance, as punishment kept the women, old men and children confined for a few days within barbed wire – very much like the cages in which Palestinians today are kept for hours at checkpoints in the West Bank when they fail to present the right permits. Seven young Palestinian men found carrying arms were executed on the spot by Jewish troops, who then expelled the rest of the villagers to Umm al-Fahm, then not yet in Jewish hands.49

  Each phase or operation in the various geographical locations produced new patterns of behaviour that were later adopted by the rest of the troops. A few days after the village of Kafrayn had been occupied and its people expelled, the army practised its skills on the now empty village, wiping it off the face of the earth.50 This type of manoeuvre was used again and again, long after the war of 1948 had ended, well into the 1950s.

  The operation in Safad’s hinterland was already motivated less by rage than by efficient planning, and had been given the ominous codename of ‘Broom’ (matateh). It began with the cleansing of the villages along the Tiberias–Safad highway. The first village to go was Ghuwayr. After Tiberias fell, the mukhtar immediately realised what was in store for his village, as it was the nearest to the city. He asked Adib Shishakly, the head of the ALA volunteers, to help, and suggested distributing arms to the villagers, but Shishakly refused. The news demoralised the villagers, and women and children began fleeing to Rama on the road to Acre on the other side of the Galilee mountains. The mukhtar proceeded to recruit fifty peasants who, armed with their hartooush (old hunting guns from the First World War) awaited the Jewish assault. On 22 April, the Jews, as was to become their custom, first sent a delegation proposing a collective evacuation of the men without fighting. In this case, however, the delegation was unusual: it was made up of people who in the past had maintained friendly ties with the village, and the Palestinians who were present at the meeting later recalled their apologetic tone when they explained that all the villages on the road between Tiberias and Safad were scheduled to be expelled. The mukhtar did not reveal the fact that the village was almost deserted and avowed that the people ‘will defend their homes’.51

  After the swift occupation of the village, another pattern emerged. A Jewish soldier went out on the roof of one of the houses and inquired whether among the men captured there were any Druze. ‘If so’, he shouted, ‘they can stay. The rest have to go to Lebanon.’ But even that option was not open to all, as the occupying force decided to conduct a selection process before ‘allowing’ the villagers to leave for Lebanon. Such selection operations were to become the model for the following expulsions, and one that has remained deeply engraved in the collective memory of Palestinians from the Nakba years, haunting them to this very day. Young men between the age of ten and thirty were taken aside and sent to prison camps. Forty men of Ghuwayr were thus separated from their families for eighteen months, languishing in pens.

  The village of Ghuwayr was frequently visited by UN observers checking first-hand how the partition resolution was being implemented. They witnessed the expulsions. Representatives of the western media, including a New York Times reporter, were still filing stories about individual villages, although the public interest in their fate was by this time diminishing; in any case, western readers were never given the full picture of events.52 Furthermore, it seems that none of the foreign correspondents dared openly to criticise the actions of the Jewish nation just three years after the Holocaust.

  It was in and around Haifa that the ethnic cleansing operation gathered momentum, its deadly pace heralding the destruction to come. Fifteen villages – some of them small, that is with less than 300 people, some of them huge, with around 5000 – were expelled in quick succession. Abu Shusha, Abu Zurayq, Arab al-Fuqara, Arab al-Nufay‘at, Arab Zahrat al-Dumayri, Balad Al-Shaykh, Damun, Khirbat al-Kasayir, Khirbat al-Manshiyya, Rihaniyya, Khirbat al-Sarkas, Khirbat Sa‘sa, Wa‘rat al-Sarris and Yajur were wiped off Palestine’s map within a sub-district full of British soldiers, UN emissaries and foreign reporters.

  Expulsion and flight were not enough to save the villagers. Many of them were hunted down by the Marxist kibbutzniks of Hashomer Ha-Tza‘ir, who swiftly and efficiently looted their houses before detonating them. We have records of the verbal condemnation by concerned Zionist politicians from this period – which provided ‘new historians’ in Israel with material on the atrocities they had not encountered in other archival sources.53 Today, these documents of complaint read more as an attempt by ‘sensitive’ Jewish politicians and soldiers to absolve their consciences. They form part of an Israeli ethos that can best be described as ‘shoot and cry’, the title of a collection of expressions of supposedly moral remorse by Israeli soldiers who had participated in a small-scale ethnic cleansing operation in the June 1967 war. These concerned soldiers and officers were then invited by the popular Israeli writer Amoz Oz and his friends to perform a ‘rite of exoneration’ in the Red House before it was demolished. Back in 1948, three years after the Holocaust, similar remonstrations served to ease the troubled consciences of Jewish soldiers involved in atrocities and war crimes against a largely defenseless civilian population.

  Crying aloud while killing and expelling innocent people was one tactic for dealing with the moral implications of Plan D. The other one was dehumanizing the Palestinians who, as the Jewish Agency had promised the UN, were to become full citizens of the State of Israel. Instead, they were expelled, imprisoned or killed: ‘Our army marches forward and conquers Arab villages and their inhabitants flee like mice,’ wrote Yossef Weitz.54

  The spectrum of military activity was still quite wide in April. Unlike in later months when vast areas were to be cleansed, in April some villages were still left intact; other villagers suffered a worse fate than expulsion and were subjected to massacres. The military orders reflected this spectrum when they distinguished between two kinds of action to be taken against Palestinian villages: cleansing (le-taher) and harassing (le-hatrid). Harassment was never specified. It consisted of the random shelling of cities, towns and villages and hit-or-miss fire on civilian traffic.55 On 14 April, Ben-Gurion wrote to Sharett: ‘From day to day we expand our occupation. We occupy new villages and we have just begun.’56

  In some of the villages that were close to urban centres, the Jewish troops followed a policy of massacres in order to preci
pitate the flight of the people in the cities and towns nearby. This was the case of Nasr al-Din near Tiberias, Ayn al-Zaytun near Safad, and Tirat Haifa near Haifa. In all three of these villages, groups of men that were, in the parlance of the Hagana, ‘males between the age of 10 and 50’, were executed in order to intimidate and terrorise the village population and those living in the nearby towns.57 Out of the three massacres, historians do not yet have the full picture for Nasr al-Din, but the other two are well documented, the most well-known of which is Ayn al-Zaytun.

  Ayn al-Zaytun

  Ayn al-Zaytun is the best known of the three massacres because its story formed the basis for the only epic novel on the Palestinian catastrophe we have so far, Bab al-Shams by Elias Khoury. The events in the village were also chronicled in a semi-fictional Israeli novella on the period, Netiva Ben-Yehuda’s Between the Knots.58 Bab al-Shams was made into a film, a French-Egyptian co-production.59 The scenes on the screen closely resemble the descriptions we find in Between the Knots, which Ben-Yehuda largely based on reports in the military archives and on oral recollections. The film also faithfully represents the beauty of the village, which lay in a low-lying canyon bisecting the high mountains of the Galilee on the road between Mayrun and Safad, and was graced by a stream of fresh water surrounded by hot mineral pools.

  The village’s strategic location, a mile west of Safad, made it an ideal target for occupation. It was also coveted by local Jewish settlers, who had started buying land nearby and who maintained an uneasy relationship with the villagers towards the end of the Mandate. Operation ‘Broom’ provided a chance for the Hagana’s elite unit, the Palmach, not only to cleanse the village in accordance with Plan Dalet on 2 May 1948, but also to settle ‘old accounts’, namely the hostility with which the Palestinian villagers had viewed and received the settlers.