by Ilan Pappe
CHAPTER 5
1. Rivlin and Oren, The War of Independence, vol. 1, p. 332.
2. Speech to the Executive Committee of the Mapai party, 6 April 1948.
3. Quoted directly from the orders to the Carmeli Brigade, Zvi Sinai (ed.), The Carmeli Brigade in the War of Independence, p. 29.
4. Binyamin Etzioni (ed.), The Golani Brigade in the Fighting, p. 10.
5. Zerubavel Gilad, The Palmach Book, vol. 2, pp. 924–5. Daniel McGowan and Matthew C. Hogan, The Saga of the Deir Yassin Massacre, Revisionism and Reality.
6. The descriptions and testimonies about what happened in Deir Yassin are taken from Daniel McGowan and Matthew C. Hogan, The Saga of the Deir Yassin Massacre, Revisionism and Reality.
7. Ibid.
8. Contemporary accounts put the number of victims of the Deir Yassin massacre at 254, a figure endorsed at the time by the Jewish Agency, a Red Cross official, The New York Times, and Dr Hussein al-Khalidi, spokesperson for the Jerusalem-based Arab Higher Committee. It is likely this figure was deliberately inflated in order to sow fear among the Palestinians and thereby panic them into a mass exodus. Certainly, loudspeakers were later used in villages about to be cleansed to warn the people of the terrible consequences if they did not leave voluntarily, to generate panic and encourage them to flee for their lives before the ground troops moved in. Menachem Begin, the leader of the Irgun, described the effect the spreading of such rumours had on the Palestinians in The Revolt, ‘Arabs throughout the country, induced to believe wild tales of “Irgun butchery” were seized with limitless panic and started to flee for their lives. This mass flight soon developed into a maddened, uncontrolled stampede. Of the almost 800,000 who lived on the present territory of the State of Israel, only some 165,000 are still there. The political and economic significance of this development can hardly be overestimated.’ Begin, The Revolt, p. 164. Albert Einstein, along with 27 prominent Jews in New York, condemned the massacre of Deir Yassin in a letter published 4 December 1948 in The New York Times, noting ‘terrorist bands [i.e. Begin’s Irgun] attacked this peaceful village, which was not a military objective in the fighting, killed most of its inhabitants – 240 men, women, and children – and kept a few of them alive to parade as captives through the streets of Jerusalem. Most of the Jewish community was horrified at the deed, and the Jewish Agency sent a telegram of apology to King Abdullah of Transjordan (sic). But the terrorists, far from being ashamed of their act, were proud of this massacre, publicized it widely, and invited all the foreign correspondents present in the country to view the heaped corpses and the general havoc at Deir Yassin.’
9. Uri Ben-Ari, Follow Me.
10. Of particular interest is the way Geula Cohen, today an extreme rightwing activist, and a leading member of the Stern Gang, saved Abu-Ghawsh, because a member of the villages helped her escape the British prison in 1946. See her story in Geula Cohen, Woman of Violence; Memories of a Young Terrorist, 1945–1948.
11. Filastin, 14 April 1948.
12. Palumbo, The Palestinian Catastrophe, pp. 107–8.
13. Ibid., p. 107.
14. See a summary in Flapan, The Birth of Israel, pp. 89–92.
15. This telegraph was intercepted by the Israeli intelligence and is quoted in Ben-Gurion’s Diary, 12 January 1948.
16. See Rees Williams, the Under Secretary of States statement to Parliament, Hansard, House of Commons Debates, vol. 461, p. 2050, 24 February 1950.
17. Arnan Azariahu, who was Israel Galili’s assistant, recalled that when the new Matkal was moved to Ramat Gan, Yigael Yadin demanded that the Qiryati people not be put in charge of protecting the site. Maqor Rishon, interview, 21 May 2006.
18. Walid Khalidi, ‘Selected Documents on the 1948 War’, Journal of Palestine Studies, 107, Vol. 27/3 (Spring 1998), pp. 60–105, uses the British as well as the Arab committee’s correspondence.
19. Hagana Archives, 69/72, 22 April 1948.
20. Central Zionist Archives, 45/2 Protocol.
21. Zadok Eshel (ed.), The Carmeli Brigade in the War of Independence, p. 147
22. Walid Khalidi, ‘Selected Documents on the 1948 War’.
23. Montgomery of Alamein, Memoirs, pp. 4534.
24. Walid Khalidi, ‘The Fall of Haifa’, Middle East Forum, XXXV, 10 (December 1959), letter by Khayat, Saad, Mu’ammar and Koussa from 21 April 1948.
25. The information on the Palestinian side is taken from Mustafa Abasi, Safad During the British Mandate Period: A Social and Political Study, Jerusalem: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2005 (Arabic); a version of it appeared as ‘The Battle for Safad in the War of 1948: A Revised Study, International Journal for Middle East Studies, 36 (2004), pp. 21–47.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.
28. Ben-Gurion’s Diary, 7 June 1948.
29. Salim Tamari, Jerusalem 1948.
30. The reconstruction of the orders was done by Itzhak Levy, the head of the Hagana intelligence in Jerusalem in 1948, in his book Jerusalem in the War of Independence, p. 207 (these interviews were later incorporated into the IDF archives).
31. Fourteen of these telegrams are quoted by Ben-Gurion in his diary, see Rivlin and Oren, The War of Independence, pp. 12, 14, 27, 63, 64, 112, 113, 134, 141, 156, 169, 170, 283.
32. Mentioned in Ben-Gurion’s Diary, 15 January 1948.
33. Levy, Jerusalem, p. 219.
34. Red Cross Archives, Geneva, Files G59/1/GC, G3/82 sent by the international Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delegate de Meuron on 6–19 May 1948 describe a sudden typhoid epidemic.
35. All the information is based on the Red Cross sources and on Salman Abu Sitta, ‘Israel Biological and Chemical Weapons: Past and Present’, Between the Lines, 15–19 March 2003. Abu Sitta also quotes Sara Leibovitz-Dar’s article in Hadahsot, 13 August 1993, where she traces, from a clue from the historian Uri Milstein, ‘those who were responsible for the Acre operation, but who refused to answer her questions. She concluded her article by saying: ‘What was done then with deep conviction and zealotry is now concealed with shame’.
36. Ben-Gurion’s Diary, 27 May 1948.
37. Ibid., 31 January 1948 and his notes on the history of HEMED.
38. Levy, Jerusalem, p. 113, although he does accuse the Legion of joining earlier in attacks on those who had already surrendered. See pp. 109–12.
39. Interview with Sela (see chapter 2, note 31).
40. Evidence given by Hanna Abuied, on the website www.palestineremembered.com.
41. Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, p. 118.
42. Morris in the Hebrew version refers to the meeting on p. 95, Ben-Gurion mentions it in his Diary.
43. Most of these operations are mentioned in Morris, ibid., pp. 137–67.
44. The most detailed information on numbers, methods and maps are in Salman Abu Sitta’s Atlas of the Nakbah.
45. Interview with Sela, (see chapter 2, note 31).
46. The information taken from Khalidi (ed.), All That Remains, pp. 60–1 and, the Hagana’s Village Files, and Ben-Zion Dinur et al., The History of the Hagana, p. 1420.
47. Ha-Kibbutz Ha-Meuchad Archives, Aharon Zisling Archives, Ben-Gurion letters.
48. Almost every expulsion and destruction of the villages was described in The New York Times, which is our main source, together with Khalidi (ed.), All That Remains, Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, and Ben-Zion Dinur et al., The History of the Hagana.
49. Morris, ibid., pp. 243–4.
50. Palmach Archives, Givat Haviva, G/146, 19 April 1948.
51. Nafez Nazzal, The Palestinian Exodus from the Galilee 1948, Beirut: the Institute for Palestinian Studies, 1978, pp. 30–3 and Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, p. 130.
52. Khalidi uses this source very extensively in All That Remains.
53. This provided the main sources for Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited.
54. Weitz, My Diary, vol. 3, 2
1 April 1948.
55. See the orders in IDF Archives, 51/967 particularly in Files 16, 24 and 42, and 51/128/50
56. Ben-Gurion Archives, Correspondence Section, 23.02–30.1 doc. 113.
57. Nazzal, The Palestinian Exodus, p. 29.
58. Netiva Ben-Yehuda, Between the Knots.
59. For a review on the film, see Al-Ahram Weekly, 725, 13–19 January 2005.
60. See the synthesis of the available sources in Khalidi (ed.), All That Remains, p. 437.
61. Hans Lebrecht, The Palestinians, History and Present, pp. 176–7.
62. This is an openly available publication, The Palmach Book, vol. 2, p. 304.
63. Ben-Yehuda, Between the Knots, pp. 245–6.
64. The Palmach Book.
65. Interview with Sela (see chapter 2, note 31).
66. Ibid.
67. Ibid.
68. Ibid.
69. Laila Parsons, ‘The Druze and the Birth of Israel’ in Eugene Rogan and Avi Shlaim (eds), The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948.
70. Ben-Gurion Archives, Correspondence, 23.02–1.03.48, doc. 70.
71. See the discussion in the Arab League in Pappe, The Making of the Arab–Israeli Conflict, pp. 102–34.
72. Walid Khalidi, ‘The Arab Perspective’ in W. Roger Louis and Robert S. Stookey (eds), The End of the Palestine Mandate.
73. Pappe, The Making of the Arab–Israeli Conflict.
74. Qasimya Khairiya, Fawzi al-Qawuqji’s Memoirs, 1936–1948
75. See Shlaim, Collusion.
76. Ben-Gurion’s Diary, 2 May 1948.
77. As much was also conveyed by the Hagana senior officers in a meeting on 8 May 1948 and to Golda Meir by King Abdullah, on May 10. Meir did report to the Zionist leadership that Abdullah would not sign a treaty with the Jews and would have to go to war. But Moshe Dayan affirmed in 1975 what the British suspected, that in fact he promised that the Iraqi and Jordanian troops would invade the Jewish state. See Dayan in Yeidot Acharonot, 28 February 1975 and see Rivlin and Oren, The War of Independence, pp. 409–10 about the 8 May meetings.
78. PRO, FO 800,477, FS 46/7 13 May 1948.
79. Nimr Hawari wrote a war memoir called The Secret of the Nakba, which he published in Nazareth in Arabic in 1955.
80. Quoted in Flapan, The Birth of Israel, p. 157.
81. Recently there was an interesting debate between Israeli historians on Ben-Gurion’s position. See Ha’aretz, 12 and 14 May 2006 ‘The Big Wednesday’.
82. Wahid al-Daly, The Secrets of the Arab League and Abd al-Rahman Azzam.
83. In front of the Joint Parliamentary Middle East Councils, Commission of Enquiry – Palestinian Refugees, London: Labour Middle East Council and others, 2001.
CHAPTER 6
1. Levy, Jerusalem, criticized the decision to try and defend these enclaves as a strategic mistake which did not serve the overall strategy; Levy, Jerusalem, p. 114.
2. Yehuda Sluzky, Summary of the Hagana Book, pp. 486–7.
3. For all meetings I quote from Ben-Gurion’s Diary.
4. Interview with Glubb, and see Glubb, A Soldier with the Arabs, p. 82.
5. Ben-Gurion’s Diary, 2 June 1948.
6. Amitzur Ilan, The Origins of the Arab–Israeli Arms Race: Arms, Embargo, Military Power and Decision in the 1948 Palestine War.
7. IDF Archives, 51/665, File 1, May 1948.
8. Pail, ‘External’.
9. In fact some of the books we have mentioned, notably Khalidi (ed.), All That Remains, Flapan, The Birth of Israel, Palumbo, The Catastrophe and Morris, Revisited prove this point very convincingly.
10. The orders can be found in the IDF archives, 51/957, File 16, 7 April 1948, and see 49/4858, File 495 to 15 October 1948 [hence IDF Archives, orders].
11. See Maqor Rishon. The reason quoted was direct hits on the Red House and Ben-Gurion’s flat by Egyptian airplanes.
12. IDF Archives, 1951/957, File 24, 28 January 1948 to 7 July 1948.
13. Ibid.
14. See Ilan Pappe, ‘The Tantura Case in Israel: The Katz Research and Trial’, Journal of Palestine Studies, 30(3), Spring 2001, pp. 19–39.
15. Based on Pappe, ibid., p. 3 and also Pappe, ‘Historical Truth, Modern Historiography, and Ethical Obligations: The Challenge of the Tantura Case,’ Holy Land Studies, vol. 3/2 November 2004.
16. Nimr al-Khatib, Palestine’s Nakbah, p. 116.
17. Sinai and Rivlin, The Alexandroni Brigade.
18. IDF Archives, 49/6127, File 117, 13 April to 27 September 1948.
19. Ibid.
20. Hagana Archives, 8/27/domestic, 1 June 1948.
21. See note 8.
22. Report to Yadin, 11 May 1948 in Hagana Archives, 25/97.
23. Eshel (ed.), The Carmeli Brigade in the War of Independence, p. 172.
24. Posted on www.palestineremembered.com, 1 July 2000.
25. Ben-Gurion’s Diary, 24 May 1948.
CHAPTER 7
1. Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, p. 128.
2. Four such villages – Beit Tima, Huj, Biriyya, and Simsim – are reported in Ben-Gurion’s Diary, 1 June 1948; the Israeli State Archives report setting fire to villages, in 2564/9 from August 1948.
3. As reported in his diary.
4. Ben-Gurion’s Diary, 2 June 1948.
5. Ibid.
6. Naji Makhul, Acre and its Villages since Ancient Times, p. 28.
7. Interview by Teddy Katz with Tuvia Lishanski, see Pappe, Tantura.
8. The recollections of eyewitnesses were presented in Salman Natur, Anta al-Qatil, ya-Shaykh, 1976 (no publishing house); Michael Palumbo, who scrutinized the UN archives, reports that the UN was aware of Israel’s method of summary execution, The Palestinian Catastrophe, pp. 163–74.
9. IDF Archives, 49/5205/58n, 1 June 1948
10. Israeli State Archives, 2750/11 a report of the intelligence officer to Ezra Danin, 29 July 1948.
11. IDF Archives, 49/6127, File 117, 3 June 1948.
12. Israeli State Archives, 2566/15, various reports by Shimoni.
13. Orders, for instance, to the Carmeli Brigade in the Hagana Archives, 100/29/B.
14. See oral history evidence on the website www.palestineremembered.com.
15. Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, pp. 198–9.
16. Ben-Gurion’s Diary, 16 July 1948.
17. IDF Archives, 49/6127, File 516.
18. Report by the Intelligence Officer of the Northern Front to the HQ, 1 August 1948 in IDF Archives, 1851/957, File 16.
19. The New York Times, 26 and 27 July 1948.
20. Khalidi (ed.), All That Remains p. 148.
21. Lydda in The Encyclopedia of Palestine.
22. Dan Kurzman, Soldier of Peace, pp. 140–1.
23. Ben-Gurion’s Diary, 11, 16 and 17 July 1948 (this was a real obsession).
24. Ibid., 11 July 1948.
25. Ben-Gurion’s Diary, 18 July 1948.
26. Ibid.
27. Interview with Sela (see chapter 2, note 31).
28. Nazzal, The Palestine Exodus, pp. 83–5.
29. IDF Archives, 49/6127, File 516.
30. A detailed description of the expulsion of the Bedouin can be found in Nur Masalha, A Land Without a People: Israel, Transfer and the Palestinians.
31. IDF Archives, File 572/4, a report from 7 August 1948.
32. Ibid. 51/937, Box 5, File 42, 21 August 1948.
33. Ibid.
34. IDF Archives, 549/715, File 9.
35. Ibid. 51/957, File 42, Operation Alef Ayn, 19 June 1948.
CHAPTER 8
1. Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, pp. 305–6.
2. Detailed information on the current location of refugees and their original villages may be found in Salman Abu Sitta’s Atlas of Palestine 1948.
3. Nazzal, The Palestinian Exodus, pp. 95–6 and Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, pp. 230–1 and Khalidi, (ed.), All That Remains, p. 497.