On January 30, 1948, the Jaffa newspaper, Ash Sha’ab, reported: “The first of our fifth column consists of those who abandon their houses and businesses and go to live elsewhere. At the first signs of trouble, they take to their heels to escape sharing the burden of struggle.” Another Jaffa paper, As Sarih (March 30, 1948), denounced Arab villagers near Tel Aviv for “bringing down disgrace on us all by abandoning the villages.”
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Hieroglyphics
A fifth column is a group that works within a country to undermine the government on behalf of an external enemy of that country.
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Jewish forces seized Tiberias on April 19, 1948, and the entire Arab population of the city (6,000) was evacuated under British military supervision. The Jewish Community Council issued a statement afterward saying that no one forced the Arabs to leave and the forces ordered that no one touch Arab property.
In early April, an estimated 25,000 Arabs left the Haifa area, following an offensive by the irregular Arab forces led by Fawzi al-Qawukji and rumors that Arab air forces would soon bomb the Jewish areas around Mt. Carmel. On April 23, the Haganah captured Haifa. A British police report dated April 26 explained that “every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab populace to stay and carry on with their normal lives, to get their shops and businesses open, and to be assured that their lives and interests will be safe.” In fact, David Ben-Gurion had sent Golda Meir to Haifa to try to persuade the Arabs to stay, but she was unable to convince them because of their fear of being judged traitors to the Arab cause. By the end of the battle, more than 50,000 Palestinians had left.
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Sage Sayings
Villages were frequently abandoned even before they were threatened by the progress of war.
—John Bagot Glubb, the commander of Jordan’s Arab Legion
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Tens of thousands of Arab men, women, and children fled toward the eastern outskirts of the city in cars, trucks, carts, and afoot in a desperate attempt to reach Arab territory—until the Jews captured Rushmiya Bridge toward Samaria and northern Palestine and cut them off. Then thousands rushed every available craft, even rowboats, along the waterfront, to escape by sea toward Acre.
Bye-Bye Haifa
In Tiberias and Haifa, the Haganah issued orders that none of the Arabs’ possessions should be touched and warned that anyone who violated the orders would be severely punished. Despite these efforts, all but about 5,000 or 6,000 Arabs evacuated Haifa, many leaving with the assistance of British military transports.
Syria’s UN delegate, Faris el-Khouri, interrupted the UN debate on Palestine to describe the seizure of Haifa as a “massacre” and said this action was “further evidence that the ‘Zionist program’ is to annihilate Arabs within the Jewish state if partition is effected.”
The following day, however, the British representative at the United Nations, Sir Alexander Cadogan, told the delegates that the fighting in Haifa had been provoked by the continuous attacks by Arabs against Jews a few days before and that reports of massacres and deportations were erroneous. The same day (April 23, 1948), Jamal Husseini, the chairman of the Palestine Higher Committee, told the UN Security Council that instead of accepting the Haganah’s truce offer, the Arabs “preferred to abandon their homes, their belongings, and everything they possessed in the world and leave the town.”
The Invasion Starts an Emigration Flood
As fear and chaos spread throughout the land, the number of Arabs leaving Palestine grew precipitously—numbering more than 200,000 by the time the provisional government declared the independence of the state of Israel. When the five-country Arab invasion began in May 1948, most remaining Arabs left for neighboring countries. Surprisingly, rather than acting as a strategically valuable “fifth column” in the war, the Palestinians chose to flee to the safety of the other Arab states, still confident of being able to return. A leading Palestinian nationalist of the time, Musa Alami, revealed the attitude of the fleeing Arabs:
The Arabs of Palestine left their homes, were scattered, and lost everything. But there remained one solid hope: The Arab armies were on the eve of their entry into Palestine to save the country and return things to their normal course, punish the aggressor, and throw oppressive Zionism with its dreams and dangers into the sea. On May 14, 1948, crowds of Arabs stood by the roads leading to the frontiers of Palestine, enthusiastically welcoming the advancing armies. Days and weeks passed, sufficient to accomplish the sacred mission, but the Arab armies did not save the country. They did nothing but let slip from their hands Acre, Sarafand, Lydda, Ramleh, Nazareth, most of the south and the rest of the north. Then hope fled.
As the fighting spread into areas that had previously remained quiet, the Arabs began to see the possibility of defeat. And as this possibility turned into reality, the flight of the Arabs increased—more than 300,000 departed after May 15, leaving approximately 160,000 Arabs in the state of Israel.
The Arabs’ fear was naturally exacerbated by the atrocity stories following the attack on Deir Yassin (see Chapter 10). The native population lacked leaders who could calm them. Their spokesmen, such as the Arab Higher Committee, were operating from the safety of neighboring states and did more to arouse Arabs’ fears than to pacify them. Local military leaders were of little or no comfort. In one instance, the commander of Arab troops in Safed went to Damascus and his troops withdrew from the town the following day. When the residents realized they were defenseless, they fled in panic.
Although most of the Arabs had left by November 1948, others chose to leave even after hostilities ceased. An interesting case was the evacuation of 3,000 Arabs from Faluja, a village between Tel Aviv and Beersheba, as reported by the New York Times (March 4, 1949):
Observers feel that with proper counsel after the Israeli-Egyptian armistice, the Arab population might have advantageously remained. They state that the Israeli government had given guarantees of security of person and property. However, no effort was made by Egypt, Transjordan, or even the United Nations Palestine Conciliation Commission to advise the Faluja Arabs one way or the other.
Palestinians Get a Push
In a handful of cases, the Israeli forces did expel Arab residents from villages, usually out of military necessity. For example, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) needed to capture a series of towns along the Tel Aviv–Jerusalem highway to relieve the siege on Jerusalem. After the military overran the towns of Lydda and Ramle, the inhabitants were trucked out toward the Arab Legion’s lines with only the possessions they could carry.
In one clear case, Israelis did force Arabs from their land. The IDF was operating along the northern border against Syrian and Lebanese forces. The Israelis were welcomed by the villagers of the Maronite Christian town of Biram. Initially, the soldiers confiscated all the Arabs’ weapons there and ordered them to remain in the village. A few days later, the Jews returned and ordered all the Arabs to evacuate and go to Lebanon. Most didn’t leave, choosing instead to hide nearby. The Israelis then told them that they needed to leave for only a short time and then would be allowed to return. The Arabs went to a largely abandoned Arab village, but were never permitted to go back to their homes. After the war, Biram was razed and the land was given to Jewish settlers.
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Ask the Sphinx
Many of the people originally of Biram still live in the village they moved to in October 1948. Since that time, they have fought in the Israeli courts for the opportunity to rebuild Biram. In recent years, government ministers have expressed sympathy for their plight, but nothing has been done to redress the injustice.
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Arab Leaders Provoke Exodus
A plethora of evidence exists demonstrating that Palestinians were encouraged to leave their homes to make way for the invading Arab armies. The U.S. Consul-General in Haifa, Aubrey Lippincott, wrote on April 22, 1948, for example, that “local mufti-dominated Arab leaders” were urgin
g “all Arabs to leave the city, and large numbers did so.”
The British newspaper The Economist, a frequent critic of the Zionists, reported on October 2, 1948:
Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa, not more than 5,000 or 6,000 remained. Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit…. It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades.
The report from the Times of the battle for Haifa (May 3, 1948) was similar: “The mass evacuation, prompted partly by fear, partly by orders of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarter of Haifa a ghost city…By withdrawing Arab workers, their leaders hoped to paralyze Haifa.”
The secretary of the Arab League Office in London, Edward Atiyah, wrote in his book The Arabs that the Palestinian “exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boastings of an unrealistic Arabic press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders, that it could be only a matter of weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab states and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re-enter and retake possession of their country.”
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Sage Sayings
The tragedy of the Palestinians was that most of their leaders had paralyzed them with false and unsubstantiated promises that they were not alone; that 80 million Arabs and 400 million Muslims would instantly and miraculously come to their rescue.
—King Abdullah I, great-great-grandfather of the current King of Jordan, Abdullah bin al-Hussein
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In his memoirs, Haled al Azm, the Syrian prime minister in 1948–49, also admitted the Arab role in persuading the refugees to leave: “Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes. But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave. Only a few months separated our call to them to leave and our appeal to the United Nations to resolve on their return.”
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Mysteries of the Desert
Many Arabs claim that 800,000 to 1 million Palestinians became refugees during the Israeli War of Independence. The census in 1945 counted only 756,000 permanent Arab residents in Israel. On November 30, 1947, the date the United Nations voted for partition, the total Arab population was 809,100. A 1949 census counted 160,000 Arabs living in the country after the war. These numbers show that no more than 650,000 Palestinian Arabs could have become refugees. Reports by the UN mediator on Palestine arrived at an even lower figure: 472,000, and only about 360,000 Arab refugees required aid.
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Numerous other Arab publications talk about the way the Palestinians were encouraged to leave by the promise that the invading armies would make short work of the Jews and that the millions the Jews had spent on land and economic development would be easy booty.
Jews Flee Arab Lands
Arabs weren’t the only ones taking flight during the violent 1947 to 1949 period. Jews living in Arab states also fled, but whereas Arabs were leaving Israel, the Jews were going there. The situation of Jews living in Arab states had long been precarious, and during the 1947 UN debates, Arab leaders threatened them. Egypt’s delegate told the General Assembly: “The lives of one million Jews in Muslim countries would be jeopardized by partition.”
The number of Jews fleeing Arab countries for Israel in the years following Israel’s independence was roughly equal to the number of Arabs who had left Palestine. Many Jews were allowed to take little more than the shirts on their backs.
However, unlike the Arabs who fled, the Jews had no desire to be repatriated. Of the approximately 820,000 Jewish refugees, 586,000 were resettled in Israel at great expense and without any offer of compensation from the Arab governments who confiscated their possessions.
The contrast between the reception of Jewish refugees in Israel and the reception of Palestinian refugees in Arab countries is even more stark when one considers the difference in cultural and geographic dislocation experienced by the two groups. Most Jewish refugees traveled hundreds—and some thousands—of miles to a tiny country whose inhabitants spoke a different language. Most Arab refugees never left Palestine at all; they traveled a few miles to the other side of the truce line, remaining inside the vast Arab nation that they were part of linguistically, culturally, and ethnically.
What to Do About Refugees?
The United Nations began considering the plight of the refugees in the summer of 1948, even before Israel had completed its military victory. At the time, the Arabs still believed they could win the war and allow the refugees to return triumphant. The Arab position was expressed by Emile Ghoury, the secretary of the Arab Higher Committee:
It is inconceivable that the refugees should be sent back to their homes while they are occupied by the Jews, as the latter would hold them as hostages and maltreat them. The very proposal is an evasion of responsibility by those responsible. It will serve as a first step towards Arab recognition of the state of Israel and partition.
On December 11, 1948, the United Nations adopted Resolution 194. It called upon the Arab states and Israel to resolve all outstanding issues through negotiations—either directly or with the help of the Palestine Conciliation Commission established by this resolution. Furthermore, Point 11 of the resolution resolves that:
[R]efugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which under principles of international law or in equity should be made good by Governments or authorities responsible. Instructs the Conciliation Commission to facilitate the repatriation, resettlement and economic and social rehabilitation of refugees and payment of compensation…[emphasis added].
The italicized words in the preceding quote demonstrate that the United Nations recognized that Israel could not be expected to repatriate a hostile population that might endanger its security. The solution to the problem, like all previous refugee problems, would require at least some Palestinians to be resettled in Arab lands.
Israel’s Response to Resolution 194
The resolution met most of Israel’s concerns regarding the refugees, whom they regarded as a potential fifth column if allowed to return unconditionally. The Israelis considered the settlement of the refugee issue a negotiable part of an overall peace settlement.
It should be noted that at the time, the Israelis did not expect the refugees to be a major issue. They thought the Arab states would resettle the majority, and some compromise on the remainder could be worked out in the context of an overall settlement.
The Arab’s Response to Resolution 194
The Arabs were no more willing to compromise in 1949 than they had been in 1947. In fact, they unanimously rejected the UN resolution.
The Arabs have since interpreted Resolution 194 as granting the refugees the absolute right of repatriation and have demanded that Israel accept this interpretation ever since.
* * *
Sage Sayings
We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down.
—Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said
* * *
One reason for maintaining this position was the conviction that the refugees could ultimately bring about Israel’s destruction, a sentiment expressed by Egyptian Foreign Minister Muhammad Salah al-Din: “It is well-known and understood that the Arabs, in demanding the return of the refugees to Palestine, mean their return as masters of the homeland and not as slaves. With a greater clarity, they mean the liquidation of the state of Israel.” (Al-Misri, October 11, 1949)
Palestinian Refugees Get International Relief
The G
eneral Assembly subsequently voted, on November 19, 1948, to establish the United Nations Relief for Palestinian Refugees (UNRPR) to dispense aid to the refugees. The UNRPR was replaced by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) on December 8, 1949, and given a budget of $50 million.
UNRWA was designed to continue the relief program initiated by the UNRPR, to substitute public works for direct relief, and to promote economic development. The proponents of the plan envisioned that direct relief would be almost completely replaced by public works, with the remaining assistance provided by the Arab governments.
UNRWA had little chance of success, however, because it sought to solve a political problem using an economic approach. By the mid-1950s, it was evident that neither the refugees nor the Arab states were prepared to cooperate on the large-scale development projects originally foreseen by the agency as a means of alleviating the Palestinians’ situation. The Arab governments and the refugees themselves were unwilling to contribute to any plan that could be interpreted as fostering resettlement. They preferred to cling to their interpretation of Resolution 194, which they believed would eventually result in repatriation.
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Ask the Sphinx
Israel has maintained that any agreement to compensate the Palestinian refugees must also include Arab compensation for Jewish refugees. To this day, the Arab states have refused to pay any compensation to the hundreds of thousands of Jews who were forced to abandon their property before fleeing those countries.
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Middle East Conflict Page 21