The curious case of the disappearing Palestinians
The Berean challenge (part 2)
"It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country from them. They did not exist."
—Golda Meir, June 1969 as Prime Minister of Israel
"We have forgotten that we have not come to an empty land to inherit it, but we have come to conquer a country from people inhabiting it."
—Moshe Sharett in 1914, future Prime Minister of Israel1
“‘He lived safely in our midst for years, we even helped him build a clinic in the region. But when the Haganah came to our village, he joined them and turned his gun against us,’ my grandfather would say...”2 Stories like these are common among oral histories of the 1948 War. Stories of betrayal. Betrayal seems to be the most common sentiment in the Arab narrative of modern Palestine.3 Betrayed by England. Betrayed by Arab nations. Betrayed by King Abdullah of Jordan. Betrayed by the "great powers" like the United States. And in this part of the story, betrayed by long-time Jewish neighbors.
Not all Jewish immigrants to pre-1948 Palestine subscribed to the “zero-sum thinking” of Political Zionism (Jewish nationalism)4 or approved of actions taken by the majority. As Zionist immigrants flocked to Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s, some Kibbutzim leaders envisioned cooperation with Arabs,5 and neighborly relations developed in most places6 even if they were tainted by an attitude of European superiority7. In the towns and cities, where one-third of Arab Palestinians lived, there was an even longer history of coexistence.
Even after the colossal rift that resulted from the 1948 War, new partnerships developed along the "green line" motivated by necessity or opportunity.8 And don't forget the native "Mizrahi Jews" in Palestine who were Arabs themselves and had lived alongside their Muslim and Christian neighbors for years, fully integrated into the social life of Arab Palestine.9
For these reasons, the term "Civil War" is a more appropriate description for the hostilities of 1948 instead of popular titles which favor the viewpoint of one faction or other— "War of Independence" or "The Catastrophe". Like all civil wars, the gunfire and artillery did as much to kill goodwill between neighbors as it did to kill the "enemy".
The 1948 War in Palestine had three primary elements:
an internal civil war between Jewish militias and local Arabs beginning in late 1947,10
the organized expulsion of Arabs from Jewish occupied territories, also beginning in late 1947,
and a brief war between Israel and neighboring countries from mid-1948 to early-1949.11
This period of history is almost entirely unknown to us in America. It is not taught in secondary schools or most college curriculums, there are no movies about it, no popular novels, no Ken Burns documentaries.12
The second aspect of the war mentioned above, the organized expulsions, is referred to as the Nakba or "catastrophe" in Arab vocabulary. Although Palestinians were forced to flee their homes at other times in the 20th century, this is the moment in history when the greatest collective trauma occurred. The Nakba became a central part of Palestinian identity after 1948.
For the few Americans who stumble across Arab stories from the 1948 War, the Nakba is a surprising revelation. See below for a brief overview of this topic…
quick overview
How Palestinians were expelled from their homes (16min. video from Vox)
Plan Dalet overview from the Institute for Middle East Understanding (3min. read)
Emigration of the Arabs of Palestine : An Israeli Military Report from June 1948 (PDF with highlights for quick reading)
especially for Christians
Musalaha. Salim Munayer, a Palestinian Christian, tells how his father taught him to reject bitterness toward those who harmed his family and how he was inspired facilitate reconciliation between Jewish and Palestinian individuals. The video shows Salim's father reconciling with a Jewish veteran of the 1948 War. (11min. video)
news & visuals
Why Arab countries are unwilling to take in Palestinian refugees from Gaza (AP News, Oct. 2023)
Israeli minister threatens 'Nakba 2023', but it's already happening (The Hill, Nov. 2023)
Destruction in northern Gaza aimed at preventing return (Washington Post, Dec. 2023)
…and if you have lots of time on your hands, scroll down a little more.
optional deep dive for the curious
Summary excerpt from The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe (PDF with highlights for quick reading)
The Debate About 1948 by Avi Shlaim (long article, Int'l Journal for Middle East Studies)
Nakba denial (Wikipedia article)
documentaries
"Al Nakba". A documentary made in 2008 by Rawan Daman. A longer film (3+ hours) made several years after the two listed below, which also covers the history leading up to the 1948 War.
episode 1 : history of Zionism and British partnership up to 1936
episode 2 : 1936 revolt, Peel Commission, military preparations
episode 3 : partition plan, expulsion plan, start of the 1948 War
episode 4 : end of the war, assassination of Count Bernadotte, geographical changes and cover-ups, survivor interviews, continued expulsions
Al Nakba: The Palestinian Catastrophe 1948. Made in 1997 by Benny Brunner and Alexandra Jansse. Arguably, the first documentary film to seriously tackle this period of history.
1948 Documentary. Made in 1998 by Arab-Israeli actor Mohammad Bakri. The film mostly consists of interviews with Arab survivors as well as a few Jewish veterans. There is no commentary, only interviews, which gives the film a uniquely "unedited" feel.
Tantura. A documentary made in 2022 by Alon Schwarz. The film explores one of the many hushed-up massacres of 1948. Alternately, this interview with the documentary creator gives an overview of the film (long article on Haaretz).
books for the readers
Ilan Pappe. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
Nahla Abdo and Nur Masalha. An Oral History of the Palestinian Nakba.
NOTE: We use a variety of sources for the weblinks and include primary sources where possible. We try to select sources that are not annoyingly biased, while also avoiding a false (and boring) sense of balance. Our primary goal is to provide information and perspectives that are interesting, thought provoking, reliable, and unfamiliar to most Americans. We do not link to information that is already well known to our audience or reinforce perspectives that do not lead to a positive outcome. The opinions espoused in the linked resources are not necessarily our own.
Be wary of sources claiming to promote a “balanced” perspective…
—"A dangerous balancing act" by David Robert Grimes, EMBO Reports
—"Lies, Misinformation Play Key Role in Israel-Hamas Fight" by Todd C. Helmus and William Marcellino, RAND
Footnotes
Quote taken from Righteous Victims by Benny Morris (p. 91)
Emad Moussa, “We saw the Nakba through our grandparents’ eyes, and we internalised it”. The New Arab, 14 May 2022.
Lila Abu-Lughod, “Moods of Betrayal in the Story of Palestine”. Public Books, 18 July 2018.
For a brief overview of Zionism, see the next article in this series
From the story of Siegfried Lehmann My Promised Land by Ari Shavit (ch. 5 “Lydda”):
“…On the contrary, Lehmann believed that Zionism must plant the Jews in their ancient homeland in an organic fashion. It must respect the Orient and become a bridge between East and West. […] Dr. Lehmann believed that Zionism would prevail only if it was integrated into the Middle East. In July 1927, the young doctor rushed to the traumatized Arab city of Lydda to attend to the survivors of a devastating earthquake that demolished much of the old town and killed scores of its residents. In the 1930s, because of the profound impact his work had had on the community during the disaster, Lehmann made friends among Lydda’s gentry and among the dignitaries of the neighboring Arab villages of Haditha, Dahariya, Gimzu, Daniyal, Deir Tarif, and Bayt Nabala. He saw to it that the villagers walking to and from Lydda in the scorching summer heat would enjoy cool water and refreshing shade at a specially designed welcome fountain that he built for them at the gate of the Zionist youth village. Lehmann instructed the youth village clinic to give medical assistance to Palestinians seeking it. He insisted that the students of Ben Shemen be taught to respect their neigh bors and their neighbors’ culture. Almost every weekend the youth of Ben Shemen went on trips to the villages. They also frequently visited Lydda, its market, its schools. Arab musicians and dancers were invited to participate in the youth village’s festivals. An Orient fair was held, at which Arab rural civilization was studied, displayed, and celebrated.
When the Hollywood-produced film Land was shot in Lehmann’s youth village just after World War II, the scenes it captured portrayed a humanist utopia. In black-and-white frames, the director, Helmar Lerski, and his cinematographers registered an unreal reality. Here were boys and girls who had barely escaped Germany living in a progressive, democratic educational establishment, a kind of convalescent home for the uprooted youth of an uprooted people in the land of the Bible. Here were young Hebrew shepherds herding sheep on the craggy, ancient hills between Haditha and Dahariya. Here were young weavers spinning yarn on spindles as if they were French or German villagers who had been living on the land for generations. Here was a community of orphans living a Euro-Palestinian village culture that is in peace with the land it had just descended upon. On the eve of the Sabbath, the children, wearing white shirts, gathered around white-cloth-covered tables to light candles. Although they had no parents, they had faith. Some played Bach, some sang hymns, some told Jewish legends and tales from Tolstoy. But everyone in the halls of Ben Shemen, from age eight to eighteen, took part in an exceptional ritual of secular youngsters reaching for the holy in the Holy Land.
Lydda suspected nothing. Lydda did not imagine what was about to happen. For forty-four years, it watched Zionism enter the valley: first the Atid factory, then the Kiryat Sefer school, then the olive forest, the artisan colony, the tiny workers’ village, the experimental farm, and the strange youth village headed by the eccentric German doctor who was so friendly to the people of Lydda and gave medical treatment to those in need. The city of Lydda had two mosques and a large cathedral called St. George. But though by Christian tradition, Lydda was the city of Saint George, the people of Lydda did not see that Zionism would turn into a modern-day dragon. They did not see that while Dr. Lehmann preached peace, others taught war. While Dr. Lehmann took his students to the neighboring Palestinian villages, Shmaryahu Gutman took them to Masada. While the youth village taught humanism and brotherhood, the pine forest behind it hosted military courses training Ben Shemen’s youth to throw grenades, assemble submachine guns, and fire antitank PIAT shells. The people of Lydda did not see that the Zionism that came into the valley to give hope to a nation of orphans has become a movement of cruel resolve, determined to take the land by force.
**Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land is a popular book from a one-sided perspective (patriotic to the core). Many people shy away from stories and memoirs like this that are overly subjective or hold an opposite perspective to their own. This is a real shame because it can be quite useful to read one-sided sources in order to gain a better understanding of how people think— people who are different from yourself— and develop your sense of curiosity and empathy. But… Shavit’s book is long and wordy. I’ll save you some time… the most useful chapters are ch. 4 and ch. 5 (“Masada” and “Lydda”). Shavit’s storytelling is colorful and enjoyable. At the moment, the audio and e-book are available on Everand.
“What was Palestine like before the Nakba?” by Jewish Voice for Peace.
Walid Sadik, former member of Israel’s Knesset (Parliament) said about the time he spent working on a Kibbutz as part of a socialist labor movement called the “Pioneer Arab Youth”:
“…the coexistence was forced, not genuine. Coexistence is expressed in everyday life, in deeds, not in theories. It was hypocrisy per se, and I think that the same hypocrisy exists to this day. The kibbutzim believe above all that this is a Jewish state and that the Jews in it are more privileged than the Arabs and have priority in everything. This, in my opinion, is the spirit that resides in every Jewish Zionist, and especially among the kibbutzniks, the most Zionist settlers there are.” —from “When Arabs Were Invited to Live the Zionist Dream” by Ayelet Bechar, Haaretz, 26 July 2019.
“partnerships”. Mezer-Meiser Coexistence (5min. video). The story of Kibbutz Mezer and the Arab village of Meiser (5min. video). A very encouraging story.
“green line”. The armistice line and effective international border between Israel and the West Bank (Jordanian territory) between 1949 and 1967.
See this brief explanation of “Mizrahi” on justvision.org (2min. read)
An interview with a “Mizrahi” Israeli soldier about Arab Jews in Israel (3min. video clip, starting at 19:00… the rest of the video is on a different topic)
The Civil War was sparked by small acts of violence and retaliation in late 1947 following a period of calm (Wikipedia articles)
The political intrigue surrounding the 1948 War is outside the scope of this article and outside the scope of Salam 25. Nonetheless, it is quite interesting. For you students of history who have only been exposed to the original Israeli narrative surrounding the 1948 War, you will find the below sources to be interesting, both are written by Israeli Jewish historians.
The debate about 1948 between the old and the new historians resembles the American debate on the origins of the Cold War. That debate evolved in stages. During the 1950s the so-called traditionalist view held sway […] Then, in the context of the Vietnam war and the crisis of American self-confidence that accompanied it, a new school of thought emerged, a revisionist school of mostly younger, left-wing scholars. […] Following the opening up of the archives, a third school of thought emerged, the post-revisionist school. […] The hallmark of post-revisionism is not to allocate blame to this party or the other but to try and understand the dynamics of the conflict that we call the Cold War. The debate about the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict seems to be following a similar pattern. —from “The Debate About 1948“by Avi Shlaim
Shlaim goes on to say that a “post-revisionist” school of thought has not fully emerged yet in Israeli historical scholarship regaring 1948.
Two assumptions that have been challenged by the “new historians” beginning in the 1980s are:
the Arab-Israeli military balance in 1948 and
the aims of the invading Arab armies
Regarding the first assumption, see the below excerpt from chapter 4 of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe:
[…] not once between the end of November 1947 and May 1948 did Ben-Gurion and, one should add, the small group of leading Zionist figures around him sense that their future state was in any danger, or that the list of military operations was so overwhelming that they would impinge on the proper expulsion of the Palestinians. In public, the leaders of the Jewish community portrayed doomsday scenarios and warned their audiences of an imminent ‘second Holocaust’. In private, however, they never used this discourse. […] The Zionist leaders were confident they had the upper hand militarily and could drive through most of their ambitious plans. And they were right.
Moshe Sharett, the Jewish state’s foreign minister ‘designate’, was out of the country during the months leading up to the declaration of the state. Every now and then he would receive letters from Ben-Gurion directing him how best to navigate between the need to recruit global and Jewish support for a future state in danger of being annihilated, and at the same time keeping him abreast of the true reality on the ground. When, on 18 February 1948, Sharett wrote to Ben-Gurion: ‘We will have only enough
troops to defend ourselves, not to take over the country,’ Ben-Gurion
replied:”[…] we will be able not only to defend [ourselves] but also to inflict death blows on the Syrians in their own country – and take over Palestine as a whole. I am in no doubt of this. We can face all the Arab forces. This is not a mystical belief but a cold and rational calculation based on practical examination.”
[…] This confident posture regarding the Hagana’s ability to take Palestine as a whole, and even beyond, would be maintained for the duration of the fighting, inhibited only by the promises they had made to the Jordanians.
Regarding the second assumption, see the below quote from “The Debate About 1948“ by Avi Shlaim:
The question is why did the Arab states invade Palestine […]? The conventional Zionist answer is that the motive behind the invasion was to destroy the newly-born Jewish state and to throw the Jews into the sea. The reality was more complex. […]
King Abdullah, who was given nominal command over all the Arab forces in Palestine […] His objective in sending his army into Palestine was not to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state, but to make himself master of the Arab part of Palestine which meant preventing the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. […] the Arab League made every effort to avert a head-on collision and, with the exception of one of two minor incidents, made no attempt to encroach on the territory allocated to the Jewish state by the UN cartographers. […]
There was no love lost between Abdullah and the other Arab rulers who suspected him of being in cahoots with the enemy. Abdullah had always been something of a pariah in the rest of the Arab world, not least because of his friendship with the Jews. Syria and Lebanon felt threatened by his long-standing ambition to make himself master of Greater Syria. Egypt, the leader of the anti-Hashemite bloc within the Arab League, also felt threatened by Abdullah's plans for territorial aggrandizement in Palestine. King Farouk made his decision to intervene in Palestine at the last moment, and against the advice of his civilian and military experts, at least in part in order to check the growth of his rival's power. […]
The one purpose which the Arab invasion did not serve was the ostensible one of coming to the rescue of the embattled Palestinians. […] The reality was one of national selfishness with each Arab state looking after its own interests.
Greg Shupak, “Erasing the Nakba in the U.S. Media“. Institute for Palestine Studies, Iss. 8, 2022.