The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

Read The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Online

Authors: Ilan Pappe

Tags: #History, #Middle East, #Israel & Palestine, #General, #Modern, #20th Century

PRAISE FOR
THE ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINE

 

‘Ilan Pappe is Israel’s bravest, most principled, most incisive historian.’

—John Pilger

 

‘Ilan Pappe has written an extraordinary book of profound relevance to the past, present, and future of Israel/Palestine relations.’

—Richard Falk, Professor of International Law and Practise, Princeton University

 

‘If there is to be real peace in Palestine/Israel, the moral vigour and intellectual clarity of
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
will have been a major contributor to it.’

—Ahdaf Soueif, author of
The Map of Love

 

‘This is an extraordinary book – a dazzling feat of scholarly synthesis and Biblical moral clarity and humaneness.’

—Walid Khalidi, Former Senior Research Fellow, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University

 

‘Fresh insights into a world historic tragedy, related by a historian of genius.’

—George Galloway MP

 

‘Groundbreaking research into a well-kept Israeli secret. A classic of historical scholarship on a taboo subject by one of Israel’s foremost New Historians.’

—Ghada Karmi, author of
In Search of Fatima

 

‘Ilan Pappe is out to fight against Zionism, whose power of deletion has driven a whole nation not only out of its homeland but out of historic memory as well. A detailed, documented record of the true history of that crime,
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
puts an end to the Palestinian “Nakbah” and the Israeli “War of Independence” by so compellingly shifting both paradigms.’

—Anton Shammas, Professor of Modern Middle Eastern Literature, University of Michigan

 

‘An instant classic. Finally we have the authoritative account of an historic event, which continues to shape our world today, and drives the conflict in the Middle East. Pappe is the only historian who could have told it, and he has done so with supreme command of the facts, elegance, and compassion. The publication of this book is a landmark event.’

—Karma Nabulsi, research fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford University

 

‘The first book to so clearly document the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948, of which the massacre at Deir Yassin was emblematic. A masterful achievement.’

—Daniel McGowan, Executive Director, Deir Yassin Remembered, Hobart and William Smith College

 

‘Pappe has opened up an important new line of inquiry into the vast and fateful subject of the Palestinian refugees. His book is rewarding in other ways. It has at times an elegiac, even sentimental, character, recalling the lost, obliterated life of the Palestinian Arabs and imagining or regretting what Pappe believes could have been a better land of Palestine.’

—The Times Literary Supplement

 

‘Succinct, clearly written, sometimes emotionally overwhelming in its personalized presentation,
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
should be put forward as a document serving as a prime witness to the war crimes and the crimes against humanity of the destruction of Palestinian society and cultural geography by the Jewish state.’

—Palestine Chronicle

 

‘Pappe offers a scorching indictment of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people in
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
.’

—Metro

 

‘Pappe is one of the brave few voices to stand up and be counted in the oppressive atmosphere of Israeli society.’

—Morning Star

 

‘For anyone who possesses a strong stomach and an equally strong desire to know the truth.’

—Counterpunch

 

‘Pappe is well positioned to lob a grenade such as this one into the twin worlds of Middle Eastern studies and politics.’

—Arab Banker

 
THE ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINE
 

ILAN PAPPE

 

THE ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINE

First published by Oneworld Publications Limited October 2006
This paperback edition first published 2007
Reprinted 2008 (three times), 2010, 2011
This ebook edition published by Oneworld Publications 2011

Copyright © Ilan Pappe 2006

All rights reserved
Copyright under Berne Convention
ACIP record for this title is available
from the British Library

ISBN-13: 978–1–78074–056–0

Cover design by Jon Gray
Typeset by Jayvee, Trivandrum, India

Oneworld Publications
185 Banbury Road
Oxford, OX2 7AR
England

The publishers would like to thank the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for permission to reproduce the photographs on plates 8, 10–12, 18, 19, and back cover, all copyright © UNRWA. The publishers would also like to thank the Institute of Palestine Studies, Beirut, for permission to publish the photographs on plates 14-17, all from the book
All That Remains
(ed. Walid Khalidi) and for generously providing maps 3, 4, and 7; and would like to express their sincere gratitude to Abu al-Sous of
www.palestineremembered.com
, whose assistance in locating images has been invaluable. The photographs on plates 4 & 13 copyright © Bettmann/Corbis; the photograph on plate 1 copyright © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis; the photograph on plate 6 and front cover copyright © Getty Images; the facsimile article on plate 7 copyright ©
New York Times
.

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www.oneworld-publications.com

 
 
Contents
 

List of Illustrations, Maps and Tables

Acknowledgements

Preface

 

1.  An ‘Alleged’ Ethnic Cleansing?

Definitions of Ethnic Cleansing

Ethnic Cleansing as a Crime

Reconstructing an Ethnic Cleansing

2.  The Drive for an Exclusively Jewish State

Zionism’s Ideological Motivation

Military Preparations

The Village Files

Facing the British: 1945–1947

David Ben-Gurion: The Architect

3.  Partition and Destruction: UN Resolution 181 and its Impact

Palestine’s Population

The UN’s Partition Plan

The Arab and Palestinian Positions

The Jewish Reaction

The Consultancy Begins its Work

4.  Finalising A Master Plan

The Methodology of Cleansing

The Changing Mood in the Consultancy: From Retaliation to Intimidation

December 1947: Early Actions

January 1948: Farewell to Retaliation

The Long Seminar: 31 December–2 January

February 1948: Shock and Awe

March: Putting the Finishing Touches to the Blueprint

5.  The Blueprint for Ethnic Cleansing: Plan Dalet

Operation Nachshon: The First Plan Dalet Operation

The Urbicide of Palestine

The Cleansing Continues

Succumbing to a Superior Power

Arab Reactions

Towards the ‘Real War’

6.  The Phony War and the Real War over Palestine: May 1948

Days of Tihur

The Massacre at Tantura

The Brigades’ Trail of Blood

Campaigns of Revenge

7.  The Escalation of the Cleansing Operations: June–September 1948

The First Truce

Operation Palm Tree

In Between Truces

The Truce that Wasn’t

8.  Completing the Job: October 1948–January 1949

Operation Hiram

Israel’s Anti-Repatriation Policy

A Mini Empire in the Making

Final Cleansing of the South and the East

The Massacre in Dawaymeh

9.  Occupation and its Ugly Faces

Inhuman Imprisonment

Abuses Under Occupation

Dividing the Spoils

Desecration of Holy Sites

Entrenching the Occupation

10.  The Memoricide of the Nakba

The Reinvention of Palestine

Virtual Colonialism and the JNF

The JNF Resort Parks in Israel

11.  Nakba Denial and the ‘Peace Process’

First Attempts at Peace

The Exclusion of 1948 from the Peace Process

The Right of Return

12.  Fortress Israel

The ‘Demographic Problem’

Epilogue

Endnotes

Chronology

Maps and Tables

Bibliography

Index

List of Illustrations, Maps, and Tables
 
ILLUSTRATIONS: PLATE SECTION
 

1. Irgun troops marching through Tel-Aviv, 14 May 1948

2. Jewish forces occupy a village near Safad

3. Jewish forces enter Malkiyya

4. Arab men of military age are marched to holding camps

5. The Red House in Tel-Aviv, headquarters of the Hagana

6. Refugee women, children and the elderly are evacuated

7. The
New York Times
report on the Deir Yassin massacre

8. Palestinian refugees flock to the sea to escape

9. Refugees on the move

10. Loading belongings into trucks for the journey

11. Elderly refugees

12. Palestinian refugees flee on fishing boats

13. Jewish immigrants arrive at the port in Haifa

14. The village of Iqrit before its destruction

15. The village of Iqrit, 1990

16. A theme park on the site of Tantura

17. The cemetery of Salama

18. Nahr al-Barid refugee camp in northern Lebanon

19. Baqa’a refugee camp, Jordan

MAPS AND TABLES
 

1. Jewish State Proposed by the World Zionist Organisation, 1919

2. The Peel Commission Partition Plan, 1937

3. Palestine Partition Commission Plan B, 1938

4. Palestine Partition Commission Plan C, 1938

5. United Nations General Assembly Partition Plan, 1947

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