Why did Israel remove much of the Arab Palestinian population from Israel?

Answer 1

Understandably this is naturally a contentious question. There is also serious scholarly debate as to whether Israel actively removed the Arab Palestinians or the Arab Palestinians left as a result of the general violence and fear of Israeli action. As a result, this answer his been split in two sections. The first section deals with those who hold that Israel did actively remove the Arab Palestinians and the second deals with those that hold that Arab Palestinian Exodus was a result of the general fighting.

A) Assuming Israel did remove Arab Palestinians from Israel...

Answer A1

What would you do if you had decided to move into a house and people were staying in it?

Some people wanted to make a Jewish state. They made a deal with Britain called the Balfour Declaration of 1917. Palestine was part of the British Empire in those days, and Britain stated that it "view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" with the understanding that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

So the Jews moved in, but they didn't abide by the understanding. They removed the Palestinians so that Jews could have the land.

Answer A2

There is no evidence that many Palestinians were Nazis or Nazi sympathizers.

In 1942, The Jewish leadership, at a convention held in America, declared that it would not be satisfied with less than the whole of Mandate Palestine as a Jewish state. The intention was to at least achieve and maintain ethnic control of the proposed state. that Palestine be established as a Jewish Commonwealth

Professor Ilan Pappe of the University of Haifa, Israel (A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples)s says that massacres were carried out by Jews in Balad al-Shaykh and elsewhere. Each brigade of the Jewish Hagana paramilitary was given a list of villages to occupy and destroy, with the objective being to cleanse the future Jewish state of as many Palestinians as possible. In addition, some of the brigades are to take over the mixed Arab-Jewish towns and expel the Palestinian populations - this being the fate of Jaffa, Haifa, Safed and Tiberius. By the time the British had left in mid-May, one third of the Palestinian population has been evicted.

Long after the expulsions, Israel maintained that the Palestinians did not really exist as a nation - they were really Jordanians, or that as 'Arabs' they should leave Israel and integrate into the populations of their Arab neighbours. Even today, it is unusual to hear Jews speak of the original people as Palestinians, many always referring to them as Arabs, in an apparent attempt to negate their identity.

A Jewish West Bank settler interviewed some time back unconsciously illustrated the reasons for the Israelis driving Palestinians out of the future Israeli state, although the circumstances were different. She did not claim the right to live in the West Bank for religious reasons, but because the land was free. The Israelis had driven Palestinians out of Israel so that land would be unoccupied and therefore available at no cost.

B) Assuming that Arab Palestinians fled Israel for other reasons...

Answer B1

The Palestinian refugee problem was originally created by Arab leaders, many of them Nazis or Nazi sympathizers, who urged their followers to abandon their homes. The Palestinian community, Haj Amin al-Husseini, did end up sitting at Berchtesgarten before and during WW2 advising Hitler on Arab affairs and an enthusiastic supporter of Hitler's Final Solution. And Husseini wrote in his memoirs, "Our fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany was a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world."

Palestinian leaders did not demand a state when Palestine was part of the Turkish Empire, nor during the Protectorate when it was under British rule, nor at any other time of foreign domination. But when Palestine finally and for the first time in living history became a country of its own - called Israel, Islamic leaders couldn't stand it.

Please see the Related Link for a Youtube Video showing the direct link between the Nazis and the Palestinian Leadership.

Answer B2

Jews began settling in the Turkish Empire's eastern seaboard in growing numbers from the 1880's on. In WW1 Britain took apart the Turkish Empire and with the French began to create all of the states that now exist in the Middle East. In 1922 a League of Nations Mandate endowed Britain with the responsibility of promoting a Jewish National Home in Palestine. Modern Palestine was a creation of the British, its borders negotiated with the French. In September 1923 Britain excluded the Palestine east of the Jordan River from the area in which it would promote a Jewish National Home; that eastern region in 1946 became the Hashemite Kingdom, originally TransJordan, later Jordan. It was ruled by Abdullah, a member of the Hashemite tribe from Mecca. It is still ruled by his great-grandson - also Abdullah - although almost 2/3 of its citizens are in fact Palestinian Arabs.

In 1948 the British-created and ruled Palestine came to an end. The UN Security Council with a vote of 33 for, 13 against, and 10 abstentions, divided the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean into 2 states, 1 Arab, 1 Jewish. The Jews accepted the partition, the Arabs did not and initiated war. The Jewish population was about half of the Arab population and perhaps the Arabs expected an easy victory, especially when the British were due to leave and the surrounding Arab states would attack as well. The war was fought in 2 phases: the first while the British were still in place from November 30 - December 14 when local Arabs, with some help from outside, fought the local Jewish community who fought back; the second when the British left; Israel was declared a state and all the neighboring countries did indeed attack. In the initial stages of fighting Israel defended with mainly hand weapons and a little artillery. Later Israel brought in heavier equipment and things went her way.

Israel was a little country, but long and narrow with problematic logistical lines. Different army commanders handled their problems in different ways: up north if a village attacked Israeli troops, generally the villagers were forcibly removed, to keep the supply lines safe [there were not enough troops to guard these places], down south sometimes the same. At the same time some Arab leaders called on the Arabs to get out of the way of attacking armies who would then throw the Jews out and they could then return. Some fled the war zone, some fled because others had fled. The Arab population was poorly served by their local leadership [the Arab Higher Committee] who called on the people to stay put and fight, but who themselves had largely [12 of 15 members] removed themselves and their families from harm's way and were sitting in Beirut and Damascus

There was never a government decision to expel the Arabs from areas conquered; there was never such an army directive, Ramle and Lydda excepted. Sometimes local army commanders took upon themselves such an action usually as described in the paragraph above. On the other hand, there was also not a single Jew left alive in territories captured by the Arabs and often Jewish captives were tortured to death, sometimes just for pure enjoyment - see for example Arthur Koestler's description of the capture of Mishmar HaYarden in his Promise and Fulfillment. This may well account for what an English sergeant told an American newsman on the day of Jaffa [an Arab town]'s surrender: The Arabs were frightened to death when they imagined to themselves that the Jews would do to them half of what they would have done to the Jews were the situations reversed.

A lot of Propaganda has been written about Jewish expulsion of Arabs in 1948. The only serious study to date which examined, village by village, battle by battle, what actually happened to the Arab residents, can be found in Benny Morris: 'TheBirth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited'Cambridge University Press ,2004. [This is not a book of the war but of how the refugees became refugees. On the war itself you can see his 2008 book "1948".] Morris, when he writes history, bases it on clear evidence, preferably written documentation. One cannot say the same of his newspaper interviews.

I disagree with some of his conclusions but it is still the best study around. Personally I think he underestimates the effect of the Arab leadership abandoning the arena. In the larger towns the only place where what happened was clearly documented [by the British who had called for a meeting of the fighting parties] was in Haifa where the Arab population chose to leave. Overall some 20 % of villages [this figure does not relate to the population as a whole] were clearly forcibly removed; the others fled for a variety of reasons. Israel took a decision not to allow back those who were outside the borders as of June 30 1948. That in a nutshell was how the Palestinian refugee problem was born.

It has unfortunately been perpetuated by UNRWA which is a UN body set up to resolve the problem and which regards children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of refugees as refugees themselves, even when they are citizens, as in Jordan, of other countries. In Lebanon and Syria they are maintained in UNRWA camps and not allowed rights or jobs. The humanitarian problem could be solved were the Arab host countries genuinely concerned with the welfare of Palestinian refugees. The problem could also probably be resolved by putting them under the aegis of UNHCR which handles refugees in the rest of the world and where there are no multi-generational refugees at all. They have been repatriated or resettled. But no-one seems genuinely interested in resolving the humanitarian concerns.

Proponents of Palestinians returning to their grandparents' or great-grandparents' homes overlook the fact that 61 years have passed and Israel's population [Jews and Arabs] has grown from well under a million in early 1949 to over 7,000,000 today. By and large the homes no longer exist. This scenario is as unrealistic as it is for the millions of refugees post-WW2 returning to their homes, including Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, all of whom are no longer in refugee camps, but resettled in Israel and elsewhere.

Answer B3

(Note: Although the terms Israel/Israeli and Palestine/Palestinian are not the proper terms, given the time period, they will be used anachronistically to keep terminology consistent.)

The question as posed suggests active removal, which is a little strong in my view compared to where the historical facts seem to stand. Active removal requires intent and plans from the top down. The plans typically cited by those who believe that the Israeli militias (like the Haganah or Palmach) had an intent to remove the Palestinians are Plan Dalet, which consolidated and directed Israeli operations. However, even the words of Plan Dalet are vague as to whether Israeli positions and towns are to be held at all costs means that all Palestinian villages should be cleansed or destroyed.

The actual events during the Jewish-Arab Engagement of 1947-1949 seem to show a general Israeli willingness to prevent the full integration of the Palestinian Arab population into a Jewish State. It's the idea of "we won't force them out, but it wouldn't be so bad if they left". This feeling of casual disregard was a result of the mistrust built up between Israelis and Palestinians. There were numerous instances of Palestinian Arab Civilians giving Palestinian Militants information on Israeli Militia movements, which resulted in successful ambushes against Israeli personnel. Sometimes Israeli Militiamen were attacked in their sleep. It should be incredibly illustrative that in order to gain the Israelis' trust, the Palestinian Arab Sheikh of Abu Ghosh had to give his five daughters over to Israeli custody for the Israelis to believe that he would pose no threat to them. Abu Ghosh is considered by many Israelis to show how Palestinians could easily have become Israelis. So, naturally, due to this mistrust, Israeli soldiers would on a few occasions, commit atrocities against Palestinian towns (like Deir Yassin) to make Palestinians more fearful of betraying Israelis and to make them more willing to abandon their homes.

This played right into the reciprocal Palestinian Arab interest to play up Israeli violence and militancy. They would add casualties to actual events and allege similar acts where none had occurred. This had the dual goals of making Israel appear worse than it was for international consumption and to make Palestinian civilians flee. The reason the Arabs wanted the Palestinian civilians to flee was that they could attack the Israelis more strongly without fear of collateral damage. Additionally, they would look like liberators when they cleansed the Israelis from the land and brought the Palestinians back to their homes.

Therefore, the two sides with wildly disparate motivations led to a general fearmongering among Palestinian Arabs, which led to their mass departure. In 1947-1949, approximately 720,000 Palestinian Arabs fled from Israel. From 1948-1955, approximately 850,000 Jews fled from Arab countries due to acts of retaliation in those countries for Israeli actions.

A quick note on the "Arab-Nazi" connection. Both sides (Answer A2 and B1) are right. The Palestinian Arab Militia Leaders: Al-Husseini and Al-Qawuqji were both affiliated with the Nazis, with Al-Husseini actively helping to integrate Muslim Bosniaks into the Nazi SS. While the majority of Palestinians did not accept Nazism or sympathize with it, a good portion of Nazi Anti-Semitism was incorporated in to Arab Nationalism, meaning that the people were more radicalized against Jews than they would have been if their leaders were not former Nazis.

Answer 2

Israel did not remove Palestinian Arabs from Israel.