Benutzer:DaWalda/Nakba

Benutzer:DaWalda/Nakba/Entwurf

Konsens oder gesichert

Hammond 2016:

While there are a number of points on which Morris and his critics heatedly disagree, it’s imperative to begin by highlighting those facts that aren’t in dispute.
First and foremost, it’s completely uncontroversial that hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes by the Zionist forces during the 1948 war—about 700,000, according to Morris, by the time it was done.
Also uncontroversial is the fact that much of this flight and expulsion occurred well before the neighboring Arab states sent in their armies following the Zionists’ declaration of the existence of the state of Israel on May 14, 1948.
In his book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949, Morris estimates the number of Arabs made refugees prior to May 14 at somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000. In his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Israeli historian Ilan Pappé writes, “There were in fact 350,000 if one adds all of the population from the 200 towns and villages that were destroyed by 15 May 1948.”[8] This is consistent with Morris’s remark that the number was “apparently smaller” than 400,000.
Another uncontroversial fact is that there was a prevailing “atmosphere of transfer” among the Zionist leadership—with “transfer” being a euphemism for the forced displacement of Arabs from their homes. As Morris notes in his book 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War, “an atmosphere of what would later be called ethnic cleansing prevailed”, and, to be sure, “much of the country had been ‘cleansed’ of Arabs” by the end of the war. (…) In sum, there was a consensus that such a sizable population of Arabs within the borders of their desired “Jewish state” was unacceptable. The events that followed must be analyzed within the context of this explicit understanding among the Zionist leadership that, one way or another, a large number of Arabs would have to go.

<=> Reihenfolge: Staatsausrufung durch Zionisten => Einmarsch arabische Liga => Israelische Vertreibungen und Eroberungen:
Assenburg 2021, S. 26:

Die zionistische Führugn hatte ihrerseits den Teilungsplan zwar akzeptiert, betrachtete die darin vorgesehenen Grenzen aber spätestens ab Beginn des Krieges als hinfällig. Im Laufe der militärischen Auseinandersetzungen sicherten die israelischen Truppen nicht nur das ihnen zugesprochene Gebiet, sondern erhoberten das seither international weithin asl Staatsgebiet Israels anerkannte Territorium innerhalb der sogenannten Grünen Linie.

• 1948: Zionisten:Palästinenser: Landbesitz: 5,8:?% (Pappé 2007, S. 46); 7:85% (UNSCOP-Report).
  Bevölkerung: 30%:70% (Bregmann 2017, S. 3; Assenburg 2021, S. 24).
  Avisierte Verteilung: 55%:44% (z.B. Hammond 2016) 56%:43% (Assenburg 2021, S. 24)
  Pappé 2007, S. 71: "Demnach sollte Palästina in drei Teile geteilt werden. Auf 42 Prozent der Fläche sollten 818 000 Palästinenser einen Staat bekommen, in dem 10 000 Juden lebten; der jüdsiche Staat sollte dagegen fast 56 Prozent der Fläche erhalten, die 499 000 Juden sich mit 438 000 Palästiennsern teilen würden. Der dreitte Teil bestand aus eienr kleinen Enklave mit Jerusalem ...
  S. 72 In dem vorgesehehen jüdischen Staatsgebiet herrschte ien nahezu ausgewogenes demografisches Verhältnis, das für die zionistische Führung einen politischen Alptraum geschaffen hätte, wenn man diese Grenzen tatsächlich umgesetzt hätte: Der Zionismus hätte keines seienr grundlegenden Ziele jemals erreichen können. Simcha Flapan - einer der ersten israelischen Juden, die die konventionelle zionistische Version der Eriegnisse von 1948 in Frage stellte - vermutete, falsl die Araber oder die Palästinenser sich entschlossen hätten, der Teilungsresolution zuzustimmen, hätte die jdüsiche Führung die vom UNSCOP angebotene Karte sicher abgelehnt.
  Tatsächlich war die Tragödie, die ma Tag n ach der Annahme der Resolution 181 begann, mit dieser UN-Karte vorprogrammiert."
• Bis Mai geflohen: 380.000 (Benveniste 2000, S. 124)
• Nach Kriegsende Landverhältnis: 77%:23% (z.B. Assenburg 2021, S. 27)

Streitfragen

Kontext: Seit Mitte 1980er einige neue Archivdokumente aus Israel zugänglich. => Neue israelische Historiker.

Esber 2009, S. 34f: "Some of the pertinent 1948 records remain secret, however. Teh IDF papaers are still aprtly classified, including the larger part of the Haganah (HA) Intelligence Service (Shai) reports. The Haganah and the Israel State S35 Archives (ISA) 'continue to keep sealed' certain sensitive documentation, according to Benny Morris. Among the documents and sections that remain secret are those tha 'contain evidenceo f atrocities committed by Israeli soldiers against Palestinian civilians' during the 1948 war, or those which 'record high-level discussions among Israeli cabinet ministers about the needs to expel the Arab populations,' according to Tom Segev.
During the 2001 Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, at Morris's request, classified minutes and testimonies from 1948, which had been retained by the ISA and the IDF archives, were about to be ceclassified by Justice Minister Yossi Beilin. ... The decision to declassify the documents were rescinded under pressure from the state archivist Evyatar Friesen and the Israeli defense establishment. They claimed the files were 'liable to damage the State's foreign relations.'"

Shlaim 1995, S. 290: "On the Arab side, there is no equivalent of the thirty-year rule. In the re Arab archives little access to materials on the 1948 war is allowed, and this resriction does pose a serious problem to the researcher. It is sometimes argued th definitive account of the 1948 war, least of all an account of what happened the scenes on the Arab side, is possible without proper access to the Ar archives. But difficulty should not be construed as impossibility. In the first place, some official Arab documents are available. A prime example is the report of the Iraqi parliamentary committee of inquiry into the Palestine question, which is packed with high-level documents. Another example is the collection of official, semiofficial, and private papers gathered by the Institute for Palestine Studies. In addition, there is a far from negligible literature in Arabic that consists of first-hand accounts of the disaster, including the diaries and memoirs of prominent politicians and soldiers. But even if none of these Arabic sources existed, the other available sources would provide a basis for an informed analysis of the 1948 war. A military historian of the Middle Ages would be green with envy at the sight of the sources available to his contemporary Middle Eastern counterpart. Historians of the 1948 war would do much better to explore in depth the manifold sources that are available to them than to lament the denial of access to the Arab state archives.

Grundstimmung vor Beginn

WK I

=> Mandatssystem: Klose 2014, Abs. 22f: "Selbst der aus den Versailler Verhandlungen hervorgegangene Völkerbund bekannte sich nun in Artikel 22 seiner Satzung formell zum Prinzip, Kolonialgebiete langfristig in die Eigenstaatlichkeit zu überführen. Die neugegründete internationale Organisation übertrug aus diesem Grund den siegreichen Alliierten die Vormundschaft über die ehemaligen Kolonien des unterlegenen Deutschen Reiches und die arabischen Provinzen des aufgelösten Osmanischen Reiches. Ziel war es, diese sogenannten Mandatsgebiete ihren jeweiligen Entwicklungsfortschritten gemäß auf lange Sicht in die Unabhängigkeit entlassen zu können. In der Realität bedeutete dies allerdings nichts anderes, als dass sich vor allem die bereits führenden Kolonialmächte Großbritannien und Frankreich die entsprechenden Gebiete unter dem Vorwand des Mandatsauftrags einverleibten und ihrem Herrschaftsbereich zuordneten. [Louis 1984: Era of the mandate System, S. 201-213; Callahan 2008: Mandates and Empire in Africa]
Die Folge war also nicht die Dekolonisation der ehemaligen Gebiete der Mittelmächte, sondern lediglich ein Austausch der Kolonialherren. In der Zwischenkriegszeit erreichte daher "die koloniale Welt das universalhistorische Maximum ihrer Ausdehnung", zumal das faschistische Italien 1935 mit der Invasion Abessiniens einen der letzten unabhängig gebliebenen afrikanischen Staaten okkupierte.

=> unfaire Wirtschafspolitik der Mandatsmacht > Verarmung der Palästinenser (Yazbak)

=> verstärkt durch Landpolitik der immigrierenden Zionisten:

Pappé 2007, S. 46: "Wenn ein Stück Land oder sogar ein ganzes Dorf den Eigentümer wechselte, bedeutete das traditionell nicht, dass die Pächter oder Dorfbewohner gehen mussten, i nder bäuerlichen Gesellschaft Palästinas brauchte der neue Grundbesitzer die Pächter, damit sie sein Land weiter bestellten. Das änderte sich mit der Ankunft des Zionismus. Weitz besuchte persönlich die neu erworbenen Ländereien, oft begleitet von seinen engsten Mitarbeitern, udn ermutigte die neuen jüdischen Besitzer, die einheimischen Pächter hinauszuwerfen, selbst wenn sie keine Verwendung für die gesamte Ackerflächen hatten."

Bregmann 2017, S. 4: "It perhaps deserves mention that the Jews did not, as is sometimes alleged, ‘rob’ the Arabs or ‘steal’ their land, but rather they bought it from them for hefty sums of money. As for the Arab aristocracy of landowners who had sold the land to the Jews, they did so voluntarily and with open eyes, and they must have known that for the Arab peasants who had been living on their lands for generations this would be a devastating blow. Indeed it proved to be so, for when the new owners of the land voluntarily became hewers of wood and drawers of water and worked the land themselves (they called it: Avoda Ivrit, ‘Jewish work’) – as a means of recovering contact with nature and also disproving the slander of their detractors that they were fit only for commerce and not for labour – they inevitably deprived Palestinian labourers of employment."

s. auch Shaw-Kommission

=> Arabischer Aufstand in Palästina 1936–1939: Kein jüdischer Staat: Palästinensischer Staat!

führt zu und verstärkt durch Peel-Kommission: Zwei Staaten

=> Weißbuch von 1939: Doch keine zwei Staaten: Einheitsstaat

=> Radikalisierung der Zionisten: Biltmore-Konferenz: True, keine zwei Staaten: Wir wollen nun alles (s. auch Weizman 1942)

=> Während derselben ganzen Zeit unterbinden die Briten gegen ihren Mandatsauftrag eine palästinensische Staatsgründung.

Zeitgleich militärische Aufrüstung der Zionisten, Umstrukturierung zu umfassender Militarisierung.

+

Pappé 2007, S. 45-52: Von den 1930ern bis 1947 wurde konstant an einem "Dorfregister" gearbeitet, in dem palästinensische Informanten und israelische Spione organisiert und strukturiert in "Dorfdossiers" Informationen v.a. politischer und militärischer Art in Form von Dorfdossiers zusammentrugen. Die Palästinenser wussten dies; der das Netzwerk der Informanten leitende Kollaborateur mit dem Decknamen "der Schatzmeister" etwa wurde daher um 1945 von militanten Palästinensern umgebracht. (S. 50).

Pappé 2007, S. 56: "Aber er [Ben Gurion] war nicht nur ein Staatsgründer, sondern auch ein pragmatischer Kolonialist. Ihm war klar, dass man Maximalpläne wie das Biltmore-Programm, das die Forderung nach dem gesamten Mandatsgebiet Palästinas erhob, für unrealistisch halten würde. Druck auf die Briten auszuüben war natürlich unmöglich, solange sie in Europa die Stellung gegen Nazi-Duetschland hielten. Folglich schraubte er während des Zweiten Weltkriegs seine Ambitionen zurück. ... Die Entwaffnung [der Zionisten durch die Briten nach zionistischen Anschlägen] erfolgte allerdings nur partiell, aber es kam zu zahlreichen Veraftungen, die ausreichten, u mdne zionistischen Führern S57 klar zu machen, dass sie eine anpassungsfähigere Politik verfolgen mussten, solange die Briten noch für Recht und Ordnung im Land zuständig waren. ... Wie Generationen israelischer Füührer nach ihm bis hin zu Ariel Sharon im Jahr 2005 musste auch Ben Gurion die extremistischeren Zionisten zurückhalten, und er erklärte ihnen, dass 80 bis 90 Prozent des palästinensischen Mandatsgebiets genügen würden, um einen lebensfähigen Staat aufzubauen, sofern sie eine jüdiscche Vorherrschaft gewährleisten konnten. Weder das S58 Konzept noch die Pronzentzahl sollten sich im Laufe der nächsten 60 Jahre ändern. einige Monate später setzte die jewish Agency Ben Gruions 'großes Stück Palästinas' in eine Landkarte um, die sie an alle verteilte, die für die Zukunft Palästinas relevant waren. Diese Karte von 1947 sah einen jüdischen Staat vor, der fast bis ins letzte Detail Israel in den Grenzen vor 1967 entsprach, also Palästina ohne Westjordanland (West Bank) und Gazstreifen umfaßte."

=> 1946: Erstellung von avisierter Landkarte durch Jewish Agency, entspr. ziemlich exakt den Verhältnissen von 1949 (s. Pappé 2007, S. 58)

Pappé 2007, S. 67: "Die zionistische Bewegung dominierte 1947 das diplomatische Geschehen so schnell, dass die Führung der jüdischen Gemeinde zuversichtlich genug war, vom UNSCOP die Zuweisung eines Staatsgebiets zu fordern, das über 80 Prozent des Landes ausmachte. Die zionistischen Gesandten bei den Verhandlungen mit den Vereinten Nationen legten sogar eine Landkarte mit dem Staatsgebiet vor, das sie sich wünschten. Es umfasste das gesamte Territorium, das Israel ein Jahr später besetzt hatte, nämlich das S68 Mandatsgebiet Palästina ohne Westjordanland. Die meisten UNSCOP-Mitglieder hatten allerdings das Gefühl, das sei ein bisschen zu viel, und überzeugtne die Judne, sich mit 65 Prozent des Landes zufrieden zu geben. Außerdem drängten die katholischen Länder die Vereinten Nationen, Jerusalem wegen seienr religiösen Bedeutung zu eienr internationalen Stadt zu machen, daher lehnte der UNSCOP auch die zionistische Forderung ab, die Heilige Stadt in den künftigen jüdischen Staat einzubeziehen."

Pappé 2007, S. 200: "Tatsächlich vermieden die Briten bereits im Oktober 1947 jede ernsthafte Intervention udn schauten untätig zu, wie jüdische Truppen Vorposten unter ihre Kontrolle zu bringen versuchten; sie unternahmen auch nichts gegen arabische Freiwillige, die in dkleinen Mengen ins Land kamen. Im Dezember waren noch 75 000 britische Soldaten in Palästina stationiert, aber sie hatten ausschließlich den Auftrag, den Abzug der Truppen und der Mandatsbeamten zu sichern."

Pappé 2007, S. 201: "Laut Teilungsresolution sollten die Vereinten Nationen in Palästina präsent sein, um die Durchführung des Friedensplans zu überwachen: die Überführung ganz Palästinas in die Unabhängigkeit und die Schaffung zweier Staaten mit Wirtschaftsunion. Die Resolution vom 29. November 1947 enthielt ganz klare Bestimmungen. Unter anderem verpflichteten sich die UN, jeden Versuch einer der beiden Seiten zu verhindern, Land zu enteignen, das Bürgern des anderen Staates oder der anderen nationalen Gruppe gehörte – sei es bestelltes Ackerland oder Brachland.
Zugunsten der UN-Emissäre in Palästina ist anzuführen, dass sie die Verschlechterung der Lage zumindest merkten und auf ein Überdenken der Teilungspolitik zu drängen versuchten, aber sie in unternahmen nichts weiter als die Lage zu beobachten und Berichte über anfängliche ethnische Säuberungen zu schreiben. Die Vereinten Nationen hatten nur begrenzt Zugang zu Palästina, da die britischen Behörden ein organisiertes UN-Gremium im Land nicht erlaubten und damit den Passus der Teilungsresolution missachteten, der die Anwesenheit einer UN-Kommission verlangte. Großbritannien ließ die ethnische Säuberung vor den Augen seiner Soldaten und Beamten noch während seiner Mandatszeit zu, die am 14. Mai 1948 um Mitternacht endete, und behinderte die UN-Bemühungen um eine Intervention, die manche Palästinenser hatte retten können. Nach dem 15. Mai gab es keine Entschuldigung mehr für die Art und Weise, in der die Vereinten Nationen die palästinensische Bevölkerung im Stich ließen, nachdem sie ihr Land geteilt und ihr Wohl und Wehe den Juden ausgeliefert hatten – den Juden, die seit Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts den Wunsch hegten, sie zu vertreiben und ihre Stelle in dem Land einzunehmen, das sie für sich beanspruchten."

---

Muslih 1988, S. 192:
"After the demise of the Ottoman Empire, the political consciousness of the Arabs inhabiting the fertile Crescent seems to have been more amenable to the idea of a territorial nation-state than it was for the idea of one single state encompassing all the Arabs. IN other words, the Arabs of Syria, the arabs of Palestine, and the Arabs of Iraq concluded that their destiny and their responsibility lay in theri native land, which it was theri duty to liberate, to defend, and to rebuild. On this duty they focused, with the Syrians stressing the primacy of Syria's interests, the Iraqis those of Iraq, and hte Palestininas those of Palestine.
Despite the unitarian content of Arab nationalism, political identity and loyalty were therefore crystallizing after teh war on the basis of the entities inhabiting within the national frontiers of Iraq, and wht later became a separate Syria, a separate Lebanon, and a separate Palestine. ...
Two ideological forces therefore emerged on the political scene after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire: the push of Arab nationalism, and hte stronger pull of local nationalism. The first stressed a shared Arab destiny and provided the idiom in which pan-Arab sentiments were couched. The second was the product of hte impact of Western civilization upon the Arabs of Asia. The first was the universe of a minority composed of yougn political activists; the second was the realm of older politicians. The first idea was the one that was expected to replace Ottomanism because it was the only viable ideological option left on the eve of hte Ottoman collapse; the second was the more powerful force taht shaped the course of Arab politics after the war....
S. 194: Under these circumstances, it was difficult for the Palestinians, at least for the time being, to reach a workable ocnsensus on the future of theri country.They were unnimous in their opposition to Zionism and their determination to keep Palestine in Arab hands. But they were not unanimous on hte issue of what kind of relations they should have with Syria or with the colonial European powers. ....
S.s 196: And independence was what the Older Palestinians really wanted. When Ibrahim al-Shammas, a Greek-Orthodox member of hte Jerusalem MCA, stated in his testimony beforethe King-Crane Commission that the Palestinian Arabs wanted nothing but their independence and freedom, the place of teh meeting resounded with the applause of the attending Older Politicians. In front of their Palestinian constitutency, the Older Politicians also thre their weight behind the cause of Palestinian independence, asserting taht Palestien should legislate its internal laws on the basis of the wishes of the Palestinian Arabs and the requirements of their country.
Before the advent of the commission, the Older Politicians had already submitted similar demands to the British authorities. In their direct contacts with British officials, they did not refer to Palestine as southern Syria; nor did they demand its unification with syria. Tehy rather stressed that the future of Palestine should be decided by its Arab people and even referred to it as 'our countra Palestine' (biladuna Filastin)."

Shlaim 1987, S. 52:
"As Ernest Bevin put it in one of his many papers to the cabinet: 'In peace and war the Middle East is an area of cardinal importance ot hte United Kingdom, second only to the United Kingdom itself. Strategically the Middle EAst is a focal point of communications, a source of oil, a shield of Africa and the Indian Ocian, and an irreplaceable offensive base.' The retention of Britain's position and influence in the Middle EAst was considered by the chiefs of staff in January 1947 as one of the three vital props of tehir entire defense structure, alongside the S53 protection of the United Kingdom itself and the maintenance of sea communications."

Krammer 1974:
S. 39: "The investigation of Russia's motives in casting its lot with the creation of Israel, a tiny strip of land on the Mediterranean whose Jewish population only slightly exceeded half a million people, in the face of a potential ally numbering millions of Arabs, must begin with a basic axiom: 'As far as the Soviet Union is concerned,' Russia's forign minister, Andrei Gromyko, once said, 'there is only one kind of logic in foreign affairs: the logic of what is best for the Soviet Union.' What was 'best for the Soviet Union' with regard to its S40 support of the Jewish Agency's claims in Palestine was a single limited objective: to immediately end British control in Palestine, and create an independent state whose future allegiance, either as the result of gratitude or diplomatic pressure, might e directed toward the Eastern bloc."
Krammer 1974, S. 34-36. geht davon aus, dass die USSR in dieser Hinsicht stark beeinflusst wurde durch Politiker der kommunistischen israelischen Partei Maki und Vertreter der kommunistischen Bewegung Hashomer Hatzair, unter denen z.B. Mordechai Oren effektiv Lobbyist der Zionisten in Osteuropa war.

---

• Friedliebende Israelis, Streitlustige Palästinenser
  • Morris: 1948, S. 1152f.:

    From the end of November 1947 until the end of March 1948, the Arabs held the initiative and the Haganah was on the strategic defensive.

    
    ebd., S. 1515-1517:

    Much of the fighting in the first months of the war took place in and on the edges of the main towns - Jerusalem, Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and Haifa. Most of hte violence was initiated by the Arabs. Arab snipers continuously fired at Jewish houses, pedestrians, and traffic and planted bombs and mines along urban and rural paths and roads.

  • Tendenziell Assenburg 2021, S. 24f.

    Vor Ort wurde das Abstimmungsergebnis [der UN-Generalversammlung] von der jüdischen Bevölkerung enthusiastisch gefeiert. Von der arabischen Bevölkerung, die die Gründugn eines jüdischen Staates in ihrer Heimat ablehnte udn die bei der Entscheidung kein Mitspracherecht gehabt hatte, wrude es mit Bestürzung zur Kenntnis genommen. Um die Umsetzung des Beschlusses - auch mit Gewalt - zu verhindern, formierten sich lokale Guerillagruppen und Widerstandskomitees. In der Folge kam es zu bewaffneten Auseinandersetzungen mit den zionistischen Vorläufern der SS israelischen Armee, die rasch in eine Art Bürgerkrieg eskalierten, bei der die palästinensischen Kämpfer allerdings deutlich unterlegen waren. Im Dezember 1947 beschloss die Arabische Liga, indirekt zu intervenieren udn arabische Freischärler, die ab Januar 1948 nach Palästina kamen udn die sogenannte Arabische Befreiungsarmee bildete, zu unterstützen. Allerdigns war diese eher ein bunt zusammengewürfelter Haufen unerfahrener und schlecht ausgerüsteter Guerillakämpfer als eine Armeee mmit klarer Befehlsstruktur Gewalt und Gegengewalt richteten sich nicht nur gegen Kombattanten, sondern auch und vor allem gegen die Zivilbevölkerung.

• Friedliebende Palästinenser, Streitlustige Israelis
  • Tendenziell Hammond 2016:

    Morris employs this same rhetorical device—a mainstay of Zionist propaganda—in his book 1948 to suggest that it was the Arabs who were the aggressors, while the Jews were simply defending themselves. For example, he emphasizes that “most of the fighting between November 1947 and mid-May 1948 occurred in the areas earmarked for Jewish statehood”—thus implying that most of the fighting occurred on land rightfully belonging to the Jews. However, the fact that most of the violence occurred within this area is completely irrelevant and tells us nothing about which side was guilty of aggression. After all, Arabs owned more land than Jews and much of this fighting took place in Arab villages and towns located within that same “earmarked” territory.

Benveniste 2000, S. 120:

This was not the only time that David Ben-Gurion articulated contradictory positions regarding the fate of the arab villages and theri land-holdings. For example, in February 1948 he ordered the military commander of Jerusalem to settle Jews in abandoned Arab homes, but when a detailed adn comprehenstive proposal for the repopulation of abandoned villages was presented to him, he did not give his approval. He authorized the destruction of a village and silently assented to the eradication of others but rejected a proposal for the systematic destruction SS of large numbers of villages, brought to him by Zionist activists. Anyone wishing to assign responsiblity for the destruction of the Arab landscape to the leader of the Yishuv and supreme commander of the Jewish forces will be able t ofind much to support this view. But those who would like to see him absolved of such responsibility will likewise find evidence to support their views. Ben-Gurion, constantly aware of how history would judge his deeds, publicly expressed misgivings regarding the expulsion of Arabs, the destruction of villages, and the seizure of their land. He knew that these deeds would be perceived in the future - by people far removed from the atmosphere of hte war - as acts of cruelty that morally stained their perpetrators. He therefore strove to distance himself from those directly responsible for carrying out such actions. Even those who, for one reason or another, justify the destruction of the Arab landscape in retrospect cannot ignore the fact that the then national leader not only did not boast of it but also took great care in his writings to obfuscate his vital contribution to its execution.

Legalität und Aktualität der UN-Teilung (Res 181)

Pappé 2007, S. 66: "Es ist klar, dass die Vereinten Nationen bei der Annahme des Teilungsplans die ethnische Zusammensetzung der Landesbevölkerung völlig außer Acht ließen. Hätten die Vereinten Nationen beschlossen, die Größe des zukünftigen jüdischen Staates dem Territorium in Palästina nazupassen, das von Juden besiedelt war, hätten sie Anspruch auf nicht mehr als zehn Prozent des landes gehabt. Aber die Vereinten Nationen akzeptierten die nationalistischen Ansprüche, die die zionistische Bewegung auf Palästina erhob, udn waren zudem bestrebt, die Juden für den Holocaust in Europa zu entschädigen.

• Legalität:
  • Illegal:
    • Pappé 2007, S. 70: "Mehrere führende Palästinenser forderten damals, die Legalität der Resolution vor dem (1946 geschaffenen) Internationalen Gerichtshof überprüfen zu lassne, aber dazu kam es nie. Man braucht keien sonderlichen juristischen Fachkenntnisse oder Einblicke, um sich denken zu können, wie der Interantionale Gerichtshof darüber geurteilt hätte, dass einem Land eine Lösung aufgezwungen wurde, die seine Bevölkerungsmehrheit vehement ablehnte.
      Die Ungerechtigkeit war damals ebenso eklatant, wie sie heute erscheint, udn dennoch gab es kaum Kommentare dazu in den führenden westlichen Zietungen, die in dieser Zeit über Palästina berichteten: Die Juden, denen weniger als sechs Prozent der Gesamtfläche Palästinas gehörten udn die nicht mehr als ein Drittel der Bevölkerung stellten, bekamen über die Hälfte des Gesamtterritoriums. Innerhalb der Grenzen des von den Vereinten Naitonen vorgeschlagenen Staates besaßen sie nur elf Prozent des Landes und waren in jedem Distrikt in der Minderheit. Im Negev - ein Wüstengebiet, das einen großen Teil des jüdischen Staates ausmachte, S71 aber doch eine beträchtliche ländliche Bevölkerung und Beduinen besaß - stellten sie nur ein Prozent der Gesamtbevölkerung.
      Schon bald tauchten weitere Aspekte auf, die die rechtliche und moralische Glaubwürdigkeit der REsolution erschütterten. Die Teilungsresolution ordente den größten Teil des fruchtbaren Landes dem vorgeschlagenen jüdischen Staatsgebiet zu sowie fast alle Städte udn ländliche Gebiete, in denen Juden lebten. Aber sie bezogen auch 400 (von über 1000) palästinensische Dörfer in den designierten jüdischen Staat ein. Rückblickend ließe sich zur Verteidigung des UNSCOP anführen, dass die Resolution 181 auf der Annahme beruhte, die beiden neuen politischen Staatsgebielde würden friedlcih koexistieren udn daher habe man kein besonders Augenmerk auf eine demografische und geografische Ausgewogenheit legen müssen. Sollte dies der Fall gewesen sein, wie einige UNSCOP-Mitglieder später argumentierten, dann wäre ihnen vorzuwerfen, dass sie den Zionismus völlig falsch auslegten und seine Ambitionen grob unterschätzten. Um es noch einmal mit Walid Khalidis Worten auszudrücken: Die Resolution 181 war 'ein vorschneller Akt, die Hälfte Palästinas einer ideologischen Bewegung zuzusprechen, die schon in den 1930er Jahren unverhohlen ihren Wunsch erklärt hatte, Palästina zu entarabisieren.' DAher ist es der unmoralischste Aspekt der Resolution 181, dass sie keienrlei Mechanismen vorsah, um die ethnische Säuberung Palästinas zu verhindern."
      s. 153: "Der UN-Teilungsplan hatte Haifa ebenso wie Tiberias dem jüdischen Staat zugesprochen: Den S154 einzigen größeren Hafen des Landes jüdischer Kontrolle zu unterstellen war ein weiterer Ausdruck für den unfairen Handel, den der UN-Friedensvorschlag den Palästinensern anbot."
    • Hammond 2016: Weder England noch die UN hatten das Recht, palästinensisches Land der zionistischen Bewegung zu überschreiben.

Aktualität:

Hammond 2016:

Morris’s argument also assumes that Resolution 181 somehow lent legitimacy to the Zionists’ goal of establishing a “Jewish state” in Palestine within the area proposed under UNSCOP’s plan. It did not. While it is a popular myth that the UN created Israel, the partition plan was actually never implemented. Resolution 181 merely recommended that Palestine be partitioned and referred the matter to the Security Council, where it died. Needless to say, neither the General Assembly nor the Security Council had any authority to partition Palestine against the will of the majority of its inhabitants.
Although Resolution 181 was cited in Israel’s founding document as having granted legitimacy to the establishment of the “Jewish state”, in truth, the resolution neither partitioned Palestine nor conferred any legal authority to the Zionists for their unilateral declaration of the existence of the state of Israel on May 14, 1948.

Wer hat begonnen?

konkret:

• Israelis
  • Pappé 2007, S. 101-103: Khisas (S. 103: Am 18. Dezember überfielen jüdische Truppen das dorf mitten in der Nacht und sptrengten wahllos Häuser in die Luft, während die Bewohner noch fest schliefen. Bei dem Angriff wurden 15 Einwohner getötet, darunter fünf Kinder.) + Deir Ayyub (21.12. 102: "Aber ihre Freude wurde schlagartig getrübt, alls gegen 22 Uhr ein Trupp von 20 jüdishen Soldaten ins Dorf stürmte ... und wahllos das feuer auf einige Häuser eröffnete. Später wurde das Dorf noch drei Mal angegriffen, bevor es im April 1948 zwangsgeräumt und völlig zerstört wurde.") nach Wechsel von "Vergeltungs"-Strategie zur "Initiativen"-Strategie
    S. 105: Haifa (30.12.): "Es begann damit, dass ein Irgun-Trupp eine bombe in eine große Gruppe von Palästinensern warf, die am Werkseingang auf Einlass warteten. Die Irgun stellte es als Vergeltungsschlag für einen vorherigen Angriff arabischer Arbeiter auf ihre jüdischen Kollegen dar, ein neues Phänomen in einem Betrieb, in dem arabische und jüdische Arbeiter gewöhnlich vereint für bessere Arbeitsbedingungen gegen ihre britischen Arbeitgeber gekämpft hatten. Aber die UN-Teilungsresolution versetzte dieser Klassensolidarität einen schweren Schlag, udn die Spannungen wuchsen. Bomben in arabishe Menschenmengen zu werfen war eine Spezialität der Irgun, die solche Anschläge bereits vor 1947 verübt hatte. Der Bombenanschlag an der Raffinerie erfolgte jedoch in Absprache mit der Hagana im Rahmen des neuen Plans, die Palästinenser zu terrorisieren, um sie aus haifa zu vertreiben. Innerhalb von Stunden reagierten palästinensische Arbeiter mit Unruhen und töten zahlreiche - 93 - S106 jdische Arbeiter in einem der schlimmsten palästinensischen Gegenangriffe, der allerdings auch der letzte in der sonst üblichen Kette von Vergeltungsscharmützeln war.
    Die nächste Phase leitete ein neues Kapitel in der Geschichte Palästinas ein. Da das Hagana-Oberkommando unter anderem darauf brannte, die britische Wachsamkeit angesichts ihrer Aktionen zu testen, beschloss es im Rahmen der Beratergruppe, ein ganzes Dorf zu plündern udn einen großen Teil der Einwohner zu massakrieren. Damals waren die britischen Behörden noch für Recht und Ordnung zuständig und in Palästina stark präsent. Das Oberkommando wählte das Dorf Balad al-Shaykh aus, wo sich das Grab von Shaykh Izz al-Din al-Qassam befand, der zu den verehrtesten und charismatischsten Palästinenserführern der 1930er Jahre gehörte und 1935 von den Briten getötet wurde. Seien Grabstätte gehört zu den wenigen Überresten des Dorfes, die heute noch etwa zehn Kilometer östlich von Haifa existieren.
    Ein örtlicher Kommandeur, Haim Avinoam, erhielt den Befehl, 'das Dorf zu umstellen, möglichst viele Männer zu töten, Hab und Gut zu verwüsten, aber keine Frauen und Kinder anzugreifen." [Milstein, The History of the Indepenence War II, S. 78] Der Überfall fand am 31. Dezember statt udn dauerte drei Stunden. Er forderte über 60 palästinensische todesopfer, nicht nur Männer Auffallend ist, dass hier noch zwischen Männern und Frauen unterschieden wurde: In ihrer nächsten Sitzung kam die Beratergruppe zu dem Schluss, dass eine solche Unterscheidung künftige Operationen unnötig erschwere. Gleichzeitig mit dem Überfall auf Balad al-Shaykh sondierten Hagana-Einheiten in Haifa das Terrain mit einer drastischeren Aktion: Sie filen in ein arabisches Viertel der Stadt ein, Wadi Rushmiyya, vertrieben die Einwohner und sptrengten die Häsuer. Dieser Akt lässt sich als offizieller Beginn der ethnischen Säuberungen in palästinensischen Städten werten. Während diese Gräueltaten begangen wurden, schauten die Briten fort.
    Zwei Wochen später, im Januar 1948, 'nutzte' die Palmach die S107 geschaffene Dynamik, um Hawassa, ein relativ abgelegenes Viertel Haifas, zu überfallen udn zu räumen. In diesem Elendsviertel der Stadt standen ursprünglich nur Hütten von veramrten BAuern, die in dne 9120er Jahren auf der Suche nach Arbeit hergekommen waren und hier unter armseligen Bedingungen hausten. Damals lebten etwa 5000 Palässtinenser in diesem östlichen Stadtteil. Die Palmach machten die Hütten udn die örtliche Schule platt, udn die ausbrechende Panik trieb viele Menschen in die Flucht."
• Palästinenser
  • Morris: 30. November: 7 Tote durch Terroranschlag in Kfar Syrkin
    <=> Hammond 2016:

    Yet Morris also acknowledges that these attacks were almost certainly “not ordered or organized by” the Arab Palestinian leadership. And “the majority view” in the intelligence wing of the Haganah — the Zionists’ paramilitary organization that later became the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) — “was that the attackers were driven primarily by a desire to avenge” a raid by the Jewish terrorist group Lehi, also known as the Stern Gang, on an Arab family ten days prior. Lehi “had selected five males of the Shubaki family and executed them in a nearby orange grove” as an act of revenge for the apparently mistaken belief that the Shubakis had informed the British authorities about a Lehi training session that prompted a British raid on the group in which five Jewish youths were killed.[20]
    So why wasn’t the murder of five Arabs by the Jewish terrorist organization the initiating act of hostility marking the start of the 1948 war, in Morris’s account?

    
    Pappé 2007, S. 92f.: "Bei anderen Zwischenfällen handelte es ich jedoch um Übergriffe, die laut jüdischen Geheimdiensten nichts mit dem UN-Beschluss zu tun hatten. So kam es beispielsweise zu einem Angriff aus dem Hinterhalt auf einen jüdischen Bus, ein Zwischenfall, der in fast S93 allein israelischen Geschichtsbüchern als Beginn des Krieges von 1948 auftaucht. Der Angriff war von der Abu-Qishq-Bande inszeniert und eher von claninternen und kriminellen Impulsen motiviert als von einer nationalen Agenda. [FN 23: Dass er in keinem politischen Zusammenhang stand wurde Ben Gurion mitgeteilt. Sie Ben-Gurion Archives, Correspondence Section, 1.12.47 bis 15.12.47, Doc.7, Eizenberg to Kaplan, 2.12.1947.]"
• unentscheidbar: Hammond 2016

abstrakt:

• Israelis
  • Hammond 2016: durch Ausrufung des Staates:

    Moreover, Morris’s assumptions that the UN partition plan was an equitable solution and that Resolution 181 lent legitimacy to the Zionists’ unilateral declaration of the existence of the state of Israel on May 14, 1948, are both categorically false. He bases his arguments that the Jews were acting defensively on the grounds that the Arab states had threatened “to attack the Jewish state” and then carried out that threat by “invading” Israel. But given the illegitimacy of the May 14 declaration and the inherent prejudice of the Zionist project toward the majority Arab population, this narrative crumbles. To characterize the Arabs as the “invaders” while Palestine’s Arab inhabitants were being systematically expelled or driven into flight and its Arab villages literally wiped off the map is simply to flip reality on its head.
    Vgl. Bregman 2017, S. 14: "Declaring a state was a bold and courageous move, given the threat of Arab neighbouring states to prevent by force the establishment of a Jewish state, even on that part of Palestine which had been allotted to the Jews by the UN. It also seemed, at the time, a suicidal move, given that US Secretary of State George Marshall had warned the Jews that America would not consider itself responsible for the consequences of their declaring a state and would not ‘bail them out’ if attacked by their Arab neighbours." [Interview with Gideon Rafal, Jerusalem, 19 Januar 1997, BLA

• Palästinenser
  • Morris 2016:

    First, throughout the article Blatman ignores the basic fact taht the Palestinians were the ones who started the war when they rejected the UN compromise plan and embarked on hostile acts in which 1,800 Jews were killed between Novembr 1947 and mid-May 1948.

  • Benveniste 2000, S. 126:

    And there is no doubt that the Palestinians were the primary victims of the intercommunal warfare, but they cannot shrug off responsiblity for the outbreak of hostilities. When all is said and done, the 1948 War erupted because of hte Arabs' refusal to S127 accept the UN Partition Plan. And even if this refula arose from principled and legitimate motives, that does not reduce their responsiblilty for what took place as a result of the fatal error they made in choosing the military option. The astonishing helplessness exhibited by the Palestinian leadership contributed greatly to the flight of their people, and the contention that the Jews exploited the Palestinians' weakness in order to carry out unprovoked, premeditated ethnic cleansing does not stand up to close scrutinity.

Ausmaß Flucht und Vertreibung vor Plan Dalet (10 März 1948)

Blau: Gebiet in zionistischem Besitz (5-7%).
schwarz: Vor 15. Mai entvölkerte Dörfer (n=~250).
rot: Orte mit Mehrfach- und Massenmorden vor 15. Mai (n=~60)

Pappé 2007, S. 170: "Zwischen dem 30. März udn dem 15. Mai wurden 200 Ortschaften besetzt und ihre Einwohner vertrieben. Diese Tatsache ist noch einmal hervorzuheben, da sie den israelischen Mythos erschüttert, die 'Araber' seien geflüchtet, nachdem die 'arabische Invasion' begonnen habe. Die Angriffe auf beinahe die Hälfte der arabischen Dörfer waren bereits erfolgt, als die arabischen Regierungen schließlich widerstrebend, wie wir wissen, beschlossen, ihre Truppen zu entsenden. Weitere 90 Dörfer sollten zwischen dem 15. Mai udn dem 11. Juni ausradiert werden, als die erste der beiden Waffenruhen in Kraft trat."

Esber 2009, S. 86: "Ben-Guirion appears, from his writings, to have a high level of confidence in Zionist military superiority as early as the 1930s, or at least in its potential. In a 1937 letter to his son, Ben-Gurion predicted a decisive war in which the Arab states would come to the aid of the Palestinian Arabs. He counted on zionist military superiority to achieve victory: 'It is very possible taht the Arabs ofthe neighboring countries will come to their <Palestinian Arabs> aid against us. But our strength will exceed theirs. Not only because we will be better organized and equipped, but because behind uns there stands still larger force, superior in quantity and quality ... the whole younger generation <of Jews from Europe and America>.' [Brief vom 5.10.1937, nach Teveth 1985, S. 189]
Ben-Gurion spoke again of the likelihood of a decisive war at the Jewish Agency executive meeting on June 20, 1944, and at the 22nd Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland, in Dezember 1946. The reiteration of his acceptance of war in late 1946 indicates Ben-Gurion's belief that Zionist forces retained superior strength, actual and potential, despite the loss of S87 msot of the young generation of Europe's Jewis in the Holocaust.
A turning point in the Haganah's strategic thinking occurred in December 1946, when Ben-Gurion assumed responsiblility for the Jewish Agency's defensive planning. ... He identified the Arabs as the enemy posing the greatest threat to Jewish national aspirations and he warned the Haganah command in June 1947 that 'we should expect' an invasion by the neighboring Arab states. The Palestinian Arabs he dismissed as a non-threat; he held that 'an attack by the Palestinian Arabs will not jeopartdize the jishuv,' a view shared by Haganah high command. [Rede vom 18.12.1946, in David Ben-Gurion, Ba-ma'arakha V; Tel Aviv 1969, S. 135f.] Ben-Gurion ordered the Haganah's reorganization as a regular military force to resist the expected invasion by regular Arab armies."

Pappé 2007, S. 152-168: Urbizid überwiegend schon vor 15. Mai:

• Haifa: 21.-22. April
• Jerusalem: 24. April: Fehlgeschlagener Angriff auf Shayk Jarrah, danach Säuberung von acht palästinensischen Stadtviertel und 39 Dörfern im Großraum (S. 162f.)
• Safad: 29. April
• Baysan: 12. Mai
• Jaffa: 13. Mai
• Akko (Acre): 17. Mai: Besetzung durch Hagana, davor schon Typhus-Anschlag auf Wasserversorgung

Plan C (Ende 1947)

Pappé 2007, S. 61: "Wie Plan A und B zielte auch Plan C darauf, die Streiträfte der jüdischen Gemeinde in Palästina auf die Offensiven gegen ländliche und urbane Gebiete Palästinas vorzubereiten, die sie sofort nahc dem Abzug der Briten führen würden. zweck solcher Aktionen sollte die 'Abschreckung' der palästinensischen Bevölkerung gegen Angriffe auf jüdische Siedlungen und die Vergeltung für Übergriffe auf jüdische Häuser, Straßen und Verkehr sein. Plan C sagte klar und deutlich, was solche Strafaktionen beinhalten sollten:

• Töten der palästinensischen politischen führung
• Töten der palästinensischen Anstifter und ihrer finanziellen Unterstützer.
• Töten der Palästiennser, die gegne Juden vorgehen
• Töten hoher palästinensischer Beamter und Bediensteter <der Mandatsverwaltung>
• Zerstörung palästienensischer transportmittel
• Zerstörung lebenswichtiger palästinensischer eindirchtungen: Brunnen, Mühlen etc.,
• Angriffe auf benachbarte palästinensische dörfer, die künftige Angriffe wahrscheinlich unterstützen könnten
• Angriffe auf palästinensische Clubs, Kaffeehäuser, Treffpunkte etc.

Plan C ergänzte, dass alle erforderlichen Informationen für die Durchführung dieser Aktionen in den Dorfdossiers zu finden seien. Listen der Anführer, Aktivisten, der 'potentiellen menschlichen Ziele', die genaue Lage der Dörfer usw."

militärische Stärke

Shlaim 1995, S. 294f.: "The heroism of the Jewish fighters is not in question, nor is there any doubt about the heavy price that the Yishuv paid for its victory. Altogether there were 6,000 dead, 4,000 soldiers and 2,000 civilians, or about 1 percent of the entire population. Nevertheless, the Yishuv was not as hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned as the official history would have us believe. It is ttrue that the Yishuv numbbered merely 650,000 souls, compared with 1.2 million Palestinian arabs and nearly 40 million Arabs in the surrounding states. It is true taht the senior military advisers told the political leadership on 12 May 1948 that "fifty-fifty" chance of withstanding the imminent Arab attack. it is true that the sense of weakness and vulnerability in the Jewish population was as acute as it was pervasive and that some segments of this population were gripped by a feeling of gloom and doom. And it is true that during three critical weeks, from teh invasion of Palestine by the regular armies of the Arab states on 15 May until the start of the first truce on 11 June, this community had to struggle for its very survival.
But the Yishuv also enjoyed a number of advantages that are commonly downplayed by the old historians. The Yishuv was better prepared, better mobilized, and better organized when the struggle for Palestine reached its crucial stage than its local opponents. The Haganah, which was renamed the Israel Defense Forces on 31 May, could draw on a large reserve of Western-trained and homegrown officers with military experience. It had an effective centralized command and control. And, in contrast to the armies of the Arab states, especially those of Iraq and Egypt, it had short, internal lines of communication that enabled it to operate with greater speed and mobility.
During the unofficial phase of the war, from December 19477 until 14 May 1948, the Yishuv gradually gained the upper hand in the struggle against its Palestinian opponents. Its armed forces were larger, better trained, and more technologically advanced. Despite some initial setbacks, these advantages enabled it to win and win decisively the battle against the Palestinian Arabs. Even when the Arab states committed their regular armies, marking the beginning of the official phase of the war, the Yishuv retained its numerical superiority. In mid-May the total number of Arab troops, both regular and irregular, operating in Palestine was between 20,000 and 25,000. The IDF fielded 35,000 troops, not counting the second-line troops in the settlements. By mid-July the IDF fully mobilized 65,000 men under arms, by September the number rose to 90,000, and by December it reached a peak of 96,441. The Arab states also reinforced their armies, but they could not match this rate of increase. Thus, at each stage of the war, the IDF significantly outnumbered all the Arab forces ranged against it, and by the final stage of the war its superiority ratio was nearly two to one.
S. 295 The IDF's gravest weakness during the first roudn of fighting in May-June was in firepower. TEh arab armies were much better equipped, especially with heavy arms. But during the first truce, in violation of the U.N. arms embargo, Israel imported from all over Europe (espcieally from Czechoslovakia) rifles, machine guns, armored cars, field guns, tanks, airplanes, and all kinds of ammunition in large quantities. These illicit arms acquisitions enabled the IDF to tip the scales decisively in its own favor. In the second round of fighting the IDF moved on to the offensive, and in the third round it picked off the Arab armies and defeated them one by one. The final outcome of the war was thus not a miracle but a faithful reflection of hte underlying Arab-Israeli military balance. In this war, as in most wars, the stronger side ultimately prevailed."

Abu-Sitta 2010, S. 85: "The day after the United Nations adopted Resolution 181 recommending the division of the country, the Zionist leadership called upon all Jews in palestine aged 17-25 to register for military service. David Ben Gurion, then Chairman of the Jewish Agency, immediately put 'Plan C' (Gimmel), finalized in May 1946, into action. It was the third such plan developed by the Haganah General Staff. Plan C, which was designed for implementation while British Mandate forces were still in Palstine, aimed ot put pressure on the local Palestinian population and to solidify the position of Jeiwsh colonies. ... The end of 1947 marked the greatest disparity between the strength of the Jewish immigrant commmunity and the native inhabitants of Palestine. The former had 185,000 able-bodied Jewish males aged 16-50, mostly military-trained, and many were veterans of WWII. ... Israel's rate of 'direct military mobilization had surpassed any precedence of military history.' This was not the case of a normal army defending its nation, it was an immigrant militia that came to conquer and establish a new state in Palestine. ... The Palestinians had about 2,500 militia men dispersed among a dozen towns and several hundred villages. They had old rifles, few machine guns, no artillery and no tanks. They had no central command and no wireless communications. At best they were only able to mount defensive operations, rushing to a village after hearing cries for help. ...
S 86, FN 260: The so-called 'Arab Liberation Army', led by Fawzi al Qawqji, constituted a force of 3,155 assorted volunteers from several Arab countries. ... Theri number is misleading, as theri idspertion made them ineffective. Theri distribution was as follows: the largest concentration was in Jenin area and in Galilee (groups of 50-100), in Haifa (200), in Jerusalem (a few hundred) and in Jaffa (200). ... The majority were located in teh part allocated for the 'Arab State' in the Partition Plan, where few Jews existed. This was in conformity with the plans set up by Transjordan for the eventual control of that part. ... Ther were very few of them where needed to repel the Jewish attacks. Moreover, the discipline and military performance of this force had been the subject of much ciriticism, even derision. The Muslim Brothers force were a group of highly motivated Egyptian and Palestinian volunteers. Some were well-trained but their number did not exceed 500 in total. They operated in the south, and lost many killed due to their daring and bravery. ...
S 85 By the end of March 1947 Zionist military operations carried out under Plan C resulted in the depopulation of 30 Palestinian villages with a population of about 22,000 people. ... To encourage their expulsion, Zionist forces committed further atrocities and massacres in the villages of Qisarya and Wadi ´Ara (Haifa district) and in Mansurat al-Khayt (Safad district).

Bregmann 2017, S. 10: "On the eve of the civil war in Palestine, Jewish forces comprised Hagana, which was the largest underground organization of the Yishuv, the Jewish community, and two smaller dissident organizations: the Irgun Zvai Leumi, better known as ‘Irgun’ and Lochamai Herut Yisrael, known also as ‘Lehi’ (or ‘The Stern Gang’). The Hagana comprised 45,000 men and women, about 2,100 of them in Palmach, making up the striking force of the organization. In Irgun and Lehi there were about 3,000 fighters and, although independent of Ben Gurion’s Hagana, the two small organizations often coordinated their actions with Hagana, as they did in the notorious battle at Deir Yassin. Expecting a strong Arab response to the UN resolution to partition the land of Palestine, the Jewish leadership under Ben Gurion began mobilizing the whole community, and just a day after the UN resolution it issued a decree calling on men and women between the ages of 17 and 25 (those born between 1922 and 1930) to service. ...
On 3 February, all Jews aged between 19 and 23 (born between 1925 and 1929) were called to serve. The new recruits were not ordered to join a specific underground organization – this could have caused an immediate controversy – rather to enlist to Sherut Ha’am (literally: ‘Service of the Nation’).
The Arab force in the civil war was made up of four components. First was the Arab Liberation Army (ALA), which had around 4,000 volunteers from Palestine and the neighbouring Arab countries, mainly Iraq and Syria. The ALA was organized and equipped by the Military Committee of the Arab League and was trained at the Syrian training centre, Katana. It marched into Palestine on 20 January 1948 from Jordan, and operated from two locations: Galilee, where it had two battalions comprising between 1,500 and 2,000 men; and Samaria, just west of the Jordan river, where it deployed about the same number of men.
S. 11: The second element of the Arab force consisted of between 1,000 and 1,500 volunteers from the ‘Moslem Brothers’ and Egyptian youth organizations who had crossed from Egypt to Palestine, and operated in the southern part of the country and in and around Majdal (now called Ashkelon) and Yibne (now called Yebne).
The third element, some 5,000 men, was led by Abdall Quader Al-Husseini, a relative of the Mufti of Jerusalem and perhaps the most charismatic and ablest Arab leader in Palestine; he was operating in the Jerusalem, Ramallah and Jericho areas. Husseini’s force comprised irregular bands and masses of villagers – the Palestinian element was strong – and it also had some European elements, that is volunteers from Britain, Yugoslavia and Germany who had joined the Arab Palestinians in their fight against the Jews. Another Arab group, 3,000 at most, was led by Hassan Salemeh, who had been trained in Germany, had been parachuted into Palestine, and was operating in the Jaffa-Lydda-Ramleh area. All in all, the number of Arab para regulars, irregulars and volunteers can be estimated at 25,000–30,000 men; their weakness, though, was a lack of cooperation and central control.

Weizmann 1942, S. 334: 10.000 Juden aus Israel hatten für die Briten in der "Nil-Armee" gedient.

Khalidi 2020, S. 86: Auch 12.000 Palästinenser, diese bildeten aber keine eigene Brigade und wurden danach nicht in ein organisiertes Militär integriert.

Pappé 2007, S. 84: "Alles in allem umfassten die jüdischen Streitkräfte am Vorabend des Krieges von 1948 etwa 50 000 Mann, davon gehörten 30 000 zu Kampfeinheiten, die restlichen zu Hilfstruppen, die in den verschiednene Siedlungen lebten. Im Mai 1948 konnten diese Truppen auf die Unterstützung eienr kleinen Luftwaffe udn Marien zählen udn auf die Panzereinheiten, die sie mit Panzerfahrzeugen und schwerer Artillerie begleiteten. Ihen nstanden paramilitärische einheiten der Palästiennser gegenüber, die nicht mehr als 7000 Mann umfaßten. Kampftrupps ohne jede Struktur und Hierarchie, die im Vergleich zu den jüdischen Truppen schlecht ausgerüstet waren. Außerdem kamen inm Februar 1948 etwa 1000 Freiwillige aus der S85 arabischen Welt hinzu, deren Zahl in den folgenden Monaten auf 3000 anwuchs.
Bis Mai 1948 waren beide Seiten schlecht ausgerüstet. Dann erhielt die neu gegründete israelische Armee mit Hilfe der Kommunistischen Partei des Landes eine große Lieferung schwerer Waffen aus der Tschechoslowakei und der Sowjetunion, während die regulären arabischen Armeen einige schwere Geschütze aus eigenen Beständne heranschafften. In den Wochen nach Kriegsbeginn gestaltete sich die israelische Rekrutierugn so effizint, dass ihre Armee bis zum Ende des Sommers auf 80 000 Mann anwuchs. Die regulären arabischen Truppen brachten es nie über eine Stärke von 50 000 Mann hinaus und erhielten zudem keine Waffenlieferungen mehr von Großbritannnien, das ihr Hauptrüstungslieferant war.
iIn den anfangsstadien der ethnischen Säuberung (bis Mai 1948) standen also ein paar tausend irreguläre palästinensische und arabische Kämpfer Zehntausenden gut ausgebildeten jüdischen Soldaten gegenüber. Im Verlauf der folgenden Phasen hatten die jüdischen Streitkräfte mit einer Truppenstärke, die fast das Doppelte aller arabischen Armeen zusammen betrug, kaum Schwierigkeiten, ihre Aufgabe abzuschließen."
S. 94: "Daher empfahl der Rat der Arabischen Liga, der sich aus den Außenministern der arabischen Staaten zusammensetzte, Waffen an die Palästinenser zu liefern und eine allarabische Freiwilligentruppe zu schaffen, die Arabische Befreiungsarmee (Jaish al-Inqath, wörtlich 'Rettungsarmee' von dem Verb anqatha: 'aus drohender Gefahr retten') heißen sollte. Zum Befehlshaber ernannte die liga einen syrischen General. Im Laufe ds Monats begannen kleine Trupps dieser Armee nach Palästina einzudringen und lieferten damit der Beratergruppe einen willkommenen Vorwand, über eine weitere Eskalation der Hagana-Operationen zu diskutieren, die bereits im Gang waren."
S. 95f: "Die jüdischen Baern in den Kibbuzim und in den Kollektiv- oder Privatsiedlungen verwandelten ihre Dörfer in verteidigungs- und angriffsbereite militärische Vorposten - verstärkten ihre Befestigungsanlagen, reparierten Zäune, legten Minen usw.; jeder bekam eine Schusswaffe und wurde in die jüdischen Streitkräfte aufgenommen."
S. 188: "Nur wenige [arabische Politiker] hegten in diesem frühen Stadium, Anfang 1948, noch Zweifel daran, dass dem palästinensischen Volk eine Katastrophe drohnte. Aber sie verzögerten udn verschoben die unvermeidliche Intervention, so lange sie konnten, und wollten sie dann lieber früher als später beenden. Ihnen war nicht nur völlig klar, dass die Palästinenser besiegt waren, sondenr auch, dass ihre Armeen den überlegenen jüdischen Streitkräften nichts entgegenzusetzen hatten. Sie schickten Truppen in einen Krieg, vond em sie wussten, dass sie kaum oder gar keine Chance hatten, ihn zu gewinnen."
S. 195: In diesem Kontext ist noch einmal Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni zu erwähnen, der unter den Dorfbewohnern eine paramilitärische Einheit zu ihrem Selbstschutz zu organisieren versuchte. Seine 'Armee des heiligen Krieges' - ein recht großspuriger Name für die zweifelhafte Gruppe, die er führte - hielt durch, bis sie am 9. April besiegt und Abd al-Qadir von den Hagana-Truppen getötet wurde, die ihr an Ausrüstung und militärischer Erfahrung weit überlegen waren.
Ähnliche Versuche unternahmen der bereits erwähnte Hassan Salameh und Nimr Hawari ... im Großraum jaffa. Sie versuchten aus ihrer Pfadfinderbewegung paramiitärische Einheiten zu machen, die aber ebenfalls innerhalb weniger Woche nbesiegt wurden.
Vor Ablauf des Mandats stellten also weder die arabischen Freiwilligen von außerhalb Palästinas noch die paramilitärischen Einheiten im Inland eine ernsthafte Gefahr für die jüdische Gemeinde dar, den Kampf zu verlieren oder zur Kapitualation gezwungen zu werden.
S. 205: "In Kairo beschloss die Regierung erst im letzten Moment - zwei Tage vor Beendigung des Mandats -, Truppen nach Palästina zu entsenden. Unter dne aufgestellten 10 000 Soldaten befand sich ein großes Kontingent Freiwilliger der Muslimischen Bruderschaft, die fast 50 Prozent ausmachten. ...
Die syrischen Truppen waren besser ausgebildet und ihre Politiker waren engagierter, aber nur drei Jahre, nachdem die französische Mandatsmacht Syrien in die Unabhängigkeit entlassen hatte, schlug sich das kleine, nach Palästina entsandte Kontingent so schlecht, dass die Beratergruppe noch vor Ende Mai 1948 mit dem Gedanken spielte, die jüdische Staatsgrenzen an der Nordostflanke nach Syrien hinein auszudehnen und die Golanhöhen zu annektieren. Noch kleienr und unengagierter waren die libanensichen Einheiten, die während des Krieges weitgehend auf ihrer Seite der Grenze zu Palästina blieben udn dort wisderstrebend die Grenzdörfer zu verteidigen versuchten.
Die irakischen Truppen bildeten die letzte udn faszinierendste Komponente der allarabischen Militäranstrengungen. Sie bestanden aus einigen tausend Mann und hatten von ihrer Regierung den Befehl, S206 sich an die jordanische Richtlinie zu halten: also den jüdischen Staat nicht anzugreifen, sondern das König Abdullah zugedachte Gebiet, das Westjordanland, zu verteidigen. Sie waren im Nordteil des Westjordanlands stationiert, missachteten aber die Befehle ihrer Politiker und versuchten eine effektivere Rolle zu spielen. Dadurch konnten 15 Dörfer im Wadi Ara an der Straße von Afula nach Hadera standhalten und der Vertreibung entgehen (im Sommer 1949 trat die jordanische Regierugn sie im Rahmen eines bilateralen Waffenstillstandsabkommens an Israel ab)."

Esber 2009, S. 89f: "A review of arab and Jewish military capabilities at the time shows that the balance strongly favored Zionist forces in the civil war period, creating opportunities to evict Arabs. (Zionist military capabilities would be superior for the second period of the war as well.) It also shows tha the Zionist leaddership was aware of this superiority and had taken steps to make certain taht it endured.
S90 A wide variety of sources support these conclusions. British and zioonist sources include testimony by British and Haganah military commanders and Jewish Agency leaders before the 1946 Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry (AAACI) and hte 1947 U.N. Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP). Other British assessments include a 1945 British general staff intelligence (GSI) report, the March 1948 Palestien Police intelligence report, and a July 1947 report by Leitenant Colonel C. R. W. Norman, head of British military intelligence. Americal observations are reflected by U.S. army intelligence reports of December 1947 and March 1948, and by the director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff's report of March 31, 1948. Reports by the Arab League military committee, General Ismail Safwat commanding the Arab Liberation Army (ALA), and hte Egyptian minister of war, Colonel Muhammad Nouh, provide Arab assessments. U.N. observations are provided by U.N. military advisor Colonel Roscher Lund and the Guatemalan representative to the UNSCOP, Jorge García Granados. As we will see, international observers, as well as the Arab and Jewish military experts themselves, also arrived via separate paths at a consensus that the Zionists enjoyed decisive military superiority over the Arabs both durign the civil war and the subsequent regional war. ...
S 91: The zionist leadership and contemproary Briths, U.S., and even U.N. military observers all assessed the military capabilities of hte Palestinian Arabs and the Arab states as poor to mediocre, with the exception of the British-financed and led Transjordan Arab Legion. Howeve,r King Abdullah of transjordan, the Legion#s commander in chief, had been negotiating privately with Jewish Agency leaders to avoid direct conflict with the Jewis and to divide Palestine between the Zionists and Trnasjordon [sic]. Furthermore, all observers and parties to the conflict, including Zionist leaders, were cognizant of long-standing political, economic, and interstate Arab rivalries that prevented a united Arab front."
S. 108f.: "On teh eve of the Arab armies' entry into Palestine, the british commander in chief of Middle East Land forces sent an intelligence report to the War Office assessing the relative strength of the Jewish fighting troops at 74,000, S109 including 70,000 fully mobilized and trained Haganah and Palmach and 4,000 IZL. The Arabs' assessed fighting force totaled 19,200, composed of 5,000 ALA, 5,000 Arab Legion; 2,000 Iraqis, 5,000 Egyptians; 1,500 Syrians; and 700 Lebanese. In spite of the Arab states' preponderance of artillery, armored figiting vehicles and aircraft teh British believed that the Arab forces were 'numerically too small to sustain major offensive operations in <the> Jewish occupied area.' The Arabs were handicapped by divided command; lack of operational experience; communication and supply problems, and lack of reserves. The Zionists meanwhile had superior intelligence, good communications, mobile interior lines, battle experience, and strong offensive spirit.
The British command predicted that if the United States supported the Jewish forces, it would likely make up equipment deficencies and create an efficient air force at an early date. British military intelligence concluded, and the GOC Palestine concurred, that in the event of ppartition, the Jewish state would by the time of hte mandate's end 'be sufficiently well orgnaized to defend itself against aggression from the Arabs of Palestine and Syria.'
The follwoign table compiles the comparative numerical strength of Zionist and Arab [= palästinensisch] military forces prior to May 15, according to estimates of contemporary sources: [paläst.: ALA + Polizei + Guerrillas: GB: 11.000-12.000; Arab: 7.700; Zio: 13.000-17.000; U.N: 6.000-11.000 <=> Zio: GB: 61.400 - 97.400; Arab: 75.000-76.000; Zio: 90.000; U.S: 85.000; U.N: 35.000]

Abu-Sittah 2010, S. 88:

Britsh diplomatic correspondence in this period shows clearly that the major powers were convinced that the Zionist forces could defeat any combination of arab armies [Toye / Seay]. Even Arab military advisors to the Arab League, the supposed protecter of hte beleaguered Palestinians, acknowledged the same.
On May 15 a segment of the Egyptian army entered Palestine on two days notice. The tiny Lebanese forces hardly entered the country. Units from the Syrian army entered Palestine, south then north of Lake Tiberias. The Arab Legion (later the Jordanian Army) entered Palestine to carry out King Abdullah’s scheme, with British acquiescence, to annex as much as possible of Palestine leaving the rest to the Jews in accordance with a secret agreement. [Avi Shlaim 1988: Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine]
S. 99: His aim was not to ‘liberate’ Palestine but to annex Arab Palestine to his kingdom through an agreement with the Jews to divide Palestine between them. ...
S. 87: Units of the Iraqi 'Hashemite' army entered in support of the 'Hashemite' King Abdullah and then left. None of these Arab forces had the intention to exceed the limits of the Arab state in the Partition Plan.Their number and preparedness were far less than necessary to meed the task at hand. ...
S 88: Arab regular forces were outnumbered during the initial and subsequent phases of the war. Lebanese forces, for example, which started at 700, and reached a maximum of 1,000, had no military impact. They even lost a dozen Lebanese villages to the Israeli forces. Syrian forces (about 2,000) tried and failed to capture two Israeli settlements south of Tiberias. The well-trained Iraqi forces, which started at 2,500 and expanded later, arrived without orders ... to defend the villages. It was able to defend Jenin against Israeli attacks but lost the villages around Jenin. Iraqi forces were subsequently withdrawn at the request of Transjordan. The Arab Legion, with a maximum force of 4,500, well-trained and armed men, and led by British officers, maintained defensive positions in the Old City of Jerusalem. Together with Palestinian and other volunteers, the Arab Legion overran four Etzion Bloc settlements south of Jerusalem in the area allocated to the Arab state.
The brunt of the fighting after 15 May was taken up by Egyptian forces. In the beginning, they numbered 2,800, and grew immediately thereafter to 9,292. In October, the size of the force increased to 28,500, in addition to 1,109 Saudis, 1,675 Sudanese and 4,410 volunteers, mostly Palestinians. As a force of 35,662 men under one command, it was by far the largest Arab force. Its task was to defend a large Arab area, over half of Palestine, with very few Jewish settlements in it. Like other Arab forces, at no point did it attempt to enter the designated Jewish state. Under the inept leadership of General Mawawi, however, Egyptian forces lost all of this territory, with the exception of the tiny Gaza Strip, defended by Mawawi’s successor, General Ahmad Fouad Sadik. ...
Israeli forces continued to expand as the war dragged on through the summer of 1948. By August, Israeli forces had grown to 74,450. By October, just before the start of Operation Yo’av, the number of Israeli forces had reached 99,122, and finally reaching 121,000 at the beginning of 1949. It had by then a credible navy, a strong airforce and powerful armaments.
The First Truce was announced to start on June 11, 1948. Although Israeli forces were hard pressed in this phase, combat with Arab forces emboldened them and increased Ben Gurion’s conviction that Israel could defeat any combination of Arab armies and that the Israeli military was capable of attacking and occupying Arab capitals. During the truce Israel received enormous supplies of armaments, and soon thereafter, their first fleet of aircrafts, including the “flying castles” some weeks later. These aircraft introduced a new element in the fighting and, through indiscriminate air raids on refugee concentrations killing hundreds each time, had a devastating physical and psychological impact on Palestinian refugees. Emboldened and strengthened, Ben Gurion was determined to go beyond the Partition Plan, and occupy a territory connecting Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and expand the Jewish-held Palestinian coast. Israel thus broke the First Truce.
...S 91: Israel thus managed to win a largely uncontested battle and succeeded in emptying 530 towns and main villages (in addition to 145 smaller villages) of their inhabitants, thus making 805,000 people refugees. Their conquest extended Israeli control to an area of about 20,350 km2 or 77 percent of Palestine, an increase of about 19,000 km2 over the land they possessed under the British Mandate and with an additional 24 percent of Palestine conquered beyond the limit of the Partition Plan. ... Three hundred and fifty six of massacres, atrocities, destruction of property and houses, plunder and looting of possessions were recorded up to 1956. ... B Between 1947 and 1956 alone, well over 100 massacres and atrocities were committed by Israeli forces. Of these, about half were committed in 51 Galilee villages. Two thirds were committed before 15 May, that is, during the British Mandate, before Israel was created and before Arab forces came to rescue the Palestinians.

Bregman 2017, S. 15: The number of Israeli troops committed to battle on the eve of the Arab invasion was more or less equal to that of the Arabs, but then, while the number of Arab troops increased only slightly, the number of Israelis grew steadily and dramatically. A breakdown shows that the total strength of the invading Arab armies was about 23,500 troops, made up of 10,000 in the Egyptian army, 4,500 in the Arab Legion of Transjordan, 3,000 Syrians, 3,000 Iraqis and 3,000 Lebanese and ALA troops; S15 there was also a token contingent from Saudi Arabia.58 Compared with these numbers, Israel, as Ben Gurion notes in his diary of the war, had committed a total of 29,677 men and women to battle. 59 But then, with the progressive mobilization of Israeli society and the average monthly arrival of 10,300 new immigrants, the number of available fighters steadily grew.60 On 4 June 1948, the number of Israeli troops was, according to Ben Gurion, 40,825; and on 17 July it grew to 63,586. On 7 October 1948, these numbers swelled to 88,033, and by 28 October reached more than 92,275.61 On 2 December the number of Israeli soldiers on the field was 106,900;62 on 23 December it stood at 107,652, and on 30 December the number had risen to 108,300 (10,259 of them women).63 Jewish volunteers from abroad – Mahal – also joined, and although their number was relatively low, at most 5,000, they nevertheless provided valuable technical expertise. By the end of the war Israel’s fighting force was larger in absolute terms than that of the Arabs, and as John Bagot Glubb correctly observed:

the common impression that the heroic little Israeli army was fighting against tremendous odds (one army against seven armies was one of the expressions used) was not altogether correct. The Israeli forces were, generally speaking, twice as numerous as all the Arab armies put together.

In weaponry and firepower, however, the Arabs had a clear edge. The total inventory of Hagana at the start of the war consisted of 22,000 rifles of various calibres, 1,550 light and medium machine guns, 11,000 largely homemade submachine guns, 195 three-inch calibre infantry mortars, 682 two-inch mortars, 86 PIAT (Projector Infantry Anti-Tank – a crude man-portable device of armourpiercing explosive charges) and five old 65mm field guns. A few tanks and aircraft still awaited shipment in Europe.65 Egypt, according to Israeli estimates, had 48 field guns, 25–30 armoured cars, 10–20 tanks, and 21–25 aircraft. Iraq had 48 field guns, 25–30 armoured cars, and 20 aircraft. Syria had 24 field guns, 36 armoured cars, 10–20 tanks and 14 aircraft. Jordan had 24 field guns and 45 armoured cars; and Lebanon 8 field guns and 9 armoured cars.66 But as in manpower, so with weaponry; as the war progressed the balance steadily tipped in favour of the Israelis. A fund-raising mission by Golda Meir to America raised $50 million, which was used to buy arms, and ships loaded with weapons were purchased and sent to Israel by such people as Ehud Avriel.67 In NewYork, a team headed by Teddy Kollek (later the long-serving Mayor of Jerusalem) bought aeroplanes, took them to pieces and, with the help of the Mafia, and under the nose of the FBI, shipped the precious weapons to Israel.68 Israelis not only purchased weapons, but they also took measures to prevent the Arabs from adding arms to their own arsenals. In Bari, Italy, on 9 April 1948, Israeli agents executed ‘Operation Shalal 1’ and sunk the ship Lino, which was packed with 8,000 rifles designated for S16 Syria.69 Also in Italy, on 18 September 1948, Israeli agents broke into a garage where they destroyed four aeroplanes which were awaiting shipment to Egypt.70 Additionally, Israel developed its own weapons industry, which included chemical and biological weapons.

Brief v. Ben Gurion: "Wenn wir die Waffen, die wir bereits gekauft haben, rechtzeitig erhalten, und vielleicht sogar einige, die die UN uns versprochen haben, können wir uns nicht nur verteidigen, sondern auch den Syrern in ihrem eigenen Land tödliche Schläge versetzen - und ganz Palästina einnehmen. Daran hege ich keinerlei Zweifel. Wir können es mit den gesamten arabischen Truppen aufnehmen. Das ist kein Wunderglaube, sondern kühle, nüchterne Berechnung aufgrund praktischer Untersuchungen. [zitiert nach Pappé 2007, S. 88]

---

Waffenembargo

Pappé 2007, S. 206: "In Palästina merkten die arabischen Truppen sehr bald, dass sie ihre Nachschublinien überdehnt hatten und daher keine Muntion mehr für ihre antiquierten udn oft versagenden Waffen bekamen. ... Waffen waren knapp, da die Hauptrüstungslieferanten der arabischen Armeen, Frankreich und Großbritannien, ein Waffenembargo gegen Palästina verhängt hatten. Das beeinträchtigte die arabischen Armeen, nicht aber die jüdischen Streitkräfte, die in der Sowjetunion und ihrem neu geschaffenen Ostblock bereitwillige Lieferanten fanden."

Bregmans 2017, S. 19: The first three crucial weeks of fierce fighting between Arabs and Israelis ended in a truce which was negotiated by the Swedish UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte. The Arabs had objected to stopping the fighting on the grounds that the Israelis might exploit the respite to regroup, strengthen their defences and obtain weapons. The Israelis, on the other hand, welcomed the possibility of a truce so that they could snatch a breathing space and reorganize themselves. Fearing UN sanctions, the Arabs reluctantly accepted the truce which came into effect on 11 June 1948 at 10 a.m.81 Four days later Ben Gurion recorded in his war diary the arrival of ten 75mm guns, ten light tanks with 37mm guns, nineteen 65mm guns and four 20mm automatic guns.[Ben Guion, Kriegstagebuch, 15. Juni 1948]

Aus Wikipedia: Da die USA, Großbritannien und Frankreich das Waffenembargo an die potenziellen Konfliktparteien einhielten, versorgten sich die jüdischen Paramilitärs mit Zustimmung der Sowjetunion aus Beständen des sich formierenden Ostblocks. Im Dezember 1947 wurde der erste Vertrag abgeschlossen, wonach die Tschechoslowakei 10.000 Gewehre, 4500 schwere Maschinengewehre sowie drei Millionen Schuss Munition an Israel liefern sollte. [Arnold Krammer: The Forgotten Friendship – Israel and the Soviet Bloc 1947–53. Urbana 1974, S. 54–61.; Benny Morris: 1948 – A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. New Haven 2008, S. 206.]

Jordanien + Irak

Glubb 1957, S. 59:
"We in Trans-Jordan produced our own solution. We favoured partition, but we considered it essential to retain British garrisons in Jerusalem and Haifa. If such a plan had been adopted, figting would have been avoided. Any necessary exchanges of population could have been carried out without unnecessary hardship, and there would have been no destitute refugees. Such parts of Palestine as were allotted to the Arabs would have been incorporatedi nthe neighbouring Arab States. Galilee would have joined Lebanon; Samaria and judea would have been united ot Trans-Jordan; and hte Gaza-Beersheba district to Egypt. Lord Moyne, British Minister of State in the Middle East, to whom I explained the idea. professed himself to be keenly interested."

Shlaim 1987, S. 55:
"King ´Abdallah, nicknamed 'Mr. Bevin's little King' by the officials at the Foreign Office, now assumed the kind of importance within the framework of British strategy in the Middle East that had always been denied him in the past. On Staurday, 7 February 1948, ´Abdallah's proime minister, Tawfiq Abu al-Huda, accompanied by Sir John Bagot Glubb, the renowned British commander of the British-trained and British-financed Arab Legion, paid a secret visit to Bevin at the Foreign Office to discuss Palestine. Abu al-Huda outlined hte plan to send the arab Legion across the Jordan when the mandate ended and to occupy that part of Palestine awareded by the UN to the Arabs taht was contiguous with the frontier of transjordan. When glubb finished translating, Bevin said, 'It seems the obvious thing to do,' and then repeated, 'It seems the obvious thing to do, but do not go and invade the areas allotted to the Jews.' The keystone of British policy swung into place. Up to the meeting with Abu al-Huda, Britain had declined ot enforce the UN partition plan but had not firmly settled on an alternative strategy. From now on Britain worked in close cooperationw ith King ´Abdallah to secure the expansion of his kingdom over most of Arab Palestine."

Shlaim 1987, S. 61:
The Iraqi officiers operating in Transjordan were particularly hostile to both the British and the Arab Legion, and they practically ceased ot have any relations with the latter. [Kirkbride to FO, 6. August 1948, FO 371/68830] Some of the disaffected Iraqi officers began to talk about the need to clear out the old gang tat served Britain#s interests in Baghdad and Amman and averred that the principles involved in the Palestien quesiton meant os much to them that they would throw in their lot with any major power willing to lend upport to the Arab cause. [G. C. Littler, actual consul general, Basrah, to the chargé d'affairs, British Embassy, Baghdad, 26 August 1948, FO 371/68451]

Shlaim 1995, S. 293: "The key to British policy during this period is summed up by Pappé in two words: Greater transjordan. bevin felt that if Palestine had to be partitioned, teh Arab area could not be left to stand on its own but should be united with Transjordan. A Greater Transjordan would compensate Britain for the loss of bases in Palestine. ...
The policy of Greater Transjordan implied discreet support for a bid by Abdullah - nicknamed 'Mr. Bevin's little king' by the officials at the Foreign Office - to enlarge his kingdom by taking over the West Bank. At a secret meeting in London on 7 February 1948, Bevin gave Tawfiq Abul Huda, ordan's prime minister, the green light to send hte Arab Legion into Palestine immediately following the departure of the British forces. But Bevin also warned Jordan not to invade the area allocated by the U.N. to the Jews. An attack on Jewish state territory, he said, would compel Britain to withdraw her subsidy and officiers from the Arab Legion. Far from being driven by blind anti-Semitic prejudice to unleash the Arab Legion against the Jews, Bevin in fact urged restraint on the Arabs in geenral and on Jordan in particular. Whatever sins were committed by the British foreign secretary as the British Mandate in Palestine approached its inglorious end, inciting King Abdullah to use force to prevent the emergence of a Jewish state was not one of them. ...
In short, if there is a case to be made gainst Bevin, it is not that he tried to abort the birth of the Jewish state but that he endorsed the understanding between King Abdullah and hte Jewish Agency to partition Palestine between themselves and leave the Palestinians out in the cold."
S. 296f: "The central thesis advanced in my book is that in November 1947 an unwritten agreement was reached between King Abdullaha nd the Jewish Agency to dividde Palestine between themselves following the termination of the British Mandate and that this agreement laid the foundation for mutual restraint during the first Arab-Israeli S297 war and for continuing collaboration in the aftermath of this war. A subsidiary thesis is that Britain knew and approved of this secret Hashemite-Zionist agreement to divide up Palestine between themselves, not along the lines of the U.N. partition plan.
... S 298: "In other words, I accept that in the period 1947-49 Israel had no Palestinian option or any other rab option, save the Jordanian option. King Abdullah was the only Arab head of state who was willing to accept the principle of partition and to coexist peacefuly with a Jeiwsh state after the dust had settled. From March to April 1948 this understanding was subjected to severe strain as the Jews went on teh offensive. In the period May-July 1948, the two sides came ot blows. From Abdullah's postwar vantage point, this was merely a fitna, a family quarrel, and the jews had started it. And after the initial outburst of violence, both sides began to pull their punches, as one does in af amily quarrel."

Pappé 2007, S. 81-83: "Ende 1946 hatte die Jewish Agency intensive Verhandlungen S82 mit König Abdullah von Jordanien aufgenommen. Abdullah war ein Sprössling der haschemitischen Königsfamilie aus dem Hidjas ..., die im Ersten Weltkriega uf Seiten der Briten gekämpft hatte. Zum Dank für die Deinste, die sie der britischen Krone erwiesen hatten, bekamen die Haschemiten die kÖnigreiche Irak und Jordanien, die das Mandatssystem geschaffen hatte. Ursprünglich hatten die Briten ihnen ... auch Syrien versprochen, um zu verhindern, dass sie Franzosen diesen TEil des Nahen Ostens übernahmen. Als die Franzosen aber Abdullahs Bruder Faysal aus Syrien vertrieben, machten die Briten ihn statt Abdullah zum irakischen König. Als ältester Sohn der Dynastie war Abdullah mit seinem Antteil unzufrieden, zumal die Saudis 1924 den Haschemiten ih Stammesgebiet, den Hidjas, abrangen. Transjordanien war kaum mehr als ein Wüstenemirat am Ostufer des Jordans mit Beduinenstämmen udn ein paar tscherkessischen Dörfern. Kein Wunder,d ass er eine Expansion in das fruchtbare, kultivierte udn besiedelte Palästina anstrebte und ihm dafür jedes Mittel recht war. ... Da es in dem Gebiet, das der König haben wollte (das heutige Westjordanland), nur sehr wenige jüdische siedlungen gab, waren die meisten in der Führungsspitze der jüdischen Gemeinde durchaus 'bereit', diesen Teil Palästinas aufzugeben, obwohl dort einige bilbische jüdische Stätten wie die Stadt S83 Hebron (al-Khahl) lagen. ... Abdullah versprach, sich nichtan etwaigen allarabischen Militäroperationen gegen den jüdischen Staat zu beteiligen Gegen Ende der Mandatszeit erlebten diese Verhandlungen HÖhen und tiefen, wurden aber fortgesetzt, das lag nicht nur an der geringen Zahl jüdischer Siedler im Westjordanland, sondenr auch an der tatsache, dass die Jordanier in der zwieten Hälfte des Jahres 1948 wiedehrolte jüdische versuche, Teile des Westjordanlands zu besetzen, mit HIlfe eines irakischen Truppenkontigents erfolgreich abwehrten (einer der wenigen Triumphe in der arabischen Militärgeshcichte von 1948). Damit war das Territorium abgesteckt, das die zionistische Bewegung anstrebte: also ganz Palästina, wie sie es im Bildmore-Programm von 1942 gefordert hatte, allerdings mit dieser einen Einschränkung, sofern man davon ausgeht - wie die meisten Historiker es heute tun -, dass die zionistische führugn sich an ihre geheimen Absprachen mit den Jordaniern gebunden fühlte. Somit stellte die jüdische führung sich auf ein künftiges Statsgebiet ein, das sich über 80 Prozent des palästinensischen Mandatsgebiets erstrecken sollte: die 56 Prozent, die die Vereinten Nationen den Juden zugesagt hatten, sowie weitere 24 Prozet des Territoriums, das die UN den Palästinensern für den arabischen Staat zugedacht hatten. Die restlichen 20 Prozent sollten die Jordanier übernehmen."
S. 190: "Der Außenseiter in diesem System war König Abdullah von Transjordanien. ER nutzte die neue Situation, um seine Verhandlungen mit der Jewish Agency über eine Palästinavereinbarung für die Nachmandatszeit zu intensivieren. Seine Armee hatte zwar Einheiten in Palästina stationiert, und mache von ihnen waren hier udn da auch bereit, den Dorfbewohnern beim Schutz ihrer Häuser und Felder zu helfen, wurden aber weitgehend von ihren Kommandeuren zurückgehalten. Fawzi al-Qawqjis Tagebuch lässt erkennen, dass der ALA-Kommandeur zunehmend frustriert war über die mangelnde Bereitschaft der in Palästina stationierten jordanischen Einheiten, mit seinen Truppen zu kooperieren.
S. 191 Anfang Februar 1948 war der jordanische Premierminister nach London geflogen, um über das Geheimabkommen Bericht zu erstatten, das Jordanien mit der jüdischen Führung über die Aufteilung Palästinas nach Ablauf des Mandats geschlossen hatte. die Jordanier sollten den Großteil der Gebiete annektieren, die in der Teilungsresolution den Arabern zugedacht waren, udn wurden sich als Gegenleistung nicht an Militäroperationen gegen den jüdischen Staat beteiligen. Die Briten gaben diesem Plan ihren Segen. [Shlaim, Kollusion] Jordaniens Arabische Legion war die bestausgebildete Armee der ganzen arabischen Welt udn den jüdischen Truppen ebenbürtig, auf manchen Gebieten sogar überlegen. Aber der König und sein britischer Generalstabschef, John Glubb Pasha, schränkten ihren Aktionsradius auf das Territorium ein, das ihrer Ansicht nach Jordanien zustand: Ostjerusalem udn die Gebiete, die man heute Westjordanland nennt."
S. 193: Letztlich musste die Arabische Legion trotz der jordanischen Geheimabsprachen mit Israel um ihre Annektierungen kämpfen. zunächst konnten die Jordanier die Gebiete, die sie haben wollten, einnehmen, ohne auch nur einen Schuss abzufeuern, aber einige Wochen nach Beendigung des Mandats versuchte die israelische Amrmee, ihnen Teile avon wieder abzuringen. Offenbar bedauerte David Ben Gurion seinen Entschluss, den Krieg nicht zu nutzen, um das jüdische Staatsgebiet noch über die angestrebten 87 Prozent Palästinas hinaus auszudehnen. ... S 194 Die Teile Palästinas, die König Abdullah eisern als seine ansah, verteidigte die Arabische Legion erfolgreich bis zum Ende des Krieges. Mit anderen Worten: Die jordanische Besetzung des Westjordanlands kam anfangs Dank einer vorherigen Vereinbarung mit den Juden zustande, aber danach blieb sie in haschemitischer Hand, weil die Jordanier sie hartnäckig verteidigten udn die irakischen Truppen ihnen halfen, israelische Angriffe abzuwehren. Diese Episode lässt sich noch aus einem anderen Blickwinkel betrachten: Indem die Jordanier das Westjordanland besetzten, bewahrten sie 250 000 Palästinenser vor der Vertreibung, allerdings nur bis Israel sie 1967 besetzte udn einer neuen, wenn auch gemäßigteren udn langsameren Vertreibungswelle unterwarf, die bis heute andauert."
S. 206: Was die mangelnde Koordination anging, so war sie die unausweichliche Folge aus der Entscheidung der Arabischen Liga, König Abdullah den Oberbefehl über die allarabische Armee zu übertragen udn einen irakischen General zu ihrem Befehlshaber zu machen. Während die Jordanier S207 nie den blick zurückwandten auf diese Tage im Mai, Juni und Juli 1948, als sie den allgemeinen arabischen Militäreinsatz nach Kräften untergruben, stellten die revolutionären herrscher, die 1958 im Irak die Macht übernahmen, ihre Generäle wegen ihrer Rolle in der Katastrophe vor Gericht."

Esber 2009, S. 91: The zionist leadership and contemproary Briths, U.S., and even U.N. military observers all assessed the military capabilities of hte Palestinian Arabs and the Arab states as poor to mediocre, with the exception of the British-financed and led Transjordan Arab Legion. However King Abdullah of transjordan, the Legion's commander in chief, had been negotiating privately with Jewish Agency leaders to avoid direct conflict with the Jews and to divide Palestine between the Zionists and Transjordon [sic].

Abu-Sittah 2010, S. 88:

Britsh diplomatic correspondence in this period shows clearly that the major powers were convinced that the Zionist forces could defeat any combination of arab armies [Toye / Seay]. Even Arab military advisors to the Arab League, the supposed protecter of hte beleaguered Palestinians, acknowledged the same.
On May 15 a segment of the Egyptian army entered Palestine on two days notice. The tiny Lebanese forces hardly entered the country. Units from the Syrian army entered Palestine, south then north of Lake Tiberias. The Arab Legion (later the Jordanian Army) entered Palestine to carry out King Abdullah’s scheme, with British acquiescence, to annex as much as possible of Palestine leaving the rest to the Jews in accordance with a secret agreement. [Avi Shlaim 1988: Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine]
S. 99: His aim was not to ‘liberate’ Palestine but to annex Arab Palestine to his kingdom through an agreement with the Jews to divide Palestine between them. ...
S. 87: Units of the Iraqi 'Hashemite' army entered in support of the 'Hashemite' King Abdullah and then left.

Bregman 2010, S. 17: "All regarded Jordan’s King Abdullah with intense suspicion, and rightly so, for the King was far more concerned to seize the land west of the river Jordan, which had been allotted to the Palestinians, than to destroy Israel.73 The British commander of the Arab Legion later confirmed that the Jordanian troops were indeed instructed ‘To occupy the central and largest area of Palestine allotted to the Arabs by the 1947 partition’.74 This is a most significant statement, for it shows that rather than five Arab armies attacking the Israelis, there had been only four – Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon – and rather than intending to destroy the newly born state of Israel, the Arab Legion had crossed the Jordan river with the aim of partitioning the land by seizing the S18 territory allotted by the UN to the Palestinians. Lack of coordination among the invading forces is reflected in testimonies of Arab troops who took part in this war."

Biologische Kriegsführung

Cohen 2001: Israel and chemical/biological weapons: History, deterrence, and arms control
W. Seth Carus 2001). Bioterrorism and Biocrimes. S. 87f.
Salman Abu Sitta 2003. Traces of Poisoning
Morris / Kedar 2022: ‘Cast thy bread’: Israeli biological warfare during the 1948 War

Ha'aretz; Palestine Chronicle

Cohen 2001, S. 31: "Tight secrecy characterized all matters related to HEMED BEIT, and hte biological unit was insulated from all other HEMED units. To this day, there is no public record of HEMED BEIT's operations during the 1948 war - indeed, all archival material relating to the unit is classified and unavailable to scholars - and Israeli historians have not shown any great interest in exploring this subject. Stilll, rumors about secret BW operations in Palestinian villages and towns have persisted for years. Dr. Uri Milstein, an iconoclastic Israeli military historian, maintains, 'in many conquered Arab villages, the water supply was poisoned to prevent the inhabitants from coming back.'
It is believed that one of the largest operations in this campaign was in the Arab coastal town of Acre, north of Haifa, shortly before it was conquered by the IDF on May 17, 1948. According to Milstein, the typhoid epidemic that spread in Acre in teh days before the twon fell to hte Israeli forces was not the result of wartime chaos but rather a deliberate covert action by the IDF - the contamination of Acre's water supply. Milstein even named the company commander who was involved in the operation. When journalist Leibovitz-Dar found this individual in 1993, he refused to talk. 'Why do you look for troubles that took place forty-five years ago?' he asked. 'I know nothing about this. What would you gain by publishing it. ... Why do you need to publish?'
The success of the Acre operation may have persuaded Israeli decisionmakers to continue with these activities. On May 23, 1948, Egyptian soldiers in the Gaz area caught four Israeli soldiers disguised as Arabs near water wells. A statement issued by the Egyptian Ministry of Defense on May 29 stated that four 'Zionists' had been caught trying to infect artesian wells in gaza with 'a liquid, which was discovered to contain the germs of dysenterey and typhoid.' According to the Egyptian statement, a confession had been obtained during interrogation of one of the captured Israelis, David hOrin. He reportedly admitted that thier commander had given them a canteen filled with dysetnery and typhoid bacteria 'to be thrown into the well to kill the Egyptian army.' The four Israelis were put on trial, convicted, and executed by hanging three months later.
Israel firmly denied the Egyptian allegations of acteriological warfare, calling them a 'wicked libel.'"

Abu-Sittah 2003: "The story can now be told, thanks to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) files which have now become available, 50 years after the event. A series of reports, under the reference G59/1/GC, G3/82, sent by ICRC delegate de Meuron from 6 May to about 19 May 1948 describe the conditions of the city population, struck by a sudden typhoid epidemic, and the efforts to combat it.
Of particular importance are the minutes of an emergency conference held at the Lebanese Red Cross Hospital in Acre on 6 May, to deal with the typhoid epidemic. The meeting was attended by: Brigadier Beveridge, Chief of British Medical Services and Colonel Bonnet of the British Army, Dr Maclean of the Medical Services, Mr de Meuron, ICRC delegate in addition to other officials of the city. The minutes stated that there are at least 70 known civilian casualties, others may not be reported. It was determined that the infection is "water borne", not due to crowded or unhygienic conditions as claimed by the Israelis. It was decided that a substitute water supply should now come from artesian wells or from the agricultural station, just north of Acre (see map), not from the aqueduct. Water chlorine solution was applied, inoculation of civil population started, movement of civil population was controlled (lest refugees heading north towards Lebanon will carry the typhoid epidemic with them, as intended by the Zionists).
In his other reports, de Meuron mentioned 55 casualties among British soldiers, who were spirited away to Port Said for hospitalisation. General Stockwell arranged for de Meuron to fly on a military plane to Jerusalem to fetch medicine. The British, who left Palestine in the hands of the Jews, did not want another embarrassing incident to delay their departure.
Brigadier Beveridge told de Meuron that this is "the first time this happened in Palestine". This belies the Israeli story, including that of the Israeli historian Benny Morris, that the epidemic is due to "unhygienic conditions" of the refugees. If that was so, how come there was an almost equal number of casualties among British soldiers? Why did such conditions not cause epidemic in such other concentrations of refugees, under far worse conditions, in Jaffa, Lydda, Nazareth and Gaza?"

Pappé 2007, S. 163f: "Offenbar wurde das Wasser [Akkos] während der Belagerung mit Typhuserregern infiziert. Örtliche vertreter des Internationalen Roten Kreuzes, die diese Meldung an ihre Zentrale weitergaben, ließen wenig Raum für Zweifel, wen sie in Verdacht hatten: die Hagana. Die Rote-Kreuz-Berichte schildern eine plötzliche Typhusepidemie udn duten selbst in ihren vorsichtigen Formulierungen eine Vergiftung von außen als einzige Erklärung für diesen Ausbruch an. [Red Cross Archives, File G59/1/GC, G3/82] ...
Ein ähnlicher Versuch, die Wasserversorgung in Gaza zu vergiften, wurde am 27. Mai verhindert. Die Ägypterfassten zwei Juden, David HOrin und David Mizrachi, bei dem Versuch, die Brunnen von Gaza mit Typhus- und Ruhrerregern zu versuchen. General Yadin meldete den Vorfall Ben Gurion, der ihn kommentarlos in sein Tagebuch eintrug. Die beiden Täter wurden später von den S165 Ägyptern hingerichtet, ohne dass Israel offiziell protestiert hätte.
In den 1940er Jahren hatte Ben Gurion eine Abteilung geschaffen, die an der Entwicklung israelischer biologischer Waffen arbeitete und euphemistisch Wissenschaftscorps der Hagana hieß."
S. 126f.: "Das Selbstvertrauen des Militärs lässt sich an der Tatsasche ablesen, dass die jüdische Armee nun in der Lage war, eigene Vernichtungswaffen zu entwickeln. Ben Gurion verfolgte persönlich die Anschaffung einer besonders tödlichen Waffe, die bald zum Einsatz kommen sollte, um Felder und Häuser von Palästinensern in Brand zu setzen: der Flammenwerfer. Sasha Goldberg, ein anglo-jüdischer Chemieprofessor, leitete das Projekt, diese Waffe zu erwerben und herzustellen, zunächst in einem Labor in London, später in Rehovot südlich von Tel Aviv ... Die mündlich überlieferte Geschichte der Nakba ist voller Zeugnisse für die schreckliche Wirkung, die diese Waffe für Menschen udn Sachen hatte.
Das Flamenwerferprojekt unterstand einer größeren Abteilung, die sich mit der Entwicklung biologischer Waffen befasste udn unter der Leitung eines Physikochemikers namens Ephraim Katzir stand ... Die biologische Abteilung, die er gemeinsam mit seinem Bruder Aharon leitete, nahm im Februar ihre Arbeit auf. Ihr Hauptziel S127 war die Entwicklung einer Waffe, die Menschen erblinden ließ. Katzir berichtete Ben Gurion: 'Wir experimentierten mit Tieren. Unsere Forscher trugen Gasmasken und entsprechende Schutzkleidung. Gute Resultate. Die Tiere starben nicht (sie wurden nur blind). Wir können pro Tag 20 Kilogramm dieses Stoffes produzieren.' Im Juni schlug Katzir vor, ihn gegen Menschen einzusetzen. [Ben-Gurion, Tagebuch, 14.1.1948; 2.2.1948; 1.6.1948]"

• nicht gewaltsam:
  • Benveniste 2000, S. 112f:
    "The Israeli designation of Qastal as the first village captured with the intent of 'permanent conquest and occupation' does not seem accurate to Palestinian historians, who do not differentiate between villages that were vacated by their inhabitants before April of 1948 and subseuqnetly taken over by Jewish forces as a local initiative and those that were conquered and occupied in accordinace with Plan D. They see the distinction between the Principles for the Execution of Reprisal Actions of January 1948 and Plan D (from March of that year) as artificial and self-serving, and they regard the process of Jewish domination of the Arab landscape as having been continuous and premeditated. Palestinian scholars therefore stress that Plan D was 'a Zionist program whol´se principle points were already determined before the 1948 War, it sfinal version having only been adapted to suit the new reality created by the war.'
    It is, of course, impossible to force this distinction on those who evaluate a process on the basis of its results. Why should the villagers of al-Qastal, who were uprooted by Plan D, feel that they are different from the villagers of the Sharon Plain, who fled from their homes as a result of attacks, executed according to the Principles for the Execution of Reprisal Actions? This way of looking at things is, however, based on a perception of the Arabas as powerless victims who had no influence on the actions of the all-powerful Zionist forces. To buttress this point SS of view, Palestinian historians divorce the conquest of the villages from the broader military context and do not deal at all wit hthe 'war of the roads,' the Arab victory which obliged the Jews to adopt the strategy of conquest and occupation of vital areas. As mentioned earlier, everything is determined by context - but the context itself is determined by ethnic affiliation, and each side will choose what to define as cause and what as effect.
    S. 120: "According to an unpublished doctoral dissertation by Arnon Golan, who based his conclusions on data from primary sources: 'The agencies involved in planning, building, and developing the Jewish state made provision in ttheir plans for the Arab population, which, it was assumed, would constitute approximately half its inhabitants.' During the early stages of the war, the use of military force as a means for gaining control of land for settlement purposes was not considered an option. It became realistic only after the launching of Plan D - despite the fact taht the plan had been intended not for this purpose but for directing military operations.
    This does not mean that the exceedingly strong connection between military conquest and the 'redemption of land' had escaped the notice of the Yishuv leadership. As early as the beginning of February 1948, two months prior to the commencement of the takeover of Arab villages in accordance with Plan D, David Ben-Gurion told JNF leaders: 'The war will give us the land. Concepts of 'ours' and 'not ours' are peacetime concepts only, and they lose their meaning during war.' He made a similar statement on another occasion soon afterward: 'In the Negev we shall not buy land. We shall conquer it. You forget that we are at war.' Yet Ben-Guirion was neither consistent nor conclusive in hiw views. A while later, when some Arab villages had been captured, making it possible to turn 'not ours' into 'ours,' Ben-Guiron was in no hurry to do so. When Joseph Weitz asked him, '<What about> ownership of the land?' he responded with a question of his own: 'Shall we steal land?' He 'had forgotten,' comments Weitz in his diaries, 'what he had said before, that he would capture the land in the war.'"
    S. 121f.: All-out communal warefare was at its peak in March and April 1948 - coinciding with the withdrawal of hte British regime, which had done its utmost to prevent generalized conflict thorughout the years of its rule. Of course, as soon as the Jewish community perceived the struggle as a war for its very survival (all the historical assessments suggesting that the Jews were never in danger of annihilation are products of the wisdom of hindsight), the military component of the Zionist strategy overshadowed SS all other considerations. Once ap iece of land was captured and the army command decided to hold on to it on military grounds, however, the other came into play, transforming it into 'liberated territory' redeemed by the Jewish People, which could be retained only if settled by acricultural pioneers who embodied both 'sheaves and the sword.'
    ... Yet even Ben Gurion could not anticipate the consequence of the total war for the Arab population. The scope of hte Arab exodus from the cities and villages astounded him, as it did the rest of the Yishuv's leadership. There is a great deal of evidence on the extent of their surprise; it was so overwhelming that many believed that the mass flight had been planned in advance by the Arab leadership with the objective of aking it easier for the Arab armies to exterminate the Jewish community without harming hte Palestinian population. ... And Moshe Shertok (Sharett) stated: 'Who expected - who could have imagined - that when the calamity of war overtook <the Palestinian People>, they would uproot themselves thus and move and wander away from theri places of habitation?'
    The astonishment was quickly replaced by the feeling that a 'miralce' had taken place - the 'miralce of the flight.' Not many days went by before intentional efforts began being made ot speed up the flight by force of arms, to initiate widespread expulsions, and later to nationalize and repopulate the abandoned landscape. There is, howeve,r a qualitative difference between 'premeditated transfer' and 'transfer ex post fact,' labeled as such by the Israelis (transfer bediavad in Hebrew); and those who accuse the Zionists of starting hte 1948 War in order to expel the Arabs of palestien from thier land cannot ignore the intra-Palestinian S123 factors that motivated the mass flight in its early stages and were exploited by the Jews.
  • Bregman 2017, S. 11: "The principal aim of the Jews in Palestine in the period immediately after the UN resolution to partition Palestine, was to gain effective control over the territory allotted to them by the UN and to secure communication with thirty-three Jewish settlements which, according to the UN plan, fell outside the proposed Jewish state. For although the UN had partitioned the land between Jews and Arab Palestinians, there were still Jewish settlements which were to remain within the Arab area and, on the other hand, Arab villages on land allotted to the Jews. In contrast to Arab villages within Jewish areas, which were self-reliant, the Jewish settlements relied heavily on outside supplies, which made the keeping open of routes a necessity for them."
    Bregman 2017, S. 12: "In the initial stages of the civil war the Arabs gained the upper hand and succeeded in dictating the pattern of the struggle. By March 1948 they had cut off the entire Negev – allotted to the Jews by the UN – from the coastal plain, as well as most of Western Galilee and the Jerusalem area; they also succeeded in isolating many of the Jewish settlements within these regions from one another. ...
    But soon the civil war began to take a new shape. In April 1948, with the war at its height, an attempt by the ALA to cut off the Haifa region and the Valley of Jezreel from the coastal plain failed (4 April) and Jewish forces proceeded with their own offensive, which proved to be eminently successful. In central Palestine, they broke open the road to Jerusalem (‘Operation Nachshon’, 3–15 April) and this allowed supplies of food and ammunition to get through to the Jews in the city. Elsewhere, all Arab towns and villages, and the mixed cities within the territory designated for the Jewish state, were overrun in rapid succession. Tiberias was captured on 18 April, and the vital port of Haifa fell into Jewish hands on 22–3 April. Most of Haifa’s 70,000 Arabs fled, many to Acre, others to Lebanon.39 Between 25 and 27 April, Irgun forces attacked the all-Arab town of Jaffa, which was meant to be included in the future Arab state; at first they were checked by British troops, but once the British had left, Irgun forces took the town (13 May 1948) whose original 90,000 inhabitants were reduced to only 5,000.40 In northern Palestine, the town of Safad was occupied, and on the night of 13–14 May all Western Galilee came under Jewish control. The all-Arab town of Acre – like Jaffa it was meant to be included in the future Arab state – was besieged by Jewish forces and capitulated on 17 May. The Arab forces in Palestine were now bewildered by defeat, and retreated, with their leadership confused and disorganized."

Plan Dalet: Defensiv oder offensiv?

Pappé 2007, S. 138:

"[Er] enthielt eindeutige Angaben zu den geografischen Parametern des künftigen jüdischen Staates (die von Ben Gurion angestrebten 87 Prozent) und zum Schicksal der einen Million Palästiennser, die in diesem Gebiet lebten:

Diese Operationen lassen sich folgendermaßen durchführen: entweder durch Zerstörung von Dörfern (indem man sie in Brand setzt, sptrengt udn die Trümmer vermint) und insbesondere von Wohngebieten, die auf Dauer schwer zu kontrollieren sind, oder durch Durchsuchungs- und Kontrolloperationen nach folgenden Richtlinien: Umstellen un durchkämmen der Dörfer. Im Fall von Widerstand sind die bewaffneten Kräfte auszuschalten und die Einwohner über die Landesgrenzen zu vertreiben.

Dörfer sollten vollständig geräumt werden, weil sie entweder an strategisch wichtigen Stellen lagen oder von ihnen Widerstand in irgendeiner Form zu erwarten war. Diese Befehle wurden erteilt, als bereits klar war, dass die Besetzung immer einen gewissen Widerstand hervorrufen würde und daher kein Dorf immun wäre, entweder aufgrund seienr Lage oder der Tatsache, dass es sich nicht ohne weiteres besetzen ließ. Das war also der Masterplan für die Zwangsräumung sämtlicher Dörfer im ländlichen Palästina. Ähnliche Anweisungen mit weitgehend gleichem Wortlaut gab es für die Aktionen gegen Palästinas Städte."

Abu-Sitta 2010, S. 86: "Plan D outlined a strategy of total war. The Plan called for the “encirclement of the village and conducting a search inside it. In the event of resistance, the armed force must be wiped out and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state”. In cities, the plan called for “occupation and control of all isolated Arab neighbourhoods [and] encirclement of Arab municipal area[s] and termination of its vital services (water, electricity, fuel, etc.)…. [I]n case of resistance, the population will be expelled.” Plan D also called for the “[d]estruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up and planting mines in the debris)”- to prevent the return of refugees.
Plan D was put into action on or around April 2, 1948. By this time, the size of Zionist forces had reached 65,000259, several times greater than the number of Arab defenders, whether they were the villagers, the Muslim Brothers coming from Egypt or the motley assortment of Arab Liberation Army (ALA) led by Fawzi Qawqji. The lack of serious action by the British to protect civilians encouraged Ben Gurion to ratchet up the scale of offensive operations. In a series of simultaneous offensives, all the spaces and strategic points separating Jewish colonies were occupied by Zionist forces. ... This military conquest emptied about SS88 2220 Palestinian towns and villages. This included key commercial, administrative and cultural centres of Palestinian life, such as Haifa, Jaffa, Safad, Tiberias, Baysan and western jerusalem. The population of the depopulated Palestinian villages and towns exceeded 440,000 at theis time, or 55 percent of all the refugees. More than half of the total number of refugees was thus made homeless while under the authority and protection of the British Mandate forces, contrary to British obligations under the Mandate, not to mention the terms of the 1907 Hague Convention. This means that British Mandate officials are responsible for occurrence of the war crimes committed by Zionist forces.
By teh middle of May 1948, Zionist forces had not only expelle the Palestinian inhabitants of 220 villages, but tehy also conquered approximately 3,500 km2 of territory, or 13 percent of Palestine, an increase of 3,000 km2 over land previously-held. This area was the richest and most fertile part of Palestine. It wwas naturally laso the most densely populated. Pre-state institutitons established by the Zionist movement durign the first decade of the British Mandate now had an integral, continuous well-defended territory. ... The traditional Zionist narrative depicted Israel in this period as a small beleaguered community fighting in self-defense agaisnt hte 'Arab invasion' of vastly superior armies. Thie historical record does not bear out these claims.

1. nach Plan Dalet geräumtes Dorf:

• Pappé 2007, S. 146f: Dörfer der Operation Nachshon vom 1.-9.4.1948. Einsatzbefehl: "Hauptziel der Operation ist die Zerstörung arabischer Dörfer <und> die Vertreibung der Einwohner, damit sie zu einer wirtschaftlichen Belastung für die allgemeinen arabischen Streitkräfte werden." [Gilad, The Palmach Book II, 924 f. apud Pappé 2007, S. 146] => Massaker von Deir Jassin, Eroberung von Qastal
• Benveniste 2000, S. 111f.: Saris, 16. April

  On the night between 15 and 16 April, the village of Saris, situated to the west of Qastal, was occupied and destroyed. The Palmach commander explained his decision to destroy Saris thus: 'Because S112 I didn't want to leave a unite stationed in Saris ... I decided to demolish the houses thereby prevent their becoming a base for Arab fighters. ... I preferred occupying the village and exprelling its inhabitants to <later> wiping out a gang of fighters.
  Thus was the Haganah's Plan D implemented for the first time, and the village of alQatal is mentioned in the official history of the Haganah as 'the first Arab village that was occupied with the intention of holding it permanently. ... In place of sorties and raids against enemy bases, efforts were begun to take control of them.' There is no doubt that the considerations at the time of the occupation and destruction of the villages were purely military, and the decision to occupy specific villages was itself determined by operational requirements. Additional evidence for this can be found in the fact that nearby villages such as Suba and Ein Karem were not attacked, beacuse they were not as close to the Tel Aviv road, and despite the fact taht they served as bases for the acitivity of irregular Arab forces, they were not occupied at that time, even though it was well within the ability of the Haganah to overrun them in April 1948."

• defensiv:
  • Gelber 2007, S. 304: "Although it provided for counter-attacks, Plan D was a defensive scheme and its goals were (1) protectign the borders of the upcoming Jeiwsh state according to the partition line; (2) securing its territorial continuity in the face of invasion attempts; (3) safeguardign freedom of movement on teh roads and (4) enabling continuation of essential daily routines. Plannign at the general staff level was limited to general schematic guidelines. Preoccupied in combat, most brigade headquarters had no time for completing the planning or delving into the details.
    Plan D was not 'ideological' as the Palestinians portray, nor was it a 'doctrine' as Kimmerling asserts. It was a practical resposnse to an emerging threat. However, it was not even an operational blueprint, as most Israeli works on the war since the publication of the History of teh Haganah have described it. Its planners - Israel Ber and Moshe Pasternak under the guidance and supervision of Yigal Yadin - formulated principles S305 and procedures of action and allocated missions and objectives to the 'Haganah brigades. Tehy did not enter into the tactics for achieving the objectives.
    The overall layout was first to improve teh defence of Jeiwsh-held areas by fortifying them against inavsion; secondly, to create territorial continuity by taking over arab 'pockets' within the Jewish areas. The third phase involved local offensive actions ot gain control of open areas beyond the Jewish settlements but within the partition borders, followed in the fourth stage entailing occupation of the Arab countryside. Teh culmination of Plan D was the fifth phase: besieging the arab cities within Jewish-allotted territory until they surrender. Having secured the Jewish state's viability, counter attacks against targets across its borders, such as invasion bases were a feasible contingency.
    However, Plan D was not executed according to this layout, apart from teh Upper Galilee region. Its architects believed taht the British withdrawal would take place in one fell swoop across the country and Plan D would be launched on this 'D-Day' of the evacuation, with no British troops present in Palestine. Actually, the British withdrawal was gradual and had begun ealier than expected, in mid-April 1948. Consequently, Plan D had no D-Day and no zero hour. Its objectives were only partially accomplished ad hoc during hte last month of the British mandate in Palestine, not as a single concerted preplanned operation. Military gains were the result of local initiatives that took advantage of prevailng conditions in the field - without consideration of the Pla's guidelines and some times againt its principles or recommendedp roccedures. In several places, teh Plan's targets were occupied by Arab troops who were quicker to seize the opportunity than the local Haganah units. Only four days before tehe end of the mandate Plan D was hastily altered ot address teh new threat of an invasion by regular Arab armies and the unexpected prolonged presenceo f British troops in Haifa enclave after the termination of Great Britain's mandate.
    Plan D listed routs, bridges, government buildings and police fortresses that Haganah brigades should have seized immediately upon thier evacuation by the British. These were essential for executign the defensive phases of Plan D. However, apart from villages on the main road and railways, the plannersl eft decisions regardign the fate of Arab villages, which should be 'seized, mopped up or destroyed,' for the bigade's consideration and did not dicatete a general policy.
    S 306: Teh text clarified unequivocally that expulsion concerned only those villages that would fight agaisnt the Haganah and resist occupation, and not all Arab hamlets. Similar guidelines related to the occupation of Arab neighbourhoods in mixed towns. ...
    The text, however, is clear enough: reding Plan D as it is, without deconstructing it to change its meaning, show that there is no correlation between the acutal text, and the significance, backgroudn and outcomes that hte Palestinian scholars and their israeli colleagues assign it. These paragraphs of Plan D were of marginal significance, and thier contribution to shaping a policy towwards the Arab population was immaterial. Arab policies were decided either locally, by commanders in the field and their lcoal advisors on Arab affairs, or by the 'Arabists' within Ben-Guiron's inner circle of advisors who advised their superiors. Ber, Pasternak and even Yadin did not pretend to be authorities on Arab affairs or any other issue of high policy. Their concerns were just military, and hte scheme's purpose was preparing for the ARab invasion, not expellign the Palestinians."
  • teilweise Morris, aber 1948, S. 1497-1500:

    [The policy outlined in April was] generally, to evict the Arabs living in the brigade's area.

  • Benveniste 2000, S. 137: jedenfalls primär militärisch, nicht "cleanend" gedacht:
    "Plan D, in accordance with which the actions involved the conquest and takeover of the villages were carried out, was 'a plan for gaining control of the territory of hte Jewish state and for the defense of its borders,' as emtnioned ealier. when this plan was drawn up, it was formulated with reference to the borders defined in the UN Partition Plan. Therefore, the territory that was captured and from which the Arab inhabitants fled was principally within the area that had been allocated ot the Jewish state. Scrutiny of a map of the territory captured up to the middle of May 1948 reveals taht the political and military leadership confined its targets to locations within the partition borders and dared not deviate from this guideline except in the face of compelling military constraints, such as the need t osecure the road to Jerusalem or to gain control of the Western Galilee, where there were isolated Jewish settlements. ...
    S138 Hence one may view Plan D as defensive, with an aim to take control of only those areas intended for the Jewish state. Nevertheless, the takeover of Arab territory and the expulsion of the village inhabitants can also be seen as a program of aggressive expansion resulting in the displacement of hundreds of thousands of human beings and the destruction of their world. One way or the other, the Jewish state was emptied of the overwhelming majority of its Arab inhabitants, who, according to the terms of the Partition Plan, were supposed to be full citizens of this state, with equal rights.
    Most of the captured villages outside the designated boudnaries of the Jewish state were located along the road to Jerusalem (seven villages with approximately 7,500 inhabitants) and in the Westner Galilee (twelve villages, population about 10,000). The villages along the road to Jerusalem were situated in a narrow strip that ensured Jeruslaem's contact with Tel Aviv, and there is no doubt that their capture was dictated by military considerations. The conquest of the villages of the Western Galilee was motivated by a combination of military needs and the desire for revenge. The villages that lined the coastal road linking the Jewish settlements of the Western Galilee with Haifa were captured on 13 - 14 May 1948 (Operation Ben-Ami, first phase), thereby connecting the block of Jewish communities that lay in an area designated as part of the Arab state wit hthe body of the Jewish state.
    One week later, teh second phase of Operation Ben Ami was carried out - during which five villages situated to the east of the Jewish seaside town of Nahariya were occupied. The principal objective of this phase of the operation was to lift the siege on the isolated settlement of Kibbutz Yehiam, but it had an additional, and perhaps more important, goal: to take revenge on the Arab villages that had had a part in wiping out a supply convoy bound for Yehima. The convoy was attacked by hundreds of armed villagers and units of the ALA as it passed near the village of al-Kabri on 27 March 1948. Forty-nine Jews (and six Arabs) were killed in the battle. ...
    S. 141: I estimate the total numbero f persons who were displaced from Jewish-controlled areas during hte period ending in late May 1948 at 380,000 and the number of villages (including permanent Bedouin encampments) abandoned at 207. The number or rural Arab refugees - 180,000 persons - was equal to the number of refugees from six cities. Twenty-two of the abanoned villages (and three of the cities) were situated outside the area allocated ot hte Jewish state; the number of refugees from these locations is estimated at 120,000: 22,000 from the villages and 98,000 from the cities (Jaffa, Acre, and West Jerusalem).
• offensiv:
  • Ben-Gurion, Tagebuch vom 11. Mai 1948: "Die Säuberung [bi´ur] Palästinas blieb das vorrangige Ziel von Plan Dalet" [apud Pappé 2007, S. 204]
  • Pappé 2006, S. xvi
    S. 138: "[Er] enthielt eindeutige Angaben zu den geografischen Parametern des künftigen jüdischen Staates (die von Ben Gurion angestrebten 87 Prozent) und zum Schicksal der einen Million Palästinenser, die in diesem Gebiet lebten: ... Dörfer sollten vollständig geräumt werden, weil sie entweder an strategisch wichtigen Stellen lagen oder von ihnen Widerstand in irgendeiner Form zu erwarten war. Diese Befehle wurden erteilt, als bereits klar war, dass die Besetzung immer einen gewissen Widerstand hervorrufen würde und daher kein Dorf immun wäre, entweder aufgrund seiner Lage oder der Tatsache, dass es sich nicht ohne weiteres besetzen ließ. Das war also der Masterplan für die Zwangsräumung sämtlicher Dörfer im ländlichen Palästina. Ähnliche Anweisungen mit weitgehend gleichem Wortlaut gab es für die Aktionen gegen Palästinas Städte. ...
    Die Befehle an die Einheiten vor Ort waren genauer. ... S. 139 Jeder Brigadekommandeur erhielt eine Liste der Dörfer oder Stadtviertel, die zu besetzen, zu zerstören und von ihren Einwohnern zu räumen waren, mit genauen Daten. Manche der Kommandeure waren übereifrig in der Ausführung ihrer Befehle udn fügten im Schwung ihrer Begeisterung zusätzliche Orte hinzu. Dagegen erwiesen sich andere Einsatzbefehle als zu hochesteckt udn ließen sich nicht innerhalb des erwarteten Zeitplans ausführen. ... Die Regel waren 531 Dörfer sowie elf Städte udn Stadtviertel, die auf unmittelbare Befehle der Beratergruppe von März 1948 zerstört und deren Einwohner vertrieben wurden. zu diesem Zeitpunkt waren bereits 30 Dörfer verschwunden.
    Einige Tage, nachdem Plan D abgetippt war, wurde er an die Komamndeure der zwölf Brigaden verteilt, die die Hagana nun umfasste. Zu der Liste, die jeder Kommandeur erheilt, gehörte eine detaillierte BEschreibung der Dörfer in seinem Einsatzgebiet udn ihres bevorstehenden Schicksals: Besetzung, Zerstörung und Vertreibung. Die israelischen Dokumente aus den IDF-Archiven, die Ende der 1990er Jahre freigegeben wurden, belegen eindeutig, dass Plan Dalet - entgegen der Behauptungen von Historikern wie Benny Morris - an die Brigadekommandeure nichti n vagen Leitlinien, sondern in klar umrissenen Einsatzbefehlen weitergegeben wurde.
    Anders als der allgemeine Entwurf, deer an die politischen Führer geschickt wurde, enthielt die Liste der Dörfer, die die Kommandeure bekamen, keien Details, wie die Zerstörung und Vertreibung durchzuführen war. Es gab keine spezifischen Angaben, dass Dörfer S140 sich zum Beispiel durch eine bedingungslose Kapitualation retten könnten, wie es das allgemeine Dokument versprach. Und noch ein Unterschied bestand zwischen dem Entwurf, der an die Politiker weitergereicht wurde, udn dem, den die Kommandeure erhielten: In dem offiziellen Entwurf hieeß es, der Plan werde erst nach Beendigung des Mandats aktiviert; die Offiziere vor Ort erhielten aber Befehl, innerhalb weniger Tage nach seiner Annahme mit der Ausführung anzufangen."
    S. 146: "Nach dem Endergebnis dieses Stadiums von April bis Mai 1948 zu urteilen, ergab diese Konsultation, dass kein einziges Dorf verschont bleiben sollte. Während der offizielle Plan Dalet den Dörfern die Möglichkeit einräumte, sich zu ergeben, sahen die Einsatzbefehle nicht vor, ein Dorf aus irgendeinem Grund auszunehmen. Damit war die Blaupause in den militärischen Befehl umgesetzt, mit der Zerstörung von Dörfern zu beginnen."
  • Esber 2009, S. 382: "Strong evidence indicates that zionists planned to displace the Arabs. The historical literatur attests to a well-established intention to 'transfer' Arabs out of Palestine. The Zionists' political motie for forced 'transfer' was to create a Jewish tae with few non-Jews. The Haganah's Plan D explicitly articulated a policy of driging out Arab communities and destroyign their villages, obliterating traces of Arab society. Its implementation during the civil war resulted in the expulsion of more than 400,000 civilian Palestinian Arabs from some 225 rural locales and urban centers.
  • Hammond 2016, aber nach Fehlzitation. An sich aber richtig: "Moreover, Plan D did make explicit the operational orders to expel Arabs from their villages. Morris also suggests that since not all Arabs were expelled, therefore it wasn’t ethnic cleansing. But once again his logic is a non sequitur. It doesn’t follow that since there were Arabs who were allowed to remain in the territory that became Israel that therefore the expulsion of the majority of that territory’s Arab inhabitants didn’t constitute ethnic cleansing. Morris can opine that Ben-Gurion didn’t do a thorough enough job of it; but he can’t sustain the suggestion that the lack of thoroughness means it wasn’t ethnic cleansing."
  • Assenburg 2021, S. 27f: "Ziel der Maßnahmen war es, ein S28 zusammenhängendes Territorium mit einer starken jüdischen Bevölkerungsmehrheit zu schaffen, dem Entstehen einer 'fünften Kolonne' arabischer Feindstaaten vorzubeugen und für die erwartete jüdische Masseneinwanderung Wohnraum und Einkommensmöglichkeiten zu schaffen.
    Eine Offensive zionistischer Verbände unter dem Namen 'Plan Dalet' führte bereits im April/Mai 1948 zur Eroberung und Entvölkerung der großen arabischen Bevölkerungszentren in Jaffa und Haifa, bestimmter Viertel in West-Jerusalem und von Orten wie Tiberias, Safad und Beisan."
  • Flapan 1987b, S. 9
  • Masalha 1982, S. 178: "[Although Plan D] was not a blueprint for the expulsion of the Arabs, <the plan> was anchored in the politico-ideological concept of transfer and provided the operative policy in teh field.'"
• beides:
  • Bregman 2017, S. 11: "The General Staff of the Jewish forces devised what became known as ‘Plan Dalet’ (Tochnit Dalet), the principal objective of which was to consolidate control over areas allotted to the Jewish State and also to seize strategic positions to make it possible to block regular Arab armies in case they marched into Palestine. What is significant about ‘Plan Dalet’ is that, apart from envisaging the occupation of strategic positions, it also allowed for the occupation of Arab villages, towns and cities and, where necessary, the expulsion of their inhabitants. This, we should comment here, was a blank cheque for Jewish forces to expel Arab Palestinians, as indeed took place in the ensuing days of the war."

Bregman 2017, S. 11f.: "The Palestinians’ strategic aim during the civil war was negative in nature, namely to prevent the S12 implementation of the partition plan by disrupting and strangling Jewish lines of communication, and by cutting off Jewish settlements from localities and positions that were already occupied. These opposing aims of Jews and Arabs led to the ‘battle of the roads’ which raged in Palestine during the first half of 1948, with Jewish forces attempting to gain control of the communications roads and the Arabs of Palestine seeking to prevent them from achieving this."

Bregman 2017, S. 13f.: Although highly successful, the period which had followed the UN partition resolution was for the Jews in Palestine, many of whom were European refugees, S14 traumatic. During the six months from November 1947 to mid-1948, 1,308 Jewish soldiers and 1,100 civilians perished. This is a very high toll, given the relatively low number of Jews in Palestine and the relatively short duration of the fighting.

Flapan 1987b, S. 23: "On 4 May 1948, Ben-Gurion wrote that "history has proved who is really attached to this country and for whom it is a luxury which can be given up. Until now not a single Uewish] settlement, not even the most distant, weak, or isolated, has been abandoned, whereas after the first defeat the Arabs left whole towns like Haifa and Tiberias in spite of the fact that they did not face any danger of destruction or massacre."

Esber 2009, S. 28: "The Palestinian Arab losses are harder to calculate, if not impossible. With no Palestinian govenrment and a wide dispersion of hte population during and after the war, no accurate casualty records were created. Palststinian Arab society and culture were shattered in 1948, and an estimated 20,000 Palestinians died during the war, about 1.5 percent of the Palestinian Arab population. The number of Palestinians injured remains unknown. Thousands of others, particularly children and the elderly, died as a result of the refugees' living condition. A British Red Cross officer reported in 1949 that one refugee camp had 4 percent deaths per month."

Kommando arabischer Eliten zur Flucht?

Ist bis Ende Mai nicht unbekannt. Morris 1986b zitiert die Einschätzung des IDF für Fluchtfaktoren (S. 8-11)

1. 55%
   1. Direkte Angriffe der Hagana
   2. Angriffe der Hagana auf benachbarte Orte, bes. bei Niederlagen großer Nachbarorte
2. 15%: Operationen (Angriffe + Anschläge + Entführungen) von Irgun und Lehi
3. 10%: Grundsätzlich Furcht
4. 5%: Aufruf arabischer Kommandanten und Eliten. S. 10: "These orders to evacuate were given for 'strategic reasons ... out of a desire to turn the village into a base for attack on the Jews or out of an awareness that there was no possiblility of defending the village or out of a fear that the village could turn into an <anti-Arab> Fifth Column, especially if it reached an agreement with the Jews'."
5. 5%: Vertreibung durch Ultimatum (vgl. Morris 1986b, S. 14: Aufzählung stimmt nicht mit Prozentberechnung überein)
   Morris 1986b, S. 15: "While the report was not produced wit hany propagandizing intention in mind, its authors seem to have exhibited a perhaups understandable tendency to minimize the role direct expulsion orders played in bringing about part of the Palestinian exodus. The proportion of villages expelled is computed incorrectly and a large grey area of 'semi-expulsions' is included under the category of flight due to 'military operations' or some other 'non-expulsion' category.
6. 2%: Psychologische Kriegsführung der Zionisten, S. 11 "usually involving 'friendly advice' by Jewish liaison officers ot Arabs to quite their village ..."
7. <1%: Furcht vor Gegenangriff nach palästinensischem Angriff
8. 8-9%: "'local factors', such as the breakdown in specific localities of Arab-Jewish peace negotiations and the Arabs' 'inability to adjust to certain real situations'."

S. 11: "At the start of the evacuation 'the Arab institutions attempted to struggle against the phenomenon of flight and evacuation, and to curb the waves of emigration'. The Arab Higher Committee decided to impose restrictions, and issued threats, punishments and propaganda in the radio and press to curb emigration. The committee also tried to mobilize the governments in the neighbouring Arab states to assist in this; there was a coincidence of interests. 'Especially, they tried to prevent the exodus of youngsters of military age,' states the report."
Morris 1986b, S. 16: "What then is the significance of the IDF Intelligence Branch report in understanding the Palestinian exodus of 1948? To begin with, it thoroughly undermines the traditional official Israeli 'explanation' of a mass flight S17 ordered or 'invited' by teh Arab leadership for political-strategic reasons. Quite clearly, according to the report, Arab orders to evacuate villages were restricted to a number of areas where mainly local strategic calculations were allowed full scope and affected no more than 10 per cent of the Palestinian refugee populations. (About one third of the villages evacuated because of Arab command, those in the Jerusalem area, were in fact subsequently repopulated by their original inhabitants once the strategic circumstances had changed.) ... Indeed, the Intelligence Branche report in its main thrust seems to go still further in undermining the official Israeli historiography. For not only is the 'Arab orders' explanation seen to be limited in the numbers it affected and extremely restricted geographically; but the report goes out of its way to stress that the exodus was contrary to the political-strategic desires of both the Arab Higher Committee and the governments of the neighbouring Arab states. These, according to the report, struggled against the exodus - threatening, cajoling, imposing punishments, all to no avail. There was no stemming in panic-borne tide. ... The exodus was certainly viewed favourably by the bulk of the Yishuv's leadership; it had solved the embryonic Jewish state's chief and agonizing political-strategic problem, the existence in it of a very large actively or potentially hostile Arab minority. A tone of satisfaction with the exodus does indeed pervade the Intelligence Branch report; but from it emerges a very definite impression that the depopulation of the villages and towns was an unexpected outcome of operations the purpose of which was wholly or primarily the conquest of military positions and strategic sites in the course of a life-and-death struggle. Jewish military operations indeed accounted for 70 per cent of the Arab exodus; but the depopulation of the villages in most cases was an incidental, if favourably regarded, side-effect of these operations, not their aim. Had the population of the villages and towns remained in situ during and after the Jewish attack and conquest, the Haganah/IDF and IZL would have been faced at each site with the successive dilemma: to expel or not to expel. As it was, the population, by taking to its heels at the first whiff of grapeshot, usually solved this possible problem. "

Flapan 1987b, S. 8: "Therefore, 84 percent left in direct response to Israeli actions, while only 5 percent left on orders from Arab bands. The remaining 11 percent are not accounted for in this estimate and may refer to those who left voluntarily. (The total reflects only about 50 percent of the entire exodus since a similar number were to leave the country within the next six mont.)"

Esber 2009, S. 313f: "In numerous cases, Morris's conclusions as to why Arabs abanoned towns and villages are not supported by the evidence, including, at times, the evidence he himself offers. Frequently, when he attributed villagers' evacuation to fear, the fall of neighboring villages or psychological warfare, Palestinians testifiedtaht they left because of intimidation, direct S314 attack, and expulsion. This was true with Bayt Dajan, Fajja, al-Jammasin al-Ghabri, al-Jammasin al-Sharqi, Kawkaba, al-Mas´udiyya, Na´ani, and Shahma, among others. ...
The ranger of causes I see is organized in descending order by intensity of violent intimidation:

1 On-site massacre, atrocities, rape, expuslsion by Zionist forces

2 Expulsion orders or transported out by Zionists

3 Direct mortar attacks on civilians, siege, shooting at fleeing Arabs

4 Terror raids, house demolitions, sniping, hostage-taking, loting, destruction cof crops and livestock

5 Psychological warfare to proote Arab evacuation: verbal threats of violence, threatenign broadcasts, loudspeakers, leaflets, etc.

6 Attack or atrocity in neighboring village or community.

7 Fear of impendign attack, or fall of neighboring town or village

8 victims' or witnesses' reports of atrocities, attack, and expulsion

9 Evacuation on Arab orders.

S. 387-392: Für 225 Orte erhoben. In knapp der Hälfte der Fälle gibt es multiple Gründe.
S. 378f: "The driving force in the exodus from the main towns and cities in the mandate's last mont hand a half - which constiutted the bulk of the civil war exodus - was direct military attack by Zionist forces. These operations typically included several days of mortaring, siege, psychological warfare aggravated by reports of specific atrocities, and a final multi-pronged assault. S379 British documents confirm that Zionist forces regularly provoked or intiitated attacks on Palestinian Arabs, including in such areas as the Qatamon and Shayk Jarrah quarters of Jerusalem, the cities of Jaffa and Haifa, the village of Dayr Yasin, and scores of other communities. If Palestinian Arabs responded in defense, Zionist force retaliated with indiscriminate and overwhelming lethal force.
Haganah and IZL military orders indicate that provoking civilian flight was in fact a key and explicit goal of offensive attacks. Teh panic-inducing pressure continued even after a community began to evacuate. Zionist forces would intimidate already panicked Arab civilians into further flight by prusuing them as they sought safety, as was witnessed in Hafia, Jaffa, and numerous towns and villages. By designating a sole escape route durign a three-pronged attack, particularly in villages, Zionist forces drove villagers through an exit chute away from their homes, robbing, harassing, and humiliating hte Arabs while expelling them.
Incorporating the voices of the dislocated into the historical record helps to confirm that intimidation tactics drove the exodus. Teh frefugees' accoutns typically contradict Morris's assertion that deteriorating living conditions in the villages and urban areas, nd the zionists' capture of nearby locales, were primary reasons Arabs evacuated. No significant evidence supports the argument that hte Palestinian leadership or the Arab states intentionally encouraged a mass exodus. ample evidence does show that they tried to stop it. In only a few cases in the civil war period did Arab commanders order inhabitatns of certain villages to vacate for strategic or safety reasons.
Desertion by Arab military commanders and civil leaders before and during critical battles was also not a direct caue of Palestinian Arab flight. Refugees rarely if ever cited it as a major factor in their evacuation. By contrast, they consistentl ycited the violence of direct military attack, the trauma of civilian deaths in their communities from attacks, a rational fear of rape and massacre, threats of these or other atrocities, and ordere expulsion.
S 381 Palestinian arabs often attempted to defend their towns and villages with a meager supply of rifles, ammunition, and inexperienced fighters, until they realized they were unable to withstand a military onslought. This brought a realistic fear of further violence after defeat, basedo n implicit or explicit threats, observed abuse and atrocities durign the takeover of the community, and credible reports of harm to life and 'honor' from Zionist actions elsewhere. They also believed that they had to withstand Zionist attacks only until May 15, when the Arab armies, as repeatedly promised, would come to their resuce and foil the Zionist plan to form a Jewish stae in Palestine. This contributed ot hte perception that evacuation - in the face of death - was a short-term risk.
The climate of terror was greatly accentuated by the two most critical events of the civil war: the Dayr Yasin massacre in early April and by the fall of Haifa two weeks later. Both clearly illustrated British forces' inability and unwillingness to protect Arab civilians. The Dayr Yasin massacre particualrly motivated villagers ot depart just before, during, and after a Zionist attack. Palestinian Arabs were terrified an demoralized by the reported size nad brutality of the massacre, and particularly horrified by the accoutns of rape and mutilation. In arab tradition, honor is paramount and female purity is a central measure of family honor. 'The whole world revolved aroudn this,' said Hamdi Muhammad Matar from Qalunyia near jerusalem. 'People fled in order to safeguard their honor.' Arab villagers feared that 'Jews would come and do to us waht they had done at Dayr Yasin. If we had stayed, we wuld have been killed,' said Matar. Fatima Husan al-Jawabri, of Haifa, said that 'when peopel saw three or four killed, they became afraid. people feared for theri daughters. They preferred to protect hteir honor instead of their lands.'
Fearing slaughter and rape, villagers often evacuated women, children, and elderly to areas perceived as safer.

Abu-Sittah 2010, S. 107.117: "The Register records 530 towns and primary villages which were the refugees’ home. However there were other locations or hamlets which were depopulated. Their total number (674) is marked in the Atlas but the additional villages were not listed in the Register because their names were uncertain or because the village was a satellite, or part, of the same village but scattered in other multiple locations as in the Beer Sheba district."
Gründe für Exilierung:

• Militärischer Angriff: 270 (52%)
• Aktive Exilierung: 122 (24%)
• Fall nahegelegenen Ortes: 49 (9,5%)
• Furcht => Flucht: 38 (7%)
• Aufgabe: 5 (1%)
• Unbekannt: 34 (6%)

Esber 2009, S. 24: "The Palestinian refugee oral testimony combined with the documentary record confirms that Palestinian Arab displacement during the civil war period was primarily the result of the deliberate and systematic use of force against Arab civilian population centers by Zionistm ilitary organizations. Zionist forces engaged in intensifying threats and violence against civilians, with the purpose of depopulating Palestine of its majoirty non-Jewish inhabitants. This aggression was unleashed during the first period of the 1948 war.
S. 382: Nintety-four percent of the Palestinian Arab population displaced during this period [bis Mai] was driven out by direct Zionist attacks or psychological warfare. Only 2 percent of teh Arabs left their homes before tehy were directly intimidated or attacked."
S. 217f.: The Palestinian exodus varied in different parts of the country over time, but the causes of flight were not as 'markedly different' as Morris suggests. S218. Only local tactics differed, from rural areas to town, or according to circumstances. Inall cases, the Zionists exploited Palestinian arab fears, disorganization, and unpreparedness for war.
At the same time, Palestinian Arab testimony and British military observatiosn corroborate that rural Arabs very often did attempt some defense of theri villages. Teh villagers wanted to satay, and onyl after reports of atrocities, particularly the Dayr Yasin massacre, did tehy move women, children, and elderly to safer areas. Zionist forces did little to dispel and much to recreate the fear of another Dayr Yasin.
In most cases, villagers were finalyl driven out through direct intimidation and force. Immediately after an attack, Zionist forces would often prevent villagers from returning by using snipers, demolishing homes and villages, placing land mines and barbed wire ecnlosures, and destroying crops and livestock. Villagers unable to evacuate, such as the elderly, sick, wounded, and handicapped, were reportedly killed by Zionist forces in a number of locales, including Bayt Mahsir, Bayt Surik, Hadatha, Sabbarin, and Saris.
Villagers' testimony also indicates that when Arab villagers remained in or near theri homes, Zionist forces employed any tactic necessary to compel theri flight, prevent return, and speed frontier crossing when possible. In case after case, Zionist forces drove Arab villagers from areas in which they had sought sacntuary after an initial expulsion from home locales. Zionist forces began, in this way, to intimidate the Arabs into leaving their homes - through military attacks and physical and psychological terror, exploiting villagers' fears of what might happen if they fell into Jewish hands."

Esber 2009, S. 38: "Palestinian testimony and contemporary documents, which this book examines in detail, show that in the overwhelming majoirty of cases, Arab villagers and twonspeople remained in their homes until Zionist forces threatened attack or attacked. Only after the fighting intensified, and particularly in April 1948 after Zionist forces massacred more than 100 civilians in Dayr Yasin village (a figure exaggerated to 254 at the time by Zionist war propaganda), did many men begin to escort their wives, children, and elderly to safety in other villages or outlying areas. In fewer cases, a general state of fear and panic did cause Palestinian Arabs to leave their villages before an actual attack. But the 'domino effect,' insofer as it occurred, was usually precipitated and encouraged by Zionist terrorist or military operations, as this book will describe.
... S 30 Nazzal cites Zionist terrorism, rumors, psychological pressure and panic, siege, direct attacks on civilians, and direct expulsions as the reasons for hte Palestinian exodus from the Galilee. Nazzal's work, which predated the declassification of key British, Israeli, and U.S. documents, did not insist on the premeditation or preplanning of zionist poliy, only that the policy was 'coscious and wilful.' His conclusions relied heavily on interviews with Palestinian Arab civilians and participants in the war. Because Nazzal did not examine events of the 1948 war throughout the country, his generalized conclusions about hte Palestinian Arab exodus, especially in the civil war period, were necessarily tentative, as he did not have access to the contemporary documentary record. Ultimately, as we will see, teh record would back up his conclusions."

Esber 2009, S. 42: Palumbo states taht most of the sources he consulted made clear that the refugees left their homes as the result of Zionist 'terror and psychological warfare.' While he acknowledges the importance of other factors in the Palestinian Arabs' exodus, including the early flight of hteir military and political leaders, the lack of coopeartion and leadership among Arab factions, and the Dayr Yasin massacre, palumbo nonetheless contents that 'no amount of pseudo-academic argumetn about an 'irrational panic syndrome' or the 'loss of community infra-structure' can obscure the fact that most Palestinians did not leave their homes until their town or village was invaded by an Israeli army that subjected them to a reign of terror.'" [Palumbo 1987 S. xviii]

• Ja:
  vgl. Esber 2009, S. 37: "Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Guiron, presented his government's official 'Arab orders' argument on October 11, 1961, in the Knesset: 'The Arab's exit from Palestine ... began immediately after teh U.N. resolution, from the areas earmarked for the Jewish state. And we have explicit documents testifying that they left palestien following instructions by the Arab leaders, with the mufti at their head, under the assumption that the invasion of hte arab armies at the expiration of the mandate <would> destroy the Jewish state and push all the Jews into the sea, dead or alive.'"
• Nein:
  • Flapan 1987b, S. 4f: The claim that the exodus was an "order from above," from the Arab leadership, proved to be particularly good propaganda for many years, despite its improbability. Indeed, from the point of view of military logistics, the contention that the Palestinian Arab leadership appealed to S5 the Arab masses to leave their homes in order to open the way invading armies, after which they would return to share in the makes no sense at all. The Arab armies, coming long distances and in or from the Arab areas of Palestine, needed the help of the loca for food, fuel, water, transport, manpower, and information.
    The recent publication of thousands of documents in the state and Zionist archives, as well as Ben-Gurion's war diaries, show that there is no evidence to support Israeli claims. In fact, the declassified material contradicts the "order" theory, for among these new sources are documents testifying to the considerable efforts of the AHC and the Arab states to constrain the flight.
    ...To support their claim that Arab leaders had incited the flight, Israeli and Zionist sources were constantly "quoting" statements by the Arab Higher Committee-now seen to be largely fabricated-to the effect that "in a very short time the armies of our Arab sister countries will overrun Palestine, attacking from the land, the sea, and the air, and they will settle accounts with the Jews."9 Some such statements were actually issued, but they were intended to stop the panic that was causing the masses to abandon their villages. ...When, after April 1948, the flight acquired massive dimensions, Azzam Pasha, secretary of the Arab League, and King 'Abdallah both issued public calls to the Arabs not to leave their home.
    ...S6 Palestinian sources offer further evidence that even earlier, in March and April, the Arab Higher Committee broadcasting from Damascus demanded that the population stay put and announced that Palestinians of military age were to return from the Arab ountries."
  • Esber 2009, S. 37f: "Working independently to investigate the Israeli allegation of Arab radio-ordered evacuation, Walid Khalidi and the Irish journalist and boradcaster Erskine Childers reviewed the Israeli claims. Khalidi examined S38 the Briths Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Summary of World Broadcasts (SWB), U.S. Foreign Broadcast Inforamtion Service (FBIS) files, and three major-Arab newspapers without finding any evidence to support Israeli government claims taht Arab leaders ordered Palestinians to leave their homes. [Walid Khalidi 1959: Why Did the Palestinians Leave?", in: Middle East Forum 35/7. S. 21-24.] Childers examined official Israeli statement about the Arab exodus and foudn taht 'no primary evidence of evacuation orders was ever produced.' He reuqested the 'explicit documents' from the Israeli government but reported that he never received them. Childers also examined arab radio broadcasts, which the BBC had monitored throughout 1948. He concluded that 'there was not a single order, or appeal, or suggestion about evacuation from Palestine from any Arab radio station, inside or outside Palestine, in 1948. There is repeated monitored record of Arab appeals, even flat orders, to civilians of Palestine to stay put [Childer 1961]. My own review of hte FBIS files, interviews with Palestinian Arab refugees, and archival research affirm previous findings - that no contemporary evidence shows that Arab leaders issued general evacuation orders to the Arab population in Palestine."
    So auch Morris 1987, S. 30
• k.A.:
  Benveniste 2000 S. 124:

  The debate over whether Arab leaders actually did encourage the exodus has generated numerous detailed studies intended to either shore up or confute this claim. But for the most part the preoccupation with this question does not really address the Palestinian communal leadership's contributing responsibility for the mass flight: they may not have ordered it, but neither did they do - nor was it in thier power to do - anything to halt it.

Bregman 2017, S. 13: "What is so significant about the civil war in Palestine is that it was then that what became known as ‘the Palestinian refugee problem’ started. With its leadership and the middle class – those who had the money to do so – leaving Palestine to take what they believed to be temporary refuge in neighbouring Arab countries, and with the Jews advising the poorer Palestinians to follow suit and using force to expel the others – the Arab Palestinians moved out of Palestine.44 Exaggerations by Arab leadership of Jewish atrocities, as happened after the events at Deir Yassin, was also a catalyst, leading the Palestinians to flee whenever a Jewish soldier was seen approaching their village." - und dabei zitiert er Morris 1986b!

ethnic cleansing?

Flapan 1987b, S. 4: "The Arabs attributed the flight to a deliberate Zionist design to population out of the country by means of intimidation, terror, an expulsion. The Zionists denied all responsibility, claiming that the Arab Higher Committee had called upon the civilian population to clear the way for the Arab armies and stay out of battle areas until the war was over and the Zionists were defeated. Recently declassified documents throw a new light on this question"

Haltungen israelischer Spitzenpolitiker dokumentiert in Masalha 1982

Morris 2007, S. 39: "From the start, the Zionists wished to make the area of Palestine a Jewish state. Unfortunately, the country contained a native Arab population of 500,000 at the start of the Zionist influx around 1882 and of 1.3 million in 1947. How was a round peg to fit into a square hole? How was a Jewish minority – of some 60,000–80,000 in 1914 and 650,000 in 1947 – to gain control of a country populated by an antagonistic Arab majority? Several solutions offered themselves.
The first and most important was through Aliya or further Jewish immigration. Gradually the minority would demographically overwhelm the native majority, despite the Arabs higher birth rates; once the Jews were in a majority, a Jewish state would naturally ensue. Unfortunately, the Ottoman Turks and subsequently, from a certain point on, their British imperial successors, restricted immigration. At the same time, through most of the period, relatively few Diaspora Jews actually wished to immigrate to Palestine. Most, if moving, preferred North America, Western Europe, and the Commonwealth states. A Jewish majority in Palestine would not come to pass through immigration. ...
S. 40: A third solution lay the way of partition. By the 1930s many of the Zionist leaders understood that the pace of Jewish immigration was insufficient to lead within the foreseeable future to a Jewish majority – and concluded that, at least temporarily, the Jews would have to forgo sovereignty over the whole land of Israel and make do with only a part of the country. A Jewish majority in the whole of Palestine appeared unattainable. But perhaps the country could be divided in such a way as to create a majority in the part allocated for Jewish sovereignty? The problem with partition, however, was that any way one divided the country – unless one declared the minute area of Tel Aviv and its immediate environs a Jewish state – the state that emerged would necessarily contain an Arab majority or at least a very large Arab minority subversive of and hostile to the Jewish polity to which it had been consigned. Indeed, the Jewish state faced such a problem in the UN Partition Plan of November 1947: it would have had 55 percent Jews and 40–45 percent Arabs. Any way one cut it, partition would be extremely problematic, to say the least. ...
The last and, let me say obvious and most logical, solution to the Zionists’ demographic problem lay the way of transfer: you could create a homogeneous Jewish state or at least a state with an overwhelming Jewish majority by moving or transferring all or most of the Arabs out of its prospective territory. And this, in fact, is what happened in 1948. ...
During the 1990s, I looked afresh at the matter, partly in response to Nur Masalhas book, Expulsion of the Palestinians.
My conclusion was and remains that thinking about the transfer of all or part of Palestine’s Arabs out of the prospective Jewish state was pervasive among Zionist leadership circles long before 1937, when Lord Peel recommended transfer alongside partition as the only possible solution to the conflict, and continued to exercise the Zionist imagination during the following decade.
...S. 41: As Masalha has shown, many if not most of Zionism’s mainstream leaders expressed at least passing support for the idea of transfer during the movement’s first decades. True, as the subject was sensitive, they did not often or usually state this in public. Such utterances would certainly have annoyed Arabs and Turks, and perhaps others. But traces, and more than traces, of support for transfer are well documented.

Ben Gurion, Tagebuch vom 12.7.1937 (apud Morris 2007, S. 42):
"As before, I am aware of the terrible difficulty posed by a foreign force uprooting some 100,000 [sic.] Arabs from the villages they lived in for hundreds of years – will Britain dare carry this out?
Certainly it will not do it – if we do not want it, and if we do not push it to do it with our force and with the force of our faith. Even if a maximum amount of pressure is applied – it is possible she may still be deterred . . . It is certainly possible – and [nothing] greater than this has been done for our cause in our time [than Peel proposing transfer].
And we did not propose this – the Royal Commission . . . did . . . and we must grab hold of this conclusion [i.e., recommendation] as we grabbed hold of the Balfour Declaration, even more than that – as we grabbed hold of Zionism itself we must cleave to this conclusion, with all our strength and will and faith – because of all the Commission’s conclusions, this is the one that alone offers some recompense for the tearing away of other parts of the country [i.e., the commission’s apportioning of most of the Land of Israel for Arab sovereignty], and [the proposal] also has great political logic from the Arab perspective, as Transjordan needs settlement and an increase of population and development and money, and the English government – the richest of governments – is required by her Royal Commission to provide the funds needed for this, and in the implementation of this transfer is a great blessing for the Arab state – and for us it is a question of life, existence, protection of culture, [Jewish population] increase, freedom and independence."

Morris 2007, S. 43f.:
"Despite the fact that the notion of transfer had been proposed by a royal commission and that Ben-Gurion had seen fit to speak of it in the plenum of the Zionist Congress, the subject was still very sensitive. Indeed, a gauge of its continuing sensitivity is to be found in the fact that the Jewish press reports about the Congress’ proceedings generally failed to mention that Ben-Gurion, or anyone else, had come out strongly in favor of transfer or indeed had even raised the subject. And when the Zionist Organization published the texts of the addresses the following year, reference to transfer was almost completely excised from every speech. Needless to say, the passage quoted above from Ben-Gurion’s speech was completely deleted from this laundered version of the proceedings.
S. 44: Subsequently, the matter of transfer repeatedly cropped up at the meetings of the Jewish Agency Executive (JAE), the “government” of the Yishuv and the leading body of the Zionist Organization. However, according to the existing protocols, the Executive debated the matter infrequently over the years 1939–47. Usually, the matter was referred to in an isolated sentence or half-sentence, without follow-up. My assumption is that more was said about transfer at these meetings than actually was recorded in the protocol. The issue was highly sensitive – and it was common practice in Zionist bodies to order stenographers to “take a break” and thus to exclude from the record discussion on such matters. But, perhaps, the record does not lie and transfer was simply not discussed often or comprehensively, perhaps because all or most of the JAE members simply felt that there was no need for such debate. At the time, the idea was deemed impractical and, in any case, all or almost all members were in agreement on the matter. ...
[O]n 12 June the matter was roundly discussed. Werner David Senator, a Hebrew University executive, said that the Yishuv must aim for “maximal transfer.” Menahem Ussishkin, head of the JNF, said that there was nothing immoral about transferring 60,000 Arab families: “It is the most moral [thing to do].” Berl Katznelson, one of the dominant Mapai Party’s leaders, said: “A large transfer must be agreed.” And Ben-Gurion said: “I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see in it anything immoral.”
The consensus or near-consensus in support of transfer – voluntary if possible, compulsory if necessary – was clear.

Yossef Weitz: "Transfer dient nicht nur einem Ziel - die arabische Bevölkerung zu reduzieren -, sie dient auch einem zweiten, keineswegs unwichtigeren Zwck, nämlich: Land zu räumen, das derzeit von Arabern bestellt wird, und es frei zu machen für jüdische Besiedlung ... Die einzige Lösung ist, die araber von hier in Nachbarländer umzusiedeln. Kein einziges Dorf und kein einziger Stamm darf ausgelassen werden." (Weitz, My Diary II 181, nach Pappé 2007, S. 110)

Diskussion Weitz mit USSR-Botschafter Ivan Maisky, Januar 1941 (apud Morris 2007, S. 46):
"Mr. Maisky said there would have to be an exchange of populations. Dr. Weizmann

said that if half a million Arabs could be transferred, two million Jews could be put in their place. That, of course, would be a first instalment; what might happen afterwards was a matter for history. Mr. Maisky’s comment was that they in Russia had also had to deal with exchanges of population. Dr. Weizmann said that the distance they had to deal with in Palestine would be smaller; they would be transferring the Arabs only into Iraq or Transjordan. Mr. Maisky asked whether some difficulties might not arise in transferring a hill-country population to the plains, and Dr. Weizmann replied that a beginning might be made with the Arabs from the Jordan Valley; but anyhow conditions in Transjordan were not so very different from the Palestine hill-country . . . Dr. Weizmann explained that they were unable to deal with [the Arabs] as, for instance, the Russian authorities would deal with a backward element in their population in the USSR. Nor would they desire to do so."

Glubb 1957, S. 59: (!)
"We in Trans-Jordan produced our own solution. We favoured partition, but we considered it essential to retain British garrisons in Jerusalem and Haifa. If such a plan had been adopted, figting would have been avoided. Any necessary exchanges of population could have been carried out without unnecessary hardship, and there would have been no destitute refugees. Such parts of Palestine as were allotted to the Arabs would have been incorporatedi nthe neighbouring Arab States. Galilee would have joined Lebanon; Samaria and judea would have been united ot Trans-Jordan; and hte Gaza-Beersheba district to Egypt. Lord Moyne, British Minister of State in the Middle East, to whom I explained the idea. professed himself to be keenly interested."

Pappé 2007, S. 135: "Benny Morris listet eine Reihe von Operationen auf, die Weitz im Februar und März anwordnete und zu denen die 'politische Führung' - wie Morris sie beschönigend nennt - keine Genehmigung erteilt habe. Das ist unmöglich. Die zentrale Hagana-Führung autorisierte sämtliche Vertreibungsaktionen; es stimmt zwar, dass sie vor dem 10. März 1948 nicht immer im Voraus darüber Bescheid wissen wollte, aber nachträglich erteilte sie immer ihre Genehmigung. Weitz erhielt nie eine Rüge für die Vertreibungen,für die er verantwortlich war: in Qamun und Qira, Arab al-Ghawarina im Naman-Tal, Qumya, Nasurat al-Khayt, Husayniyya, Ulmaniyya, Kirad al-Ghannama und Ubaydiyya - alle diese Dörfer hatte er entweder wegen der Qualität ihres Ackerlandes ausgesucht oder weil dort oder in der Nähe jüdische Siedler lebten."

Bregman 2017, S. 7: ". It is sometimes alleged that, in fact, the real intention of the Jews was to have the whole of Palestine (including parts allotted to the Arabs), but that they wished to obtain it in stages – first get what they could from the UN and then expand it by force. This claim is supported, for example, by a letter of Ben Gurion to his wife, where he says: ‘Establish a Jewish state at once, even if it is not in the whole land ... the rest will come in the course of time’.26 That the Jewish hidden agenda was indeed to occupy all of Palestine was also believed by leading Palestinians. At a meeting in September 1947 with a British official in Lebanon, where he was in exile, the leader of the Arab Palestinians, Haj Amin Al-Husseini, said: ‘No form of partition ... would finally satisfy the Zionists. Whatever they got would merely be a springboard from which to leap on more’."

• Ja:
  • Häufige militärische Einsatzbefehle sind bi'ur, tihur und nikkuy (jeweils: "Reinigung"), "alle drei Begriffe entsprechen den anerkannten internationalen Definitionen ethnischer Säuberung." (Pappé 2007, S. 241)
    Morris 2007, S. 49f.:
    Similarly, the IDFA will generally declassify a document which useseuphemisms such as to 'move' (le`haziz) or 'evacuate' (le`fanot) a community while S50 keeping closed a document employing hte more explicit term to 'expel' (le`garesh')."
  • Flapan 1987b, S. 6f: "It must be understood that official Jewish decision-making bodies-the provisional government, the National Council, and the Jewish Agency Executive-neither discussed nor approved a design for expulsion, and any proposal of the sort would have been opposed and probably rejected. These bodies were heavily influenced by liberal, progressive labor, and socialist Zionist parties. ...
    In the debates with Great Britain, and later with UNSCOP and at the UN General Assembly, the Jewish Agency and the Yishuv gave solemn assurances that they would respect the rights of the Palestinians. Weizmann declared that the "Jews are not going to encroach upon the rights and territory of the Arabs."
    Once the flight began, however, Jewish leaders encouraged it. Sharett, for example, immediately declared that no mass return of Palestinians to Israel would be permitted.17 Cohen insisted in October 1948 that "the Arab exodus was not part of a preconceived plan." But, he acknowledged, "a part of the flight was due to official policy. . . . Once it started, the flight S7 received encouragement from the most important Jewish sources, for both military and political reasons."
    According to the evidence now available, these sources went beyond mere "encouragement." ...
    During this period, Ben-Gurion, as head of the governing council, was assisted by the leaders of the Haganah, the general staff of the newly formed Israeli Defense Forces, and the directors of the Jewish Agency and of the settlement department of the Jewish National Fund, as well as advisers on Arab affairs and executives of the Jewish Agency in charge of the acquisition and production of arms. They were not only responsible for planning the defense and the war but also determined the policies and strategies regarding the borders of the Jewish state; the locations, numbers, and placement of new Jewish settlements; the demography of all the districts; and, ultimately, the destiny of the Arab population. They were the real decision makers. Not all the members of Ben-Gurion's team agreed on how to treat the Arab opposition to the mufti, what the future status of the Arab areas was to be, or what rules should be applied to land requisition and compensation. But they were all of one mind that the Arabs understood only the language of force and that any proposals for compromise would be taken as a sign of weakness. Above all, they accepted Ben-Gurion's view that the state of Israel should be demographically homogenous and geographically as.extensive as possible.
    It is impossible to know all the details of the team's deliberations and plans, since the relevant materials are still classified in the Ben-Gurion and IDF archives and some of the discussions and decisions have not even been transcribed. Records are available from archives and diaries, however, and while not revealing a specific plan or precise orders for expulsion, they provide overwhelming circumstantial evidence to show that a design was being implemented by the Haganah, and later by the IDF, to reduce the number of Arabs in the Jewish state to a minimum and to make use of most of their lands, properties, and habitats to absorb the masses of Jewish immigrants.20 ...
    S8 In private, however, Ben-Gurion was not averse to making his real views clear. Thus, on 19 December 1947, he demanded that "we adopt the system of aggressive defense; with every Arab attack we must respond with a decisive blow: the destruction of the place or the expulsion of the residents along with the seizure of the place."23 He declared: "When in action we . . . must fight strongly and cruelly, letting nothing stop us."24
    Even without direct orders, the goal and spirit of real policy were understood and accepted by the army. That Ben-Gurion's ultimate aim was to evacuate as much of the Arab population as possible from the Jewish state can hardly be doubted, if only from the variety of means he employed to achieve this purpose ..."
    S. 10: "The psychological aspect of warfare was not neglected either. The day after the plan went into effect, the Lebanese paper AlHayat quoted a leaflet that was dropped from the air and signed by the Haganah command in Galilee:
    We have no wish to fight ordinary people who want to live in peace, but only the army and forces which are preparing to invade Palestine. Therefore . . . all people who do not want this war must leave together with their women and children in order to be safe. This is going to be a cruel war, with no mercy or compassion. There is no reason why you should endanger yourselves." [vgl. IDF Archives, 51/957, File 16 apud Pappé 207, S. 102: Flugblatt in syr. + lib. Dörfern: "Wenn der Krieg in euer Dorf getragen wird, wird er zu massiven Vertreibungen der Dorfbewohner mit ihren Frauen und Kindern führen. Wer von euch dieses Schicksal nicht erleiden will, dem sage ich: In diesem Krieg wird ohne Mitgleid udn Erbarmen getötet. Wenn ihr euch nicht an diesem Krieg beteiligt, müsst ihr eure Häuser und Dörfer nicht verlassen."]
    Flapan 1987, S. 22: Ben-Gurion, it should be noted, referred to the body he set up to deal with refugees and infiltrators as the "Committee for Removal and Expulsion" (vaadat akirah v'girush), though the editors of his War Diaries thought it appropriate to change the name to the "Committee for Evacuation and Population.""
    Flapan 1987b, S. 23: " The myth of a voluntary Palestinian exodus in response to Arab "orders from above" has survived with an astounding perseverance. In retrospect, the myth can be seen as the inevitable result of the denial of the Palestinians' right to national independence and statehood, a principle that guided Zionist policies from the very beginning. Political in origin, the myth became an important component in the prevailing self-image of the new state. First of all, it served to cover the traces of the unsavory methods employed by the authorities-from the confiscation of food, raw materials, medicaments, and land to acts of terror and intimidation, the creation of panic, and, finally, forcible expulsion - and thus to exorcise the feelings of guilt in many sectors of society, especially the younger generation. Many of them bore the burden of the operations that caused the Arab flight. They personally implemented the instructions to destroy whole villages, forcing men, women, and children to leave their homes for some unknown destination beyond the borders. Many of them took part in operations where they rounded up all able-bodied men and then crowded them into trucks for deportation. Their feelings of moral frustration and revulsion were not easily eradicated.<br /.... S24 This contention ignored the fact that the large majority of the Palestinians who fled their homes did not leave the country. Like many Jews caught in the same circumstances, they evacuated battle areas and moved to safer places.65 The spontaneous movement of Palestinians back to the country - what was known then (and punished) as "infiltration," and which started even before the end of the war-and the persistent refusal of the majority of the Palestinian refugees to "rehabilitate" themselves in Arab countries must certainly be considered demonstrations of the tenacity of their attachment to their homeland.
    The myth of voluntary exodus became Israel's major argument against accepting even partial responsibility for the refugee problem, not to mention consideration of the refugees' right to repatriation. Moreover, the refusal to permit the refugees to return helped create the impression among Israelis that the Palestinian problem would gradually disappear."
  • Pappé 2007, S. 16: "Als die zionistische Bewegung ihren Nationalstaat gründete, war es keineswegs so, dass sie einen Krieg führte, der 'tragischerweise, aber unvermeidbar' zur Vertreibung eines 'Teils' der heimischen Bevölkerung führte; vielmehr war es umgekehrt: Hauptziel war die ethnische Säuberung gnaz Palästinas, das die Bewegung für ihren neuen Staat haben wollte. Einige Wochen, nachdem die ethnischen Säuberungsaktionen begonnen hatten, schickten die benachbarten arabischen Staaten eine kleine Armee - klein, gesemmen an ihrer gesamten militärischen Stärke - und versuchten vergeblich, die ethnische Säuberung zu verhindern. Bis sie im Herbst 1948 erfolgreich abgeschlossen war, brachte der Krieg mit den regulären arabischen Truppen die ethnische Säuberung nicht zum Stillstand."
    S. 91f.: "Doch Flapan akzeptiert auch, dass Plan Dalet ein Masterplan für die ethnische Säuberung Palästinas war. ... [Es] entstand die eindeutige Blaupause für die ethnische Säuberung Palästinas, Plan Dalet, nicht in einem Vakuum. Als endgültige Planung entwickelte sie sich durch eine Art Ad-hoc-Politik, die sich im Laufe der Zeit in Reaktion auf die allmähliche Entwicklung der Erignisse vor Ort S92 herauskristallisierte. Aber diese REaktion gründete unerschütterlich in der zionistischen Ideologie und dem rein jüdischen Staat, den sie anstrebte. Das Hauptziel war also von Anfang an klar: die Entarabisierung Palästinas, aber die Mittel, mit denen es sich am effektivsten erreichen ließe, entwickelten sich parallel zur tatsächlichen militärischen Besetzung der palästinenssichen Territorien, die den neuen Staat Israel ausmachen sollten."
    S. 208: "Es dürfte also klar geworden sein, dass der grundlegende israelische Mythos über die freiwillige Flucht der Palästinenser gleich bei Kriegsbeginnn - als Reaktion auf einen Aufruf arabischer Führer, Platz für die Invasion ihrer Armeen zu machen - keineswegs stichhaltig ist. Und dass es von jüdischer Seite Versuche gab, Palästinenser zum Bleiben zu bewegen,w ie israelische Geschichtsbücher bis heute behaupten, ist reine Erfindung. Hunderttausende Palästinenser waren bereits vor Kriegsbeginn gewaltsam vertrieben worden udn weitere Zehntausende sollten in den erstne Kriegswochen vertrieben werden."
    Shlaim 2009, S. 57:
    "[...F]rom the outset the leaders of the Zionist movement realised that they could not achieve their aim without inducing, by one means or another, a large number of Arabs to leave Palestine. In thier public utterances the zionist leaders avoided as far as possible any mention of transfer, but in private discussions they could be brutally frnak. So it is from private rather than public sources that Masalha draws the bulk of his incriminating evidence. He goes to some length to demonstrate that support for transfer was not confined ot hte extremists or maximalists but was embraced by almost every shade of Zionist opinion, from the Revisionist Right to the Labour Left. Transfer, he argues, occupied a central position in the strategic thinking of the Jewsh Agency as a solution to what was coyly referred to as the 'Arab question'. Virtually every member of the Zionist pantheon advocated in in one form or another. ...
    S. 59: The main strength of his book derives from the new material he has unearthed about Zionist attitudes to transfer during the pre-1948 period. But he spoils a good case by overstating it. In the first place, he focuses very narrowly on one aspect of Zionist thinkin gand neglects the broader political context in which this thinking crystallised. Secondly, he portrays the Zionist movement as monolithic and single-minded in its support for transfer, ignoring the reservations, the doubts, the internal debates and the opposition. Thirdly, he presents transfer as the cornerstone of zionist strategy, when it was in fact only one of the alternatives under consideration at various junctures in the conflict over Palestine. Fourthly, while sharply critical of the Zionist design and of the means by which it was achieved, he completely ignores the part played by the Palestinians themselves in the disaster that eventually overwhelmed them, or the part played by theri leaer, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who had about as much political sense as the Good Soldier Schweik.
    The end result of Masalha's selective use and tendentious interpretation of the evidence is an accoutn which posits a straingtforward Zionist policy of transfer and lays all the blame for hte flight of hte Palestinians in 1948 at the door of the wicked Zionists. If Benny Morris does not go as far in his critique of the Zionists as his evidence would seem to warrant, Nur Masalha goes way beyond what his evidence can sustain. If Morris carries his multi-phase and multi-cuase explanation to the point of obscuring the primary responsibility of the Zionists for hte displacement and dispossession of the Palestinians, Masalha ends up with a monocausal explanation which absolves everybody other than the Zionists.
    For a broader, more balanced and more searchign analysis of the causes of the Jewish triumph and the Arab defeat in the struggle for Palestine one must turn to Ilan Pappé.
    ...S. 60: Pappé examines every claim and counterclaim against the avialable evidence, and discards all those which fail to stand up to his critical scrutiny. ON the question of whether the expulsion of the Palestinians was pre-planned, for example, he is much closer in his views to the Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi than he is to his compatriot and co-revisionist Benny Morris. ... In the final analysis, he argues, if you have a plan to thorw somewone out of his house, and the person leaves before you carry out your plan, that does not in any way alter your original intention. For all the trouble he took to cover his traces, David Ben-Gurion emerges from Pappé's book, as S61 he does from the books by Morris and Masalha, as the great expeller of the Palestinians in 1948.
  • Esber 2009, S. 41f: "Palumbo's conclusions, as this book shows in fuller detail, are more accurate than those of Morris. Although attributing the Palestinian Arabs' S43 exodus to 'invasion' simplifies the diversity of violent intimidation employed and feared, Palumbo's contention that Palestinian Arabs remained in their homes until targeted by Zionist violence or psychological intimidation is correct. He is also correct in his assessment of an ideological root to the forced depopulation. Palumbo views the expulsion of the Palestinian Rabas as 'true fulfillment of the destiny taht was implicit in Zionism from teh very beginning.'
    S. 382: "Strong evidence indicates that zionists planned to displace the Arabs. The historicalliteratur attests to a well-established intention to 'transfer' Arabs out of Palestine. The Zionists' political motie for forced 'transfer' was to create a Jewish tae with few non-Jews. The Haganah's Plan D explicitly articulated a policy of driging out Arab communities and destroyign their villages, obliterating traces of Arab society. Its implementation during the civil war resulted in the expulsion of more than 400,000 civilian Palestinian Arabs from some 225 rural locales nad urban centers.
  • Bregman 2017, S. 13: "While there was no explicit decision by the Jewish leadership to expel the Palestinians, there was nevertheless a tacit agreement that this should be done.46 In a meeting with military commanders, Prime Minister Ben Gurion said: ‘In each attack [against Arabs] it is necessary to give a decisive blow, ruining the place, kicking away the inhabitants’. [D. Ben Gurion, Diary of War, entry for 19 December 1948]
    Bregman 2017, S. 20: The expelled Arabs were not allowed back to their homes, for what the Israelis wanted was to have the land without its inhabitants so they could establish an exclusive Jewish community. In a meeting of the Israeli cabinet on 16 June 1948, Prime Minister Ben Gurion told the ten ministers who were present: ‘War is war. We did not start the war. They did. Do we have to allow the enemy back so they could make war against us? They lost and fled and I will oppose their return also after the war’" [Ben Gurion, in Transcript of the Meeting of the 16th June 1948, 21-2, in the author's archive (Hebrew).]
    Esber 2009, S. 84: "The yishuv's increasing militarism was coupled with the Zionist leadership's continued transfer plannning. In 1937, the Jewish Agency set up the Committee for the Transfer of Arabs. The committee met regularly and assembled information and statistical data to prepare plans for the compulsory transfer of Arabs from Palestine. ...
    Zionist transfer plans were soon formally endorsed by the British government. Yet another British commission was dispatched to Palestine to ascertain Arab grievances taht led to the 1936 Arab Revolt. The 1937 Royal (Peel) Commission proposed to terminate the mandate and to partition the country between the Arabs and the Jews. The partition plan explicitly included the forced depopulation of large numbers of Arabs from teh proposed Jewish area to the Arab area (but not vice versa). The Zionist leadership publicly accepted and advanced the concept of forced transfer S85 in the context of the Peel plan. ...
    S 86: Many Zionist leaders continued to press for forced transfer. In 1942, after Nazi Germany advanced into Eastern Europe and commenced its persecution, removal, and genocide of European Jews, Chaim Weizmann called on Western powers to support the creation of a Jewish commonwealth in all of Palestine and to pressure the Arabs to acccept a population transfer. ...
  • Hammond 2016, aber nach Fehlzitation. An sich aber richtig:

    Moreover, Plan D did make explicit the operational orders to expel Arabs from their villages. Morris also suggests that since not all Arabs were expelled, therefore it wasn’t ethnic cleansing. But once again his logic is a non sequitur. It doesn’t follow that since there were Arabs who were allowed to remain in the territory that became Israel that therefore the expulsion of the majority of that territory’s Arab inhabitants didn’t constitute ethnic cleansing. Morris can opine that Ben-Gurion didn’t do a thorough enough job of it; but he can’t sustain the suggestion that the lack of thoroughness means it wasn’t ethnic cleansing.

• Nein:
  • Morris 1987, S. 286: "The Palestinian refugee problem was born of war, not by design, Jewish or Arab. It was largely a by-product of Arab and Jewish fears and of the protracted, bitter fighting that characterized the first Israeli-Arab war; in smaller part, it was the deliberate creation of Jewish and Arab military commanders and politicians."
    <=> Khalidi 1988, S. 429: "Compared to Palumbo, who pulls few punches, Morris treads warily, often refusing to draw conclusions which his evidence seems clearly to point to."
    Shlaim 1995, S. 296: "An observation that is frequently made, by Western as well as Palestinian reviewers, is that the evidence presented in teh body of hte book suggests a far higher degree of Israeli responsibility than that implied by Morris in his conclusion."
    Esber 2009, S. 41: "His conclusion, echoing Gabbay's non-archival and interview-free research, for the most part evades the cocnlusions his own data should have compelled."
    Morris 2007, S. 48f.:
    "Nothing that I have seen in Israeli archives during the past decade indicates the existence before 1948 of a Zionist master plan to expel the Arabs of Palestine. Nor, in looking at the materials from 1948, is there anything to show that such a plan existed and was systematically unleashed and implemented in the course of hte war, or that any overall expulsory policy decision was taken by the Yishuv's executive bodies - the Jewish Agency Executive, the Defence Committee, the People's Administration, or the Provisional Government of Israel - in the course of the 1948 War (apart from the June-July 1948 Cabinet decision to bar a refugee return).
    None the less, expulsion was in the air in the war of 1948. From April on, Palestinian Arabs were the target of a series of concrete expulsions from individual villages, clusters of villages, and towns. The readiness among the Israeli commanders and officials to expel fluctuated in relation to the local conditions and ot the national military situation (certainly S49 there was greater willingness to expel after the Arab states invaded Palestine, on 15 May, putting the Yishuv's very existence temporarily in question), the character and outlook of hte Israeli commanders, and the nature of the Arab villagers and townspeople involved (traditional anti-Zionists or 'friendly' Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Druse, etc.), topographical conditions, and so on.
    Clearly, the readiness to resort to compulsory transfer grew in the Yishuv's bureaucracies and among its military units in the course of the first months of fighting, and as the fighting became more despearate, bloody and widespread, with benGurion himself settign the tone and indicating direction, usually resorting to a nod and a wink if not acutally issuing explicit orders.
    Ben-Gurion apart, the documentation that has come to light or been declassified during hte past ten years offers a great deal of additional information about the expulsions of 1948. Teh departure of Arab communities from some sites, departures that were described in The birth as due to fear or IDF military attack or were simply unexplained, now appear to have been tinged if not characterized by Haganah or IDF expulsion orders and actions ... This means that the proportion of hte 700,000 Arabs who took to the roads as a result of expulsions rather than as a result of straightforward military attack or fear of attack, etc. is greater than indicated in The Birth. Similarly, the new documentation has revealed atrocities taht I had not been aware of while writing The Birth ... Thes atrocities are important in understanding the precipitation of various phases of the Arab exodus.
    Let me add that with respect to both expulsiosn and atrocities, we can expect additional revelations as the years pass and as more Isralei records become available. As things stand, the IDFA has a standing policy guideline not to open material explicitly describing expulsions and atrocities. Thus, much IDF material on these subjects remains closed. But IDFA officials, like all officials, occasionally overlook a document with an explicit description or, more frequently, relent when it comes to implciit or indirect descriptions."
• Bis 14. Mai noch nicht, danach schon:
  • Benveniste 2000, S. 124:
    According to Benny Morris, these reasons [for the different reasons for the abandonment of villages] can be categorized as follows: expulsion by Jewish forces; abandonment by order of Arab leaders; fear of Jewish attack or accidental involvement in hostilities; a military campaign against the community by Jewish armed forces; a rumor-mongering campaign (psychologicalwarfare); nad the influence of the fall of a neighboring community or of the exodus of its inhabitants. Palestinian scholars accept these categories but add to them mass murder and rape, thereby imbuing the exodus with the character of ethnic cleansing. ... S125
    The rules of war prohibit the expulsion of civilians, the demolition of their homes, or damage to their property, not to mention injury to their persons. A distinction is made, however, between injury to civilians as a result of military actions in response ot ostile activities, and ethnic cleansing carried out after hostilities have ceased and the area has been secured militarily. During civil wars or intercommunal conflicts, distinctions between civilians and soldiers become blurred, and acts of violence S126 are perpetrated by armed militias that are not subject to control by any clar authority, and whose brutality is nourished by ancient hatred and hte frcitions that areise daily from living in close quarters, as well as from mutual fear. All of the conditions leading to the Palestinian exodus( Up to late May 1948) were typical of those that prevail during violent intercommunal conflicts, and they dod not fit the definition of 'ethnic cleansing' - unless it can be proven that they were the result of explicit orders whose objective was to promote a campaign of organized terror, rape, and systematic murder, with the aim of expelling civilians on other than military grounds and taking over their homes and land-holdings and settling them with members of the other community.
    The designation of the Arab exodus of the first half of the war as 'ethnic cleansing# is, of course, controversial, and evidence supplied by even the most exacting researchers does not justify the use of that term. An order was indeed issued to take control of Arab villages and expel theri inhabitants (Plan D), but there is no doubt that its objectives were military, it did not include a directive to target this territory for Jewish settlement, and generally the commanders were not required to forcibly expel the inhabitants, since they had lfed prior to the capture of their villages. The commanders of the Jewish forces certainly did carry out some attacks whose objective was to terrorize the Arabs into leaving their homes, but on the other hand there is abundant evidence that the Jeiwsh leadership was surprised at the scope of the exodus and even made efforts to persuade the Arabs to remain in their homes. Jews did take over abandoned Arab homes in the suburbs of tel Aviv and Jerusalem as early as the winter of 1948, but they themselves were generally refugees who had been ruprooted from Jewish border neighborhoods that had suffered Arab attacks.
    It is ceratinly hard to isolate the military-oriented from the settlement-oriented aspects of the Jewish leaders' motivations, but the abandoned villages attracted those inflused iwth the urge to 'redeem the soil,' and there is no doubt that hte Jewis' apppetite was aroused by the 'miraculous exodus,' which spread before them possiblities they had not previously envisioned. It is of course ture that the overwhelming majority of those who were uprooted were Arabs, yet thousands of Jews also abanoned their homes because of hte hostilities, and several Jewish settlements were captured and destroyed. And there is no doubt that the Palestinians were the primary victims of hte intercommunal arfare, but tehy cannot shrug off responsibility for the outbreak of hostilities.
    S127 But these unambiguous [!!!] conclusions regardign 'ethnic cleansing' appy only to the first part of the war. The violent situation, ideological perceptions, and demographic, economic, and political pressures, bot hinternal and external - especially the proclamation of the State of Israel (14 May 1948) and the invasion by the armies of the Arab states - gave rise ot changes that necessitate a different view of the Arab exodus during the second half of the war.
    S. 142: The picture that emerges from a description of the first part of the 1948 War is not, in any case, unambiguous. It does not fully support the claim of 'ethnic cleansing,' planned and premeditated by the Zionist leadership. Neither does it support the opposite contention - that hundreds of thousands of Arabs had fled without the deeds of hte Jews having had a decisive influence on the exodus. The Jews were not saddened by the Arabs' leaving, and they even encouraged it through acts of intimidation, violence, and psychologicalwarefare, yet this is not sufficient to provide a basis for the claim that the objective of hte 1948 War was S143 the expulsion of the Arab population. On the other hand, three developments that took place between 15 May and 16 Junde 1948 oblige us to regard the subsequent exodus of the Arabs in a different light. These were the establishment of Israeli sovereignty in palestine, the Israeli decision to prevent the return of the uprooted Palestinians, and the decision to make their abandoned land available for Zionist settlement. ...
    S. 145: The expulsions carried out after the founding of the state, and without a doubt those effected after the middle of June (during the First Truce, 11 June through 8 July 1948), came dangerously close to fitting the definition of 'ethnic cleansing.' Although not as severe as in the case of Bosnia, atrocities that could be defined as war crimes did occur. Not only was 'an undesirable opoulation expelled from a given territory due to religious or ethnic discrimination, political, strategic or ideological considerations, or a combination of these,' but some of hte Arabs were expelled not on military groudns but with the objective of taking over their homes and land expressly for the settlement of Jews.

Massaker

Flapan 1987b, S. 10f.: Exactly how cruel and merciless was already clear from the example of the Dayr Yasin massacre. [... Beschreibung...] But from another perspective, it made perfect sense. More panic was sown among the Arab population by this operation than by anything that had happened up to then. Dayr Yasin is considered the direct reason for the flight of the Arabs from Haifa on 21 April and from Jaffa on 4 May and for the final collapse of the Palestinian fighting forces. While Ben-Gurion condemned the massacre in no uncertain terms, he did nothing to curb the independent actions of the Jewish S11 underground armies, whose planned provocations and indiscriminate bombings were always successful in raising national tensions.37 On 4 January 1948, the Irgun used a car bomb to blow up the government center in Jaffa, killing twenty-six Arab civilians. Three days later, they planted explosives at Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem, and another twenty-five Arab civilians were killed. A pattern became clear, for in each case the Arabs retaliated, then the Haganah-always condemning the actions of the Irgun and LEHI-joined in with an inflaming "counterretaliation."
For its part, the Haganah avoided outright massacres like Dayr Yasin but, through destruction of property, harassment, and rumor-mongering, was no less determined to evacuate the Arab population and prevent its return. Indeed, by the end of the 1947 and 1948 war, the IDF's burning, blowing up, and mining of the ruins accounted for the destruction of 350 Arab villages and townlets situated in areas assigned to the Jewish state or those conquered during the fighting. thousands upon thousands of houses, workshops, storerooms, cattle pens, nurseries, and orchards were destroyed, while livestock was seized and equipment looted or burned. The operation, executed with a strict efficiency, was inexplicable since most of these villages were not engaged in heavy fighting against the Jewish forces and most of the inhabitants had fled either in fear of a "new Dayr Yasin" or in response to "friendly advice" from Jewish neighbors."

Morris 2009, S. 54 am Beispiel einer Region:
"But what of the massacres? Our knowledge of the details of these massacres is limited, relying mainly on Arab oral and written testimony and some United Nations and Israeli civilian documentation (see Appendix, p. 57). The IDF documents relating to them – reports from the officers in the field and the testimony given to various inquiry commissions which probed the massacres and their final reports (there were at least two, one by IDF Northern Command itself and the other by Israel’s attorney general, Yaakov Shimshon Shapira) – are still classified and unavailable to researchers. But the general lines of what happened are clear.
I am not arguing here that Carmel gave a general order to carry out massacres and that, as a result, a series of massacres were committed. But two things indicate that at least some officers in the field understood Carmel’s orders as an authorization to carry out murderous acts that would intimidate the population into flight: the pattern in the actions and their relative profusion; and the absence of any punishment of the perpetrators. The massacres were carried out by battalions of the three main units that participated in Hiram, namely, the (1st) Golani, the 7th, and the (2nd) Carmeli brigades, as well as by second-line garrison battalions who replaced the assaulting brigades in the conquered villages. To the best of my knowledge, none of the soldiers or officers who carried out these war crimes was ever punished.
It is quite possible that the perpetrators looked to Carmel’s order of 31 October as inspiration for their actions. The fact that no one was subsequently punished leaves the impression that their interpretation of that order (or accompanying oral instructions or exegesis by officers lower down the chain of command, such as brigade commanders) was sufficiently widespread and well founded so as to deter anyone from bringing them to book. ...
In any event, the uniform or at least similar nature of the massacres points to a belief, among the perpetrators, of central direction and authorization (and perhaups even to the existence of some form of central guideline). S55 Almost all the massacres followed a similar course: a unit entered a village, rounded up the menfolk in the village square, selected four or ten or fifty of the army-age males (in some places according to prepared lists of persons suspected of helping Qawuqji’s or Grand Mufti Hajj Amin al Husayni’s forces), lined them up against a wall, and shot them. Some of the massacres were carried out immediately after the conquest of the village by the assaulting troops, though most occurred in the following days. In some cases (as in Majd al Kurum on 5 or 6 November) the massacre occurred ostensibly as part of the unit’s efforts to force the villagers to hand over hidden weapons, though more often it seems to have been connected to a process of intimidation geared to provoking the villagers into flight (as in Ilabun, Jish, etc.).
In The Birth I assumed that there had been no central order from “on high” to commit the atrocities. The documentation recently declassified in the IDFA seems to corroborate this. ... But the profusion of cases (altogether about a dozen massacres occurred), the lack of punishment, the pattern of the events, and the delay in the issuing of this “order of the day,” taken together, perhaps point to a more ambiguous conclusion."

Esber 2009, S379: British documents confirm that Zionist forces regularly provoked or intitiated attacks on Palestinian Arabs, including in such areas as the Qatamon and Shayk Jarrah quarters of Jerusalem, the cities of Jaffa and Haifa, the village of Dayr Yasin, and scores of other communities. If Palestinian Arabs responded in defense, Zionist force retaliated with indiscriminate and overwhelming lethal force.

Pappé 2007, S. 95: "Die rasche Rückkehr zur Normalität und der Wunsch der Palästinenser, nicht in einen Bürgerkrieg verwickelt zu werden, stellten ein Problem für eine zionistische Führung dar, die entschlossen war, die Zahl der Araber in ihrem künftigen jüdischen Staat drastisch, wenn nicht gar vollständig zu reduzieren. Sie brauchte einen Vorwand, der natürlich schwerer herbeizuführen war, wenn die moderate palästinensische Reaktion anhielt. 'Zum Glück' für die zionistische Führung weitete die arabische Freiwilligenarmee irgendwann irhe Angriffe gegen jüdische Konvois und Siedlungen aus und machte es dem Beratergremium damit einfacher, die Besetzungs- und Vertreibungspolitik als eine Form gerechtfertigter 'Vergeltung' - hebräisch tagmul - darzustellen. Aber bereits im Dezember 1947 benutzte die Beratergruppe das hebräische Wort yotzma ('Initiative') für die Strategie, die sie im angestrebten Territorium ihres jüdischen Staates gegenüber den Palästiennsern verfolgen wollte. 'Initiative' bedeutete, gegen die palästiennsische Bevölkerung vorzugehen, ohne abzuwarten, bis sich ein Vorwand für tagmul ergab. Immer häufer fehlten denn auch solche Vorwände für Vergeltungsschläge."
Vgl. weiter S. 98-100.
S. 113: "Er [Yigael Yadin] empfahl [am 1.1.1948], den Begriff 'Vergeltung' aufzugeben: 'Das entspricht nicht dem, was iwr machen; das ist eine Offensive und wir müssen Präventivschläge initiieren, es ist nicht nötig, dass ein Dorf uns <zuerst> angreift. Wir haben unsere Möglichkeiten, die Wirtschaft der Palästinenser zu strangulieren, nicht richtig genutzt.' Der für viele Israelis legendäre Palmach-Chef Yitzhak Sadeh stimmte Yadin zu und ergänzte. 'Es war falsch von uns, nur Vergeltungsschläge zu führen.' Den Truppen musste eingeimpft werden, dass Angriff 'jetzt das A udn O ist'.
Sein Stellvertreter, Yigal Allon, war noch kritischer. Indirekt bemängelte er, dass die Beratergruppe Anfang Dezember keine expliziten Befehle uz einem umfassenden Angriff erteilt hatte. 'Inzwischen hätten wir ohen weiteres Jaffa aiennehmen können und die Dörfer um Tel Aviv angreifen sollen. Wir müssen eine Reihe 'kollektiver Strafaktionen' angehen, selbst wenn in den <angegriffenen> Häusern Kinder leben.' ... S 114 Moshe Dayan äußerte ähnliche Ansichten, und Ben Gurion lehnte jeden Versuch ab, in Jaffa oder anderen Orten Nichtangriffsabkommen zu schließen."
S. 114f.: Folge: Klagen der Bürgermeister von Tel Aviv, Rehovot, Nes Ziona, Rishon Le-Zion, Petah Tikva, dass die Hagana die Palästinenser durch unmotivierte Angriffe provoziere (Ben Gurion, Tagebuch vom 9.1.1948)
S. 149: ""In Deir Yassin zeigte sich deutlich die Systematik, die sich hinter Plan Dalet verbarg. ... Wegen des Abkommens, das die Hagana zuvor mit dem Dorf getroffen hatte, beschloss sie, die Truppen der Irgun und der Stern-Gruppe hinzuschicken, um offiziell jede Verantwortung von sich weisen zu können. Bei den späteren Säuberungsaktionen 'befreundeter' Dörfer hielt man nicht einmal mehr diese List für notwendig."

---

Esber 2009, S. 41: "...Palestinian refugee testimonies and other sources confirm that from April to May 15, 1948, the threat of British intervention to prevent Zionst military action was dissipating, and credible reports of pervasive and large-scale atrocities against Arabs were circulating. Without a deterrent, Zionist forces greatly expanded the systematic practice of intimidating Palestinian Arabs into abandoning their lands throug hdirect attack and terror, including massacres and other means of psychological warfare."

Abu-Sitta 2010, S. 85:

The immediate aim of Plan C was to disrupt Arab defensive operations, and occupy Arab lands situated between isolated Jewish colonies. This was accompanied by a psychological campaign to demoralize the Arab population. In December 1947, the Haganah attacked the Arab quarters in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Haifa, killing 35 Arabs. On December 18, 1947, the Palmah, a shock regiment established in 1941 with British help, committed the first reported massacre of the war in the village of al-Khisas in the upper Galilee. In the first three months of 1948, Jewish terrorists carried out numerous operations, blowing up buses and Palestinian homes. Even at this stage, early signs of ethnic cleansing became apparent.

Bregman 2017, S. 13: "The civil war in Palestine was vicious, cruel and littered with atrocities. It involved immense human suffering and a degree of blatant brutality never before seen in Jewish–Arab relations in Palestine, which had usually seen the two peoples living side-by-side in relative peace. On 31 December 1947, taking revenge for the killing of six of their fellows by Irgun, Arabs attacked and killed thirty-nine Jews at the Haifa oil refineries.41 The Hagana responded in kind, attacking the village of Bladel-Shieke, where it killed more than sixty Arabs, including women and children. At the beginning of February 1948, more than ten Arabs and two British policemen were killed in an explosion near the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem and, on 22 February, sixty Jews were killed by a car-bomb explosion on Jerusalem’s BenYehuda street. On 11 March, seventeen Jews were killed and forty were injured by a bomb in the courtyard of the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem43 and, on 9 April, 110 Palestinians – men women and children – were killed by Jews in the small village of Deir Yassin just west of Jerusalem, at least twenty-five of them being massacred in cold blood. Four days later, on 13 April, the Arabs took revenge by attacking a Jewish convoy of medical staff on its way to Mount Scopes, leaving seventy-seven dead.

Weitere Massaker: 18.12.1947: Al-Khisas-Massaker 30.12.1947: Haifa Oil Refinery-Massaker und Gegenmassaker 1.12.1947-1.1.1948: Balad al-Shaykh-Massaker 4.1.1948: Jaffa "Saraya"-Bombe 5.1.1948: Semiramis Hotel-Bombe 7.1.1948: Jaffa Gate-Bombe 15.2.1948: Sa'sa'-Massaker [Pappé 20077, S. 132] 13.+16.3.1948: al-Husayniyya-Massaker

9.4.1948: Deir Yassin-Massaker.

Benveniste 2000, S. 115:

With the outbreak of hostilities, Deir yasin and the adjacent Jewish neighbourhood of Giv´at Shau signed an agreement promising to be good neighbors, to hand over information regarding the movement of strangers on village territory, and to guarantee the safety of vehicles from the village traveling within the precincts of the Jewish neighborhoods. this agreement was approved by Haganah headquarters in Jerusalem. The inhabitants of Deir Yasin were fastidious in their fulfillment of the terms of the agreement, forcefully resisting incursions by Arab irregulars and rejectign the suggestion that they reinforce village defenses with fighters from outside. Five days before the attack, village dignitaries had refused to allow the entry of Arab forces that were preparing for raids in the Qastal area - emphasizing hte peaceful relations that prevailed between them and their jewish neighbors. Theese facts were known to IZL and LEHI (the 'Irgun' and 'Stern Group,' Jeiwsh extremist splinter groups), who planned the attack on the village and, after the massacre, falsely claimed taht Deir Yasin was a village of troublemakers where Syrian and Iraqi troops were being harbored.
The decision by the splinter groups to attack Deir Yasin - from which they would not budge despite their nominally being under the command of the Haganah - was not justified militarily. The attackers also did not operate as a military unit, instead behaving like uncontrolled rabble. In fact, the villagers succeeded in wounding forty of them, and only the intervention of a Palmach unit, summoned by the beleaguered Jeiwsh forces, saved the remainder and led to the conquest of the village. During, and especially after, the initial attack, the raiders fired indiscriminately, blew up houses with their inhabitants still inside, executred men, women, and children - firing at close range - and looted whatever came ot hand. Althoug hthe number of dead is not known for certain, the figure cited in both Jewish and Arab sources is 254 souls SS or approximatley one-third of the inhabitants, many of them women and children. New studies conducted by Sharif Kana´aneh reudce the estimated number of casualites to 120 killed. At the conclusion of the battle, teh surviving villagers were loaded on trucks and paraded in a 'victory march' through the main streets of Jerusalem, escorted by cheering fighters, weapons in hand. The writer of these lines, then a boy of forteen, along with thousands of hte city's Jeiwsh residents, still remembers htis disgusting spectacle.

1.5.1948: Ein al-Zeitun-Massaker 13.-19.5.1948: Abu Shusha-Massaker 23.5.1948: Tantura-Massaker (vgl. Pappé 2007, S. 211-218) 13.-14.5.1948: Abu Shusha-Massaker Juli 1948: Palästinensischer Exodus aus Lydda und Ramle 1948 mit Lydda-Massaker 28.10.1948: Daway(i)ma-Massaker 29.10.1948: Safsaf-Massaker 30.10.1948: Eilabun-Massaker 30.10.-2.11.1948: Saliha-Massaker 31.10.1948: Hula-Massaker 2.11.1948: Arab al-Mawasi-Massaker

30.11.1947: Fajja-Bus-Attacke 10.1.1948: Javne-Massaker 14.1.1948: Haifa-Massaker 22.2.1948: Ben Yehuda-Straßen-Bombe 18.3.1948: Akko-Massaker 13.5.: Kfar Etzion-Massaker (Rache für Deir Yassin: Benveniste, S. 116)

Eingriff arabischer Staaten (15 Mai)

(Operationen davor: S. List of Battles and Oeprations in the 1948 Palestine War

• 13.-20. Mai: Operation Ben-Ami in Westgaliläa
  Pappé 2007, S. 223: "Den jüdischen Truppen, die im Mai 1948 mit Operation 'Ben-Ami' die dörfer dieser Region angriffen, hatte man ausdrücklich gesagt, dass die Orte aus Vergeltung für den Verlust des Konvois zu elminieren seien. Daher wandten sie in Sumiriyya, Zib, Bassa, Kabri, Umm al-Faraj udn Nahr eine noch grausamere Variante der üblichen Zerstörungs- und Vertreibungspraxis siraelischer Einheiten an: 'Unser Auftrag: Angreifen zum Zweck der Besetzung ... die Männer töten, Kabri, Umm al-Faraj und Nahr zerstören und in Brand stecken.' [Eshel, The Carmeli Brigade in the War of Independence, S. 172]
  Der besondere Eifer, zu dem die Truppen sich so angespornt fühlten, sorgte für eine der schnellsten Entvölkerungsoperationen in eienr der dichtest besiedelten arabischen Regionen Palästinas. Innerhalb von 29 Stunden nach Beendigung des Mandats waren nahezu sämtliche Dörfer in den Nordwestbezirken Galiläas - die alle innerhalb des designierten arabischen Staatsgebiets lagen -zerstört, worauf Ben Gruion dem neu gebildeten Parlament zufrieden verkünden konnte: 'Westgaliläa ist befreit' ... Die jüdischen Truppen brauchten also nur gut einen Tag, um einen Distrikt mit 96 Prozent palästinensischer und nur 4 Prozent jüdischer Bevölkerung - und gleichem Verhältnis an Grundbesitz - in ein fast ausschließlich jüdisches Gebiet zu verwandeln. Besonders zufrieden war Ben Gruion darüber, wie reibungslos die Vertreibung der Bevölkerung in den größeren Orten vonstattten gegangen war, etwa in Kabri mit 1500, Zib mit 2000 und Bassa mit 3000 Einwohnern."
• 15.5.-11.6.: Hauptsächlich Verdichtung und Vergrößerung der beiden Keile zwischen den drei palästinensischen Gebieten => 11. Juni: Erster Waffenstillstand.
  • Abu-Sittah 2010, S. 88: 95.000 Flüchtlinge
  • Bregman 2017, S. 19: As the time approached for the truce to expire, the Arab League Political Committee met in Cairo and decided, under pressure from the Egyptian Prime Minister Nokrashy Pasha, to renew the fighting with the Israelis. Efforts by the UN mediator Count Bernadotte to renew the truce failed, and he recorded in his diary: ‘They [the Arabs] totally rejected my proposal to agree to prolong the truce’.84 Upon realizing that the truce would not be renewed, the Israelis took the initiative and struck on 9 July, two days before the ceasefire was due to expire."
• Bis 18. Juli: Eroberung von Halb Galiläa. "Operation Dani": Vergrößerung der Schneise ins Westjordanland mit Lydda (11.-12. Juli) und Ramle (12. Juli; zusammen 60-70.000 Flüchtlinge) inkl. Todesmarsch nach Ramallah => 2. Waffenstillstand (19. Juli 1948 - 17. Oktober; schon am 15. Okt von Israel gebrochen).
  Pappé 2007, S. 257: "Nachdem sowohl die Freiwilligen als auch die Legionäre sie im Stich gelassen hatten, suchten die Männer von Lydda, mit ein paar alten Gewehren bewaffnet, Zuflucht in der Dahamish-Moschee im Stadtzentrum. Nach einigen Stunden Kampf ergaben sie sich udn wurden von den israelischen Truppen in der Moschee massakriert. Palästinensische Quellen geben an, dass in der Moschee und den umliegenden Straßen, wo die jüdischen Truppen weiter mordeten und plünderten, 426 Männer, Frauen und Kinder getötet wurden (176 Leichen wurden in der Moschee gefunden). Am nächsten Tag, am 14. Juli 1948, gingen jüdische Soldaten von haus zu Haus, holten die Menschen heraus und trieben etwa 50 000 Einwohner zu Fuß aus der Stadt in Richtung Westjordanland (über die Hälfte von ihnen waren bereits aus umliegenden Dörfern geflüchtet)."
  Pappé 2007, S. 266: "Sobald die zweite Waffenruhe in Kraft trat, wrude sie gebrochen. In den ersten zehn Tage nbesetzten israelische Truppen strategisch wichtige Dörfer nördlich von Haifa, einige weitere Widerstandsnester, die sie ine WEile in Ruhe gelassen hatten wie die Küstendörfer südlich der Stadt. Mit der Einnahme von Damun, Im was, Tamra, Qabul ind Mi´ar war die Besetzung Westgaliläas abgeschlossen.
  Auch im Süden gingen die Käämpfe während der zweiten Waffenruhe weiter, da die Israelis Mühe hatten, die ägyptischen Truppen S267 im sogenannten Faluja-Kessel zu besiegen. ... Da die zionistische Führung merkte, dass ihre Verletzungen der Waffenruhe nicht auf Kritik stießen, solange sie sich gegen die verbliebenen 'arabischen' Enklaven innerhalb des in UN-Resolution 181 designierten jüdischen Staatsgebiets richteten, setzte sie ihre Operationen auch im August und darüber hinaus fort. Sie strebte nun eindutig einen 'jüdischen Staat' an, der sich über den größten TEil des Landes, wenn nicht gar über ganz Palästina erstreckte und dem lediglich die Standfestigkeit der Ägypter und vor allem der Jordanier im wege stand. Folglich betrieb sie mühelos die ethnische Säubierung von Dörfern, die sie nach udn nach isoliert hattte, während die UN-Beobachter, die über die Einhaltung der Waffenruhe S268 wachen sollten, in der Nähe zuschauten.
  In dieser Zeit Bernadotte: The Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine (6.9. => 7.9.: Ermordet)
  • Abu-Sittah 2010, S. 85: "by direct orders from Yitzhak Rabin with Ben Gurion’s agreement".
    Vgl. Bregman 2017, S. 19f.: "This major expulsion of the Palestinians was carried out with the tacit approval of Israeli Premier Ben Gurion, as is recorded by Yitzhak Rabin - then a military commander who took part in teh operation - in a piece which was censored from his published memoires:
    S20 We walked outside [the headquarters], Ben Gurion accompanying us. Allon [the commander of central command] repeated his question:‘What is to be done with the [Arab] population [of Ramleh and Lydda]?’ Ben Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said: ‘Drive them out!’ [vgl. auch Pappé 2007, S. 260] Allon and I had a consultation. I agreed that it was essential to drive the inhabitants out. We took them on foot towards Bet Horon road. ... The population did not leave willingly. There was no way of avoiding the use of force and warning shots in order to make the inhabitants march the ten to fifteen miles to the point where they met with the Arab Legion."
• Bis 24.10.: "Opperation Yoav" (nördlicher Teil des Gaza-Gebiets) "Opperation HaHar"; 29.-31. Okt: Operation Hiram: Angriff auf Libanon, Vernichtung der ALA
  • Abu-Sittah 2010, S. 90: "Aware that other Arab forces would not interfere, Israeli forces decided to attack Egyptian forces and occupy the southern half of Palestine. Under the pretext that the Egyptians obstructed the passage of supplies to a few Negev Jewish colonies, Israeli forces crossed the vital Majdal- Bayt Jibrin road and occupied 2,500 km2, including the pivotal town of Beer Sheba, and threatened Gaza. Fortyfive villages, mainly from the southern Jerusalem district, northern Beer Sheba and western Hebron districts, were depopulated. Operation Yoav was a great success in terms of occupied land. Militarily, it met little resistance.
    Having secured the southern front, Israeli forces redirected their attention to the unoccupied part of the Galilee which was designated as part of the Arab state. During Operation Hiram, which lasted for several days in late October and early November 1948, Israeli forces swept over the Galilee, occupied around 1,650 km2 of one of the most densely and fertile parts of Palestine. The largest number of massacres took place in the Galilee to induce the inhabitants to leave their homes.
    Expulsion, as elsewhere, followed a similar pattern. Israeli forces would attack a village and circle it from three directions leaving the fourth open. When the village surrendered with or without resistance, with or without a previous peace agreement with Zionist forces, all men of the village were gathered in one place and all women and children in another. A select number of young men, anywhere from 20 to 200 in number, were killed in small groups; sometimes the last group buried S91 the previous one. During Operation Hiram the remaining able-bodied men were taken to labour camps.281 The women, children and old men were expelled, in this case to Lebanon. ...
    
• Bis 31.10.: Operation "Hiram": Rest von Galiläa
• Bis 18.1.: "Operation Assaf" Rest des Südes bins auf Gazastreifen
  • Abu-Sittah 2010, S. 91: "With Egyptian forces defeated, other Arab fronts stagnant or ineffective, and the British-led Arab Legion having already agreed on a plan to divide Palestine between Transjordan and the Zionist movement, Israeli forces were able to move freely throughout Palestine. During Operation Lot they occupied a large region near the Dead Sea unopposed. Operation Yoav continued in the south of the country. During Operation Assaf Israeli forces attempted to dissect the Gaza Strip, where the population had swelled to nearly 300,000 with the influx of some 200,000 refugees from villages in southern Palestine. Refugees found shelter under trees, in tattered tents and in schools, mosques and hospitals. The attack on Gaza would likely result in the massacre of many thousands of innocent civilians. Ahmad Fouad Sadik, the new Egyptian commander refused orders from his HQ to withdraw and to surrender, saying, “My military honour does not allow me to leave behind 200,000 women, children and old men to be slaughtered like chicken”. His forces put up a fierce resistance, assisted by Muslim Brothers volunteers, and defeated Israeli forces in a decisive battle at Sheikh Hamoudeh or Hill 86. The Gaza Strip, crammed with refugees, was thus saved.
    Soon after, the Armistice Agreement with Egypt was signed. Hardly had the ink dried, when Israel sent two columns, one along central Negev and another west of Wadi Arabah, the boundary with Jordan. The two columns reached Umm Rashrash, on the Gulf of Aqaba. They planted the Israeli flag and washed their feet in the waters of the Red Sea. Israeli forces had occupied more than 7,000 km2

without a single shot being fired. ... The Egyptians did not even know of the advance. When their sergeant at a post near Umm Rashrash tried to telephone al-Arish, he found that Israeli forces had cut the single wire."

• Bis 10.3.: "Operation Uvda": Südlicher Rest des WJL
  • Abu-Sittah 2010, S. 91: "King Abdullah meanwhile was responding to heavy Israeli pressure to cede a large strip in central Palestine. After protracted negotiations, he yielded, and an armistice agreement was signed with him. Lebanon readily signed an armistice agreement and Syria entered into tough negotiations under the UN Acting Mediator Dr. Ralph Bunche, which lasted for four months, but an agreement was signed in the end."
    Abu-Sittah 2010, S. 100: "The strain between the two Hashemite armies of Iraq and Jordan reached its height in the spring of 1949. The Iraqi army decided to leave Palestine and hand over control of Tulkarm, Nablus and Jenin to Jordan. The Iraqis had held this front and repulsed the Israeli attacks on it for about ten months. While armistice negotiations were proceeding between the Jordanian and Israeli delegations in Rhodes under UN sponsorship, the Israelis sent a message to King Abdullah that they wanted to share the land evacuated by the Iraqi army. Israel threatened that it would occupy the whole of the West Bank, noting they outnumbered the Jordanians ten to one. Jordan did not agree to their demand. To prove the seriousness of their demand, the Israelis mobilized three brigades in broad daylight. During three nights of meetings at Shuneh in Jordan, senior Israelis met in utmost secrecy with King Abdullah and his senior ministers and officers to hammer out the best way to satisfy this Israeli demand. The King finally caved in leading to the secret agreements of March 23 and 30, 1949, which were incorporated in the official armistice agreement being discussed in Rhodes. ...
    The loss to Palestinians was unexpected and caused a great deal of grief. ... The nocturnal agreement affected the life of about 100,000 (98,545 in mid-1949) Palestinians living in 70 villages intersected or dissected by the new line. Of those, 18 Arab villages in the ceded strip found themselves suddenly under Israeli rule. Thirty-eight villages, which remained in the West Bank, lost much of their land. Fourteen additional villages on the Israeli side of the line lost some of their land. Palestinians lost one of the richest and most strategic areas of 371 sq.km. which is comparable to the area of Gaza Strip. Known as the Little Triangle, the area contained the villages of Umm al-Fahm, at-Tire, at-Taiyba, Kafr Qasem and Baqa al-Gharbiya."

Absicht arabischer Staaten, Israel zu vertreiben?

• Ja
  • Assenburg 2021, S. 26:

    Trotz großspuriger Ankündigung gelang es der Allianz daher weder Israel zu vernichten noch es zurückzudrängen.

• Nein
  • Shlaim 1995, S. 299: "it is true that all the Arab states, with the exception of Jordan, rejected the U.N. partition plan. It is true taht seven Arab armies invaded Palestine the morning after the State of Israel was proclaimed. It is true that hte invasion was accompanied by blood-curdling rhetorica and threads to throw the Jews into the sea. It is true taht in addition ot the regular Arab armies and hte Mufti's Holy war army, various groups of volunteeers arrived in Palestine, the most important of which was the Arab Liberation Army, sponosored by the Arab League and led by the Syrian adventurer Fawzi al-Qawukji. More importantly, it is true that the military experts of the Arab League had worked out a unified plan for the invasion and that his plan was all the more dangerous for having had more limited and realistic objectives than those implied by the wild Pan-Arab rhetoric.
    But King Abdullah, who was given nominal command over all the Arab forces in palestine, wrecked this plan by making last-minute changes. His objective in sending his army into Palestine was not to prvent the establishmetn of a Jewish state, but to make himself master of hte Arab part of Palestine, which meant preventing hte establishment of an independent Palestinian state. ... What is clear is that, under the command of Glubb Pasha, the Arab Legion made every effort to avert a head-on collision and, with the exception of one or two minor incidents, made no attempt to encroach on the territory allocated to the Jewish state by the U.N. cartographers.
  • Abu-Sittah 2010, S. 88f. (s.o.)
  • Pappé 2007, S. 186f:
    ""Als die jüdischen Truppen im Dezember 1947 die ersten Dörfer besetzten udn zerstörten, sah es so aus, als ob Galiläa das einzige Gebiet wäre, in dem sich diese Angriffe mit Hilfe von Fawzi al-Qawqji stoppen ließen. Er befehligte eine Armee von 2000 Mann und beeindruckte die örtliche Bevölkerung mit einer Reihe von Angriffen gegen isolierte jüdische Siedlungen (wie es auch andere Einheiten taten, die über das heutige Westjordanland kamen). Aber letztlich blieben es erfolglose Versuche, die nie eine sonderliche Verschiebung des Kräfteverhältnisses bewirkten. Die Strategie, die al-Qawqji verfolgte, schränkte ihn in seinen Möglichkeiten ein: Er unterteilte seine Truppe in kleine Einheiten udn stationierte sie in möglichst vielen Städten, Gemeinden und Dörfern, wo sie dann unzureichende Verteidigungskräfte bildeten.
    Die Präsenz einer solche Freiwilligenarmee hätte die Lage noch weiter verschlimmern und Palästina in eine direkte Konfrontation drängen können, aber das geschah nicht. Im Gegenteil, nachdem al-Qawqji einige isolierte jüdische Siedlungen udn Hilfskonvois angegriffen hatte, strebte er ab Januar eine Waffenruhe an, und berühmte sich den gesamten Februar udn März hindurch weiter darum. ... Er bot Palmon einen nichtangriffspakt an, der die jüdischen Truppen auf das designierte jüdische Staatsgebiet beschränkt udn letztlich Verhandlungen über ein in kantone aufgeteiltes Palästina ermöglicht hätte. Es bedarf keiner Erwähnung, dass sein Vorschlag auf Ablehnugn stieß. Dennoch startete er nie eine größere Offensive udn war dazu auch nicht in der Lage, bis die jüdischen Truppen in die Gebiete vordrangen, die S187 dem arabischen Staat von den Vereinten Nationen zugedacht waren.
    S. 195f: Vor Ablauf des Mandats stellten also weder die arabischen Freiwilligen von außerhalb Palästinas noch die paramilitärischen Einheiten im Inland eine ernsthafte Gefahr für die jüdische Gemeinde dar, den Kampf zu verlieren oder zur Kapitulation gezwungen zu werden. Weit davon entfernt: Alle diese ausländischen und einheimischen S196 Truppen vrsuchten lediglich - vergeblich -, die heimische palästinensische Bevölkerung vor jüdischen Angriffen zu schützen.
    In der israelischen und vor allem ind er amerikanischen öffentlichen Meinung gelang es jedoch den Mythos aufrechtzuerhalten, dass dem zukünftigen jüdischen Staat die potenzielle Vernichtugn oder ein 'zweiter Holocuast' drohe. Diesen Mythos konnte Israel später ausnutzen, um sich bei jüdischen Gemeinden in der ganzen Welt massive Unterstützung für den Staat zu sichern udn die Araber im allgemeinen udn die Palästinenser im Besonderne in den Augen der breiten amerikanischen Öffentlichkeit zu dämonisieren. Die Realität im Land sah dagegen fast genau umgekehrt aus: Palästinenser waren von massiven Vertreibungen bedroht. In dem Monat, den die israelische Geschichtsschreibung als 'härtesten' darstellt, versuchten die Palästinenser in Wirklichkeit nur, sich vor diesem Schicksal zu schützen, statt sich mit der Vernichtung der jüdischen Gemeinde zu befassen. Als er vorüber war, stand den ethnischen Säuberungen durch Israels Truppen nichts mehr im Weg."
    S. 198: "Am 30. April hatte die arabische Welt dem Mann, von dem die meisten ihrer Führer wussten, dass er ein Geheimabkommen mit den Juden getroffen hatte, den Oberbefehl über die Militäroperationen in Palästina übertragen. Kein Wunder, dass Ägypten, der größte arabische Staat, erst das scheitern der letzten amerikanischen Initiative abwartete, bevor es beschloss, sich an dem Militäreinsatz zu beteiligen, der in einem Fiasko enden würde, wie seine Führer wohl wussten. Die Entscheidung,d ie am 12. Mai im ägyptischen Senat fiel, lie der ägyptischen Armee kaum drei Tage Zeit, sich auf die S199 'Invasion' vorzubereiten, und von dieser unglaublich kurzen Vorbereitung zeugte dann auch irhe Leistung auf dem Schlachtfeld. Den anderen Armeen erging es nicht besser,w ie wir noch sehen werden."
  • Ich: Allerdings hatten syrische Truppen drei kleine Enklaven im israelischen Gebiet besetzt (Mishmar Hayarden, bei Banias, bei Samra-Tel al-Qasir); Ägypten verteidigte den Negev südlich von Beerscheba (vgl. Morris 2008, S. 350f.)

Haifa als Paradigma für Koexistenz und Fluchtbefehl arabischer Eliten

Morris in Ha'aretz

<=> Palumbo 1990, S. 6: "Indeed, Benny Morris' description of hte Palestinian exodus from haifa reveals the shortcomings of an attempt to utilize predominantly official Israeli sources. For one thing, he relegates the discussion of zionist psychological warfare to a single paragraph. he neglects the sotries spread by several Jewish radiostations of epidemics and vandalsim by arab troops. or does Morris mention the testimony of many Jewish witnesses, including Leo Heiman and Arthur Koestler, as well as British and Americal diplomatic and military people, which indicates taht a campaign of Zionist psychological warfare was a major factor in the exodus of Palestinians from haifa. In his footnotes, Morris makes about a half dozen claims of errors and omissions in Walid Khalidi's early article on the fall of Haifa, which ironically is far more accurate than Morris' in the light of mroe recent objective information. Morris neglects not only the Zionist campaign of psychological warefare, but also Irgun looting and the Arab radio broadcast, which attempted to stern the exodus from Haifa." Pappé 2007, S. 104: "Interessanterweise führen israelische Mainstream-Historiker und der revisionistische Historiker Benny Morris diese Stadt als Beispiel für den aufrichtigen guten Willen der Zionisten gegenüber der einheimischen Bevölkerung an. Die Wirklichkeit sah Ende 1947 jedoch völlig anders aus. Ab dem Tag, nachdem die die UN-Teilungsresolution verabschiedet wurde, waren die 75 000 Palästinenser der Stadt einer Terrorkampagne ausgesetzt, die Irgun und Hagana gemeinsam betrieben. Da erst in den vorangegangenen Jahrzehnten jüdische Siedler in die Stadt gezogen waren, hatten sie ihre Häuser höher am Hang gebaut. Sie wohnten also oberhalb ihrer arabischen Nachbarn und konnten sie ohne weiteres bombadieren udn aus dem Hinterhalt beschießen. Ab Anfang Dezember taten sie das häufig. Sie benutztne auch nochandere Einschüchterungsmethoden: die jüdischen Truppen ließen Sprengstofffässer und riesige Stahlkugeln in die arabischen Wohnviertel hinunterrollen und gossen auf die abschüssigen Straßen ein Geschmisch aus Öl und Benzin, das sie dann anzündeten. Sobald die palästinensischen Anwohner in Panik aus ihren Häusern rannten, um die brennenden Ströme zu löschen, sahen sie sich dem Dauerfeuer von Maschinenpistolen ausgesetzt."
S. 153: "Die jüdische terrorkampagne, die im Dezember gebann, umfasste schweren Artilleriebeschuss, Heckenschützenfeuer, Bäche aus brennendem Öl und Benzin, die sich die Berghänge hinunter in die Ortschaften ergossen, und detonierende Sptrengstofffässer; der Terror setze sich über die ersten Monate des Jahres 1948 fort, wurde aber Anfang April intensiviert.
S. 156: "Schon auf dem WEg zu ihrem Treffen mit dem britischen Kommandeur hatten die vier Männer gehört, wie die Juden die palästinenssichen Frauen udn Kinder über Lautsprecher drängten, zu gehen, bevor es zu spät sei. In anderen Teilen der Stadt schallten aus Lautsprechern genau gegenteilige Durchsagen des durch udn durch anständigen jüdischen Bürgermeisters der Stadt, Shabtai Levi, der die Menschen eindringlich bat zu bleiben und versprach, dass ihnen nichts geschehen würde. Aber nicht Levi, sondern Mordechai Maklef, der Operationschef der Carmeli-Brigade, hatte das SAgen. Maklef leitete die Säuberungsaktion und gab seienr Truppe klare, einfache Befehle: 'Tötet jeden Araber, den ihr trefft, setzt alles Brennbare in Brand und sprengt die Türen auf.' [Hagana Archives, 69/72, 22.4.1948] Später wurde er Stabschef der israelischen Armee.
Als sie diese Befehle prompt auf dem 1,5 Quadratkilometer großen Stadtgebiet von Haifa umsetzten, auf dem noch immer Tausende wherloser Palästinenser lebten, verbreiteten sie so viel Angst dun Schrecken, dass die menschen massenhaft die Flucht ergriffen, ohen etwas mitzunehmen oder auch nur zu wissen, was sie taten. ...
Ein paar Tage später besuchte Golda Meir, die damals bereits der zionistischen Führung angehörte, Haifa ...
S157 In den frühen Morgenstunden strömten die Menschen zum Hafen. ...
Die Brigadeoffiziere, die wusstne, dass man den Menschen geraten hatte, sich in Hafennähe zu sammeln, befahlen ihren Leuten, auf den Hängen oberhalb des Marktes und des Hafens - wo heute das Rothschild Hospital steht - Granatwerfer in Stellung zu bringen und die wachsende Menschenmenge unter Beschuss zu nehmen. Damit wollten sie sicherstellen, dass die Leute es sich nicht noch einmal anders überlegten udn nur in eine Richtung flüchten konnten.

Hammond 2016:

But the details Morris provides in 1948 of what happened in Haifa tell an altogether different story.
By the end of March 1948, most of the wealthy and middle-class families had fled Haifa. Far from ordering this evacuation, the Arab leadership had blasted those who fled as “cowards” and tried to prevent them from leaving.[71] Among the reasons for the flight were terrorist attacks by the Irgun that had sowed panic in Haifa and other cities. On the morning of December 30, 1947, for example, the Irgun threw “three bombs from a passing van into a crowd of casual Arab laborers at a bus stop outside the Haifa Oil Refinery, killing eleven and wounding dozens.”[72] (…)
“The Jewish authorities almost immediately grasped that a city without a large (and actively or potentially hostile) Arab minority would be better for the emergent Jewish state, militarily and politically. Moreover, in the days after 22 April, Haganah units systematically swept the conquered neighborhoods for arms and irregulars; they often handled the population roughly; families were evicted temporarily from their homes; young males were arrested, some beaten. The Haganah troops broke into Arab shops and storage facilities and confiscated cars and food stocks. Looting was rife.”[83]
This, then, is the situation Morris is describing when he disingenuously writes in Haaretz that the Zionist forces “left Arabs in place in Haifa” and that Arabs fled Haifa because they were “ordered or encouraged by their leaders”.

Grüne Linie

Bregman 2017, S. 21: "The talks were tough because there was no clear victor in this war. Israel had withheld the Arab invasion and beaten Lebanon and Egypt, but both Syria and Jordan had done well. The Syrian army had managed to cross the international border (agreed between France and Britain in 1923) and occupy land which had been allotted by the UN to the Jewish state. The Arab Legion, as has been shown, seized the West Bank and kept East Jerusalem. Thus in contrast, for instance, to the situation after the First World War, where the victors were able to impose ‘peace’ on Germany at Versailles, here there had been no clear winner, and reaching an agreement had to involve giveand-take between the parties."

Abu-Sittah 2010, S. 91: "The Armistice Agreements delineated a ceasefire line separating the warring parties on the day each respective agreement was signed. In effect, the armistice lines were a measure of the Israeli advance into Arab Palestine and of the retreat of the Arab forces. Nevertheless, the armistice lines between Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Israel were legally temporary in nature. According to each agreement,

It is emphasized that it is not the purpose of the Agreement to establish, to recognize, to strengthen or to weaken or nullify, in any way, any territorial, custodial or other rights, claims or interests which may be asserted by either Party in the area of Palestine or any part or locality thereof covered by this Agreement whether asserted rights, claims or interests derive from Security Council resolutions, including the Security Council resolution of 4 November 1948 and the Memorandum of 13 November 1948 for its implementation, or from any other source. The provisions of this Agreement are dictated exclusively by military considerations and are valid only for the period of the Armistice. [nach Eg.-Isr. Vereinbarung; ähnlich in den anderen]

Inspite of the temporary nature of the armistice lines, the agreements had two devastating effects on the future of Palestine. First, the arbitrary and enforced nature of the line caused the dismemberment of the land and the life of 111 villages, in addition to the Beer Sheba district. Second, Israel only regarded the armistice lines as a de facto border when pressured to retreat to the lines established by the 1947 Partition Plan. Otherwise, Israeli forces crossed the border at will, and Israel itself freely expanded into the West Bank, Gaza "Strip, Golan Heights and Lebanon."

Bregman 2017k, S. 23: "The armistice agreements were seen as temporary settlements which would later be replaced by permanent peace agreements. But the conflict between Israel and the Arabs and Palestinians was bound to continue, for the great problem which had caused the war in the first place – the struggle between Jews and Arab Palestinians for mastery of the land – was still unresolved at the war’s end."

Abu-Sittah 2010, S. 98: [Verschiedentlich noch von Israel verletzt. Bsp.:] This was not the only violation of international agreements. Israel managed to take a further bite of the Gaza Strip, shrinking its area by some 200 sq. km.
After Israel’s failure to decimate the Gaza Strip, it started a wave of land and air attacks on the Strip. UNTSO reports for the period of 26-31 December 1948 show that Israel bombed by air hospitals and civil sites. In particular, on January 2, 1949, 4 Israeli planes bombed the refugees’ food distribution centre in Deir el Balah and killed 30 civilians and wounded seventy. The ICRC report [ICRC G59/I/GC, G 3/82] was more detailed; it gave the fatalities figure at 150 and described the attack as “a scene of horror”. Eye witnesses gave the figure of 225 killed.

Abu-Sittah 2010, S. 101: "But the anger and outrage of Palestinians reached its height when the Jordanian and Israeli officers in the West Bank and the Egyptian and Israeli officers in Gaza Strip started demarcating the armistice line on the ground. Droves of angry people, shouting, cursing, tried to chase these officials away from their land. The Israeli officers resorted sometimes to shooting angry protestors. A total of 111 villages (104 in the West Bank and 7 in Gaza Strip) in addition to the Beer Sheba district were dismembered by the armistice line. Village houses were frequently separated from the village land and the villagers lost their livelihood. The well, spring or other water sources of the village sometimes became inaccessible behind the barbed wire. The village school, cemetery, mosque or church disappeared behind the watch tower with its pointed machine-guns. A funeral S 102 procession proceeding along both sides of the barbed wire of a divided village, like Bayt Safafa, was often the scene of anger and rage. Doubts about the location were always interpreted against the villagers’ interest. It did not help matters that the Arab officers, whether Egyptian or Jordanian, accompanying the Israelis, were ignorant of the territory. They did not appreciate the value of a hill, a valley or a road to the village life. Villagers’ protestation rarely succeeded. ...
The extent of dismemberment can be seen by examining Map 3.15 and the accompanying table. The table shows that out of 3,426,001 donums, the area of all dissected villages, 45 percent came under Israeli rule, 54 percent in the West Bank and 1 percent within the armistice line. The Israeli gain in land resulting from the dissection of villages can be seen by examining the summary table of measured areas on both sides. Table 3.3 shows that 1,532,664 donums (45 percent of 3,426,001 donums) was added to Israel, which is equivalent to 24 percent of Israel’s area without Beer Sheba district. The armistice lines, as they cut Palestine into three regions, Israel, West Bank and Gaza Strip, have therefore been the theatre of many clashes."

Bregman 2017, S. 21: "According to the UN partition resolution, about 55 per cent of the land was to be given to the Jews and 45 per cent to the Arabs, but when the war ended Israel controlled almost 80 per cent of the land. Israel – odd though it seems – had managed to keep these occupied territories without serious protest or international outcry – this was not to happen again in future wars. Egypt retained the Gaza Strip, and Jordan’s King Abdullah the West Bank of the river Jordan, which he annexed to his kingdom in 1950. For all practical purposes Palestine was partitioned; not, however, as the UN had envisaged, between Jews and ArabPalestinians, but rather between the Israelis and the Arab states which had, apparently, invaded the land in support of the Palestinians."

Flapan 1987b, S. 15.17f.: " Ben-Gurion introduced military rule in all areas allocated by the UN to the Arab state that had been taken over by the Jewish forces during the early fighting. With the declaration of the state in May 1948, this formally became the military administration. It was later extended to include Arab areas within the Jewish state, as a result of which 80 percent of the Arab population of Israel lived under the control of military governors acting on behalf of the general staff and the minister of defense. The military administration's authority was grounded in the British Mandatory Emergency Regulations, introduced in 1936 to repress the Arab Revolt and later widely employed against the Jewish resistance movements in 1946 and 1947.
These emergency laws authorized the army and its military governors to exercise complete control over the life, property, work, and freedom of movement of civilians under their jurisdiction. The presiding officials could detain or imprison local inhabitants without charges or trial for an indefinite period, expel them from the country, confiscate or destroy their property, and prohibit them from working or pursuing any other kind of activity. They were also empowered to close off entire areas for indefinite periods. All of this was done in the name of security, and no proof was required to justify any action in any court of law. In fact, by order of the Ministry of Defense, the military administration was immune from any interference by legislative or judicial authorities."
S. 17: Ben-Gurion continued the policy of reducing the numbers of Arabs in Israel even after the armistice treaties with the Arab states were sign S18 Forceful expulsion was no longer possible, but as pointed out above, the Military Administration possessed enough means to "persuade" numerous Arab inhabitants that they would prefer immigration over humiliation and harassment. This was the case, for example, in the villages of Faluja, 'Iraq al-Manshiyyah, and Majdal near the Gaza Strip, where between June and September 1950 some 1,159 villagers applied for permission to cross with their dependents into Gaza.
A more sophisticated form of pressure was achieved by legislation regarding property, particularly the Absentees' Property Law of 1950. This law, first promulgated in December 1948, stated that any Arabs not at their places of residence on 29 November 1947 would be considered absentees and their property subject to appropriation by the custodian of enemy property (an office soon replaced by the custodian of absentee property). Even Arabs who had traveled to a neighboring town to visit relatives for the day were considered absentees. As a result, two million dunams were confiscated and given to the custodian, who later transferred the land to the development authority. This law created the novel citizenship category of "present absentees" (nifkadim nohahim), that is, Israeli Arabs who enjoyed all civil rights-including the right to vote in the Knesset elections-except one: the right to use and dispose of their property. The interesting thing about this law is that it was proposed and formulated by none other than Moshe Sharett, to whom many attributed a liberal and humane attitude toward the Arabs. Another law, borrowed from the Ottomans, permitted the minister of agriculture to confiscate any uncultivated land. The revival of this law was linked to the power of the Military Administration to enclose an area and prevent its cultivation, a procedure that made confiscation rather simple."f

Anzahl Exilierter und Vertriebener

• Exiliertenenzahl:
  • 600.000-700.000 (Flapan 1987b, S. 3)
  • 700.000 (Assenburg 2021, S. 27)
  • < 728.000 (First Interim Report of the United Nations Economic Survey Mission for the Middle East)
  • 800.000 (Esber 2009, S. 28)
  • 805.000 (Abu-Sittah 2010, S. 91)
• 945.000 (UNRPR, 27.10.1949 nach Zensus)

Esber 2009, S. 28: "An American Red Cross official estimated that pregnant and nursing mothers, children under 15, adults over 60, and the infirm composed 84 percent of Palestinian refugees by October 1948. A U.N. refugee expert suppported this estimate. The vast majority of Palestinians forced into exile were defenseless noncombatant civilians. Only a small percentage of refugees were ablo-bodied men; the rest were dependents and broken family groups, which had lost their men.
Approximately 250,000 Palestinians who were driven from their homes lived in the area designated as the Jewish state in the U.N. partition plan. All others, about 69 percent, were expelled from areas designated as the Palestinian Arab state, in violation of the partition resolution."

UNRPR, 27.10.1949: "As regards teh age and sex of the refugees, it is evident from teh statistics furnished by the ICRC taht more than half the total number of the refugees are children under the age of 15 years. As regards the proportion of adults of the two sexes, of the total number of refugees receiving aid from this organization, 25.3% are women and 23.3% men. With regard to religion, 93% of the refugees are Moslems, 5% Christians and less than 2% Jews [vs. 89% Muslime:11% Christen um 1947] 143 etwa 10,80% und 1181 etwa 89,20%.

Abu-Sittah 2010, S. 119: Zustand der Dörfer:

• Komplett zerstört: 81
• Zerstört, Überreste erkennbar: 140
• Zerstört, Einzelne Wände stehen noch: 60
• Einzelne Häuser stehen noch: 74
• Überwiegend zerstört, 1-2 jüd. Familien leben dort: 17
• Mehr als 2 jüd. Familien leben dort: 35 (=8,4%)
• Unzugänglich: 11 (=2,6%)

Abu-Sittah 2010, S. 104: "The area of Israelioccupied Palestine in 1948 (77 percent) had 956 localities, of which 183 were Jewish ... 306 Palestinian villages were occupied by Israel in excess of the Partition Plan. The Palestinian villages which came under Israeli control (773) outnumbered the Jewish colonies by 4.3 times. This is one reason why Israel followed (in 1948 and thereafter) a consistent policy of ethnic cleansing which succeeded in depopulating most of these villages and towns. Of the 773 Palestinian towns/villages, 87 remained although their population were dislocated by adding or losing population from or to nearby villages. Another 12 had been depopulated but then repopulated by roughly the same population ... That leaves a total number of 674 depopulated Palestinian villages. That is, 87 percent of all Palestinian localities in the part of Palestine that became Israel were depopulated.
S. 105 ... . If legality is accorded to Balfour Declaration and the Mandate, and if further, the legality of the Partition Plan is accepted, those two big contested ‘ifs’ do not justify the fact that Israel exceeded the Partition Plan by conquering extra 310 Palestinian villages and extra 24 percent of the land of Palestine.
The second conclusion is derived from the fact that Israel, after this immense conquest, was left with a vast area of land (20,359,000 donums as measured) and 773 Palestinian towns and villages. Since the Zionist ideology rests on the need to acquire a ‘Palestine land without people’, the obvious corollary is to remove the people of this land. Hence, only 99 Palestinian villages remained in Israel, albeit under military rule until 1966, and 674 villages had been totally depopulated. This was one of the largest acts of planned ethnic cleansing in modern history. It is also continuous and applied daily in the Occupied West Bank."

Rückkehrrecht (Res 194, Art. 11)

Flapan 1987b, S. 16: The concept of population transfer, although it had always appealed to Zionist thinkers, was never adopted as official policy.48 In 1937, Ben-Gurion declared that he idea-which immediately outraged the Arabs - was morally and ethically justified, nothing more than the continuation of a natural process taking place, as Jews displaced Arabs.49 The implementation of transfer occurred to Ben-Gurion, as already noted, after the flight of the Arabs from Haifa in April. In practice, the concept of transfer - or to be more precise, retroactive transfer - offered a rationale for expulsion. Under the guise of a hypothetical exchange, the already excluded Palestinians were now to be seen as replacements for Jewish immigrants from Arab countries. The project became more concrete on 5 June when Joseph Weitz of the colonization department of the Jewish National Fund proposed it as a way of dealing with the problem raised by Count Bernadotte about the return of the refugees.50 Ben-Gurion appointed what became known as the transfer committee, composed of Weitz, Danin, and Zalman Lipshitz, a cartographer. At the basis of its recommendations, presented to Ben-Gurion in October 1948, was the idea that the number of Arabs should not amount to more than 15 percent of Israel's total population, which at that time meant about 100,000.51
A week after he created the committee, Ben-Gurion told the Jewish Agency: "I am for compulsory transfer; I don't see anything immoral in it." For tactical reasons, he was against proposing it at the moment, but "we have to state the principle of compulsory transfer without insisting on its immediate implementation."52 He found no contradiction between the policy of transfer and the achievement of Jewish-Arab peace, which he always presented as one of the ultimate aims of Zionism. The committee examined the problem of the Palestinian refugees from a variety of angles and brought its conclusions to Ben-Gurion on 26 October. Estimating that there were about 506,000 refugees, almost equally divided between rural and urban dwellers, the committee reasserted that the Arabs themselves were responsible for their flight and that they could not return for two reasons. First, they would constitute a fifth column; second, enormous sums of money-beyond what Israel could pay-would be required for their return and rehabilitation. ... S17 s. Finally, the committee insisted that no refugees be allowed to return to border villages and that the Arabs must be self-supporting.
Hand in hand with measures to ensure the continued exodus of Arabs from Israel was a determination not to permit any of the refugees to return. All of the Zionist leaders-Ben-Gurion, Sharett, and Weizmann-agreed on this point. As Ben-Gurion wrote: "If we win, we shall not annihilate the Egyptian or the Syrian people, but if we fail and fall to defeat, they will exterminate us; because of this, we cannot permit them to return to the places which they left. . . . I don't accept the formulation that we should not encourage their return: Their return must be prevented . . . at all costs." ...
Writing to Weizmann on 22 August 1948, Sharett indicated, "We are determined to be adamant while the truce lasts. Once the return tide starts, it will be impossible to stop it, and it will prove our undoing. As for the future, we are equally determined-without, for the time being, formally closing the door to any eventuality-to explore all possibilities of getting rid, once and for all, of the huge Arab minority that once threatened us." He pointed out that permanent resettlement of "Israeli" Arabs in the neighboring territories would make surplus land available in Israel for settlement of Jews."

Abu-Sittah 2010, S. 91: "Israel viewed the returnees as ‘infiltrators.’ All across the country, refugees attempted to return to their homes following the end of hostilities, but this phenomenon, which is common when people are displaced, was particularly predominant in Galilee to the extent that Israeli forces initiated a special operation known as Operation Magrefa (Scoop) from December 1948 to July 1949 to hunt down and kill the returnees."

Abu-Sittah 2010, S. 98: "These terrible attacks [auf Gaza nach der grünen Linie] were intended to deter the refugees from returning to their homes. Israel booby trapped the houses and wells of the refugees. It complained to the Egypt-Israel Mixed Armistice Commission about forays of returning refugees, termed “infiltrators”. At the same time, Israel carried out a hydro-geological survey at Wadi el Hesi, marking the northern side of the armistice line, within the Gaza Strip, and found considerable water resources. It planned to take it.
Under the pretext of curbing the refugees trips to their villages, Israeli truce officers negotiated with their Egyptian counterparts, Mahmoud Riyadh and Salah Johar, the possibility of shifting the armistice line 3 km inwards, reducing the area of Gaza Strip from 555 to 362 sq. km. Thus the underground water of Wadi el Hesi was severed from Gaza Strip and the armistice was shifted inwards.
Thus, an agreement, known as Modus Vivendi agreement, was signed secretly on February 22, 1950 in Al Auja (Nizana) and registered at the Security Council on March 17, 1950. The people in Gaza, and Egypt generally, were not aware of this agreement.
S 99: Art. III of the Modus Vivendi stated that it is of “a purely local character and will not affect in any way the provisions of the principal [Armistice] agreement”. However this article was never applied. Instead, the line was demarcated by barrels, then by a tractor-ploughed line, and finally, after the 1956 Suez war (The Tripartite Aggression), by fixed pillars and electrified barbed wire. ...
Contrary to the terms of the Armistice Agreement, Israel declared that the (shifted) armistice line enclosing Gaza Strip is “an international border” with Israel."

---

Pappé 2007, S. 67: "'Palästina Frieden zu bringen' hat bis heute immer bedeutet, ein ausschließlich zwischen den USA und Israel erarbeitetes Konzept zu verfolgen, ohne dass es ernsthafte Konsultationen mit, geschweige denn Rücksicht auf die Palästinenser gegeben hätte."

Literatur

1. ✓ Salman H. Abu-Sitta (2010): Atlas of Palestine 1917-1966
2. ✓ Muriel Assenburg (2021): Palästina und die Palästinenser
3. ✓ Meron Benveniste (2000): Sacred Landscape. The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948
4. Ian Bickerton, Carla L. Klausner (2002 = 1995): A concise history of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
5. Ian Black (2017): Enemies and Neighbors. Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017
6. ✓ Ahron Bregman (2016): Israel's Wars. A History Since 1947
7. Henry Cattan (1988): The Palestine Question
8. ✓ Rosemarie Esber (2009): Under the Cover of War: The Zionist Expulsion of the Palestinians
   (UN-, US-, GB-Archive; 130 Interviews)
9. Norman G. Finkelstein (1995): Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict
10. Michael R. Fischbach (2003): Records of Dispossession. Palestinian REfugee Property and the Arab-Israeli Conflict
11. Simha Flapan
    1. Simha Flapan (1987): The Birth of Israel. Myths and Realities
    2. ✓ Simha Flapan (1987b): The Palestinian Exodus of 1948
12. Yoav Gelber
    1. Yoav Gelber (2006): Palestine 1948. War, Escape and the Emergence of the Palestinian Refugee Problem
    2. Yoav Gelber (2007): The History of Zionist Historiography. From Apologetics to Denial
13. James L. Gelvin
    1. James L. Gelvin (2021=2006): The Israel-Palestine Conflict: A History
    2. James L. Gelvin (2007): The Israel-Palestine Conflict. One Hundred Years of War
14. Martin Gilbert (1993): Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
15. Motti Golani, Adel Manna (2011): Two sides of the coin. Independence and Nakba, 1948: two narratives of the 1948 War and its outcome
16. Sharif Kanaana (2000): Still on vacation! The Eviction of the Palestinians in 1948
17. Efraim Karsh (2002): The Arab Israeli Conflict: The Palestine War 1948
18. Rashid Khalidi (2020): The Hundred Years' War on Palestine
19. Walid Khalidi (1992): All that Remains
20. Baruch Kimmerling
    1. Baruch Kimmerling (1993): Palestinians: The Making of a People
    2. Baruch Kimmerling (2009): The Palestinian People: A History
21. Gudrun Krämer (2015): Geschichte Palästinas
22. Arnold Krammer (1974): The Forgotten Friendship. Israel and the Soviet Bloc 1947-53
23. Adel Manna (2022): Nakba and Survival. The Story of Palestinians Who Remained in Haifa and the Galilee, 1948-1956
24. Nur Masalha
    1. Nur Masalha (1982): The Concept of "Transfer" in Zionist Political Thought 1882-1948
    2. Nur Masalha (2003): The Politics of Denial: Israel and the Palestinian refugee problem
    3. Nur Masalha (2018): Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History
       ___Itamar Rabinovich (2022): The Israeli-Palestinian War of Narratives: Nur Masalha's Palestine: A Four Thusand Year History in Context
25. Edward Mast (2008): Nakba. The Ongoing Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
26. Uri Milstein (1996): History of the War of Independence
27. Benny Morris
    1. Benny Morris (1986): The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem
       Pappé 2007, S. 15: "Morris' Bild war einseitig, weil er die israelischen Militärberichte, die er in den Archiven fand, für bare Münze nahm. So konnte er von Juden begangene Gräulentaten ignorieren ... Außerdem beharrte er - zu Unrecht - darauf, dass es vor dem 15. Mai 1948 keine Zwangsräumungen gegeben habe. Palästinensische Quellen belegen eindeutig, dasss es den jüdischen Truppen schon monate vor dem Einmarsch arabischer Truppen in Palästina, während die Briten noch für Recht und Ordnung im Land zuständig waren - nämlich vor dem 15. Mai -, gelungen war, nahezu eine Viertelmillion Palästinenser zwangsweise zu vertreiben. Hätten Morris und andere Historiker auch arabische Quellen verwendet oder müdnlich überlieferte Geschichte hinzugezogen, wären sie vielleicht besser in der Lage gewesen, die systematische Planung zu erkennen, die hinter der Vertreibung der Palästinenser 1948 stand, udn eine wahrheitsgetreuere Darstellung der ungeheuerlichen Verbrechen zu geben, die die israelischen Soldaten begangen haben."
    2. ✓ Benny Morris (1986b): The Causes and Character of the Arab Exodus from Palestine: The Israel Defence Forces Intelligence Branch Analysis of June 1948
    3. Benny Morris (1994): 1948 and after. Israel and the Palestinians
    4. Benny Morris (2004): The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited
    5. Benny Morris (2007): Revisiting the Palestinian exodus of 1948, in: Rogan/Shlaim 2007
    6. Benny Morris (2008): 1948. A History of the First Arab-Israeli War
       ___ Jeremy R. Hammond (2016): Benny Morris's Untenable Denial of the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
    7. Benny Morris (2016): Israel Conducted No Ethnic Cleansing in 1948
28. Ritchie Ovendale (1999): The Origins of the Arab Israeli Wars
29. Michael Palumbo (1987): The Palestinian Catastrophe: The 1948 Expulsion of a People from Their Homeland
30. Ilan Pappé
    1. Ilan Pappé (2006): The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
    2. Ilan Pappé (2006): The 1948 Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
    3. Ilan Pappé (³2007=2006): Die ethnische Säuberung Palästinas
       ___Seth J. Frantzman (2008): The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappé
       ___ Mordechai Bar-On (2008): Cleansing history of its content: Some critical comments on Ilan Palle's The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
    4. Ilan Pappé (2017): Ten Myths about Israel
    5. Ilan Pappé (2022): A History of Modern Palestine
31. John B. Quigley (2016): The International Diplomacy of Israel's Founders: Deception at the United Nations in the Quest for Palestine
32. Areej Sabbagh-Khoury (2023): Colonizing Palestine. The Zionist Left and the Makign of the Palestinian Nakba
33. Kirsten E. Schulze (2013= ?): The Arab-Israeli Conflict
34. Michael Scott-Baumann (2021): The Shortest History of Israel and Palestine
35. Tom Segev: Es war einmal ein Palästina. Juden und Araber vor der Staatsgründung Israels
36. Anita Shapira (2012): Israel. A History
37. Avi Shlaim
    1. Avi Shlaim (1987): Britain and teh Arab-Israeli War of 1948
    2. Avi Shlaim (1990): The Politics of Parittion. King Abdullah, the Zionist and Palestien 1921 - 1951
    3. ✓ Avi Shlaim (1995): The Debate about 1948
    4. Avi Shlaim (1995v): War and Peace in the Middle East. A Concise History
    5. Avi Shlaim, Eugene L. Rogan (2007=2001): The War for Palestine. Rewriting the History of 1948
    6. Avi Shlaim (2015 = 2001): The Iron Wall. Israel and the Arab World
    7. Avi Shlaim (2007): The Debate about 1948
    8. Avi Shlaim (2020=2009): Israel and Palestine. Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations
38. Jerome Slater (2021): Mythologies without End. The US, Israel, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1917-2020
39. Charles D. Smith (2014 = ?): Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. A History with Documents
40. David Tal (2004): War in Palestine 1948. Strategy and Diplomacy
41. Mark Tessler (2009=1994): A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
42. Shabtai Teveth (1985): Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs. From Peace to War
43. Baylis Thomas (1999): How Israel was won. A concise History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
44. Spencer C. Tucker / Priscilla Roberts (2008): The Encyclopedia of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
45. Alison Weir (2014): Against Our Better Judgment. The Hiden History of how the U.S. was used to Create Israel
46. Dov Waxman (2019): The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: What Everyone Needs to Know

• Walter Laqueur, Dan Schueftan 1969: The Israel-Arab Reader. A Documentary History

• Daud Abdullah (2019): A century of cultural genocide in Palestine
• Saleh Abdel Jawad (2006): The Arab and Palestinian Narratives of the 1948 War
• Saleh Abdel Jawad (2007): Zionist Massacres: the Creation of the Palestinian Refugee Problem in the 1948 War
• Naseer Aruri (2001): Palestinian Refugees The Right of Return
• Ariel Sophia Bardi (2016): The "Architectural Cleansing" of Palestine
• Elad Ben-Dror (2007): The Arab Struggle against Partition: The International Arena of Summer 1947
• Phyllis Bennis (1997): The United Nations and Palestine: Partition and Its Aftermath
• Erskine Childer 1961: The Other Exodus
• Tariq Dana, Ali Jarbawi (2017): A Century of Settler Colonialism in Palestine
• Ghazi Falah (1996): The 1948 Israeli-Palestinian War and its Aftermath: The Transformation and De-Signification of Palestine's Cultural Landscape
• Itzhak Galnoor (2009): The Zionist Debates on Partition (1919-1947)
• John B. Glubb (1957): A Soldier with the Arabs
• Stephanie Gutmann (2005): The other War. Israelis, Palestinians, an d the struggle for Media Supremacy
• Martin Shaw (2022): Palestine in an International Historical Perspective on Genocide
• Walid Khalidi (1988): Plan Dalet: Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine
• Walid Khalidi (1997): Revisiting the UNGA Partition Resolution
• Walid Khalidi (2005): Why Did the Palestinians Leave, Revisited
• Haifa Rashed u.a. (2014): Nakba Memoricide: Genocide Studies and hte Zionist/Israeli Genocide of Palestine
• Kermit Roosevelt (1948): The Partition of Palestine: A Lesson in Pressure Poltics
• Edward Said (1992): The Question of Palestine
• Chaim Weizmann (1942): Palestine's Role in the Solution of the Jewish Problem
• Grace Wernenbol (2021): A Tale of Two Narratives: The Holocaust, the Nakba, and the Israeli-Palestinian Battle of Memories
• Mahmoud Yazbak (2000): From Poverty to Revolt. Economic Factors in the Outbreak of the 1936 Rebellion in Palestine