The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

The first section of Chapter 1, “Definitions of Ethnic Cleansing,” lays out the definitions of “ethnic cleansing” that Pappé will be working with. Pappé quotes Hutchinson Encyclopedia’s definition of ethnic cleansing:

[E]xpulsion by force in order to homogenise [sic] the ethnically mixed population of a particular region or territory. The purpose of expulsion is to cause the evacuation of as many residences as possible, by all means at the expeller’s disposal, including non-violent ones, as happened with the Muslims in Croatia, expelled after the Dayton agreement of November 1995. (21)

This basic definition is also accepted by the US State Department and the UN, as well as by academics. Surveying the literature on ethnic cleansing, Pappé adds that the most common tactic of ethnic cleansing is depopulation, often with retribution as a pretext; that ethnic cleansing often makes use of violence; that ethnic cleansing is associated with nationalism; and that while ethnic cleansing may involve a master plan, the troops involved often know what to do without receiving direct orders. Ethnic cleansing is regarded by the international community as a crime against humanity punishable by international law. Pappé takes issue with the use of the qualifier “alleged” for cases of ethnic cleansing that were never brought before an international tribunal—such as the ethnic cleansing of Palestine—opining that this qualifier should not be used with cases that are so clear-cut.

In the next section, “Ethnic Cleansing as a Crime,” Pappé looks at ethnic cleansing as a crime against humanity in international law. He discusses the members of the Zionist “Consultancy” or “Consultant Committee” involved in Plan D—figures such as David Ben-Gurion, Yigael Yadin, Moshe Dayan, and Yitzhak Rabin—and states that their involvement in ethnic cleansing must be acknowledged. Pappé recommends a rule of obsolescence for this case of ethnic cleansing as the only way to achieve peace, but only on the condition that Palestinian refugees be allowed to return to their homes.

In the final section of Chapter 1, “Reconstructing an Ethnic Cleansing,” Pappé recaps the arguments of earlier historians such as Nur Masalha establishing “the origins of Zionism as the ideological cause of the ethnic cleansing” (26). The idea of ethnic cleansing, Pappé explains, was deeply rooted in Zionist thought by 1948.

Pappé ends the chapter by taking a moment to consider the scale of the “relative numbers” involved in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, emphasizing that “[h]alf of the indigenous people living in Palestine were driven out, half of their villages and towns were destroyed, and only very few among them ever managed to return” (27-28). Pappé reflects upon the “deep chasm between reality and representation that is most bewildering in the case of Palestine” (28), lamenting the extent to which the events of 1948 are misrepresented and that the true situation is often ignored.

In the first section of Chapter 2, “Zionism’s Ideological Motivation,” Pappé lays out the ideology of Zionism from its emergence in the 1880s. The Zionists’ objective was to create a home for the Jewish people, eventually setting their sights on Palestine, the Eretz Israel of the Jewish religion. However, Jewish presence in Palestine was still very limited when the British occupied Palestine in 1918, with Jewish people forming no more than 5% of the country’s total population. Pappé writes that many Palestinians initially ignored the Zionists, though some “sensed the looming danger” and tried to limit or prevent Jewish immigration to Palestine (30). Pappé acknowledges that the main motivation of most Zionists was to escape centuries of persecution in the West.

In Palestine, the Zionists were able to win support from Western powers, especially the British. British administrators such as Lloyd George preferred Jewish immigrants to the Muslim inhabitants of Palestine. Gradually, Zionist ideology became increasingly nationalist, and the result was a drive for an exclusively Jewish state.

In 1917, the British Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour passed a mandate for a national home for Jews in Palestine. This mandate was not well received by the Palestinian population and soon led to violence. The unrest led the British government to introduce a political structure that would give equal political power to both communities. In practice, Pappé claims, this plan was more advantageous to the Jewish Zionists than to the Indigenous Palestinians. The plan was initially accepted by the Zionists but not by the Palestinians, then by the Palestinians and not by the Zionists. Tensions erupted in the 1929 and 1936 Palestinian uprisings, which culminated in a brutal British intervention and the expulsion of much of the Palestinian leadership by 1939. With the Palestinian position weakening, the Zionists began demanding more and more of Palestine for themselves.

The second section, “Military Preparations,” describes the militarization of the Zionists in the 1930s, encouraged and assisted by British officers such as Orde Charles Wingate. In this period, the Zionists’ principal militia, the Hagana, rapidly transformed. There were more violent confrontations between the Hagana and Palestinian communities, with the Zionists aiming to intimidate their Palestinian neighbors.

The third section, “The Village Files,” discusses the plan of the academic Ben-Zion Luria to compile a registry of Arab villages in Palestine. The Jewish National Fund (JNF)—the Zionist agency in charge of acquiring Palestinian land for Jewish settlers—seized on this plan. Yossef Weitz, the head of the settlement department of the JNF, immediately saw the potential of the “village files” to help the Zionists get their hands on Palestinian land more quickly, though by the end of the Mandate in 1948, the Zionists still controlled only around 5.8% of the land in Palestine. Other figures involved in the development of the village files included Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, Moshe Shertock (Sharett), and Ezra Danin. By the late 1930s, the village files were nearly complete, including information on the demographics of Palestinian villages, their agriculture and economy, and individuals who were considered a threat to the Zionist movement.

By the 1940s, the Zionist leadership’s main obstacle was not Palestinian resistance but the British presence in the country. The British had already destroyed Palestinian leadership by the end of the 1930s; British imperial rule was now the only political barrier to complete Zionist governance. The Zionist leadership thus became more aggressive in their demands for a Jewish commonwealth and began trying to push the British out of Palestine.

In the final section of Chapter 2, “David Ben-Gurion: The Architect,” Pappé turns to David Ben-Gurion, the leader of the Zionist movement from the mid-1920s until the 1960s. Ben-Gurion was a strong advocate for the establishment of a purely Jewish nation-state achieved through the removal of the Palestinians. Ben-Gurion realized that the Zionists would need to use force to achieve their aims, but he also knew that they needed to wait for the right moment to strike. In the 1940s, the Zionists began to launch terrorist attacks against the British in power. Though the British responded mildly to these Jewish terrorist attacks, especially when compared with their harsh response to the Palestinians in earlier decades, Ben-Gurion realized that the Zionists would need to become more flexible. Still, he continued to insist that the Zionists demand at least 80% of the country from the British.

Ben-Gurion became more and more obsessed with “security” (bitachon) against the Palestinian majority as well as Arab neighbors who might support Palestinians. In 1946 and 1947, when it was clear that the British were soon going to depart, Ben-Gurion and the Zionists developed Plan C (in Hebrew, Gimel), also known as the Elimelech Plan, after Hagana commander Elimelech Avnir. This plan was directed at preparing a Jewish military for an offensive against the Palestinians when the British left the country, with the aim of deterrence and retaliation against Palestinian communities. The village files would enable this offensive. Plan C was soon replaced by Plan D, the objective of which was the total expulsion of the Palestinians from the Jewish state.