Israel to Blame for Expulsion of Palestinians from Their Land in 1948

By The Coalition for Justice in Israel/Palestine
Stanford Daily
Wednesday, May 15, 2002

Today, the Coalition for Justice in Israel/Palestine at Stanford invites all students, faculty and staff to attend an educational gathering to learn about al-Nakba, the "catastrophe" of 1948, in which Palestinians lost their homeland.

In light of the ongoing violence in Israel and Palestine and America's recurring involvement in the region, it is more important than ever for the Stanford community to learn about the historical origins of the conflict as a way of promoting dialogue and understanding.

One of the earliest and most enduring slogans of the Zionist movement with regards to its ambitions in Palestine ("the Land of Israel") was: "A Land without a People for a People without a Land." Historically, we know this was far from the case. At the beginning of the 20th century, Palestine was home to approximately 500,000 indigenous Arabs and 60,000 Jews.

The Zionist movement and subsequently the state of Israel's deliberate marginalization of the physical presence and political legitimacy of the large Arab population in historic Palestine has, in large part, shaped the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Indeed, this problem of historical ignorance and political myopia continues to obstruct efforts to achieve a just peace and plagues American commentary and analysis on the current conflict.

In order to understand the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we must keep a few critical historical facts in mind: The United Nations adopted Resolution 181 on Nov. 29, 1947, partitioning British Mandatory Palestine, from the Jordan River in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west, into two states -- one Jewish and one Arab.

Historical sources state that in 1947, Palestine was populated with approximately 1.2 million Arabs and 600,000 Jews. Despite this population ratio of 2:1, and despite the fact that the distribution of land ownership was 92 percent to 94 percent Palestinian Arab and 6 percent to 8 percent Jewish, the U.N. partition plan called for a Jewish state on 56 percent of historic Palestine and a Palestinian Arab state on 44 percent. According to the U.N. partition plan, therefore, a significant amount of Arab-owned land was to be designated as part of the Jewish state. As such, it is hardly surprising that Palestinian Arabs at the time rejected the loss of significant chunks of their homeland.

Thus, rising out of this context, a civil war was waged between Jews and Palestinian Arabs from November 1947 until May 1948. After the State of Israel was unilaterally declared on May 15, 1948, a regional war ensued between the newly established state and the Arab armies of Syria, Egypt, Jordan and Iraq. Already in 1938, future Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion had written: "[I am] satisfied with part of the country, but on the basis of the assumption that after we build up a strong force following the establishment of the state -- we will abolish the partition of the country, and we will expand to the whole Land of Israel." By the final ceasefire in July 1949, Israel had forcibly acquired approximately 78 percent of Mandate Palestine. Egypt and Jordan controlled the remaining parts of historical Palestine, and a Palestinian state never materialized.

During the course of the hostilities, over 418 Palestinian villages were depopulated, creating a refugee problem of some 700,000 Palestinians, who were either forcibly expelled or fled out of fear to what they thought would be a temporary stay in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan or Iraq. In total, over 250 of these Palestinian villages were then repopulated with Jewish immigrants, and all traces of these villages' Palestinian pasts were completely erased.

This narrative of the war of 1947 to 1949 has come to light thanks to the pioneering empirical scholarship of the so-called "new Israeli historians" (Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim, Simha Flapan, Ilan Pappe), who have debunked myths about the pristine nature of Israel's founding.

Despite the emergence of this critical body of history, the Palestinian experience of loss, dispersion and exile has remained a taboo topic in contemporary American political culture. Indeed, much as the original landscape of Palestine has been destroyed, re-mapped and renamed, so too has a gradual process of historical erasure and political "re-education" rendered any attempts to study and commemorate Palestinian history, culture and identity illegitimate.

There has been little space afforded the Palestinian people to affirm their unique cultural identity, let alone to commemorate the tragic loss of their homes, property and homeland set into place by the events of 1947-49.

Recent remarks by House Majority Leader Dick Armey in a televised interview condoning further "ethnic cleansing" of the Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip confirm the necessity to educate Americans about the destructive history of 1948. There's an old adage that those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. Let it not be so.