The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (48 page)

61
. Rivlin and Oren,
The War of Independence
, pp. 210–11.

62
. Ben-Gurion’s
Diary
, 1 January 1948.

63
. See note 52.

64
. Bar-Zohar,
Ben-Gurion
, p. 681.

65
. Ben-Gurion’s
Diary
, 30 January 1948.

66
. Ibid., 14 January 1948, 2 February 1948, and 1 June 1948.

67
. Information on the meetings in February is drawn from Ben-Gurion’s
Diary
.

68
. Ben-Gurion’s
Diary
, 9 and 10 February 1948 and
Haganah Book
, pp. 1416–18.

69
.
Hashomer Ha-Tza‘ir
Archives, Files 66.10, meeting with Galili 5 February 1948 (reporting a day after the
Matkal
meeting on 4 February Wed.).

70
. Zvi Sinai and Gershon Rivlin (eds),
The Alexandroni Brigade in the War of Independence
, p. 220 (Hebrew).

71
. Morris,
The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem
, pp. 53–4.

72
. Weitz,
My Diary
, vol. 3, p. 223, 11 January 1948.

73
. The figures listed in the official report were more modest, detailing the blowing
up of forty houses, the killing of eleven villagers, and the wounding of another eighty.

74
. Israel Even Nur (ed.),
The Yiftach-Palmach Story
.

75
. Ben-Gurion’s
Diary
, 19 February 1948.

76
. Ibid.

77
. Khalidi (ed.),
All That Remains
, pp. 181–2.

78
. Weitz,
My Diary
, vol. 3, p. 223, 11 January 1947.

79
. Ibid, 239–40.

80
. Morris,
The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem
, pp. 84–86.

81
. Pail,
From the Hagana to the IDF
, p. 307. See discussion of State D, next chapter.

82
. The English translation is in Walid Khalidi, ‘Plan Dalet: Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine’,
Journal of Palestine Studies
, 18/69 (Autumn 1988), pp. 4–20.

83
. See chapter five.

84
. The Plan distributed to the soldiers and the first direct commands are in IDF Archives, 1950/2315 File 47, 11 May 1948.

85
. Yadin to Sasson IDF Archives, 16/69/261 The Nachshon Operations Files.

1
. Rivlin and Oren,
The War of Independence
, vol. 1, p. 332.

2
. Speech to the Executive Committee of the Mapai party, 6 April 1948.

3
. Quoted directly from the orders to the Carmeli Brigade, Zvi Sinai (ed.),
The Carmeli Brigade in the War of Independence
, p. 29.

4
. Binyamin Etzioni (ed.),
The Golani Brigade in the Fighting
, p. 10.

5
. Zerubavel Gilad,
The Palmach Book
, vol. 2, pp. 924–5. Daniel McGowan and Matthew C. Hogan,
The Saga of the Deir Yassin Massacre, Revisionism and Reality
.

6
. The descriptions and testimonies about what happened in Deir Yassin are taken from Daniel McGowan and Matthew C. Hogan,
The Saga of the Deir Yassin Massacre, Revisionism and Reality
.

7
. Ibid.

8
. Contemporary accounts put the number of victims of the Deir Yassin massacre at 254, a figure endorsed at the time by the Jewish Agency, a Red Cross official,
The New York Times
, and Dr Hussein al-Khalidi, spokesperson for the Jerusalem-based Arab Higher Committee. It is likely this figure was deliberately inflated in order to sow fear among the Palestinians and thereby panic them into a mass exodus. Certainly, loudspeakers were later used in villages about to be cleansed to warn the people of the terrible consequences if they did
not leave voluntarily, to generate panic and encourage them to flee for their lives before the ground troops moved in. Menachem Begin, the leader of the Irgun, described the effect the spreading of such rumours had on the Palestinians in
The Revolt
, ‘Arabs throughout the country, induced to believe wild tales of “Irgun butchery” were seized with limitless panic and started to flee for their lives. This mass flight soon developed into a maddened, uncontrolled stampede. Of the almost 800,000 who lived on the present territory of the State of Israel, only some 165,000 are still there. The political and economic significance of this development can hardly be overestimated.’ Begin,
The Revolt
, p. 164. Albert Einstein, along with 27 prominent Jews in New York, condemned the massacre of Deir Yassin in a letter published 4 December 1948 in
The New York Times
, noting ‘terrorist bands [i.e. Begin’s Irgun] attacked this peaceful village, which was not a military objective in the fighting, killed most of its inhabitants – 240 men, women, and children – and kept a few of them alive to parade as captives through the streets of Jerusalem. Most of the Jewish community was horrified at the deed, and the Jewish Agency sent a telegram of apology to King Abdullah of Transjordan (sic). But the terrorists, far from being ashamed of their act, were proud of this massacre, publicized it widely, and invited all the foreign correspondents present in the country to view the heaped corpses and the general havoc at Deir Yassin.’

9
. Uri Ben-Ari,
Follow Me
.

10
. Of particular interest is the way Geula Cohen, today an extreme rightwing activist, and a leading member of the Stern Gang, saved Abu-Ghawsh, because a member of the villages helped her escape the British prison in 1946. See her story in Geula Cohen,
Woman of Violence; Memories of a Young Terrorist, 1945–1948
.

11
.
Filastin
, 14 April 1948.

12
. Palumbo,
The Palestinian Catastrophe
, pp. 107–8.

13
. Ibid., p. 107.

14
. See a summary in Flapan,
The Birth of Israel
, pp. 89–92.

15
. This telegraph was intercepted by the Israeli intelligence and is quoted in Ben-Gurion’s
Diary
, 12 January 1948.

16
. See Rees Williams, the Under Secretary of States statement to Parliament,
Hansard
, House of Commons Debates, vol. 461, p. 2050, 24 February 1950.

17
. Arnan Azariahu, who was Israel Galili’s assistant, recalled that when the new
Matkal
was moved to Ramat Gan, Yigael Yadin demanded that the Qiryati people not be put in charge of protecting the site.
Maqor Rishon
, interview, 21 May 2006.

18
. Walid Khalidi, ‘Selected Documents on the 1948 War’,
Journal of Palestine Studies
, 107, Vol. 27/3 (Spring 1998), pp. 60–105, uses the British as well as the Arab committee’s correspondence.

19
. Hagana Archives, 69/72, 22 April 1948.

20
. Central Zionist Archives, 45/2 Protocol.

21
. Zadok Eshel (ed.),
The Carmeli Brigade in the War of Independence
, p. 147

22
. Walid Khalidi, ‘Selected Documents on the 1948 War’.

23
. Montgomery of Alamein,
Memoirs
, pp. 4534.

24
. Walid Khalidi, ‘The Fall of Haifa’,
Middle East Forum
, XXXV, 10 (December 1959), letter by Khayat, Saad, Mu’ammar and Koussa from 21 April 1948.

25
. The information on the Palestinian side is taken from Mustafa Abasi,
Safad During the British Mandate Period: A Social and Political Study
, Jerusalem: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2005 (Arabic); a version of it appeared as ‘The Battle for Safad in the War of 1948: A Revised Study,
International Journal for Middle East Studies
, 36 (2004), pp. 21–47.

26
. Ibid.

27
. Ibid.

28
. Ben-Gurion’s
Diary
, 7 June 1948.

29
. Salim Tamari,
Jerusalem 1948
.

30
. The reconstruction of the orders was done by Itzhak Levy, the head of the Hagana intelligence in Jerusalem in 1948, in his book
Jerusalem in the War of Independence
, p. 207 (these interviews were later incorporated into the IDF archives).

31
. Fourteen of these telegrams are quoted by Ben-Gurion in his diary, see Rivlin and Oren,
The War of Independence
, pp. 12, 14, 27, 63, 64, 112, 113, 134, 141, 156, 169, 170, 283.

32
. Mentioned in Ben-Gurion’s
Diary
, 15 January 1948.

33
. Levy,
Jerusalem
, p. 219.

34
. Red Cross Archives, Geneva, Files G59/1/GC, G3/82 sent by the international Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delegate de Meuron on 6–19 May 1948 describe a sudden typhoid epidemic.

35
. All the information is based on the Red Cross sources and on Salman Abu Sitta, ‘Israel Biological and Chemical Weapons: Past and Present’,
Between the Lines
, 15–19 March 2003. Abu Sitta also quotes Sara Leibovitz-Dar’s article in
Hadahsot
, 13 August 1993, where she traces, from a clue from the historian Uri Milstein, ‘those who were responsible for the Acre operation, but who refused to answer her questions. She concluded her article by saying: ‘What was done then with deep conviction and zealotry is now concealed with shame’.

36
. Ben-Gurion’s
Diary,
27 May 1948.

37
. Ibid., 31 January 1948 and his notes on the history of HEMED.

38
. Levy,
Jerusalem
, p. 113, although he does accuse the Legion of joining earlier in attacks on those who had already surrendered. See pp. 109–12.

39
. Interview with Sela (see
chapter 2
, note 31).

40
. Evidence given by Hanna Abuied, on the website
www.palestineremembered.com
.

41
. Morris,
The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem
, p. 118.

42
. Morris in the Hebrew version refers to the meeting on p. 95, Ben-Gurion mentions it in his
Diary
.

43
. Most of these operations are mentioned in Morris, ibid., pp. 137–67.

44
. The most detailed information on numbers, methods and maps are in Salman Abu Sitta’s
Atlas of the Nakbah
.

45
. Interview with Sela, (see
chapter 2
, note 31).

46
. The information taken from Khalidi
(ed.)
,
All That Remains
, pp. 60–1 and, the Hagana’s Village Files, and Ben-Zion Dinur
et al.
,
The History of the Hagana
, p. 1420.

47
. Ha-Kibbutz Ha-Meuchad Archives, Aharon Zisling Archives, Ben-Gurion letters.

48
. Almost every expulsion and destruction of the villages was described in
The New York Times
, which is our main source, together with Khalidi (ed.),
All That Remains,
Morris,
The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem
, and Ben-Zion Dinur
et al., The History of the Hagana
.

49
. Morris, ibid., pp. 243–4.

50
. Palmach Archives, Givat Haviva, G/146, 19 April 1948.

51
. Nafez Nazzal,
The Palestinian Exodus from the Galilee 1948
, Beirut: the Institute for Palestinian Studies, 1978, pp. 30–3 and Morris,
The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited
, p. 130.

52
. Khalidi uses this source very extensively in
All That Remains
.

53
. This provided the main sources for Morris,
The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited
.

54
. Weitz,
My Diary
, vol. 3, 21 April 1948.

55
. See the orders in IDF Archives, 51/967 particularly in Files 16, 24 and 42, and 51/128/50

56
. Ben-Gurion Archives, Correspondence Section, 23.02–30.1 doc. 113.