The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

“[E]thnic cleansing is an effort to render an ethnically mixed country homogenous by expelling a particular group of people and turning them into refugees while demolishing the homes they were driven out from. There may well be a master plan, but most of the troops engaged in ethnic cleansing do not need direct orders: they know beforehand what is expected of them. Massacres accompany the operations, but where they occur they are not part of a genocidal plan: they are a key tactic to accelerate the flight of the population earmarked for expulsion. Later on, the expelled are then erased from the country’s official and popular history and excised from its collective memory. From the planning stage to final execution, what occurred in Palestine in 1948 forms a clear-cut case, according to these informed and scholarly definitions, of ethnic cleansing.”

Having considered several academic and diplomatic definitions of ethnic cleansing, Pappé lays out what he considers to be the nature of ethnic cleansing. According to Pappé’s definition, the dispossession of the Palestinians in 1948 “forms a clear-cut case” of ethnic cleansing, and this must be widely acknowledged (as Pappé asserts throughout his book) for political as well as moral reasons.

“This book is written with the deep conviction that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine must become rooted in our memory and consciousness as a crime against humanity and that it should be excluded from the list of alleged crimes.”

For Pappé, it is important to raise awareness about the enormity of what was done to the Palestinians in 1948. Because Pappé regards the events of 1948 as such a clear-cut case of ethnic cleansing, he is adamant that the legal qualifier “alleged” be dropped when speaking of this case, even though legal redress for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in 1948 is no longer feasible since most of the officials involved in the ethnic cleansing were already dead by the time of writing.

“The Zionist project could only be realised [sic] through the creation in Palestine of a purely Jewish state, both as a safe haven for Jews from persecution and a cradle for a new Jewish nationalism. And such a state had to be exclusively Jewish not only in its socio-political structure but also in its ethnic composition.”

Pappé, drawing on the works of earlier historians, posits that the idea of ethnic cleansing was deeply rooted in Zionist ideology. Motivated by widespread persecution that culminated in the Holocaust, the Jewish founding figures of Zionism concluded that their new home would need to be exclusively Jewish politically, socially, and ethnically to be safe for the Jewish people.

“Two magic words now emerged: Force and Opportunity. The Jewish state could only be won by force, but one had to wait for the opportune historical moment to come along to be able to deal ‘militarily’ with the demographic reality on the ground: the presence of a non-Jewish native majority population.”

The “magic words” of “Force and Opportunity,” Pappé states, represent Ben-Gurion’s policy toward the Palestinian majority in the country in the 1940s. Pappé cites evidence showing that Ben-Gurion, the leader of the Zionist movement from the middle of the 1920s, was determined from early on to expel the Indigenous Palestinian population from the country to lay the groundwork for an exclusively Jewish state.

“Partitioning the country—overwhelmingly Palestinian—into two equal parts has proven so disastrous because it was carried out against the will of the indigenous majority population. By broadcasting its intent to create equal Jewish and Arab political entities in Palestine, the UN violated the basic rights of the Palestinians, and totally ignored the concern for Palestine in the wider Arab world at the very height of the anti-colonialist struggle in the Middle East.”

According to Pappé, the UN’s partition plan was inherently unfair precisely because it tried to divide Palestine equally between the majority population (the Palestinians) and a small minority (the Zionists). Pappé classifies this plan as a violation of the Palestinians’ “basic rights” in their own country that undermined the anti-colonialist struggle that was then gaining ground in the Middle East in the aftermath of WWII. In Pappé’s view, the Palestinians’ refusal to negotiate with the UN, far from making them responsible for the conflict that followed, was perfectly reasonable.

“The Zionist leaders were confident they had the upper hand militarily and could drive through most of their ambitious plans. And they were right.”

Pappé underscores the discrepancy between the Zionists’ public representation of the conflict with the Palestinians with the privately known reality. While the Zionists portrayed the war as a kind of “second Holocaust,” the reality on the ground was that the Palestinians were simply no match for the better-trained, better-equipped, and more numerous Zionist military. The Zionist leadership was perfectly aware of their military superiority. According to Pappé, they never lacked any confidence in their ability to carry out their ethnic cleansing of Palestine successfully.

“This craving for normality remained typical of the Palestinians inside Palestine in the years to come, even in their worst crises and at the nadir of their struggle; and normality is what they have been denied ever since 1948.”

Most Palestinians did not want war in 1948. Though some Palestinians did put up resistance or join paramilitary groups, most Palestinians wanted to return to normal life and were even willing to accept the unfair partition resolution. Instead of accepting this passivity, however, the Zionists took advantage of it to launch violent attacks on the Palestinians and expel them from the country.

“All of this took place before a single regular Arab soldier had entered Palestine, and the pace now becomes hard to follow, for contemporary as well as for later historians. Between 30 March and 15 May, 200 villages were occupied and their inhabitants expelled. This is a fact that must be repeated, as it undermines the Israeli myth that the ‘Arabs’ ran away once the ‘Arab invasion’ began. Almost half of the Arab villages had already been attacked by the time the Arab governments eventually and, as we know, reluctantly decided to send in their troops. Another ninety villages would be wiped out between 15 May and 11 June 1948, when the first of two truces finally came into effect.”

Throughout the book, Pappé shows how much of the official Israeli historical narrative of 1948 is little more than a myth. Here, for instance, he points to the fact that numerous Palestinians had already been expelled long before neighboring Arab countries began sending soldiers into Palestine. That fact disproves the Israeli claim that the Palestinians ran away when the Arabs invaded the country.

“Britain allowed the cleansing to take place, in front of the eyes of its soldiers and officials during the Mandate period, which came to an end at midnight on 14 May 1948, and hampered the UN efforts to intervene in a way that might have saved a number of Palestinians. After 15 May, there was no excuse for the way the UN abandoned the people whose land they had divided and whose welfare and lives they had surrendered to the Jews who, since the late nineteenth century, wished to uproot them and take their place in the country they deemed as theirs.”

Pappé highlights the way the Palestinians were abandoned and betrayed by Western powers in 1948. The British looked the other way while the Zionists began their ethnic cleansing of the country, even though there was a large British presence in Palestine until the end of the Mandate on May 14. Similarly, the UN was responsible for supervising the peaceful implementation of their partition resolution, and they completely neglected to do anything but watch and report on the situation, failing to intervene in any meaningful way on behalf of Palestinians even after the departure of the British.

“It should be clear by now that the Israeli foundational myth about a voluntary Palestinian flight the moment the war started—in response to a call by Arab leaders to make way for invading armies—holds no water. It is a sheer fabrication that there were Jewish attempts, as Israeli textbooks still insist today, to persuade Palestinians to stay.”

Pappé’s denunciation of the official Israeli historical narrative grows more and more pronounced as he amasses the evidence against it. Though this historical narrative “holds no water,” however, it is also foundational to the ideology of the Jewish State of Israel and is considered indispensable by most Israeli people today, demonstrating The Role of Historical Narratives in Nation-State and Identity Building.

“Its members were no longer preoccupied with the master plan of expulsion: ever since Plan Dalet had been put into motion it had been working well, and needed no further coordination and direction. Their attention was now focused on whether they had enough troops to sustain a ‘war’ on two fronts: against the Arab armies and against the one million Palestinians who, according to international law, had become Israeli citizens on 15 May.”

As the Nakba progresses, so do the concerns of the Consultancy. Part of Pappé’s thesis is that ethnic cleansing operations soon begin to take care of themselves, as troops understand the overarching goals without needing to receive explicit orders. Now, with the State of Israel declared, the Jewish forces needed to further consolidate their position and fight the Arab armies beginning to enter the country. Cleansing operations, however, continued during this period—the illegality of which is stressed by Pappé when he points out that the Palestinians within the country had, “according to international law,” become citizens of Israel when the state was declared on May 15.

“All in all, the level of preparation the military command was engaged in during June for the next stages showed a growing confidence in the Israeli Army’s ability to continue not only its ethnic cleansing operations, but also its extension of the Jewish state beyond the seventy-eight per cent [sic] of Mandatory Palestine it had already occupied.”

The unwavering confidence of the Zionists throughout 1948 is a key point that Pappé highlights again and again. This confidence, evident at the higher levels of the Zionist leadership, undermines the official Israeli account of a small Jewish force that beat a much stronger Arab force against all odds. Indeed, the Zionist position was so strong by the summer of 1948 that they were even able to try to extend their plans to even more of Mandatory Palestine.

“There was no international intervention the Palestinians could hope for in 1948, nor could they count on outside concern about the atrocious reality evolving in Palestine.”

The lack of outside help for the Palestinians, especially from the West, became a pattern in 1948 and the years that followed. Though the actions the Zionists took against the Palestinians were illegal according to international law, and though international powers such as the UN and the US were aware of this, no meaningful actions were taken on the Palestinians’ behalf. Part of the success of the Zionists lay in their ability to neutralize these international forces or manipulate them in their own favor. Exceptions to this trend, such as Count Bernadotte, a UN officer who tried to help Palestinians, were very rare.

“Again, the inevitable question present [sic] itself: three years after the Holocaust, what went through the minds of those Jews who watched these wretched people pass by?”

The Holocaust (1942-1945), in which some 6 million Jews were exterminated by the Nazi regime in Germany, was a key context for the establishment of the Jewish State of Israel in 1948. Many of the Jewish immigrants who had come to Palestine were escaping the European countries where the Holocaust had taken place. For Pappé, this makes it all the more disturbing that the memory of their own history of persecution did not prevent the Zionists from doing something very similar to the Palestinians.

“Ethnic cleansing is not genocide, but it does carry with it atrocious acts of mass killing and butchering. Thousands of Palestinians were killed ruthlessly and savagely by Israeli troops of all backgrounds, ranks, and ages. None of these Israelis was ever tried for war crimes, despite the overwhelming evidence.”

Pappé reminds the reader that ethnic cleansing and genocide are not the same thing, though they are sometimes very similar. Ethnic cleansing, like genocide, sometimes makes use of tactics such as “mass killing and butchering.” Throughout his book, Pappé discusses several examples of massacres propagated by the Zionists against the Palestinians.

“As 1950 began, the energy and purposefulness of the expellers finally began to wane and those Palestinians who were still living in Palestine—by then divided into the State of Israel, a Jordanian West Bank and an Egyptian Gaza Strip—were largely safe from further expulsions. True, they were placed under military rule both in Israel and Egypt, and as such remained vulnerable. But, whatever the hardships they incurred, it was a better fate than they had suffered throughout that year of horrors we now call the Nakba.”

Though nearly 800,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes in 1948 and 1949, there were still some Palestinians left in Israel. These Palestinians were allowed to remain, according to Pappé, because “the energy and purposefulness of the expellers finally began to wane” and because other concerns of state-building became more important. By this time, however, the Palestinians constituted only a small minority of the State of Israel. Though “largely safe from further expulsions,” however, Pappé reminds readers that Palestinians would remain, at best, second-class citizens of Israel, hated and feared by the larger Jewish population.

“The human geography of Palestine as a whole was forceably [sic] transformed. The Arab character of the cities was effaced by the destruction of large sections, including the spacious park in Jaffa and community centres [sic] in Jerusalem. This transformation was driven by the desire to wipe out one nation’s history and culture and replace it with a fabricated version of another, from which all traces of the indigenous population were elided.”

With the Jewish State of Israel established, the Zionist leadership wasted no time in transforming the history and geography of the country that had become theirs, creating naming committees to give sites and settlements new names taken from the Bible, destroying the remains of Palestinian towns and villages, and building new parks and forests. This transformation of the country’s history—which removes the Palestinians from the picture—remains the prevalent and official historical narrative within history and much of the world.

“These regulations virtually abolished people’s basic rights of expression, movement, organisation [sic], and equality before the law. They left them the right to vote for and be elected to the Israeli parliament, but this too came with severe restrictions. This regime officially lasted until 1966, but, for all intents and purposes, the regulations are still in place.”

Pappé emphasizes that even the Palestinians who were allowed to remain in Israel became, at best, second-class citizens. To this day, there is no ambiguity that Palestinians in Israel do not enjoy the same basic rights and privileges as the country’s Jewish citizens.

“In other words, what the JNF texts represent as an ‘ecological concern’ is yet one more official Israeli effort to deny the Nakba and conceal the enormity of the Palestinian tragedy.”

Pappé illustrates how the wide-scale forestation of Israel in the early years of Israel is part of a larger plan to de-Arabize Israel and transform the country’s history. The new parks and forests built by the JNF were for the most part built over what used to be Palestinian villages and towns, but this fact is never acknowledged in the official Israeli historical narrative. Rather, the Zionists spread the myth that they “made the desert bloom” and that the country was largely uninhabited and uncultivated when they arrived.

“There are two factors that have so far succeeded in defeating all chances of an equitable solution to the conflict in Palestine to take root: the Zionist ideology of ethnic supremacy and the ‘peace process’. From the former stems Israel’s continuing denial of the Nakba; in the latter we see the lack of international will to bring justice to the region—two obstacles that perpetuate the refugee problem and stand in the way of a just and comprehensive peace emerging in the land.”

According to Pappé, it is not only the Zionist State of Israel that is to blame for the continuation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Western powers such as the US and UN are equally culpable. While Zionist ideology prevents Israel from acknowledging their violations of the Palestinians’ human rights in 1948, western powers have done little to support Palestinians’ rights or have openly favored Israel in peace negotiations.

“The PLO, or any other group taking up the Palestinian cause, had to confront two manifestations of denial. The first was the denial exercised by the international peace brokers as they consistently sidelined, if not altogether eliminated, the Palestinian cause and concerns from any future peace arrangement. The second was the categorical refusal of the Israelis to acknowledge the Nakba and their absolute unwillingness to be held accountable, legally and morally, for the ethnic cleansing they committed in 1948.”

What Pappé terms “Nakba Denial” has two faces: The international denial practiced by most Western powers, including the US and UN, who have consistently championed Israel’s interests over those of the Palestinians; and the “categorical refusal” of most Israeli Jews to accept their responsibility for the Nakba or even the fact that it happened at all. This presents an insurmountable challenge to Palestinian groups fighting for justice for their people.

“But what the Palestinians are demanding, and what, for many of them, has become a sine qua non, is that they be recognised [sic] as the victims of an ongoing evil, consciously perpetrated against them by Israel. For Israeli Jews to accept this would naturally mean undermining their own status of victimhood. This would have political implications on an international scale, but also—perhaps far more critically—would trigger moral and existential repercussions for the Israeli Jewish psyche: Israeli Jews would have to recognise [sic] that they have become the mirror image of their own worst nightmare.”

Here and elsewhere, Pappé highlights the ideological barriers to peace between Israelis and Palestinians. The Palestinians have long demanded that Israel recognize the Nakba and the “ongoing evil” that they have perpetrated against them, while Israeli Jews by and large are afraid that doing so would undermine the way they view their country and themselves by forcing them to acknowledge a reality that they do not want to accept: that they have treated the Palestinians in a way very similar to how others have treated them throughout history). Thus, The Role of Historical Narratives in Nation-State and Identity Building directly and negatively affects The Experiences of the Palestinian Diaspora.

“The principle of maintaining an over-whelming Jewish majority at all costs supersedes all other political and even civil concerns, and the Jewish religious propensity to seek atonement has been replaced by the arrogant disregard for world public opinion and the self-righteousness with which Israel routinely fends off criticism.”

Pappé refers to the kind of defense mechanism that many Jewish Israelis have used and continue to use to justify themselves. For these Israelis, maintaining a Jewish majority is a matter of life and death. The Palestinians and the surrounding Arab states pose an existential threat, and if anything happens to change the status quo, the Jewish state will cease to exist. This fear—which for many is completely genuine—leads some Israelis to continue to maintain an attitude that the ends always justify the means where the Palestinians are concerned.