The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine is a nonfiction book published in 2006 by the Israeli historian Ilan Pappé. Pappé reassesses traditional Israeli narratives surrounding the foundation of the Israeli state, making the case that the Nakba of 1948 should be interpreted through the paradigm of ethnic cleansing rather than war. The book has drawn Western attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and The Role of Historical Narratives in Nation-State and Identity Building, The Nature of Ethnic Cleansing, and The Experiences of the Palestinian Diaspora. Many have praised Pappé book for its groundbreaking perspective, though some critics have noted flaws in Pappé’s facts and methodology.

This study guide refers to the e-book edition published by Oneworld Publications in 2011.

Content Warning: This book discusses themes relating to nationalism, jingoism, ethnic cleansing, and genocide, including but not limited to war and war crimes, the mass suffering and displacement of Palestinians, and anti-Arab racism and xenophobia.

Plot Summary

In the Preface, Pappé introduces Plan D (Dalet), the 1948 Zionist plan to expel the Indigenous Arab and Muslim population of Palestine to make way for an exclusively Jewish state. The resulting displacement and dispossession of Palestinians from Palestine is remembered by the Israelis as their war of independence, and by the Palestinians as the Nakba, or “catastrophe.” Pappé states his thesis: that the Zionist desire for an exclusively Jewish state led them to adopt a plan for the ethnic cleansing of the territory that would become the nation of Israel. This thesis challenges the traditional Israeli historical narrative, which has long claimed that the Palestinians voluntarily left their ancestral homes. Only by acknowledging the paradigm of ethnic cleansing, says Pappé, can there be any hope for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

In Chapter 1, Pappé defines ethnic cleansing, drawing on various academic, diplomatic, and popular definitions. Ethnic cleansing is when one group homogenizes an ethnically diverse population through force. According to Pappé, the Zionist effort to homogenize Palestine (subsequently Israel) by expelling much of the Indigenous Palestinian population is a clear-cut case of ethnic cleansing, widely regarded today as a war crime punishable by an international tribunal. The idea of ethnically cleansing Palestinians, Pappé claims, was deeply rooted in Zionist ideology.

Chapter 2 traces the history of the Zionist movement from their clash with the Palestinians beginning in the 1880s through the departure of the British from Palestine in 1948. Though the Jewish Zionist community made up only a small fraction of the total population of Palestine when the British occupied the country in 1918, the Zionists long held the goal of establishing a Jewish state at the expense of the Indigenous Palestinian population.

When British Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour passed a mandate for a Jewish state in Palestine in 1917, violence began to erupt between Jewish and Palestinian communities. The British generally sided with the Zionists. Palestinian uprisings in 1929 and 1936 led to the decimation by the British of the Palestinian leadership, further strengthening the Zionists’ position.

Organization also helped the Zionists achieve their aims. The “village files,” a detailed registry of Palestinian villages and demographics, were carried out throughout the 1930s by the Jewish National Fund (JNF). The village files enabled the Zionists, led by David Ben-Gurion, to demand more and more of Palestine for the Jewish settlers and to develop plans for the expulsion of the Palestinians from the country. The Zionists intended to put their plan into effect when the British left Palestine.

In Chapter 3, Pappé details the UN’s attempt to solve the Palestine situation when the British announced they would withdraw from the country in 1947. The UN favored a partition of the country between the Zionists and Palestinians. The Palestinians deemed the plan unfair since they made up a two-thirds majority of the country. Resentful of the way the issue was being handled, the Palestinians boycotted the UN negotiations, which meant that the plan was worked out between the UN and the Zionists. The final plan passed by the General Assembly—Resolution 181—was favorable to the Zionists. The Zionists, however, used the partition resolution mainly as a bid for international legitimacy, and in meetings with the Consultancy Ben-Gurion made no secret of their intention to use force to claim the whole country for the Jewish state once the British mandate ended.

Chapter 4 expands upon the events leading up to the development of Plan Dalet, the “master plan” for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. The chapter compares the Zionist and Palestinian/Arab forces at the beginning of 1948, highlighting the considerable superiority of the Zionists to the Palestinians in numbers, equipment, and organization. Pappé also highlights the role of the Irgun and Stern Gang, two extreme Jewish militant groups, in helping the Hagana launch attacks against and massacres of Palestinian villages and urban sites, with many early attacks focusing on the major port city of Haifa. The Palestinians, meanwhile, showed little inclination to fight and remained disorganized even once the first volunteer troops from the Arab world—the Arab Liberation Army (ALA)—entered Palestine in January 1948. Taking advantage of the Palestinians’ passivity, the Zionist leadership became more aggressive in the early months of 1948, expelling larger numbers of Palestinians as they adopted a policy of aggression over their earlier policy of retaliation. In March 1948, the Consultancy adopted Plan Dalet for the systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Chapter 5 discusses Plan Dalet, which was put into effect in March. The Zionists had a strong start with Operation Nachshon, which targeted Palestinian sites in the Jerusalem area. By mid-April, the Zionists began picking off major Palestinian urban centers, taking Tiberias, Haifa, western Jerusalem, Acre, Baysan, and Jaffa in rapid succession. Many of the Zionist attacks made use of terrorist tactics. Some ethnic minorities in Palestine, including the Druze and the Circassians, began joining forces with the Zionists. Despite some scattered efforts by the ALA, the Palestinian and Arab leadership remained disorganized and ineffective. Western attempts to intervene were minimal or ineffective. The US attempted to halt the partition and extend negotiations, but they were forestalled by the Zionist lobby in the US and by the declaration of a Jewish state as soon as the British left in May. The British, though still present in the country and still responsible for law and order until May, did little or nothing to help the Palestinians during this time, and the UN did little more than watch and report on the situation.

Chapter 6 describes the events following the declaration of the Jewish State of Israel on May 14, 1948, as the Jewish forces continued ethnic cleansing operations while Arab and Western powers did very little to intervene. In particular, the tacit agreement between Israel and King Abdullah of Jordan neutralized the strongest army in the Arab world and turned the 1948 conflict into a “Phony War.” Jewish forces committed massacres as they worked to evict Palestinians from their villages, such as the notorious massacre at Tantura. In fall, some Palestinians put up more resistance, especially in Galilee. Egyptian and Syrian forces, meanwhile, occupied some isolated Jewish settlements and attacked Jewish convoys. Israel’s retaliation for these actions was often brutal.

Chapter 7 explains that, faced with the challenge of fighting against the Arab forces in Palestine while continuing ethnic cleansing operations, Israel agreed to truces brokered by the UN. However, the Jewish forces continued putting Plan Dalet into effect in between and even during these truces, with much of the most serious fighting concentrated in Upper Galilee. In Chapter 8, Pappé describes how Upper Galilee finally fell to Israel’s forces in October, with some villages receiving very harsh treatment. Confronted with mounting pressure from the West to allow refugees to return, Israel’s government set up measures to institute their anti-repatriation policy. In November and December, Israel cleansed the Negev successfully and made another abortive attempt to capture portions of the West Bank from Jordan.

In Chapter 9, Pappé discusses the human rights violations Israeli soldiers committed against the Palestinians during the occupation after the completion of their ethnic cleansing operations. These violations included internment in prison and labor camps as well as the harassment, looting, beating, and raping of Palestinians still living in occupied sites like Jaffa. The Committee for Arab Affairs was established in August 1948 to deal with the huge amount of confiscated money, property, and land. The JNF devised ways to ensure this property fell into Jewish hands to develop new Jewish settlements and forestation. International help to the Palestinians from the UN, US, and Red Cross remained limited.

In Chapter 10, Pappé demonstrates how Israel erased the memory of the Nakba by renaming sites in Palestine and turning much of the confiscated Palestinian land into parks and forests. Israel continues to claim that they “made the desert bloom,” propagating the myth that the country was empty and uncultivated before the Zionists arrived and ignoring the presence of the Palestinians who had lived on the land for centuries.

Chapter 11 discusses the halfhearted efforts at peace, in which the intervention of Western powers has been impotent or blatantly in Israel’s favor. In 1948, a UN-led effort to institute a two-state solution and enforce the Palestinians’ right of return was sabotaged by Israel and Jordan. Following the 1967 War, Israel occupied the West Bank and made it their policy not to discuss anything that happened before 1967 in peace talks. Israel’s inflexible policy led to the breakdown of peace talks at the Oslo Accords and Camp David and triggered the first and second Intifadas.

Chapter 12, the final chapter, discusses how “Fortress Israel” copes with what they see as the Palestinian “demographic problem”: that is, the fear of many Jews in Israel that they will soon be outnumbered by Arabs. Since the 2000s, Israel’s solution has emphasized a strong defense based on nuclear capability, US support, and a strong army.

A short Epilogue looks at the role of Israeli universities such as Tel-Aviv University in perpetuating the myths of official Israeli historiography, for instance by having the Faculty Club in what was once the house of the mukhtar of a Palestinian village. Pappé reminds readers that the only way to achieve peace is for Israel and the world to acknowledge the Nakba.