Benny Morris - The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949

This book is the first full-length historical study of the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem. Based on recently declassified Israeli, British and American state and party political papers and on collections of hitherto untapped private papers, it traces the stages of the 1947-9 exodus against the backdrop of the first Arab-Israeli war and analyses the varied causes of the flight. The Jewish and Arab decision-making involved, on national and local levels, military and political, is described and explained, as is the crystallisation of Israels decision to bar a refugee repatriation. The exodus from Haifa and Jaffa (April-May 1948) and the expulsion from Lydda and Ramie (July 1948), as well as the flight of the rural communities of Upper Galilee and the northern Negev approaches (October-November 1948) and the Israeli borderclearing operations of November 1948 to July 1949, are described in detail. The subsequent fate of the abandoned Arab villages, lands and urban neighbourhoods - destruction or resettlement by Jewish immigrants - is examined. The study looks at the international context of the first Israeli-Arab war and the struggle, in Washington, London and the UN, over efforts to repatriate or resettle the refugees, ending with the talks at Lausanne which effectively sealed the refugees fate.

Throughout, the book attempts to describe what happened, rather than what successive generations of Israeli and Arab propagandists have said happened, and to analyse, on the basis of documentation, the motives of the protagonists.

HR"

Cambridge Middle East Library

The birth of the Palestinian refugee problem, 1947-1949

Cambridge Middle East Library

Editorial Board

ROGER OWEN, EDMUND BURKE, SERIF MARDIN, WALID KAZZIHA, AVI SHLAIM, BASIM MUSALLAM

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BENNY MORRIS

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

CAMBRIDGE

NEW YORK NEW ROCHELLE MELBOURNE SYDNEY

Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 irp 32 East 57th Street, New York, ny 10022, USA 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia

Cambridge University Press 1987

First published 1987

Reprinted 1988

First paperback edition 1989

Printed in Great Britain at the University Press, Cambridge

British Library cataloguing in publication data

Morris, Benny

The birth of the Palestinian refugee problem, 1947-1949.-(Cambridge Middle East Library).

1. Palestinian Arabs-Middle East-

History-2Oth century 2. Refugees, Arab

-Middle East-History-2Oth century

I. Title

325'.2i'095694 DS113.7

Library of Congress cataloging in publication data

Morris, Benny, 1948-

The birth of the Palestinian refugee problem, 1947-1949.

(Cambridge Middle East Library)

Bibliography.

Includes index.

1. Refugees, Arab, 2. Palestinian Arabs.

3. Israel-Arab War, 1948-1949Refugees. 4. Jewish-Arab relations-1917-1949. I. Title. IL Title: Palestinian refugee problem, 1947-1949. III. Series.

HV640.5.A6M67 1987 362.8'7'0899275694 87-14295

ISBN o 521 33028 9 hard covers

isbn o 521 33889 1 paperback

To the memory of my mother, Sadie, from whom I may have inherited a way of thinking, and to my father, Ya'akov

SE

Acknowledgements page vi

• 2 The first wave: the Arab exodus, December 1947 - March

• 4 Deciding against a return of the refugees, April-December

• 6 The third wave: the Ten Days (9-18 July 1948) and the

• 7 The fourth wave: the battles and exodus of October-

In writing this book, which I began in 1982,1 was helped financially only by the British Council. Their grant enabled me to carry out research in British archives and, later, to give a lecture at a seminar on refugees in Oxford. I thank them. I would also like to thank Dr Roger Owen, of St Antonys College, Oxford, and Professor Yehoshua Porath, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, for their solicitude and help in seeing this work through. I owe them both a large debt. The Senior Associate Membership I held in St Antonys College, for which I thank the fellows and college officers, facilitated my research. I have frequently bothered with questions Ya'acov Shimoni, formerly of the Israel Foreign Ministry, and he deserves special thanks for his patience and help.

I would like to thank the staffs of the Israel State Archives (especially Yehoshua Freundlich, Yemima Rosenthal and Professor Avraham Alsberg), the Central Zionist Archives, the Hashomer Hatzair Archives, the Kibbutz Meuhad Archives, the Labour Party (Beit Berl) Archives, the Labour (Histadrut) Archives, the Jabotinsky Institute, the Ben-Gurion Archives, the Haifa Municipal Archives, the Tiberias Municipal Archives, the Mishmar Ha'emek Archive, the Kibbutz Ma'anit Archive, all in Israel; of the Public Record Office in London and St Antonys College Middle East Centre Archives in Oxford; and of the National Archives in Washington DC.

My biggest debt is to my family - my wife, Leah, and my children, Erel, Yagi and Orian - for holding up under the strain of my years long commitment to completing this book and its entailed price in time and attention.