From Schechtman, 49 Arab Refugees:Facts and Figures *
II. Arab Mass Flight; Origin and Responsibility
The Arab Minority
Included in the Jewish State, as envisaged by the United Nations decision of November 29, 1947, was an Arab minority of 397,000 -- 42.46 per cent of the total population. The Jews realized that this strongly nationalistic Arab community, embittered by decades of political Arab-Jewish friction, subjected to irredentist propaganda from outside, and counting on spiritual, financial and eventually military support from the neighboring Arab states, would not readily reconcile itself to a minority status and that the problem would be a considerable source of friction and conflict. Nevertheless, the Jewish leaders were determined to make every effort to bring about a peaceful co-habitation and cooperation of the two peoples in Israel.
Abortive Attempts at Conciliation
Although Arab attacks on the Jewish population began immediately after the passage of the November 29 resolution, responsible Jewish bodies did their utmost to maintain peaceful relations with the Arabs of Palestine. Early in December, Haganah distributed leaflets in all the Arab villages urging the Arabs to choose "peace and constructive work" and warning them not to listen to war-mongers and allow their villages to become bases of war operations, "so that we shall not have to harm you and your property in the course of our self-defence. You will understand that if attacks are made from these bases we shall have no alternative but to shoot back. We hope that you will heed this appeal and help us bring peace back to the country for the good of the inhabitants." Histadrut (General Labor Federation) sent out similar appeals to Arab workers.
The warnings went unheeded. Arab attacks began on November 30, when eight
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Jews were killed in a bus near Nathanya. Violence, arson and murder mounted steadily in response to incitement by the Mufti and the Arab Higher Committee. Bands of Palestinian Arabs, reinforced by irregulars from the Arab states, harried the country, slaughtering and pillaging. Nevertheless, the Proclamation of the State of Israel, issued on May 14, 1948 by the Provisional Government, contained a special appeal to the Arab population:
"In the midst of wanton aggression, we yet call upon the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to returne to the ways of peace and play their part int he development of the State, with full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its bodies and institutions, provisional or permanent." 8)
This, too, went unheeded. The Arabs expected a quick and easy victory over the Jews whom they outnumbered. But the hope of such a victory proved illusory; the Jews not only stood their ground but scored considerable military successes. Over confidence quickly changed to panic: Arabs in ever-increasing numbers began to flee and the exodus degenerated into a stampede.
Phases of the Exodus
The mass flight of the Palestine Arabs is a phenomenon for which no single explanation suffices. It is necessary to take into account several, and apparently contradictory, cause to obtain a clear picture of what happened.
The first phase started immediately after the partition decision. Well-to-do Arab families of Jerusalem, Haifa, and Jaffa, anticipating trouble, began to leave, quietly and inconspicuously, for the neighboring Arab countries. Some 30,000 persons are estimated to have departed during this initial stage. The second phase began in March - April 1948, after the citrus crop was harvested. Apparently following instructions from the Arab Higher Committee, tens of thousands of Arabs living in the Sharon coastal plain, between Tel Aviv
8) Palestine Affairs, May 1948
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and Hadera, started to move to the Arab-controlled hill regions. Many sold their poultry and flocks to Jewish neighbors. During the same period 5,000 Arabs suddenly left Tiberias (April 18); some 60,000 left Haifa (April 22); and 65-70,000 left Jaffa (April 25-29).
The third and most dramatic phase of the exodus started in May, following the proclamation of the State of Israel and the full-scale armed invasion by five Arab states.
The military successes of the Jewish armed forces during the period preceding the first truce (June 11, 1948) led to the occupation of practically all the Arab villages within the boundaries of Israel, as defined by the partition resolution. Fighting was resumed on July 9, and before a new truce was imposed by the United Nations ten days later, the Israeli Army had succeeded in capturing 494 additional square miles, including the Arab towns of Lydda, Ramleh, Jenin and Nazareth. Of the 219 Arab villages in Israeli territory, 201 were by that time occupied by Israeli forces; outside Israel's boundaries, 13 Arab towns and townlets and 112 villages had be captured, 70 of them during the last ten days of fighting.
During this period, the flight of Arab civilians assumed unprecedented proportions. Late in May, the total number of Arabs who had left Jewish-occupied areas of Palestine was estimated by Faris el Khouri, Syria's representative in the Security Council, at a quarter of a million. 9) Two months later, W.de St.Aubin, field representative of the League of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, computed that the Palestine war had created about 300,000 refugees. 10)
The second truce put a temporary stop to the refugee movement. In mid-October, the fighting started again. On the 21st, Israeli forces occupied Beersheba;
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9) The New York Times, May 23, 1948.
10) Ibid., July 24, 1948.
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On the 29th, they opened a counter-offensive against Fawzi Kawukji's "Arab Liberation Army" in Galilee up to the borders of Syria and Lebanon. The Moslem Arab population of northern Galilee, numbering some 50,000, fled into Lebanon, leaving only the Christian Arabs, approximately 3,000. Simultaneously, there was a mass flight from the whole Arab area south of Jerusalem towards Transjordan. This was prompted by the Arab feeling that Israel was planning to encircle Jerusalem from the north and the south and so complete its occupation. Reports from Arab quarters also indicated a flight from Bethlehem and from the villages in the hills of Hebron.
Finally, the Negev campaign, which started on December 22, cause a new wave of flight among the quarter of a million Arab refugees in Egyptian-held areas; many of these made their way almost to the Gulf of Acaba, above the Red Sea.
British Responsibility
The flight of Arabs from Israel on a large-scale started while the British were still in control of the country and long before the State of Israel was proclaimed. Elias N. Koussa, a well-known Haifa lawyer and an independent Arab, who recently outspokenly cirticized the Israeli Government's policy toward the Arabs remaining in Israel, categorically declared that "the primary responsibility for the panicky flight of the Arabs is the British Government's." In a letter published in The Palestine Post on February 2, 1949, he wrote that the British administration of the country "was laboring to create an atmosphere permeated with fear and alarm...The idea that the Arabs should quit their homes was advanced, sponsored and propagated by the British."
"The Government of Palestine granted its officers three months' pay in advance, and facitiliated the departure on leave of Arab officers to adjacent territories. British companies, such as the Iraq Petroleum Company and Steel Bros. and Company, unnecessarily transferred a jpart of their offices and the majority of their Arab employees to Lebanon. And generally, the attitude of the responsible British authorities was
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such as to infuse into the minds and hearts of the Arab population a feeling of consternation and the belief that their departure was a logical necessity, or, at least, a prudent precaution.
"It was the British, and not the Jews, who first put into effect the dislodgment and deportation of the Arab population. When conditions in Tiberias, where friendly relations between Arabs and Jews form a bright illustration of the possiblity of the two communities cooperating became acute, the British authorities forcibly transported the Arab inhabitants en masse to Trans-Jordan."
The role played by the British authories in the Arab mass flight is also stressed by Monsignor George Hakim, Archbishop of the Greek Catholic Churh (a Uniate Church which is in fellowship with the Vatican and counts 20,864 adherents in Palestine). An Arab himself and a former supporter of the Mufti, Archbishop Hakim told Karl Baehr, Exectutive Secretary of the American Christian Palestine Committee, that an important element in precipatating the flight , particularly in the Haifa area (where Monsignor lives) was "the fact that the British informed the Arabs that they would not protect them. Since most of the Arab leaders had already fled, the people were thrown into a panic so that they fled by sea to Lebanon. They fled in spite of the fact that the Jewish authorities guaranteed their safety and rights as citizens of Israel." 11)
Arab Responsibility
Official Palestine Arab spokesmen have repeatedly announced that the Palestine Arabs had fled of their own accord.
At a meeting of the UN Security Council on April 23, 1948, Jamal Bey Husseini, speaking for the Arab Higher Committee, said: "The Arabs would not submit to a truce...but they rather preferred to leave their homes in the town [Haifa]...and leave the town, which they did."
Again in an interview with a correspondent of the Beirut Arabic newspaper Telegraph on September 6, 1948, Emil Ghory, representative of the Arab Higher Committee at the meetings of the UN General Assembly stated: "The problem of
11) Letter of Karl Baehr in The New York Herald Tribune, June 30, 1949
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the refugees is the direct result of the policy of resistance to partition and to the establishment of the Israeli State. This policy was unanimously adopted by the Arab Governments, and it is they who have to bear responsibility for the solution of the refugee problem."
Perhaps the clearest illustration of Arab evacuation by command is the Arab exodus from Haifa. The London Economist (October 2, 1948) quotes a British eye-witness to what happened. Despite the fact that the Jewish authorities "urged all Arabs to remain in Haifa and guaranteed them protection and security... the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa not more than 4,000 or 6,000 remained."
"Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is but little doubt that far the most potent of these factors were the announcements made over the air by the Arab Higher Executive, urging all Arabs in Haifa to quit The reason given was that upon the final withdrawal of the British the combined armies of the Arab States would invade Palestine and drive the Jews into the sea.,, and it was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accented Israeli protection would be regarded as renegades. At that time the Palestinian Arabs still had some confidence in the ability of the Arab League to implement the promises of its spokesman."
All evidence seems to point to the fact that the mass exodus of the Arab population was deliberately stimulated to serve the political ends of the Arab leadership. The Arab masses were subjected to a heavy barrage of "atrocity propaganda" predicting their wholesale extermination by the advancing Jewish forces. They were exhorted to flee far their lives even though they were not immediately threatened.
This propaganda met with an unexpected measure of success. Panic seized one community after the other and the Arabs began to flee in numbers far exceeding the original intention of their leaders. In an article in the London Daily Mail (August 12, 1948), Glubb Pasha, , the British commander of the Arab Legion, said: "The Arab civil. population panicked and fled ignominiously." Villages were frequently abandoned even before they were threatened by the progress of war.
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So deeply was the reluctance to stay under Jewish rule implanted in the Arab population that the feeling has survived the war period. It largely determined the Arabs' conduct even at a time when they knew they had nothing to fear under an Israeli regime and when Arab leaders were clamoring for the return of the refugees to Israeli territory. According to the Israeli-Egyptian armistice agreement (February 24, 1949), the Egyptian brigade which was trapped in
the Faluja pocket was permitted to withdraw. The civilian population of Faluja, numbering 3,000, had the option of remaining in Israeli territory or of being transferred to Egyptian-held Gaza or to Transjordan-held Hebron or Bethlehem. The New York Times correspondent, Gene Currivan, in a dispatch which appeared on March 4, 1949, expressed considerable surprise that of the 3,000 Faluja Arabs who were under no compulsion or threat and who certainly had all the benefits of protection by the United Nations authorities, 2,500 opted for evacuation and only some 500 decided to stay.
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From Schechtman, 1949 Arab Refugees:Facts and Figures , Prepared by the Research Department, Jewish Agency for Palestine , NY NY
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