Al Nakba

 

By Hesham Tillawi
15 May 2003

"I am particularly amazed by the flight of the Arabs. This is a more extraordinary episode in the annals of this country than the establishment of a Jewish state. Truly astonishing is that the Arabs have disappeared from a whole section of the country," wrote the first Israeli foreign minister Moshe Sharette on June 16 1948.

SAFSAF- a Palestinian village- 52 men tied with a rope and dropped into a well and shot. 10 more were killed. Women pleaded for mercy, three were raped, and a girl aged 14 was raped. Another 4 were killed. This was a scene from 1948.

"They do it in the middle of the nights. Quietly, stealthily. In large groups. Well organized militias-armed and all. A crowed of about 50 religious settlers. Came in the night to two houses in Israeli-annexed, Arab East Jerusalem, Sheikh Jarah, over the Green line. They threw a child out of the broken window they had entered by. A two-year old flying baby, falling from the 2nd story window." This was a scene from the end of April 2003. As reported in Haaretz on April 29,2003, this group of terrorists were escorted to this location by Tourism Minister Benny Elon of Sharon government.    From 1948 until now the scene had not changed much. 1948 saw the birth of "Israel" and the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem.    The British Mandate over Palestine was ending on May 14, 1948. The British were supposed to bear responsibility for preserving law and order until midnight, May 14, 1948. On several occasions they defended Jewish settlements and neighborhoods. They did not, however attempt to prevent the advance of the Haganah- Jewish terrorist group- or the flight and expulsion of the Arabs. In some cases they even helped the Arabs leave their homes. At the same time they coordinated the transfer of many aspects of government with the Jewish agency. This smooth transfer of power was Britain's final contribution to the Jewish national home.

By the end of the fighting in 1949, almost a million Palestinians were forced off their land. More than 400 of the 500 Arab villages in Palestine had been taken over by the Israelis.  The inhabitants of these villages were driven out or fled in terror, their land was confiscated and they were forbidden to return to their land.

Early May 1948 speaking to the People's Council, Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion claimed that no Jewish settlement to date had been abandoned in the war- in contrast with " some hundreds Arab settlements" He asserted that "the Arabs had abandoned cities with great ease, after the first defeat, even though no danger of destruction or massacre confronted them. Indeed it was revealed with overwhelming clarity which people is bound with strong bonds to this land".

But in fact it was exactly the danger of destruction and the massacres that were the cause of the Arab abandonment of their homes. At the same moment that Ben-Gurion was saying that, the Palmah-  a Jewish terrorist group-was massacring some seventy Arab prisoners near Ein az Zeitun and several Arabs in the village itself. 

To help Sherret's with his amazement and to expose Ben-Gurion's lies that the Palestinians were in no danger when they left their homes in 1948 let us look at a small sample of what was happening in 1948:

At Sabbarin, the village fled after 20 were killed in the village, = an IZL armored car fired at the fleeing villagers. "More than one hundred old people, women and children, who had not fled from Sabbarin and other villages, were held for few days behind barbed wires at an assembly point in Sabbarin, after which they were expelled to the Arab town of Umm al Fahm. The Jewish troops combed the villages to ascertain that they were empty and to make sure they remain empty. In the town of Lydda, a massacre took place. 300 to 400 Israeli troops entered the town.  

They were ordered to shoot at any thing that moves. The town people took fright at the sounds of shooting outside believing that a massacre was taken place, they rushed into the streets, and were cut down by Jewish fire. In accordance with the Zionist plan, the Haganah and other Zionist groups launched a series of military attacks, the fully anticipated result of which was the Arabs' flight from Palestine. These attacks were the most important single factor in the exodus of April-June from both the cities and villages. This is demonstrated clearly by the fact that each exodus occurred during and in the immediate wake of each military assault. No town was abandoned by the bulk of its population before Jewish attack. Haifa, an Arab city of 70,000 strong Palestinians in 1947. In April 1948, an attack on Arab refinery workers caused some 15,000 to 20,000 to flee the city.

The attacking Jewish forces brought in Jeeps broadcasting recorded horror sounds including shrieks, wails and anguished moans of Arab women. The wail of sirens and the clang of firearm bells, interrupted by a sepulchral voice calling in Arabic: Save your souls, all ye faithful, flee for your lives. According to an eyewitness's account of a Haganah officer: "the threats to use poison gas and atomic weapons against the Arabs made the Arabs of Haifa flee the city." By the end of the war, only 3500 Arabs remained in the city. Watching the Arabs flee Ben-Gurion exclaimed, "What a beautiful sight". David Ben-Gurion was the architect of the 1948 War and the expulsion of the Arabs.    As far back as the late 1930s, Ben-Gurion said: "I support compulsory transfer. I don't see in it anything immoral".

Ad Dawayima in late October. A soldier eyewitness described how the IDF, capturing the village " without a fight first killed about 80-100 Arab men, women and children. The children they killed by breaking their heads with sticks. There was not a house without dead. The remaining Arabs were then closed off in houses without food and water, as the village was systematically razed". SA'SA- cases of mass murder, over 1000 dead. People lifted white flags. A sacrifice was offered to feed the troops. The whole village was expelled. Saliha- 94 were blown up with a house.
         
The Palestinians left their homes for two reasons, the first and for most they were expelled from their homes by force, and the second, they were afraid for their lives from the terror and the horror stories they had heard of the Jews massacring men, women, and children as they had done in the village of Deir Yassin.  The Jewish campaign of ethnic cleansing started way before Israel became a state, and before the British army left the country. On April 3 1948 the Haganah, forced the 994 residents of Khirbet Azzun to leave their village. On April 10, the 620 Arab residents of Ad Dumeir, the 910 Bedouins from Arab an-Nufeiat, and 340 Bedouins of Arab al-foqara were expelled from their homes. On April 15, some 650 Arabs from Miska and an uncounted number from Khirbet as-Sarkas were kicked out of their homes. On May 12 1948, 600 residents of Najd and 1200 residents of Sumsum were forced out. Zarnuga and Kaukaba, with population of 2600 and, 1870 were forced out on May 27 1948 by the Givati Brigade and 800 Arabs from the village of Huj were forced out on May 28th.   Arab Rubin's 1550 residents were expelled on June 1st, and Yibna with a population of 5920, was emptied by force on June 4th . 

This was only a partial list of what had happened in Palestine in 1948.  None of these expellees were allowed to return to their villages once the war was over. One of the most famous massacres took place at the village of Deir Yassin in the hills on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Its residents were considered passive, peaceful and friendly to the Jews. Its leaders had agreed with an adjacent Jewish neighborhood, Givat Shaul, that each side would prevent its own people from attacking the other side. The city had not been in any way a threat militarily to the Jews.  The Irgun and Lehi Jewish terrorist groups headed by Menachem Begin laid plans for an attack on the village. A force of 120 men went into the village. One of its leaders, Benzion Cohen, later said of the men who participated in the attack, "The majority was for liquidation of all men, in the village and any other force that opposed us, whether it be old people, women, or children."    256 people were murdered in the village. No one was spared. Old men, women and children.  

Pregnant women were killed and their babies were cut out of their wombs with knives and daggers. Bodies were left in the street for the others to see. Some of the survivors were put in the back of trucks, blindfolded and hands bound were paraded through the streets of the Jewish controlled side of Jerusalem.

News of this massacre sent shock waves through Arab communities, where Deir Yassin quickly became a name of infamy and a source of terrible fear for the Arab population of Palestine.  After this "excellent" and, "great" operation Menachem Begin, who later became Israel's prime minister issued a message to his troops:  "Accept my congratulations on this splendid act of conquest. Convey my regards to all the commanders and soldiers. We shake your hands. We are all proud of the excellent leadership and the fighting spirit in this great attack. Tell the soldiers: you have made history in Israel with your attack and your conquest. Continue thus until victory. As in Deir Yassin, so everywhere, we will attack and smite the enemy. God, God, Thou hast chosen us for conquest."

55 years and counting, the Palestinians are still faced with the same atrocities they faced back in 1948. Thousands of Palestinians killed by the Israeli army just in the last two years.

The Security Council of the United Nations issued resolution 181 back in 1948 requiring the return of all Palestinian refugees to their homes, 55 years later, refugees are still refugees, and Israel still a member of the United Nations. 

The Palestinians have been asked to control their extremists from attacking Israel, as a first step to satisfy the Road Map requirements, but who will control the extremists' government in Israel today?