Ilan Pappe and the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

Having read Ilan Pappe’s ‘The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine,’ I felt compelled to write about it. I have been following the Palestinian issue casually for over 20 years, and while claiming no expertise, I thought that I had a good understanding of it. Reading this book, however, made me realise how much I didn’t know.

Yes, I had heard of the Nakba; (literally catastrophe) the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948, and yes, I had a rough idea of its scale. What I didn’t know and what Israeli historian Ilan Pappe’s fine work demonstrates is how systematic, planned and comprehensive the ethnic cleansing was. It was no accident; not by any stretch of the imagination, Its chief architect was none other than the founder of Israel; David Ben Gurion and its principal executioners many of Israel’s most celebrated heroes.

Israel’s ‘war of independence’ wasn’t just limited to driving out 800,000 Palestinians from their homeland in 1948 and taking their homes and land; it has also included the destruction of their history, their religious sites, rape and even looting.

In other words, it was (and is) effectively an attempt to wipe the Palestinian identity of the face of the planet. In many respects, it has never ended and explains why Israel refers to Palestinian Israeli’s as ‘Israeli Arabs’ or why it considers the refugee problem off-limits in negotiations.

In forensic detail, Pappe maps the trajectory of the ethnic cleansing village by village and in the process shatters many a myth. He proves,for example, that the official Israeli narrative that emphasises a ‘voluntary transfer’ where a large number of Palestinians had decided to leave their homes temporarily and voluntary ‘so as to make way for the invading Arab armies bent on destroying the fledgling Jewish state’ is simply untrue. For those who like to argue that the land Zionist forces took from Palestinians was simply the spoils of war the Arabs instigated Pappe reminds them:

“The Zionist policy was first based on retaliation against Palestinian attacks in February 1947, and it transformed into an initiative to ethnically cleanse the country as a whole in March 1948…the plan decided upon March 10, and above all its systematic implementation in the following months, was a clear-cut case of an ethnic cleansing operation, regarded under International law today as a crime against humanity.”

Once complete 800,000 Palestinians had been uprooted, 531 villages had been destroyed and eleven urban neighbourhoods emptied of their inhabitants. Most of the homes Israeli’s occupy are the former homes of Palestinians; many of whom still retain the British mandate deeds to them. For some, this pales in comparison to other genocides or ethnic cleansing’s; however, as Pappe astutely notes the figure of 800,000 was 50% of the Palestinian population at the time.

There was nothing improvised about the Nakba (accept tactically); in fact, it was planned, systematic and carried out in accordance with a clear Zionist vision (that of creating a Jewish state). Alas, in a meeting of the Zionist leadership in Paris in August 1946 Ben-Gurion informed those present that roughly 80–90% of mandated Palestine would be enough to create a Jewish state.

As Pappe notes ‘neither the concept nor the percentage would change over the next sixty years’ and once Ben-Gurion’s suggestion had been mapped ‘This 1947 map envisaged a Jewish state that anticipated almost to the last dot pre-1967 Israel, i.e. Palestine without the West Bank and Gaza Strip.’ This one fact alone should put to bed forever the notion that the ethnic cleansing was an accident or a reaction to ‘Arab aggression’.

In due course, and after several iterations, the vision became a plan of action: Plan D (or Plan Dalet) by March of 1948. Zionist forces used their military superiority to intimidate, kill and ‘cleanse’ Palestinian towns and villages one after another. Massacres were committed; with the one in Deir Yassin being perhaps the most well-known (but as Pappe reminds his readers by no means the only one).

Many of these villages were old, with settled communities, often very picturesque and in some Jews, Muslims and Christians lived together. There were a significant number of Druze living in historic Palestine at the time; Zionist forces co-opted them by sparing them their lives and allowing them to stay.

So how was this all allowed to happen? Especially so shortly after the Second World War and the Holocaust-and given the fact that the UN had just been recently set-up in part at least to prevent such atrocities. Well, it was down to the identity of the perpetrators. Although there were efforts to resolve the issue in its formative stages, the World was in no mood to condemn the actions of a people who had suffered so much and so recently- thus making the Palestinians as Edward Said was fond of saying ‘the victims of the victims.’

What was revealing was the role of the British in facilitating the ethnic cleansing. Though Zionist forces had used terrorism to drive out the British and even carried out massacres-such as slaughtering 95 people at the King David Hotel- this didn’t prevent British complicity in the ethnic cleansing campaign. In Haifa, for example, British troops facilitated the pogrom by removing the buffer between the two communities. As Pappe details;

“This buffer was the only obstacle preventing Jewish forces from a direct assault on, and takeover of, the Palestinian areas, where more than 50,000 people still resided. The road was wide open for the de-Arabisation of Haifa.”

As for the Jordanians; King Abdullah would pay with his life for the betrayal of his Arab brethren, for his greed, and for making a ‘deal with the devil’. The art of history is akin to being a lawyer or a criminal investigator; you return to a historical scene; you investigate it and then apportion blame. A good historian can not only argue a case but substantiate it to a point where it is beyond dispute; that is precisely what Pappe does in this brave, detailed and meticulously researched book. The ultimate objective of the work is a passionate plea that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine is recognised as a crime against humanity as per International treatise and not just an alleged crime.