1948 - with Benny Morris (Part 1)
PART 1 of 2
For more than 30 years of ‘on again-off again’ peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, many Israelis, and certainly most interested observers in the West, looked to the 1967 Six-Day War as the root cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If only we could reverse the results of that defensive war in which Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza, the problem would be solved, so the narrative goes. And this served as the basis for all peace talks and agreements that have taken place since.
But, to anyone willing to listen, the story that Palestinian leaders were telling had nothing to do with 1967, and everything to do with 1948. And the story they tell goes something like this: ‘In the 1940s Jews escaped the Nazis, fled Europe, colonized Palestine, and unprovoked - ethnically cleansed the Arabs. A textbook case of settler colonialism.’
They have managed to propagate this false narrative throughout much of Western society, where millions are mindlessly chanting those six words - ‘from the river to the sea.’
So while we never thought we’d need to re-litigate this topic, we invited to the podcast (for a special two-part discussion) one of the quintessential historians of 1948 - Benny Morris. Professor Morris has dedicated his entire career to studying and writing about the war of 1948, the circumstances that led to it and its aftermath - i.e The Palestinian Refugee Problem.
Morris's first book was “The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949”. His other books include: “1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War”, and “Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001”. He completed his undergraduate studies in history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and received a doctorate in modern European history from the University of Cambridge.
Links to all of Benny Morris’s books can be found here.
His recent published essays can be found here.
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
[00:00:00] The Zionist movement cleverly through the 20s and 30s and 40s had established what amounted to a state within a state inside under the British mandate. In other words, the British government ruled Palestine, but the Jewish community also ruled itself. It taxed itself, it had its own education system, its own economy, its own self defense force, the Haganah, established the rudiments of statehood in the decades before leading up to 1948.
The Arabs of Palestine hadn't done that. They hadn't prepared themselves for statehood during the 40s. All they'd done is fight against the Jews, but they didn't establish an infrastructure. for statehood, which was, of course, to cost them dearly in 48 because they lost the war, partly because they were unprepared for statehood and for war making come the war that they launched.[00:01:00]
It's 6 p. m. on Thursday, February 29th in New York City. It is 1 a. m. on Friday, March 1st in Israel. For more than 30 years of on again, off again peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, most people in Israel, and certainly most people in the West, who observed this conflict, looked to the 1967 war as the root cause of the Israel Palestinian conflict.
If only we could reverse the results of that 1967 war in which Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza, the West Bank up until 1967. Had been occupied by Jordan and Gaza up until 1967, had been occupied by Egypt, the problem would be solved. Israel could get out of the way and the Palestinians could build their state.
This, after all, served as the basis for all peace talks and interim diplomatic agreements that have taken place since. But this was a mirage, a story viewed through Western eyes and imposed on a people, the [00:02:00] Palestinians, who wanted nothing to do with this story. As a reminder, in the year 2000, Yasser Arafat refused to that offer by then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who offered him a Palestinian state, a very generous offer, including not only the West Bank in Gaza, but also East Jerusalem as its capital.
They met. At Camp David, with President Clinton, Arafat walked away and lit the match that lit up the Second Intifada. In fact, to anyone willing to listen, the story that they were telling to themselves had nothing to do with 1967 and everything to do with 1948. And the story they tell goes something like this.
In the 1940s, Jews escaped the Nazis, fled Europe, colonized Palestine, and unprovoked, ethnically cleansed the Arabs. A classic textbook case of settler colonialism. Well, this remarkable story, and I'll give them [00:03:00] that, it was quite fantastic, fails to mention that the Arabs refused 80 percent of the land in the 1930s.
They were offered 80 percent of the total territory to build their own state. The Jewish leadership accepted that two state compromise, the Arab leadership rejected it. This story also fails to mention that the Arabs started a war against the Jews in 1947 in this area. After refusing again to a new partition plan, that the UN had voted in favor of.
This story fails to mention that after losing that war, that they started, four Arab armies invaded the newborn state of Israel, during which most of the Palestinians fled to the West Bank and Gaza, and once again, they lost the war, which they had started. But as far removed from reality that this narrative may sound, it has not stopped them from tragically believing in it.
In fact, they've managed to propagate this false narrative, shockingly, throughout much of Western [00:04:00] society, where millions are mindlessly chanting those six words, from the river to the sea, that the Palestinian state will exist, not as part of a two state solution, but as a one state solution, spanning from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
I think it's safe to say that if 10 people in Western countries, asking them, what happened in 1948? Most of them would repeat the narrative that in the 1940s, a bunch of Jews fled Europe, came to Palestine, and chased out the Palestinians. As I said, a textbook case, so the narrative goes, in settler colonialism.
If only someone told them about Wikipedia. So while I never thought we'd need to relitigate this topic, as this is largely settled history, we bring you today the quintessential historian of 1948, Benny Morris, who has dedicated his entire career to studying and writing about the [00:05:00] war of 1948, the circumstances that led to it, and its aftermath, including The Palestinian refugee problem.
Now, professor Morris is one of the most interesting and provocative historians in Israel. He was a prominent member of the Israeli new Historians, which was a revisionist group, which sought to revise the traditional understanding of Israel's founding. The new historians tried to shift the focus of historical studies around Israel's founding towards study of Palestinian suffering as a result of that war.
Indeed. Benny Morris first book, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947 1949, documented the violence that Zionist militias committed against Arab residents and the dispossession of some Palestinians from what is now Israel. Regardless of what Morris believed in the late 1980s and 1990s, there's no question he underwent a significant shift in the early [00:06:00] 2000s, when he re evaluated the prospects for a two state solution.
This shift, he says, was the result of the failure of the peace process and the subsequent wave of Palestinian terrorism of the Second Intifada. The Second Intifada seemed to crystallize for Morris that most Palestinians did not want peace as most Jews had understood it. And, in fact, most Palestinians would never accept Jewish sovereignty anywhere.
Professor Morse's books also include 1948, a history of the first Arab Israeli war, which I highly recommend. And also Righteous Victims, a history of the Zionist Arab conflict, 1881 to 2001. Benny Morse completed his undergraduate studies in history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. And received a doctorate in modern European history from the University of Cambridge.
Benny Morris on [00:07:00] 1948. This is part one of our conversation,
and I am pleased to welcome to this podcast for the first time Professor Benny Morris who joins us from his home in Saragim, which is in a village in central Israel sort of between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Benny, thanks for joining us. My pleasure. There's so much I want to explore with you today. There are many topics.
We are going to focus in this two part conversation on one period, perhaps the defining period, of the story of Israel, the story of the conflict Israel has been in, and I think a story and a history that explains so much of what's happening. today, 2023 and now 2024. I know I ran through a formal rundown of your biography in the introduction, but I want to acknowledge a couple of things.
One, you are one of the most original thinking and interesting and provocative, [00:08:00] my word, not yours, public intellectuals on all debates related to Israel and its relations with the Palestinians and the Arab world. Full disclosure, as I mentioned to you offline, I have had a, shall we say, a love hate relationship with a lot of your work over the years as someone who's been engaged in debates about Israel, and we'll talk a little bit about why you've had this effect, I think, on a lot of people who engage with Israel, where sometimes they find your work maddening and at other times they find your work validating, which is not a lot of, I think, public intellectuals and academics can make that claim for themselves, that they wind up at any given moment to be angering or validating.
The people who engage with their work, but I want to start with just a little bit about you. So you were born on a kibbutz and just tell us about a little bit about your own upbringing in Israel. Well, I was born in a kibbutz where my parents were among the founders 1948 and then they left the kibbutz and I grew up in Jerusalem.
[00:09:00] And for two periods also in New York, where my father was Israeli diplomat, uh, consul. And you served in the IDF during the Six Day War, is that right? Well, I served from 67 to 69 in the IDF. Then periodically did the reserve duty and reserve duty including your service during the first Lebanon war right in the early 80s Yeah, and then also during the Intifada the first up Palestinian uprising against Israel in 1987 You were called up as a reservist to serve in Nablus and you conscientiously objected to that service to that call up well, I refused to serve during that call up and I was Placed in jail for a few weeks and then was released and then continued my normal life.
Okay. And then you've had this career in the academic world and you've written a number of groundbreaking books, which I listed in the introduction. We're focusing today on the 1948 War of Independence and the period that led up to it. But Why do you think [00:10:00] it is so important to understand the 1948 war, what led to it, the debates around that war, in order to understand what's happening today, and the challenges Israel faces post October 7th, 2023 and into 2024?
What's the connection between the two? Well, 1948 was a revolutionary moment in the history of the Middle East. The first Israeli Arab war. The State of Israel was established, changing the geopolitics of the region, which until then if you like had been one vast Arab populated and more or less controlled area, and suddenly a Jewish state was established right in the middle of the Arab world, in fact, severing the Arab world and the Muslim world in two.
That was one importance of the 48th war. And the second was the collapse or destruction in the course of the war of Palestinian society, the major expression of which was the creation of some 750 or 700, [00:11:00] 000 so called Palestinian refugees. In other words, most of the Palestinians were uprooted from their homes and ended up living either in the West Bank or in the Gaza Strip or outside of the territory of Palestine, Israel.
And why was it important to you to study this period? I mean, this has been the focus of your career, of your academic life. It's true. I began My academic career writing a book about the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem. And I did later write a book summarizing, if you like, the whole 1948 experience, the whole war, mainly because like in European history, many historians, British, French, et cetera.
We're focused on 1789, the French Revolution, because it is the revolutionary changing moment of modern European history, and 48 is the sort of revolutionary changing moment of the Middle East or the Middle East's history. Okay. Let's begin with some context. to the war, and we're going to cover a lot of territory [00:12:00] in a short period of time.
And when I say a lot of territory, I mean, I want to fly through 3000 years in warp speed and macro historical terms. What was the story of the Jews in this region that today is the modern state of Israel? What is the history of the Jews in this region going back 3000 years? Well, the Jews, according to the Bible, or the Hebrews, as they were called in the Bible, were a tribe which arrived from Mesopotamia, arrived in Palestine, or the Land of Israel, as Jews call it, somewhere around the year 2000, or perhaps before that, B.
C. From the year 1200 BC on, we have also archaeological evidence. In the year 1200, apparently the Jews or the Hebrews who were enslaved in Egypt reached the land of Israel and settled in it and established kingdoms, a kingdom and then two kingdoms in the land. Around the time of David, 1000 BC, he had ruled the land.
[00:13:00] For 400 years, then the Babylonians came along and destroyed the kingdom of Judea, the southern Jewish kingdom. They ruled here for a while, then the Persians came along and ruled. Eventually, the Jews reestablished sovereignty here in the second century BC under the Maccabees or the Hasmonean dynasty and ruled here for another hundred or so years.
The Romans came along, conquered the place. The Jews rebelled against the Romans twice, first in the first century AD and then in the second century AD. And the Romans crushed both rebellions and the Jews. gradually left the place. They exiled some of the Jews. Most of them simply either drifted off or became pagans or eventually became Christians or Muslims when the Muslims conquered the land in the 7th century and Jews essentially left the area of the land of Israel, Palestine.
During that period, the Muslims, you say they arrived in the 7th century, what was their imprint on the land at that time? [00:14:00] Arab tribes who became Muslim in the 7th century, early in the 7th century A. D. in the Hijaz, an area of Arabia today, burst out of Arabia and conquered the Middle East and eventually North Africa and Spain even, and reached even Southern France.
All of this occurred in the 7th century, and in the, among these conquests, they took Palestine in the 4th decade of the 7th century. They conquered Palestine. Conquering Palestine Where the population was mostly either Jewish or Christian or pagan, they gradually converted most of the population in Palestine to Islam.
That left an enormous imprint on the place. Some Arabs from Arabia settled here, and the rest, as I say, were basically pagans or Christians or Jews who had converted to Islam and became, if you like, Arabs in that 7th centuries. The first three centuries of Muslim conquest of the land. [00:15:00] So they ruled for about another thousand years.
The Muslims ruled Palestine from the 7th century A. D. until the British conquered the land from the Ottoman Turkish Empire in 1917 1918 in the course of World War I. What happened in those 1400 years was Arab rule and then there was a crusader. conquest of the land in the Middle Ages, and then a reversion to Arab rule after that, and then the Ottoman Turkish Empire in the 16th century, which was a Muslim empire, conquered Palestine and ruled it for 400 years until 1917, 1918.
Okay, I'm going to dedicate a separate episode to the entire discussion and the entire history of Jewish presence in the region, but I just wanted that summary for purposes of setting up this conversation that we're having now. So I want to now go to the fall of the Ottoman Empire. You've taken us through.
these 3, 000 years [00:16:00] of Jewish presence in the region under King David's rule, under King Solomon's rule, then you get to the Muslim, Arab Muslim rule in the region. I wanted to then move forward to the late 19th century because that's where we first have, as relates to the Jews, the first political ism, Zionism.
Can you describe what Zionism was and where it came from at that time in the late 19th century? Okay, in the 1880s, the end of the 19th century, There were large scale pogroms, mass murder, if you like, of Jewish communities in the Tsarist Russian Empire. And this essentially forced many of the Jews who lived in Russia, which also included at the time Poland and other areas of Eastern Europe, forced many of the Jews to emigrate, to leave Russia.
And most of them arrived in America, Canada, Britain, France, British Commonwealth countries. about 2 million, even more than 2 million Jews, fled Russia. About 30, [00:17:00] 000, maybe no, slightly more than 30, 000, probably closer to 50, 000, arrived in Palestine between 1882 and 1914. They were motivated by the same desire to leave.
an empire which was persecuting them, but also by a desire to resurrect Jewish sovereignty in their ancient homeland, which was Palestine. As I say, most Jews fled to the West and became Americans, British, Frenchmen, and so on. These tens of thousands of so called Zionists came to Palestine, started establishing settlements here.
The Turks allowed them to buy land and to set up settlements, and more Jews came and bought more land. And by 1914, there were probably somewhere between 000 Jews in Palestine by the beginning of World War I, most of them Zionists, in other words, people dedicated to it. to the reestablishment of a Jewish sovereign state in their ancient homeland, which is [00:18:00] Palestine, or the land of Israel.
So, can you describe the region's transition from Ottoman rule to British rule? Okay, World War I also engulfed the Middle East. The Ottoman Empire, mistakenly, if you like, decided to side with the central powers, Germany and Austro Hungary, thus turning into enemies the British Empire. And the French, the British, for whom the Middle East was very important, partly because of the Suez Canal, partly because of oil, which was just becoming, being explored or becoming available, didn't want the area to fall under Turkish rule, and they had their base, the British, in Egypt.
and invaded Palestine in 1917 after the Turks first tried to conquer Egypt and failed, the British counter attacked, if you like, invaded Palestine and conquered it in two stages in 1917 1918, thus ridding the area of the Turks. They also, of course, conquered Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon, as well as the area which is now [00:19:00] Israel.
Did the Arabs in Palestine have a national or group identity at this time? Were they organized in any way that was distinctive from the rest of the Arab populations? in the Ottoman Empire? This is a subject of controversy. Arabs, Palestinian Arabs, especially, will claim that they felt a national identity or character even before World War I.
Most historians reject this. Most historians, I believe, see the Arabs of Palestine as identifying as part of the Arab world, the Arab nation, if you like, which stretches from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf. They saw themselves as Ottoman subjects, but they basically saw themselves has with a local identity.
In other words, they were from Haifa, so they were Haifites. They were Jaffa from Jaffa. They were Jaffites or they belong to a certain village. So that's the area which they knew and identified with in terms of loyalty. And of course they were Muslims, but they weren't Palestinian Arabs and didn't [00:20:00] call themselves Palestinians.
This only happened much later in the thirties and forties in the 20th century. But at the time their identity was Southern Syrian because The area of Palestine was part of the province of Damascus under Turkish rule and later, in the later Turkish years, a part of the province of Beirut, but it wasn't never a separate province, Palestine, which in a sense left the people living in it, the Arabs living in this area.
Okay, I'm going to be a little bit more specific, and in the first part of this lecture, I'm going to be talking about, what is it that Arabic has in common with the Jewishone? What is the connection between this? And, look, I'm not going to explain all of the similarities, because I'm sure we have in Palestine.
It occurs later, it occurs post World War I, beginning, I would say, in 1920. And at this time, transition from Ottoman to British rule around the wind [00:21:00] down of the First World War and the aftermath of the First World War, just give me a sense for population composition, how many Arabs are there in the region in what was the Ottoman Empire and how many Jews?
Let's focus on Palestine. In Palestine in 1881, before the first Zionists stepped off the boat and entered the land and settled in it, in Palestine, there were probably about 450, 000 Arabs, 90 percent of the Muslims, 10 percent Christians, and probably 20 Jews in Palestine in 1881. By 1918, with some Jewish immigration which arrived in Palestine, There were something like 600, 000 Arabs in Palestine and something like 70, 000, maybe 80, 000 Jews, 1918 at the end of World War I.
Okay. So now take me to the Balfour Declaration of 1917. What did it say about the British role in the region? Why did Balfour issue this declaration? [00:22:00] Give us the historical context for what was happening and what it actually was. During World War I, the British made a number of promises. to Arabs and to, if you like, the French and the Jews in order to gain support from various peoples in the region and their allies.
In 1917, they issued a declaration signed by the British foreign minister, Arthur Balfour, which said that the British government And this is, we're talking about November 1917. The British government will support a look with favor on the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish national home, which the Jews interpreted, and some of the authors of the declaration, especially Balfour, interpreted as a carte blanche or as a warrant for the eventual creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.
The declaration was given at that time in November 1917. A few weeks before the British conquered Jerusalem, which was [00:23:00] considered the holy city of Palestine and sort of the resounding symbolic name in Palestine. So they issued the declaration and this controversy about why the British issued this declaration.
Because at the time, as I said, there were only a few tens of thousands of Jews here, a large number of Arabs, ten times more Arabs. Why did the British issue this declaration? Which, of course, annoyed the Arab population in Palestine, and later the Arabs around Palestine. Well, one explanation, and this is the one given by Balfour himself subsequently, Was it the Christian world owed the Jews something because it persecuted the Jews for several thousand years, more or less since a few centuries after the appearance of Jesus Christ?
They owed the Jews something for this, and they also owed the Jews something because the Jews had given Christendom and the West some of its values, social values, the idea of freedom, the idea of social equality, and so on. Another explanation, which probably is also true, meshes. with this. There were [00:24:00] other reasons for the issue of this declaration, and that was that the British wanted the Jews around the world, especially those in the United States and in Russia, supporting the British war effort.
The Americans hadn't yet entered the war. The Americans hadn't at least sent troops to fight in the war. The British wanted them to speed up their entry into the war in terms of the fighting, and they also wanted the Russians to remain inside the war. And hope that the Jewish communities in Moscow and in Washington, New York would press the governments to stay with the alliance which was fighting Turkey and Germany and Austro Hungary.
So, there was also, if you like, an imperial war reason connected to the war making in issuing the Declaration. It wasn't just British idealism. Arabs, since then incidentally, have always rejected this explanation of the idealism underlying the Declaration and have always pointed to the imperial British interest in issuing the [00:25:00] declaration.
I would say both things are probably were in there in the British cabinet when they ended up issuing the declaration. Okay. So now I want you to talk about the Arab reaction to what the British were doing. Take us to the Arab reaction to the Balfour Declaration and then this period we're talking about the 20s where you have considerable Jewish immigration into the area.
What is the Arab reaction to the British rule and to the growing Jewish community? The Arabs of Palestine, firstly, they saw the Zionist enterprise from the 1880s burgeoning, growing. They also saw that the British, the imperial power, was supporting the Zionist enterprise and affected by the growth of nationalism.
Arab nationalism in Egypt, in Syria, in Lebanon, in Iraq, the Arabs of Palestine said, we too want self determination like our Arab brothers. And what's preventing it is the British promise to the Jews to give Palestine to the Jews and the British [00:26:00] control of their lives in the British mandate system, the government of Palestine in effect.
So the Arabs firstly reacted in 1920, 1921, 1929 in bouts of violence against the Zionist presence, essentially launching pogroms, small pogroms and growing larger each time from 1920 on in until 1936, pogroms against the Jews. In 1936, they turned their weapons, the Palestinians, and rebelled wholesale against the British presence and the Zionist enterprise, and a three year rebellion followed from 36 to 39.
The British crushed it by the spring of 1939. But the British understood that the Arabs of Palestine were being supported by the Arabs around in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and so on. And the British sensed that the world was descending into a new world war in which the British, who would end up fighting the [00:27:00] Germans, the Italians, and the Japanese, the British would need the support or at least the neutrality of the Arab world.
And if they continued, if you like, to oppress, as they saw it, the Palestinians, the Arabs would be alienated and might even turn pro German. So the British, as I say, changed tack in 1938 39, under the impact of the rebellion and of the looming world war, they turned against Zionism, promised in their white paper of May 1939.
Majority rule in Palestine within 10 years, and what that meant was that it would be Arab majority rule in a Palestinian state because they also limited, from 1939 on, severely limited Jewish immigration to Palestine. So this meant that the Arabs would be, remain the majority and would eventually receive control of Palestine as one state under Arab control with a Jewish minority.
The Jews opposed this, of course. The [00:28:00] Arabs, quite stupidly, also said no to the 1939 British White Paper. Why? Why did the Arabs say no? Because they said, we want independence immediately. We don't want it in 10 years time or 5 years time. We want it now, 1939. You British, get out. Most of the Jews should leave Palestine.
They said everybody who had arrived since 1917, all the Jewish immigrants who had arrived, should not remain in Palestine and demanded immediate Arab independence. The British said, let's give it a little more time because you need time to learn how to rule the country and so on. But as I say, the Arabs quite stupidly said no, and World War II began in September 1939, and the whole subject of Palestine was put in suspension.
The British turned basically Palestine into one large military camp. Essentially, there was military rule in Palestine. And the Jews joined the colors. They joined the British because they were fighting the Germans who were persecuting the [00:29:00] Jews. The Arabs of Palestine, the Arabs around the Arab world, supported a German victory, not because they loved Nazism, but because they hated the British because of British imperial rule and oppression of the Arabs in the Middle East, including the Arabs of Palestine.
But the Jews, as I say, supported them. And this brings us to the end of World War II. Okay, but before we get to the end of World War II, I want to talk about the Peel Commission because the British tried to tackle the issue of what in many ways today serves as the basis of discussions about a two state solution.
So can you explain 1936, 37, and the Peel Commission? In the middle of the Arab rebellion of 3639, the British said, okay, let's send a commission to investigate the grievances of the Arabs, the Jews, and perhaps propose a solution to this problem of Arab Jewish enmity in Palestine and the old problem of British rule in Palestine, given this populations which were at loggerheads under their control.
The Appeal Commission issued its report in July [00:30:00] 1937 and basically said, we British cannot continue to rule Palestine because these communities don't agree with each other because they're, they also, both of them don't really want us around. They want independence, both the Jews and the Arabs. So we British must leave.
But what we propose is that the Arabs and the Jews divide Palestine among themselves into two states, a Jewish state and an Arab state. This would give both sides at least something, a modicum of justice, a modicum of self determination in the land which both claim and both have a right to. This was the British Appeal Commission's proposal.
The British government immediately accepted the proposal. The Arabs of Palestine and the Arab world around rejected the proposal. The Jewish agency which represented the Jewish community in Palestine, or if you like, the Zionist movement. said yes to the idea, the concept of partition as a just solution to the conflict, but said we would like a [00:31:00] little more than the 17 percent which the Peel Commission had allocated for Jewish sovereignty.
Most of the country the Peel Commission said should be under Arab control. The British should continue to Rule, Jerusalem and Bethlehem, which were important to the Christian world, but the Jews should get 17% of the land. The Arabs said no to this. The Jews, more or less said yes to it, and the Arabs renewed the revolt against the British, which as I said, was eventually crushed the Arab Revolt in 1939.
And as you suggested, this idea of dividing the land into two countries, into two states. One Jewish, one Arab. It has remained as the conceptual basis for a solution to the Israel Palestine Israel Arab conflict has remained the basis for a solution among Western leaders down to this present day when, again, leaders are talking about a two state solution.
I don't like to traffic in counterfactuals in history. [00:32:00] I strenuously resist counterfactuals. That said, I'm going to resist my resistance. What do you think would have happened had the Arabs in Palestine accepted the Peel Commission recommendation in 1937 to get this approximate, what you're describing, 80 plus percent of the area for an Arab Palestinian state?
This was 1937, so we're talking just shy of, you know, 90 years ago. What would have happened? Look, the Palestinian Arabs didn't want the Jews to have any part of Palestine for Jewish sovereignty. They agreed to a small Jewish minority living in an Arab state, which would encompass all of Palestine. So the Arabs disagreed, wouldn't allow a Jewish state on 17 percent, they wouldn't have allowed a Jewish state on 5 percent.
of Palestine. Had the Arabs accepted it, and this is what you're saying, the Jews would have accepted it. And it's quite possible that the small Jewish state on the 17 percent of Palestine would have ended up fighting the Arab state on the 17 or whatever it is [00:33:00] percent, which would was allocated for the Arabs.
Because as I say, the Arabs didn't want the Jewish state in any part of Palestine. So I'm not sure it would have left us with a peaceful Palestine a hundred years on. But the Palestinians could have had a state. Long before World War II. Yes, then they could have stayed in 1947, when they again rejected a two state solution.
Okay, we'll get to that. Before we get to that, I want to talk about World War II. You said, previously said, World War II breaks out September of 1939. What was happening in this area, in Palestine, in pre state Israel, during World War II? Well, the country was in a part of the state of war in which the whole of the Middle East was in.
The Jews, as I said, supported the British and something like 30, 000 Jews from Palestine joined the British Army. Some of them ending up fighting with the British Army in North Africa. and Italy. A few thousand Arabs also joined the British army, but I don't think any of them actually fought in World War II.
And most of the Arabs, as I said, supported a victory [00:34:00] by the Axis powers because they hated Britain and they hated France. But the region was strategically important to the allies, meaning it wasn't just the Jews had joined the war on behalf of the British, but that the region strategically was important because part of World War II was being waged in North Africa on the side of the Axis powers.
Palestine became a large British rear base for the British Eighth Army, which was fighting the Germans in North Africa. Eventually the British would beat the Axis, beat Rommel's army in North Africa and then invade Italy and so on. But the Middle East was also important in other ways for the Allied war effort in World War II, because the route from Britain and if you like America as well.
To the far east, move through the Suez Canal, as it does today, and this route was important strategically, and the Middle East by that time had become a major producer of oil, which was important to the British allied war machines as well. So, the Middle East was very [00:35:00] important strategically in a number of ways, especially Palestine, given that it was next to the Suez Canal.
I want to fast forward. The World War II comes to an end, and it's 1947. You referenced 1947 earlier, so we're back in 1947. The British basically say, enough. Well, what happens in World War II and is central to our story is that six million Jews are murdered by Hitler and his allies in Europe, the Holocaust.
And this empowers or energizes the Zionist movement to demand Jewish statehood immediately. They'd wanted Jewish statehood before 1939, a party in order to save Jews from the impending Holocaust in Europe. This hadn't happened, but the destruction of European Jewry by the Nazis. Sort of prove the Zionist case that the Jews to be safe anywhere had to have a state of their own.
And this state had to be in Palestine because that's was the ancient homeland, and that's where the Zionist movement had focused its energies. [00:36:00] So by the end of World War ii. Some of the Jews were in open rebellion against the British rulers in Palestine, and in fact began to terrorize the British troops and the British officialdom in Palestine, 1946 1947.
And the British, understanding that they hadn't achieved and couldn't achieve peace between the Jews and the Arabs, and were under attack very embarrassingly. By the Jews who were their allies in World War II, and now they would have to fight the Jews in Palestine. The British said, enough's enough. And in February 47, they threw in the towel, in other words, gave it to the United Nations and said, we had control of Palestine for the past 30 years.
We haven't been able to solve the Jewish Arab problem. Ah, the Jews are also demanding self determination and want us out of here. You, the United Nations, please find the solution to the problem. We no longer want to rule Palestine. Okay. So now we're at 1947, and the UN says, [00:37:00] find. Yes. The UN Special Committee on Palestine, called UNSCOP, In August 1947, hands its recommendation over to the General Assembly and on the 29th of November 1947, the General Assembly proposes the partition of Palestine as the solution to the Jewish Arab conflict in Palestine.
The Arabs reject the partition. Proposal of the General Assembly and the Jewish agency accepts the partition plan and the Arabs of Palestine launch the war against the Jews. In fact, the day after the partition resolution is passed in New York by the General Assembly, the Arab militiamen in Palestine begin shooting up Jewish buses and passersby and thus begins the war on the 30th of November.
1947. Okay. In a speech, you see that November 30th, 1947, a war between the Jews and the Arabs in this area begins in a speech in the British parliament on [00:38:00] February 18th, 1947. I'm quoting here, by the way, from Wilf's book, The War of Return. And I was struck by this in her book. She writes in a speech in parliament on February 18th, 1947, British foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, known for his, it's important to note that he was not.
It's not terribly friendly to the Jewish pre state community in the area, and it was not terribly sympathetic to Zionism. So, quoting here from A. Nutt Wolf, Bevan explained his country's decision, and I quote here, His Majesty's government have thus been faced with an irreconcilable conflict of principles for the Jews.
The essential point of principle is the creation of a sovereign Jewish state. For the Arabs, the essential point of principle is to resist to the last, to the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine. And then Wilf goes on to write, Bevan understood that this was not a conflict between two national movements, each seeking first and foremost its own independence, but rather about one group.[00:39:00]
The Arabs seeking first and foremost to foil the independence of another, the Jews. So do you agree with that analysis that the focus of the Arabs at this time, again, was not really about their own sovereignty in the land. It was about preventing any semblance of sovereignty, no matter how small, no matter how minuscule of Jews in this land.
I would qualify that. I would say that the Arabs of Palestine under Haj Amin al Husseini wanted all of Palestine for themselves and to establish a Palestinian Arab state in Palestine. And he was the Grand Mufti. Yes, he was the Grand Mufti and a cleric who actually led the Palestinian Arab National Movement from the 1930s through 1948.
So a spiritual and political leader for Arabs in that area. A political leader, I'm not sure he was a spiritual leader, but he was a religious figure. That's true. They wanted a Palestinian Arab state. They've made that clear in the rebellion in [00:40:00] 3639, and they made it clear in 4748. They wanted a Palestinian Arab state.
But it's also true, and probably equally important to them, was to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. Both things were true. The Zionist movement cleverly through the 20s and 30s and 40s had established what amounted to a state within a state. inside under the British mandate.
In other words, the British government ruled Palestine, but the Jewish community also ruled itself. It taxed itself. It had its own education system, its own economy, its own self defense force, the Haganah, established the rudiments of statehood in the decades before leading up to 1948. The Arabs of Palestine hadn't done that.
They hadn't prepared themselves for statehood. during the 40s. All they'd done is fight against the Jews, but they didn't establish an infrastructure for statehood, which was, of course, to cost them dearly in 48, because [00:41:00] they lost the war, partly because they were unprepared for statehood and for war making come the war that they launched.
Okay, so describe what happened in the Civil War that began in 1947. The war that the Palestinian Arabs, in disorganized fashion, launched on the 30th of November 1947 had two parts. A civil war launched by the Palestinian Arabs against the Zionist enterprise, which lasted from November 47 until May 1948.
Who's funding and arming each side of the civil war? How did the armies stack up against each other in terms of fighters and military equipment? Well, the civil war, as I said occurred while the British were still the nominal rulers of the country. So neither the Arabs nor the Jews had a real army. They had militias.
But the main Jewish militia, the Haganah, was a sort of an army coming into being, whereas the Arabs had 700 different militias, one militia for each village and each town, [00:42:00] never under a national umbrella. never with national organization, and which is one of the reasons why the Haganah, the Jewish militia, overwhelmed the Arabs once it went over to the offensive.
But the war consisted essentially of guerrilla warfare in the countryside and urban guerrilla warfare in the cities, with Arabs and Jews planting bombs. sniping, ambushing convoys, and attacking each other's villages. Okay, so tell me about the blockade of Jerusalem. Why was such a critical period? Well, Jerusalem was a symbolic center of the country for both the Jews and the Arabs.
For the Arabs it was also a very holy site for Jews who are much more secular and the holiness was less important. But the historical importance of the place was very important. And there were a hundred thousand Jews living in Jerusalem. The center of the Jewish population was in the coast around Tel Aviv, Haifa.
In Jerusalem and the Haganah units protecting the Jewish West Jerusalem [00:43:00] suburbs. We're supplied from the coast growingly by convoys which protected in the first months of the Civil War by the British. As I said, they wanted to maintain law and order, so supported the side which was doing less fighting or which was trying to defend itself, which was the Jews.
But by that time, March 48, the British presence in the country had been largely depleted and because of continued Jewish terrorist attacks against the British, because the right wing of the Jewish, the Zionist movement continued to regard the British as pro Arab. From March onwards, the British stopped protecting the convoys, and from that point on, there were large scale Arab ambushes of convoys trying to resupply Jewish Jerusalem.
And this became, essentially, a siege of Jewish Jerusalem during March, April, early May 1948. The Jewish trying to resupply the town and the Arabs trying to blockade and block off supplies and reinforcements [00:44:00] from the coastal plain to a Jewish Jerusalem. So the Jews were purely in defensive mode at this time.
Well, until the end of March, 1948, partly because of the Arab ambushes of the convoys going up to Jerusalem. The Haganah changed strategy from the beginning of April, moved over to the offensive, initially to clear the Jerusalem Tel Aviv road of Arab ambushers and their bases, which are the Arab villages alongside the road.
And from that point on, the Jews tried to open the siege, break the siege, open the road to Jerusalem, and eventually also moved over to the offensive in various other parts of the country during April and the first half of May, when ultimately they crushed the Palestinian Arab militias and Arab society.
So tell me then about Tochnit Dalet. In English, it's Plan D. What was Plan D and how was it executed? Plan D was a Haganah master plan. As I said, the Haganah, [00:45:00] which was the main Jewish militia, they had 30, 000 troops, so essentially the Haganah was the Jewish defense force. On the 10th of March, 1948, in anticipation of the final British evacuation of the country, In expectation, not only that the British were about to leave, but that the Arab states were about to invade the country.
The Arab states said they will invade the country when the British leave, which in fact is exactly what occurred on the 15th of May. So on 10th of March, the Jews, that is the Haganah said, we have to prepare a plan how to protect the Jewish state's areas in advance of this expected pan Arab invasion.
And the plan basically called for the Jews taking control of the border areas through which Arab armies were expected to invade the country, and take control of the main roads and axes and main towns inside the Jewish state area. Plan D in one of its subsections It also said that the [00:46:00] Jewish brigade commanders in each area, the Haganah brigade commanders, had the right or the option of expelling Arab populations and destroying Arab villages in various areas.
If these Arab villages were inimical, if they were attacking the Jews, if they were friendly or neutral in the struggle, the brigade commanders could leave them in place. But if they were attacking the Jews, They could be removed at the discretion of the area commanders, the Jewish area commanders. Arab propagandists later said that Plan D was a master plan for the expulsion of the Arabs of Palestine.
I don't see it that way. Arab propagandists do see it that way. As I said, it was a master plan for the defense of the Jewish community and the emergent Jewish state, but the Arab propagandists have it that this was the blueprint for the expulsion of the Palestinians. Because it contained these clauses.
Okay. You said there was Arab propaganda about Plan [00:47:00] D. There's also a lot of controversy surrounding the circumstances that led to Arab refugees fleeing Arab villages. Around this time, following the implementation of Plan D, Palestinians today claim that they were all evacuated or massacred by Jewish forces fighting at that time.
You have done a lot of research on this debate. We could dedicate a whole episode to it, but in the interest of time, can you just summarize what the debate has been and where you come down on it? Well, the word massacre is largely irrelevant. The word massacres of Arabs in the course of the 48 war, there were also massacres of Jews by Arabs in the course of the 48 war, but this wasn't the essential feature of the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem.
Altogether, in fact, just so we get the figure straight in the 48 war, some 6, 000 Jews were killed, most of them soldiers in the fighting. which is 1 percent of the Jewish population of [00:48:00] Palestine died in the war. Probably a similar number of Palestinian Arabs who also died in the war. Not many more to be sure.
So in the course of the Haganah offensives of April, May 1948, and then subsequent offenses by the IDF, the Jewish forces, conquered Arab villages and urban neighborhoods and towns, and Arabs usually fled in face of the encroaching Jewish forces. Here and there, there were also expulsions of Arabs, especially famous are the expulsions of the Arab population of Lida and Ramle.
Towns east of Tel Aviv in July, 1948, but most Arabs simply fled in face of battle moving to the West Bank or the Gaza Strip, or out of the country altogether. Some Arabs also left their villages and towns as a result of advice or orders by Arab local commanders or by the Arab armies when they [00:49:00] invaded Palestine in May 1948.
In other words, to clear the decks for the Arabs so that they could fight without endangering Arab civilians as they advanced into the Jewish state. But most of the Arabs weren't expelled or advised or forced to leave by the Arabs themselves. Most of them simply fled battle. Word expulsion actually comes in on large is that during the war and by the end of the war, the Israeli government decided repeatedly.
not to allow the refugees to return to their homes. This was a government decision. There was never any decision to expel the Arabs in the course of the war, but there was a decision not to allow those who had left their homes to return to their homes and lands. And in that sense, that decision was an expulsive decision.
In other words, it made firm, it concretized the Refugee them of those Arabs who had been uprooted in the course of the war. Benny, just to be clear, how many refugees are we talking about at this [00:50:00] period? During the civil war, and there's no exact number, but probably somewhere between 250 and 350, 000.
Palestinians were uprooted from their homes in the course of November 47, mid May 1948. And out of a population of approximately how large? There were 1. 2, 1. 3 million Palestinians in Palestine on the eve of the war at the end of 1947. Okay. I want to talk about Haifa. Haifa was an evenly split Arab Jewish city, about 70, 000.
My understanding is of, of each community, 70, 000 Arabs, 70, 000 Jews. Tell us the story of what happened in Haifa as it relates to refugees. Okay. Haifa was a mixed Arab Jewish town, actually for part of the time run by a joint municipality, and Jews and Arabs lived quite well together there. There was a lot of mutual trade and cooperation, even some friendships.
In the course of [00:51:00] the Haganah offensives, which had begun in the beginning of April, on the 21st, 22nd of April, the Haganah assaulted the Arab neighborhoods of Haifa, by which time probably 000 Arabs had already fled the town, especially the middle class Arabs, and fled the town as a result of the conflict during the previous months.
So in 21, 22 April, the Jews conquered the Arab areas. The Arabs surrendered and the British called a meeting of Jews and Arabs, the British rulers of the town, and the Arabs essentially said we don't want to stay any longer in town. The Jewish mayor at the time of Haifa, Shabtai Levy, basically appealed to the Arab leaders who had remained so far to change their minds to stay so the Jews and Arabs could continue to live in Haifa together.
The Arabs said no, and the Arabs streamed out of the town from the 22nd of April during the following week, streamed out of the [00:52:00] town in caravans and by boat, essentially by June, July, only 3, 000 of the 70, 000 Arabs remained in the town. Haifa was a fairly unique example. of Jews desiring and asking Arabs to stay who are about to leave or were already leaving.
In most places, the Jews understood that Arab departure would serve their political and military interests and were happy to see their backs. In Haifa, uniquely, the mayor and apparently some other officials in town, Asked the Arabs to stay, but once they started leaving in mass, the Jews of Hai Falls also came to understand it's better for the Jewish state to have less Arabs.
Were happy that they were leaving. Benny, how does the war, or at least the Civil War phase, this phase we're talking about, how does this come to its short-lived end, and what are the results of it? Well, the A, the Civil War ends with the utter defeat of the Palestinian society and the Palestinian militias.
They're crushed, [00:53:00] they're incidentally taken by surprise. at the mass exodus and Ben Gurion and others say, how come they're all leaving? They don't understand it. But they're happy to see them leave because these Palestinian Arabs had just fought against the Jewish state. One can assume, and they could assume, that these Arabs would not be loyal citizens of a Jewish state under a Jewish government.
Based on your research, why? Why did they win this war? Basically, because they were very highly motivated. The Holocaust had ended three years before, and they had expected the Arabs to commit a second Holocaust if they won the war. Palestinian Arabs and Arab states after they invaded. So they were highly motivated, their families were just behind them.
In other words, they were protecting not just their front lines, but their homes or their houses, their villages and towns. The Jews were far better organized than the Palestinian Arabs. As I said before, they had one large predominant militia, centrally [00:54:00] controlled. They could move troops about to face different contingencies.
While the Arabs didn't have an organized large militia, they had 700 separate militias. The Jews, I think, were by and large better armed than the Palestinian Arabs. The Jews had mortars, machine guns, they had some small military industries, they produced bullets, grenades, various other small things, Sten guns, submachine guns.
The Arabs didn't have a manufacturing capability. The Jews also enjoyed the support of world Jewry, meaning essentially American Jewry, financially. A lot of money poured into the Yishuv, into the Jewish agency, and fueled their arms purchases. And there had been Jews with military experience. Some 30, 000 of Palestine's Jews had fought in World War II in the British Army.
Other Jews had fought in the Russian and American and Canadian armies and arrived in Palestine before the war. So the Jews had, a lot of them [00:55:00] had military experience, whereas the Palestinian Arabs didn't have any military experience. How clear was it to the Jewish community that an Arab invasion was imminent?
The Arab radio stations and Arab leaders had been saying for weeks and months, after the UN General Assembly resolution in November 1947, During the following months, Arab states leaders, radio broadcasts continuously said, when the British leave, we are going to invade. In other words, some Arab states in Seville said we should invade even before the British leave.
This was Iraq. But the Arab states generally understood they can't invade while the British army was still in control of Palestine, in some nominal control of Palestine. So the Jews expected an Arab invasion, obtained intelligence in early May that the Arabs were preparing for the invasion, and the invasion duly arrived on the 15th of May.
Okay, so Benny, that is where we will wrap up this part of the [00:56:00] conversation. We're on the eve. of Israel's declaration of independence. We're on the eve of the 48 phase of this war we're talking about. And obviously while all this is happening, the British have departed, they're departing. Thank you for this rich history on this part of the conversation and we'll pick up in the next part.
This was part one of our conversation. Please be sure to listen to part two of our conversation where we focus on Israel's war with the Arab nations in 1948.