How did the village of Dier Yassin come to be fought over in 1948?

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Ellie New WAP

How did the village of Dier Yassin come to be fought over in 1948?

The village of Dier Yassin was a small Arab village near Jerusalem that was attacked by Jewish fighters. Over 100 Arab townspeople were killed by Jewish paramilitaries. Because of the deaths, many of the remaining Arabs fled.

The fighting began when the Haganah launched Operation Dalet on 4th April. The aim of this was to capture the dozens of villages along the road from Jaffa to Jerusalem, in an effort to split the Arab State in two and capture Jerusalem. The Jews didn’t like this plan, as the proposed partition endangered the prospect of a Jewish homeland. As the date of the partition drew nearer, the Jews and the Arabs both planned to make war on each other, and by April 1948, a full-scale civil war began. The Dier Yassin incident was just part of this war, which is also known as the First Palestine War. It is said to be partly to blame for the ever-growing Palestinian refugee issue, as many fled when Dier Yassin was attacked, and weren’t allowed back.

Operation Dalet also involved the capture of several major towns that were meant to be part of the Arab State; Tiberias, Haifa and Jaffa. On 15th May 1948, the British mandate ended. The Jewish and Arab States now came into being. The Jewish State was called Israel. A day after this new State was made, and five neighbouring Arab countries sent armies to make war on Israel. What started as a civil war was now progressing to an international war, and was the first of many Arab-Israeli conflicts that rocked the Middle East in 1948.

The Arab-Israeli conflict had been going on for a long time before the attack on Deir Yassin. The conflict is mainly over a piece of land, or territory, known as Palestine. Both Jews and Arabs have strong claims to Palestine. According to tradition, they have one common ancestor; Abraham. From one of his sons came the Arabs, and from the other, came the Jews. The Jews claim they have a history there, and want back their holy city of Jerusalem. During the seventh century, the Arabs took over Palestine, and built many religious shrines. Jerusalem also became a sacred place for them.

After Britain defeated Turkey in World War I, the amount of Jewish immigration increased, and continued to do so over the 1930’s. The Jews fled economic desperation and anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe, and particularly Nazi Germany. By the late 1940’s, a third of the population of Palestine were Jewish.

The UNSCOP report recommended that the British mandate should end. Jerusalem would be an international zone under UN control, and Palestine be partitioned into a Jewish state and an Arab state. Jews and Arabs should be linked in an economic union to help each other’s trade. Both sides strongly opposed this proposal. The Arabs opposed the plan because at least 3000 Palestinians had been killed fighting for the Peel plan for partition from 1937-1939. The Arab State would have no direct access to the sea, because Jaffa, the main port, would be cut off from the rest. They were also angry, as most of the fertile land would be part of the Jewish State. The UNSCOP plan also stated that the Jewish State would be larger than the Arab one, even though the Jews were only a third of the population, and owned less than one tenth of the land. The Jews opposed the plan, because if it went ahead, they would have a larger population density than the Arabs.

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Source A is a Palestinian view of the Arab exodus from Palestine in 1948. It is an extract from a pamphlet written by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation in 1984. The source seems to be blaming the Israeli’s for attacking the ‘peaceful’ village. The language used makes the attack look motiveless and evil. They use words such as ‘murdered’ and ‘in cold blood’. When describing those killed, they say ‘154 men, women and children’, which emphasises that innocent people were killed. They then go on to say that the bodies were mutilated, which makes the crime seem even worse: it ...

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