To what extent is there validity to Ilan Pappes argument that the Palestinians were victims of a deliberate Israeli policy of ethnic cleansing in 1948?

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PLAN-

FOR:

  • Plan D
  • Dier Yassin
  • UN partition plan
  • Ethnic cleansing
  • Zionist intimidation
  • “No room for both peoples in this country”
  • Boundary establishment. Territorial loss
  • Attacks on Arab villages
  • The Jewish offer to stay deceitful and hypocritical
  • Arab pop in the state may cause trouble
  • Room for more Jews Lydda and Ramla had the Arab communities driven out
  • Moshe Sharettt
  • David Ben-Gurrion
  • No evidence supporting Israeli claims
  • Israel’s interests

AGAINST:

  • Inter-communal violence
  • Encouraged by invading Arab armies
  • Dier Yassin was exaggerated. Scared many people
  • Rumours spread
  • No resilience to protect from Arab countries
  • Jewish attacks were in retaliation to Palestinian attacks. Convoy incident
  • Arab violence was more brutal. The Palestinians anticipated the same in return.
  • Left voluntarily. Will be defeated soon. Return soon.
  • 156,000 still remained in Israel
  • Neighbouring countries welcomed the refugees encouraging them to leave.
  • Could have accepted the UN partition plan which would have avoided the refugee problem by avoiding the war altogether.
  • Were not really “refugees”
  • Plan D didn’t actually state the idea of ethnic cleansing. Was vague.
  • Was there to counter the incoming Arab attacks on the newly created state
  • More Arabs against the Jews. The Jews had been persecuted and were refugees themselves.
  • The Arabs were ill prepared.
  • Jews encourages the Palestinians to stay put.
  • Arab villages in Galilee were left intact.

To what extent is there validity to Ilan Pappe’s argument that the Palestinians were victims of a deliberate Israeli policy of “ethnic cleansing” in 1948?

        Ethnic cleansing is “the mass expulsion or killing of members of an unwanted ethnic or religious group in a society”, as Ilan Pappe suggests happened in the 1948 to the Palestinians by the Jews in the newly established state of Israel.  Looking back in history we can see that it was a very complicated issue with the Jews on one side already being refugees from Europe and then having the Palestinians being thrown out of their own homeland. But were they actually thrown out is the real question and this essay explores the various factors as to why over 700,000 Palestinians left their country and are still living in refugee camps 30 years after the crisis actually took place.

        Ilan Pappe holds some very strong arguments, the most striking being the effect of Plan D or Dalet in this whole situation. Plan D as shown in source H is a plan put into action in April of 1948 and was mainly there to “gain control of Hebrew state and defend its borders”. Ilan Pappe in source G interprets this as “the occupation and expulsion of the Palestinian population…” We can see this being supported in Plan D when it states that for its border security it would invade land outside its state boundaries, but only intends it to be “temporarily occupied”. Now obviously Israel would not waste its time to temporarily occupying enemy land just for the sake of it and one can see that the practical aim for this was to gain more living space for the growing Jewish population in the state. Moreover, Ilan Pappe uses the Dier Yassin massacre as another tick against Israel. Dier Yassin was a “well-publicized bloodbath” where the Arab communities were “terrorized and further intimidated by explosions set off by the Jewish forces”. Even though the Jews offered the Palestinians to stay in the area, “their leaders considered the Jewish offer to stay deceitful and hypocritical.” This is where the complication begins as many historians claim that the Arabs were broadcasting to the Palestinians to move out of the country. This can be seen as false as in source O confirms “it is true, as Erskin Childers pointed out long ago, that there were no Arab radio broadcasts urging the Arabs to flee en masse”. Benny Morris is a well-known historian and being and Israeli himself, it is unlikely that he would create a false argument against his own country. The atmosphere created was intimidating and many Palestinians believed that the only security they could gain was by leaving the country.

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        But it is not only there arguments put forth by Ilan Pappe that show Israel as the aggressor. For one, the UN partition plan took away a lot of the Arab land and gave more than 56% to the barely 30% population of Jews living there. This meant that the Jewish land allotted would have many Arabs and the Jews saw this as a threat to their security. Source M shows the keeping an Arab population within the state would be troublesome as the Arabs may retaliate and give the enemy free way into the country. Furthermore, “the Israelis wanted ...

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