The Arab-Israeli Conflict, Part I: Why Peace is Impossible

In March 2002, then-Crown Prince, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia proposed the “Arab Peace Initiative” in the Arab League Beirut Summit. According to Arab leaders this initiative consisted of a comprehensive proposal to end the entire Arab-Israeli conflict. The Arab League members unanimously endorsed the peace initiative on March 27.

According to the Arab Peace Initiative Israel will:

(a) Complete withdrawal from the occupied Arab territories, including the Syrian Golan Heights, to the 4 June 1967 line and the territories still occupied in southern Lebanon;
(b) Attain a just solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees to be agreed upon in accordance with the UN General Assembly Resolution No 194.
(c) Accept the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state on the Palestinian territories occupied since 4 June 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital.

In return the Arab states will do the following:

(a) Consider the Arab-Israeli conflict over, sign a peace agreement with Israel, and achieve peace for all states in the region;
(b) Establish normal relations with Israel within the framework of this comprehensive peace

To most unsuspecting Westerners, the Arab Peace Initiative may seem like a clear sign that Arab states are truly dedicated to peace. With such an attractive and generous offer – an end to the entire Arab-Israeli conflict, and peace with all Arab states – what does Israel have to lose?

Surely, withdrawing from all occupied territories is not such a big problem for Israel if it gets peace with all Arab countries in return; Israel has already withdrawn from the Sinai Peninsula – an area 3 times the size of Israel – in return for peace with Egypt.

Accepting an independent Palestinian state is also not a big issue of concern; Israeli PMs over the past two decades have agreed that a Palestinian state will be a reality, and negotiated with Palestinian leaders to that end.

But what about the Palestinian refugee issue? How can Israel possibly reject a “just” and “agreed upon” solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees?

Well, there’s only one little problem here – what is hidden behind the innocent sounding words of the Arab proposal is actually something quite ominous to Israel. While part (b) of the released proposal states:

Attain a just solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees to be agreed upon in accordance with the UN General Assembly Resolution No 194.

When we look at the full wording of the Arab Peace Initiative, we find the following:

“To accept to find an agreed, just solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees in conformity with Resolution 194,” and “the rejection of all forms of Palestinian patriation which conflict with the special circumstances of the Arab host countries.”

What exactly does “the rejection of all forms of Palestinian patriation” mean?

The Arab states used more explicit language on this point in a Final Statement that accompanied their initiative. They rejected any solution that involves “resettling of the Palestinians outside of their homes.”

This does not just mean that Arab states reject the settlement of Palestinian refugees in Arab countries. It also means that Arab states reject the settlement of Palestinian refugees in the future Palestinian state (in the West Bank and Gaza).

The only solution Arab states would be willing to accept – and the only solution they view as “just” – to the Palestinian refugee problem is the resettlement of millions of Palestinian refugees in Israel.

So while the Arab Initiative itself says that the solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees should be “agreed upon” – presumably in negotiations between Israel and Arab states, the Arab Final Statement leaves no room for negotiations. What this really means is that Israel should agree to the Arab proposal to resettle Palestinian refugees in Israel.

Can Israel agree to such proposal?

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) estimates there are 6.5 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants. Resettling millions of refugees in Israel – a country of 7.7 million inhabitants (including 1.25 million Israeli Arabs) – would inevitably bring the destruction of the Jewish State.

In other words, through the Arab “Peace” Initiative, Arab states declare that they are willing to end the Arab-Israeli conflict, and sign a peace agreement with Israel… once Israel ceases to exist.

Thus, according to the Arab perspective the only way to “peacefully” resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict is through the destruction of the Jewish State.

“Right of Return” for Palestinian Refugees

Certainly, Israel would never agree to absorb millions of Palestinian refugees. But is the Arab demand for the “Right of Return” for Palestinian refugees into Israel legitimate? Let us consider the question of Palestinian refugees from a historic perspective:

During the 1948 War – a war which began with Palestinian rejection of the UN Partition Plan, and the subsequent invasion of Arab armies into Israel – between 650,000 and 730,000 Palestinian Arabs were expelled or fled from the area that became Israel, and became refugees. At the same time, around 10,000 Jews were forced to leave their homes in Palestine. In 1949, Israel signed separate armistices with Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. By the end of the war territory under Israeli control encompassed approximately three-quarters of Mandate Palestine. Today, over 1.25 million Arabs are citizens of Israel.

From 1948 to 1970 between 750,000 and 1,000,000 Jews were expelled or fled from Arab countries. Today, fewer than 7,000 Jews remain in Arab countries. It is estimated that Jewish-owned real-estate left behind or confiscated in Arab countries covers a total of about 100,000 square kilometers – more than four times the size of the state of Israel. Additional 200,000 Jews from [non-Arab] Muslim countries left their homes due to increasing insecurity and growing hostility since 1948. Today over 60% of Israeli Jews are the descendants of displaced Jews from Arab countries.

Jewish refugees from Arab countries were absorbed by Israel and became equal citizens. Israel does not demand a “right of return” for Jews into Arab countries, nor does it demand compensation for confiscated Jewish land and property from Arab countries.

On the other hand, Palestinian refugees were not absorbed by Arab countries. Instead, for over 60 years Palestinian refugees have been confined to impoverished refugee camps by Arab states; denied the opportunity for a meaningful life, and cynically exploited by Arab states as a political weapon against Israel. For over 60 years Palestinian refugees have been told that only Israel is responsible for their suffering, and that one day they will return to their villages and homes.

The demand for “Right of Return” for Palestinian refugees into Israel is an Arab attempt to distort history, and shift the entire responsibility for the Arab-Israeli conflict to Israel. There is nothing just or equitable about this demand.

Thus, the “Right of Return” is synonymous with the destruction of the Jewish State.

Instead of trying to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, and address the legitimate grievances of the Palestinian people, Arab leaders have been focused on one goal: the destruction of the Jewish State.

For Arab leaders “peace” negotiations with Israel are merely the continuation of war by other means.

Certainly, Arab leaders in distant capitals – untroubled by the daily hardships of Palestinians under occupation – may adopt extreme views for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (ie. the destruction of Israel). But what about Palestinian leaders?

Palestinian leaders are more attuned with the reality on the ground. Shouldn’t they be more willing to reconcile their differences with Israel for the sake of national independence and peace? Can there still be hope for an Israeli-Palestinian peace? That will be the topic of the next post in the series The Arab-Israeli Conflict.

Reading Continued Below:

The Arab-Israeli Conflict, Part II: Why the Middle East is on a Path of War?

The Arab-Israeli Conflict, Part III: The Core of the Conflict



Geo Politics

Arabs Rewriting History

Arab reaction from 1949 shows Israel isn’t exclusively responsible for refugee problem.

By Alexander Joffe, Asaf Romirowsky

The late Palestinian intellectual Edward Said called Palestinians “the victims of the victims.” As the September deadline for the Palestinian “Unilateral Declaration of Independence” approaches, and the certain endorsement by the United Nations General Assembly, it is worth asking again who originally victimized the Palestinians. Today, of course, the unanimous consensus among Palestinians, and the Arab and Muslim worlds, is that it was Israel that, in 1948, attacked and expelled Palestinians. But who did Palestinians blame for their fate in 1949?

The two largest Palestinian communities in the US are located in Dearborn Michigan and Jacksonville Florida. On December 15th, 1949 the Michigan Arab newspaper As Sabah (literally the Morning Tribune) published an editorial on the question of the Palestine Arab refugees:

“What is the crime of the refugees in the eyes of the lords of Arabia who stand by and watch the misery of the refugees, and who suck the blood of the poor and needy-without shame before God and the world? Yes the poor refugees committed the crime of listening to those deceivers, they believed the liars, and went to the extreme foolishness of leaving their homes, counting on their deceitful leaders to bring them back! And because of what is happening to the Palestine refugees, Arab public opinion is changing little by little to support the Jews in Israel where not a single Arab dies from starvation and cold! And if there should be another war, it should be against the Arab leaders, the princes and kings who brought this catastrophe upon the poor people of Palestine.”

The editorial’s analysis regarding Arab public opinion favoring Israel was incorrect, to say the least. But the claim that Palestinians fled their homes in response to Arab leaders has been controversial since the events occurred. The Palestinians of Michigan in 1949 thought this was the case.

In October 1949, Palestinian intellectual Musa Alami wrote: “What concerned (the Arab states) most and guided their policy was not to win the war and save Palestine from the enemy, but what would happen after the struggle, who would be predominant in Palestine, or annex it themselves.”

British testimonials

But in addition to the usurpation of the Palestinian cause, which upset As Sabah’s editorialists, there was another dimension. British officials on the scene at the time, hardly pro-Zionist, were convinced that Palestinian leaders were steadily abandoning their people. In December 1947 the High Commissioner, General Sir Alan Cunningham reported that “panic of (the) middle class persists and there is a steady exodus of those who can afford to leave the country." He added later in April 1948, “In all parts of the country the effendi class has been evacuating in large numbers over a considerable period and the tempo is increasing.”

In June 1949 Sir John Troutbeck, head of the British Middle East office in Cairo reported that the refugees “express no bitterness against the Jews (or for that matter against the Americans or ourselves) they speak with the utmost bitterness of the Egyptians and other Arab states. “We know who our enemies are,” they will say, and they are referring to their Arab brothers who, they declare, persuaded them unnecessarily to leave their homes…I even heard it said that many of the refugees would give a welcome to the Israelis if they were to come in and take the district over.”

Israeli officials maintained from the beginning that a majority of the Palestinians were encouraged to flee by their own leaders and those of Arab states, who then abandoned them before or in the midst of battle. This has long been dismissed by Palestinians and their supporters as Zionist propaganda. But British officials on the scene and opposed to Israel, and Palestinians in America, would not have simply parroted their enemy’s assessment.

The implications of this long-forgotten editorial, and all the other statements, are in the first instance that Israel does not bear full and exclusive responsibility for the Palestinian refugee situation – the Arab states and the Palestinians themselves do too. This also puts their upcoming “Unilateral Declaration of Independence” into a wholly different light.

In effect, Palestinian leaders have asked the United Nations for yet another opportunity to turn the clock back to give them another chance at achieving statehood that could have been theirs in 1948 or even in 1938. Meanwhile, some Palestinian officials have begun floating the idea of returning to the 1947 partition plan, the same plan that their predecessors rejected summarily in 1947. When do these chances run out? In the process, as their predecessors did in 1949, they blame everyone but themselves for not having achieved their goals to date.

A culture without a sense of responsibility for its own decisions, that blames others for its own decisions and at the same time perpetually demands that its maintenance is someone else’s responsibility, is not likely to create a stable, functioning nation-state. Any new Palestinian state would be an instant pauper, utterly dependent on aid, primarily from the American taxpayer.

Little wonder then that at least some Palestinian leaders are trying to back off from the Unilateral Declaration of Independence. The “deceivers” that Palestinian Americans of 1949 railed against are ultimately their own leaders and other Arab states. Until new leaders can be found for both, and a new culture of responsibility and self-reliance installed, little progress will be made.

Alexander H. Joffe and Asaf Romirowsky are the authors of "A Tale of Two Galloways: Notes on the Early History of UNRWA and Zionist Historiography,” published in the journal Middle Eastern Studies



Ynet News

Crash Course in Islam and Arab Lies

MYTH 1: ISRAEL OCCUPIES ARAB PALESTINE

This is a genocidal claim made by the Muslim Students Association and other pro-Arab groups. It is genocidal because it obliterates the Jewish state. If Israel is actually “Occupied Palestine” then there is no legitimate Jewish state in the Middle East.

Since Roman times when the Philistines inhabited the region around the Jordan (hence the name “Palestine”) there has never been a political entity – neither a province nor a state – called “Palestine” and no one claimed there was until well after the United Nations created Israel in 1948. The land on which Israel was created by the U.N. was also used by the colonial powers to create Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan. It was land that had belonged to Turkey for 400 years. The Turks are not “Palestinians” and are not even arabs.

There never was an Arab country called “Palestine” or inhabited by “Palestinians.” Before the creation of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964, which was sixteen years after the birth of Israel, no Arab political entity was called by that name.

MYTH 2: ISRAEL IS AN APARTHEID STATE

The term Apartheid refers to the segregation of groups on the basis of ethnicity or race, and the denial of basic civil rights to the segregated group. There is no such segregation in Israel. Arabs are granted full civil rights under Israeli law, which forbids discrimination on the basis of race, creed, or sex. Arabs take part fully in Israeli society and government. Arab citizens of Israel vote in national elections, have representatives in the Israeli Parliament, sit on the Israeli courts and on the Israeli Supreme Court benches, and serve as tenured professors teaching in Israeli colleges and universities. The Arab citizens of Israel have more rights, and enjoy more freedom, education, and economic opportunity than the Arabs of any Arab state.

MYTH 3: THE ARABS WANT PEACE AND A STATE ON THE WEST BANK

The Arab nations rejected peace and a state on the West Bank first in 1948 when it was offered to them by the U.N. and then in 2000 when it was offered by Presidents Clinton and Barak. In 1949, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which the U.N. had designated as a homeland for the Arabs, were annexed respectively by Jordan and Egypt. When the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed in 1964 its covenant made no mention of liberating the West Bank or Gaza from Jordan and Egypt. The PLO leadership stated that its goal was to “push the Jews into the sea.” Today the “liberation” of Palestine “from the river to the sea” is still the goal of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA). The war in the Middle East is about the desire of the Arab nations and Muslims to destroy Israel; it is not about the desire for a Palestinian state.

There are 1.4 million Arabs living in Israel with civil rights that are the envy of the Arab world. Israeli Arabs vote in Israel’s elections, have representatives in the Israeli Parliament, sit on Israeli courts and on the Israeli Supreme Court, and serve as tenured professors teaching in Israeli colleges and universities. The Arab citizens of Israel have more rights, and enjoy more freedom, education, and economic opportunity than the inhabitants of any Arab or Muslim state.

MYTH 4: THE HOLOCAUST IS EUROPE’S PROBLEM; PALESTINIANS HAD NO ROLE IN IT

The father of Palestinian nationalism, Haj Amin Al-Husseini, planned death camps for the Jews in the Middle East. Haj Amin Al-Husseini, was a devoted follower of Hitler who spent the war in Berlin, recruited an Arab legion to the Nazi cause and planned a “Final Solution” for the Jews of the Arab world. The Muslim Brotherhood, which created Hamas, the government of Gaza, translated Mein Kampf into Arabic in the 1930s and called for the destruction of the Jewish state at its birth.

MYTH 5: ISRAEL’S SECURITY FENCE IS AN “APARTHEID” WALL

This is two myths in one. The West Bank fence is a fence, not a wall. About 97% of the fence is made of chain-link material. The remaining 3% is concrete, designed to repel sniper fire in particular areas. The fence was built in 2003 in response to thousands of suicide bombings and rocket attacks on Israeli citizens by Palestinian terrorists, sponsored and armed by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. The fence was built to keep out terrorists, not Arabs.

In the years since the construction of the fence, terrorist attacks have declined by more than 90%. The fence is Israel’s legitimate defense against a ruthless and amoral terrorist aggressor.

MYTH 6: ISRAEL IS THE CAUSE OF THE REFUGEE PROBLEM

The Palestinians claim there are 5 million Palestinian refugees who fled Israel during the 1948 war. This is false. There were only 500,000 Arab refugees from the 1948 war – an unprovoked war that Egypt and four other Arab states had launched against the newly created state of Israel. In the aftermath of the war, 500,000 Jewish refugees were driven out of the Arab states in the Middle East. There are no Jewish refugees today, sixty years later, because Israel resettled them. Why are there still Arab refugees? The Arab regimes have been given billions of dollars by Israel and the United States to relocate their refugees. But the Arabs are still in refugee camps. While Israel resettled Jewish refugees, no Arab country would take in the “Palestinians” who were forced into camps and were kept there by the Arab regimes to stir up hatred against the Jews. The refugee “issue” has been created by the Arab regimes as a weapon in their war against the Jews. It should be resolved by resettling the inhabitants of the refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza where almost all of them have lived all their lives.

MYTH 7: ISRAEL COMMITS WAR CRIMES BY KILLING CIVILIANS

This is the Big Lie, coming as it does from some Palestinians who have made terrorist attacks on civilians a weapon of choice, and who make martyrs and national heroes out of suicide bombers.

The Gaza strip was a base for 7,000 rocket attacks against schoolyards and townships in Israel before the Israelis responded in 2007. During Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza rocket sites there was one civilian death for every 30 terrorists. By contrast, a 2001 study by the International Committee of the Red Cross found that the civilian-to-military death ratio in wars fought since the middle of the 20th Century has been 10:1 – ten civilian deaths for every soldier death. In other words, the Israelis protect civilians at a rate 300 times greater than any other national army. As Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz observes, “No army in history has ever had a better ratio of combatants to civilians killed in a comparable setting.”

MYTH 8: JEWS HAVE LITTLE HISTORICAL CONNECTION TO ISRAEL

Jews have lived continuously in the land of Israel for over 3000 years; the Arabs arrived through multiple invasions, beginning in the 7th Century AD. In the year 70 AD, when the Jewish civilization was already over 1000 years old, the Romans forced most of the Jews of Judea and Samaria (now the West Bank) into exile. By the end of the 19th Century, the majority population of Jerusalem was Jewish.

MYTH 9: THE KORAN DESCRIBES JERUSALEM AS HOLY TO ISLAM

The Koran does not mention Jerusalem because Mohammed never set foot in the city. Jerusalem was conquered by Muslim armies in 636 after the death of Mohammed. Muslim jihadists claim that the Koran mentions “The Furthest Mosque” — Al-Aqsa in Arabic – and that this is a Koranic reference to Jerusalem. This is a lie. The Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem had not been built when the Koran was written, so the reference is to some other (or any other) “furthest mosque.” In contrast, Jerusalem is and has always been a holy city to Jews. The daily prayers of the Jews are focused on Jerusalem. The Hebrew Bible mentions Zion and Jerusalem a total of 809 times.

MYTH 10: THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON IS NOT JEWISH

This myth is one of many designed to steal the history of the Jews in order to justify erasing them from the Middle East. When the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994, it immediately began a campaign to delegitimize Israel by rewriting history with the intention of denying Israel’s right to exist. Among its false claims is that the remains of the Temple of Solomon – the Western Wall – are in fact the remnants of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Al-Aqsa Mosque was deliberately built on top of the Temple after the Muslim conquest to humiliate the conquered.



Rad More:
Wall of Truth

How Many Palestinian Arab Refugees Were There?

by Efraim Karsh
Israel Affairs
April 2011

The number of Palestinian Arabs fleeing their homes during the 1948 war has constituted one of the most intractable bones of contentions of the Arab-Israeli conflict, not least since the Palestinians have insisted on the "right of return" of these individuals and their descendants to territory that has long been part of the state of Israel.

More than a half-century later, these exaggerated initial numbers have swollen still further: as of June 2000, according to UNRWA, the total had climbed close to three and three-quarters million, though it readily admits that the statistics are largely inflated. For its part the PLO set a still higher figure of 5 million refugees, while Israel has unofficially estimated the current number of refugees and their families at closer to 2 million.

Using a wealth of declassified Arab, Israeli, and British documents, this article seeks to provide as comprehensive and accurate an estimate as possible of the actual number of refugees in the wake of the 1948 war.

At the end of the war, the Israeli government set the number of Palestinian refugees at 550,000-600,000; the British Foreign Office leaned toward the higher end of this estimate. But within a year, as large masses of people sought to benefit from the unprecedented influx of international funds to the area, some 962,000 alleged refugees had been registered with the newly-established UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

The extraordinary coverage of the 1948 war notwithstanding, the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem during the five-and-a-half months of fighting, from the partition resolution of November 29, 1947, to the proclamation of the state of Israel on May 14, 1948, passed virtually unnoticed by the international community. Nor for that matter did the Arab states, burdened as they were with a relentless flow of refugees, or even the Palestinian leadership itself, have a clear idea of the dispersal's full magnitude, as demonstrated by the mid-June 1948 estimate of the prominent Palestinian leader, Emile Ghouri, of the number of refugees at 200,000: less than two thirds the actual figure. A few weeks later, after thousands more Arabs had become refugees, a Baghdad radio commentator was still speaking of 300,000 evacuees "who are forced to flee from the Jews as the French were forced to flee from the Nazis." Taking their cue from these claims, W. De St. Aubin, delegate of the League of Red Cross Societies to the Middle East, estimated the number of Arab refugees (in late July) at about 300,000, while Sir Raphael Cilento, director of the UN Disaster Relief Project (DRP) in Palestine, set the number at 300,000-350,000 (in early August).

Paradoxically it was the Israelis who initially came with the highest, and most accurate, estimates. In early June Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion was told by Yossef Weitz of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) that "some 123,000 Arabs left 155 villages in the Jewish state's territory; another 22,000 left 35 villages outside the Jewish state: a total of 145,000 evacuees and 190 villages. Seventy-seven thousand Arabs left five cities in the Jewish state's territory (Haifa, Beisan, Tiberias, Safad, Samakh). Another 73,000 left two cities [designed to remain] outside the state (Jaffa and Acre). Forty thousand Arabs left Jerusalem: a total of 190,000 from eight cities. All in all, 335,000 Arabs fled (including 200,000 from the UN ascribed Jewish territory)."

A comprehensive report by the Hagana's intelligence service, comprising a detailed village-by-village breakdown of the exodus, set the number of Palestinian Arab evacuees in the six-month period between December 1, 1947 and June 1, 1948, at 391,000: 239,000 from the UN-ascribed Jewish state, 122,000 from the territory of the prospective Arab state, and 30,000 from Jerusalem. Another exhaustive Israeli study set the number of refugees (in late October) at 460,000, almost evenly divided between the rural and urban sectors.

This estimate was substantially higher than the 360,000 figure in the report of the UN mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte, submitted to the General Assembly on September 16, or Cilento's revised estimate of 400,300 a couple of weeks later, and was virtually identical to the supplementary report submitted on October 18 by Bernadotte's successor, Ralph Bunche, which set the number of refugees at 472,000 and anticipated the figure to reach a maximum of slightly over 500,000 in the near future.

By now, however, the Arabs had dramatically upped the ante. In a memorandum dispatched to the heads of the Arab states and Arab League Secretary-General Abdel Rahman Azzam in mid-August, the Palestine Office in Amman, an organization operating under the auspices of the Transjordan government, estimated the total number of refugees at 700,000, of whom 500,000 were in Palestine and the rest in the neighboring Arab states. The memo struck a responsive chord, for in October the Arab League set the number of refugees at 631,967, and by the end of the month official Arab estimates ranged between 740,000 and 780,000. When the newly-established United Nations Relief for Palestine refugees (UNRPR) began operating in December 1948, it found 962,643 refugees on its relief rolls.

In conversations with British diplomats (in early October) Cilento described the figures supplied by the Arab authorities as unreliable, claiming that they increased from week to week in all areas irrespective of known movements of refugees from place to place. A large number of refugees had, for example, moved from the Nablus area to the Hauran in Syria while others from Jericho, Jerusalem and Transjordan had moved to Gaza. Similarly, at least 2,000 refugees had recently moved from the Egyptian port town of Kantara, on the Suez Canal, to Gaza. Yet the number of refugees in the areas from which these movements had taken place was in all cases reported as increasing instead of decreasing. Similar exaggerations were made in Syria where, according to Bunche's October report, the authorities claimed the existence of 30,000 refugees whereas the actual figure was no more than half that size.

Cilento expected as many as 400,000 Arabs to apply for UN relief in the coming winter on top of the 360,000-390,000 registered refugees, though these were not genuine refugees in the sense that they were living in their own homes and had not been "displaced." This, however, didn't prevent him, when the prediction was vindicated before the end of the year, from raising the number of refugees to 750,000. St. Aubin, who in September 1948 became the DRP's director of field operations, went a step further by placing the figure (in July 1949) at "approximately one million."

Admitting to having "some difficulty in separating out the real refugees from the rest, and in explaining the reasons for doing so to the Arab authorities," Cilento attributed this chaotic situation to a number of reasons:

* Refugees were registered on arrival and fed but their names were not struck off the list if they moved or died;
* Refugees moving from one area to another would check in and be fed at several points en route and at each would be added to the list of refugees in the area, in this way numbers increased on paper in areas vacated as well as at final destination;
* Local destitute persons were included in numbers although they were not properly refugees;
* Fraud and misrepresentation by officials and others to utilize supplies etc.;
* There were people who left their homes owing to disturbed conditions but returned to them shortly afterward, yet were briefly registered as refugees and the records remained.

Sir John Troutbeck, head of the British Middle East office in Cairo, got a first-hand impression of this pervasive inflation of refugee numbers during a fact-finding mission to Gaza in June 1949. "The Quakers have nearly 250,000 refugees on their books," he reported to London.

They admit however that the figures are unreliable, as it is impossible to stop all fraud in the making of returns. Deaths for example are never registered nor are the names struck off the books of those who leave the district clandestinely. Some names too are probably registered more than once for the extra rations. But the Quakers assured me that they have made serious attempts to carry out a census and believe they have more information in that respect than the Red Cross organizations which are working in other areas. Their figures include Bedouin whom they feed and care for just like other refugees. They seemed a little doubtful whether this was a right decision, but once it had been taken it could not be reversed, and in any case the Bedouin, though less destitute than most of the refugees proper, are thought to have lost a great part of their possessions. They and the other refugees live in separate camps and in a state of mutual antipathy.

This was hardly a novel phenomenon. Population figures of Palestinian Arab society, especially of rural Muslim communities, were notoriously unreliable, based as they were on exaggerated information provided by village headmen in order to obtain greater government support. As explained in the preface to the mandatory government's Village Statistics 1945, for all the "very detailed work" invested in this comprehensive compendium of rural Palestine, its estimates "cannot… be considered as other than rough estimates which in some instances may ultimately be found to differ even considerably, from the actual figures."

The supplementary volume to the government's Survey of Palestine (1946), compiled in June 1947 for the information of the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), elaborated on the problematic nature of official demographic statistics:

For the years 1943-46 an investigation recently carried out by the Department of Statistics revealed that many cases of death, especially in rural areas, have not been reported. These omissions (which are mainly due to the attempt to obtain food rations of deceased persons) seriously impair the reliability of the death rates (particularly infant mortality rates) and that of the rate of natural increase. On the other hand, they are not of such magnitude as to effect seriously the estimates of total population.

This may well have been the case. But then, if accepting the Supplement's estimate of 1.3 million Palestinian Arabs at the end of 1946 (the actual figure was most probably 5%-6% lower) the number of refugees could by no stretch of the imagination approximate the million mark for the simple reason that some 550,000-600,00 Arabs who lived in the mandatory districts of Samaria, Jerusalem, and Gaza (which subsequently became the West Bank and the Gaza Strip after their respective occupation by Transjordan and Egypt) remained in situ, while another 160,000 Arabs remained in, or returned to, Israel. This, in turn, puts the number of refugees at 540,000-590,000. Likewise, according to an extrapolation of the Village Statistics 1945, the non-Jewish population of the area that was to become Israeli territory at the end the war amounted, in April 1948, to some 696,000-726,800. Deducting Israel's 160,000-strong postwar Arab population from this figure would leave 536,000-566,800 refugees beyond Israel's frontiers.

As can be seen below, my own calculations, based on British, Jewish, and to a lesser extent Arab, population figures of all identified rural and urban localities abandoned during the war, amounts to 583,000-609,000 refugees.

The Palestinian Arab Exodus 1947-48

CITIES

Acre – 13,510 (3,885 remained).

Beersheba – 6,490.

Beisan – 5,540.

Haifa – 70,910 (5,000 remained).

Jaffa – 70,730 (4,000-5,000 remained).

Jerusalem – 65,010 (some 30,000 fled).

Lydda & Ramle – 35,078 (2,500 remained).

Majdal – 10,900.

Safad – 10,210.

Tiberias – 5,770.

Total: 247,403-248,403

VILLAGES

GALILEE DISTRICT

Acre Sub-District

Amqa – 1,240, Jul. 9, 1948.

Arab Samniya – 200,

Bassa – 2,950-3,140 (includes Ma'sub), May 14, 1948.

Birwa – 1,460, Jun. 11, 1948.

Damun – 1,310, Jul. 14-18, 1948.

Deir Qasi – 1,190 (including Mansura), Oct. 30, 1948.

Ghabisiya – 690-740, May 22, 1948.

Iqrit – 490-520, Apr. 26-Oct. 30, 1948.

Kabri – 1,530-1,640, May 5-22, 1948.

Kafr Inan – 360, Oct. 30, 1948.

Khirbat Iribbin – 360 (including Jurdeih & Khirbat Idmith),

Khirbat Jiddin – no people according to the Village Statistics

Kuweikat – 1,050, Jul. 9, 1948.

Manshiya – 810-1,140, May 17, 1948.

Mansura – see Deir Qasi.

Mi'ar – 770, Oct. 30, 1948.

Nabi Rubin – see Tarbikha.

Nahr – 610, May 22, 1948.

Ruweis – 330, Jul. 18, 1948.

Suhmata – 1,130, Oct. 29/30, 1948.

Sumeiriya – 760-820, May 14, 1948.

Suruh – see Tarbikha.

Tell – May 14, 1948.

Tarbikha – 1,000 (including Nabi Rubin & Suruh), Oct. 30, 1948.

Umm Faraj – 800, May 22, 1948.

Zib (includes Manawat) – 1,910-2,050, May 14, 1948.

Beisan Sub-District

Arida – 150, May 20, 1948.

Ashrafiya – 230, May 12, 1948.

Bawati - 520-700, Mar. 30, 1948.

Bira – 220-500, May 16, 1948.

Danna – 160-400, May 16-28, 1948.

Farawna – 330-350, May 11, 1948.

Ghazawiya – 1,020, late May 1948.

Hamidiya – 220-300, Apr. 6-May 12, 1948.

Hamra, 730, May 1, 1948.

Jabbul – 250-370, May 1-18, 1948.

Kafra – 400-700, May 16, 1948.

Kaukab Hawa – 30-600, May 14, 1948.

Khuneizir – 260-400, May 20, 1948.

Masil Jizl – 100, mid-May 1948.

Murassas – 460-600, May 16, 1948.

Qumiya – 320-440, Mar. 30, 1948.

Safa – 650, May 20, 1948.

Sakhina – 200-530, May 16, 1948.

Samiriya – 250-500, May 27, 1948.

Sirin – 600-820, Apr. 24, 1948.

Tell Shauk – 120, probably in mid-May 1948.

Tira – 120-150, Apr. 15, 1948.

Zab'a – 170, May 12, 1948.

Yubla – 150-250, May 16, 1948.

Zir'in – 1,300, May 1, 1948.

Nazareth Sub-District

Indur – 620, May 24, 1948.

Ma'lul – 690, Jul. 15-18, 1948.

Mujeidil – 1,600-1,900, Jul. 15-18, 1948.

Saffuriyya – 4,320-4,330, Jul. 15-16, 1948.

Safad Sub-District

Abil Qamh – 230-330, May 10, 1948.

Abisiya – 830-1,220, May 25, 1948.

Akbara – 390-410, May 10, 1948.

Alma – 950, Oct. 30, 1948.

Ammuqa Tahta & Fawqa – 140, May 24, 1948.

Arab Shamalina – see Buteiha.

Arab Zubeid – Apr. 20, 1948.

Azaziyat – 390, Apr. 30-May 1, 1948.

Beisamun – 20, May 25, 1948.

Biriya – 240, May 2, 1948.

Buteiha - 650 (including Arab Shamalina), May 4, 1948.

Buweiziya – 510-540, May 11, 1948.

Dahariya – 350, May 10, 1948.

Dallata – 360, Oct. 30, 1948.

Darbashiya – 310, early May 1948.

Dawwara – 700, May 25, 1948.

Deishum – 590, May 9, 1948-Oct. 30, 1948.

Dirdara – Jul. 9-10, 1948.

Ein Zeitun – 620-820, May 2, 1948.

Fara – 820, Oct, 30, 1948.

Farradiya – 670, Oct. 30-Nov. 6, 1948.

Fir'im – 740, May 2-26, 1948.

Ghabbatiya – 60, probably in late October 1948.

Ghuraba – 220, May 1-28, 1948.

Hamra – May 1, 1948.

Harrawi – May 25, 1948.

Hunin – 1,620, May 3-5, 1948.

Husseiniya – 340 (including Tuleil), Apr. 21, 1948.

Jahula – 420, date not known.

Jauna – 1,150, May 9, 1948.

Jubb Yusuf – 170, early May 1948.

Kafr Bir'im – 710, Oct. 30, 1948.

Khalisa – 1,840, May 11, 1948.

Khirbat Muntar – n.a., May 7, 1948.

Khisas – 470-530, Mar. 26-May 24, 1948.

Khiyam Walid – 210-280, Mar. 29-May 1, 1948.

Kirad Baqqara – 360, Apr. 22, 1948.

Kirad Ghanama - 350, Apr. 22, 1948.

Lazzaza – 230, May 21, 1948.

Madahil – 410, Apr. 7-30, 1948.

Malikiya – 360, May 15-Oct. 30, 1948.

Mallaha – 890, May 25, 1948.

Mansura– 360, May 25, 1948.

Mansurat Kheit – 200-900, Jan. 18, 1948.

Marus – 80, May 26, 1948.

Meirun – 290, May 29-Oct. 29, 1948.

Mughr Kheit – 490, Jan. 18, 1948.

Muftakhira – 350 – May 1-16, 1948.

Nabi Yusha – 70, May 16-17, 1948.

Naima – 1,240-1,310, May 14, 1948.

Qabba'a - 460, May 2, 1948.

Qadas – 320-390, May 28, 1948.

Qaddita – 240, May 11, 1948.

Qeitiya – 940, May 2-19, 1948.

Qudeiriya – 390, May 4, 1948.

Ras Ahmar – 620, Oct. 30, 1948.

Sabalan – 70, apparently in late October 1948.

Safsaf – 910, Oct. 29, 1948.

Saliha – 1,070, Oct. 30, 1948.

Salihiya – 1,520, May 25, 1948.

Sammui – 310, May 12-Oct. 30, 1948.

Sanbariya – 130, date not known.

Sa'sa – 1,130, Oct. 29-30, 1948.

Shauka Tahta – 200, Feb. 2-May 14, 1948.

Shuna – 170, date not known.

Teitaba – 530, Oct. 30, 1948.

Tuleil – see Husseiniya.

Ulmaniya – 260, Feb. 25-Apr. 20, 1948.

Weiziya – date not known.

Yarda – Jul. 10, 1948.

Zanghariya – 840, May 4, 1948.

Zawiya – 760, May 24, 1948.

Zuk Fauqani & Zuk Tahtani – 1,050, May 11-21, 1948.

Tiberias Sub-District

Dalhamiya – 410, probably late April.

Ghuweir Abu Shusha – 1,240, Apr. 21-28, 1948.

Hadatha – 520-550, Mar. 30-May 12, 1948.

Hittin – 1,190, Jul. 17, 1948.

Kafr Sabt – 480, Apr. 22, 1948.

Khirbat Qadish – 410, Apr. 19-20, 1948.

Khirbat Wa'ra Sauda – 1,870 (Mawasi & Wuheib), date not known.

Lubiya – 2,350, Jul. 17, 1948.

Ma'dhar – 480-510, Apr.16-May 12, 1948.

Majdal – 240-360, Apr. 22, 1948.

Manara – 490, Apr. 10, 1948.

Mansura – 360, May 25, 1948

Nasr al-Din – 90 - Apr. 12, 1948.

Nimrin – 320, Jul. 17-18.

Nuqeib (includes Samra) - 290-320, Apr. 23-24, 1948.

Samakh – 3,460-3,660, Apr. 29, 1948.

Samakiya – 380, May 4, 1948.

Samra – see Nuqeib.

Shajara, 720-770, Apr. 21-May 6, 1948.

Tabigha – 330, May 1, 1948.

Ubeidiya – 870-920, Mar. 5-Apr. 21, 1948.

Ulam - 720- Mar. 30-May 12, 1948.

Yaquq – 210, Jul. 18, 1948.

HAIFA DISTRICT

Haifa Sub-District

Abu Shusha – 720, Apr. 9-12.

Abu Zueriq – 550, Apr. 12, 1948.

Arab Fuqara – 310-340, Apr. 10, 1948.

Arab Nufeiat – 820-910, Mar. 30-Apr. 10, 1948.

Atlit – 150, date not known.

Balad Sheikh – 4,120-4,500, Jan. 7-Apr. 25, 1948.

Bureika – 290, Mar. 6-Apr. 26, 1948.

Buteimat – 110, Apr. 12-May 13, 1948.

Daliyat Ruha – 280-310, Apr. 12, 1948.

Dumeira – 620, date not known.

Ein Ghazal – 2,170-2,410, Apr. 25-July 26, 1948.

Ein Haud – 650, Jul. 17, 1948.

Ghubaiyat, 1,130-1,260 (includes Naghnagiya), Apr. 9-13, 1948.

Hawsha – n.a., Apr. 4-19, 1948.

Ijzim – 2,970, Apr. 25-July 26, 1948.

Jaba – 1,140, Jul. 25, 1948.

Jalama – n.a, Jun. 1, 1948.

Kabara -120, apparently late April-early May 1948.

Kafr Lam – 340-380, May 13-15-Jul. 16, 1948.

Kafrin – 920; April 12, 1948.

Khirbat Damum – 340; late April 1948.

Khirbat Kasayir – Apr. 27, 1948.

Khirbat Lid – 640, mid-April-mid-May, 1948.

Khubbeiza – 290, apparently in mid May 1948.

Mansi – 1,200, Apr. 12-15, 1948.

Mazar – 210, May 17, 1948.

Mazra'a – 460, Feb. 6, 1948.

Naghnagiya – see Ghubaiyat.

Qannir – 750, Apr. 5-25, 1948.

Qisariya – 930-1,240, Jan. 12-Feb. 15, 1948.

Rihaniya – 240-340, Apr. 12, 1948.

Sabbarin – 1,700-1,880, May 14, 1948.

Sarafand – 290, early May 1948-Jul. 17, 1948.

Sarkas – Apr. 15-26, 1948.

Sindiyana – 1,250-1,390, May 2-14, 1948.

Tantura – 1,490-1,650, May 6-21, 1948.

Tira – 5,270, Apr. 22-Jul. 16, 1948.

Umm Shauf – 480, May 14, 1948.

Umm Zinat – 1,470, Apr. 26-May 15, 1948.

Wadi Ara – 260, Feb. 27, 1948

Yajur – 610 – Feb. 18-Apr. 25, 1948.

SAMARIA DISTRICT

Jenin Sub-District

Ein Mansi – 90, date not known.

Kufeir – 140, Apr. 27, 1948.

Lajjun – 600, Apr. 16-May 30, 1948.

Mazar – 270-350, May 30, 1948.

Nuris – 570-700, May 30, 1948.

Zir'in – 1,300-1,420, May 28, 1948.

Tulkarm Sub-District

Arab Balawina, Dec. 31, 1947.

Arab Huweitat – Mar. 15, 1948.

Arab Zubeidat (Kafr Zibad) – 1,590, Apr. 16, 1948.

Kafr Saba – 1,270-1,370, May 15, 1948.

Khirbat Azzun (Tabsur) – 50, Dec. 21, 1947-Apr. 3, 1948.

Khirbat Beit Lid – 460-500, Mar. 20-Apr. 5, 1948.

Khirbat Jalama – 70, early February 1948.

Khirbat Manshiya – 260-280, Apr. 15, 1948.

Khirbat Zalafa – 210-370, Apr. 15, 1948.

Miska – 650-880 – Apr. 15, 1948.

Qaqun – 1,970, May 4 & Jun. 4, 1948.

Umm Khalid – 970-1050, Mar. 20, 1948.

Wadi Hawarith – 1,330-1,440, Mar. 15, 1948.

JERUSALEM DISTRICT

Hebron Sub-District

Ajjur – 3,720 (including Khirbat Ammuriya), Oct. 22-24, 1948.

Barqusiya – 330, Jul. 9-10, 1948.

Beit Jibrin – 2,430, Jul. 13-14-Oct. 27, 1948.

Beit Nattif – 2,150, Oct. 22, 1948.

Dawayima – 3,710, Oct. 29, 1948.

Deir Dubban – 730, Oct. 22-23, 1948.

Deir Nakh-Khas – 600, Oct. 29, 1948.

Kidna – 450, Oct. 22-24, 1948.

Mughallis – 540, Jul. 16, 1948.

Qubeiba – 1,060, Oct. 28, 1948.

Ra'na – 190, Oct. 22-23, 1948.

Tell Safi – 1,290, Jul. 9, 1948.

Zakariya – 1,180, Jul. 22-23-Oct. 22-24, 1948.

Zeita – 330, Jul. 9-18, 1948.

Zikrin – 330-960, Oct. 22-24, 1948.

Jerusalem Sub-District

Allar – 440, Oct. 22, 1948.

Aqqur – 40, Jul. 13, 1948.

Artuf – 350, Jul. 17-18, 1948.

Beit Itab – 540, Oct. 21, 1948.

Beit Mahsir – 2,400, May 10, 1948.

Beit Naqquba – 240, Jul. 8, 1948.

Beit Thul – 260, date not known.

Beit Umm Meis – 70, Jul. 15, 1948.

Buerij – 720, Jul. 15-16, 1948.

Deir Aban - Oct. 19, 1948.

Deir Amr – 10, Jul. 14, 1948.

Deir Hawa – 60, Oct. 19, 1948.

Deir Rafat – 430, Jul. 17-18, 1948.

Deir Sheikh – 220, Oct. 21, 1948.

Deir Yasin – 610-650, Apr. 9-10, 1948.

Ein Karim – 3,180-3,390, Apr. 10-21 & Jul. 10-17, 1948.

Ishwa – 620, Jul. 10-18, 1948.

Islin – 260, Jul. 10, 1948.

Jarash – 190, Oct. 21, 1948.

Jura – 420, late Jul. 1948.

Kasla – 280, Jul. 14, 1948.

Khirbat Ismallah – 20, date not known.

Khirbat Lauz – 450, Jul. 13-14, 1948.

Khirbat Umur – 270, Oct. 21, 1948.

Lifta – 2,550-2,730, Dec. 31, 1947-early January 1948.

Maliha – 1,940-2,070, Apr. 21-May 6, 1948 & Jul. 14, 1948.

Nataf – 40, Apr. 15, 1948.

Qabu – 260, Oct. 21, 1948.

Qaluniya – 910-970, Apr. 10-May 3, 1948.

Qastel - 90-100- late March 1948-May 3, 1948.

Ras Abu Ammar – 620, Oct. 21, 1948.

Sar'a – 340, Jul. 10-14, 1948.

Saris – 560-600, Apr. 16-May 3, 1948.

Sataf – 540, Jul. 13-14, 1948.

Suba – 620, Jul. 12/13, 1948.

Sufla – 60, Oct. 21, 1948.

Walaja – 1,650, Oct. 21, 1948.

LYDDA DISTRICT

Jaffa Sub-District

Abbasiya – see Yahudiya.

Abu Kishk – 1,900 – Mar. 30, 1948.

Beit Dajan – 3,840, Apr. 25-May 1, 1948.

Biyar Adas – 300, Apr. 12, 1948.

Fajja – 1200-1,570, Mar. 17-May 15, 1948.

Haram - see Saiduna Ali.

Jalil – 600-1,020, Mar. 23-Apr. 3, 1948.

Jammasin – 1,810-2,050, Jan. 7-Mar. 17, 1948.

Jarisha – 190, apparently in mid-May 1948.

Kafr Ana – 2,000-3,020, Apr. 17-25, 1948.

Kheiriya – 1,420-1,600, Apr. 25, 1948.

Mas'udiya – 850, Dec. 25, 1947.

Mirr – 170-190, Feb. 3-15, 1948.

Muweilih – 360, Jul. 9, 1948.

Rantiya – 590, Apr. 28-May 13, 1948.

Safiriya – 3,070, apparently in late April 1948.

Saiduna Ali- 520-880, Feb. 3, 1948.

Salama – 6,730-7,610, Apr. 25, 1948.

Saqiya – 1,100-1,240, Apr. 25, 1948.

Sawalima – 800, Apr. 20, 1948.

Sheik Muwannis – 1,930-2,000, Dec. 1, 1947-Mar. 30, 1948.

Sumeil – see Mas'udiya.

Yahudiya – 5,650-6,560, May 4-Jul. 10, 1948.

Yazur – 4,030, May 1, 1948.

Ramle Sub-District

Abu Fadl (Sautariya) – 510, Apr. 7-May 9, 1948.

Abu Shusha – 870-950, May 14-20, 1948.

Aqir – 2,480-2,710, May 4-6, 1948.

Barfiliya – 730, Jul. 15-17, 1948.

Barriya – 510, May 1-Jul. 10-11, 1948.

Bashshit – 510-1,770, May 12-13, 1948.

Beit Jiz – 550-600, Apr. 20, 1948.

Beit Nabala – 630-2,310, May 13, 1948.

Beit Shanna – 210, date not known.

Beit Susin – 210, Apr. 20, 1948.

Bir Ma'in – 510, Jul. 15-16, 1948.

Bir Salim – 410-950, May 9, 1948.

Burj – 480, Jul. 15-16, 1948.

Daniyal – 410, Jul. 9-10, 1948.

Deir Abu Salama – 60, Jul. 13, 1948.

Deir Aiyub – 320, May 16, 1948.

Deir Muheisin 460-500, Apr. 7-20, 1948.

Deir Tarif – 1,750, Jul. 9-11, 1948.

Haditha – 760, Jul. 10-12, 1948.

Idnibba – 490, Jul. 9-16, 1948.

Innaba – 1,420, Jul. 10-16, 1948.

Jilya – 330, Jul. 16, 1948.

Jimzu – 1,510, Jul. 10, 1948.

Kharruba – 170, Jul. 11, 1948.

Kheima – 190, Jul. 16, 1948.

Khirbat Beit Far – 300, date not known.

Khirbat Buweira – 190, date not known.

Khirbat Dhuheiriya – 100, Jul. 10-11, 1948.

Khirbat Zakariya – date not known.

Khulda – 260-300, Apr. 7-21, 1948.

Latrun – 190, May 16, 1948.

Majdal Yaba – 1,520, Jul. 12, 1948.

Mansura – 90-100, Dec. 22-29, 1947-Apr. 20, 1948.

Mughar – 1,740-1,900, May 15-18, 1948.

Mukheizin – 200-310, Dec. 29, 1947.

Muzeiri'a – 1,160, Jul. 16-18, 1948.

Na'ana – 1,470-2,270, May 14-Jun. 12, 1948.

Nabi Rubin – 1,420, Jun. 1, 1948.

Qatra – 1,210-1,320, May 17, 1948.

Qazaza – 940, Apr. 17-Jul. 16, 1948.

Qubab – 1,980-2,160, Apr. 20-Jun. 4, 1948.

Qubeiba – 1,720-1,870, May 27-Jul. 9-10, 1948.

Qula – 1,010, Jul. 11-18, 1948.

Sajad – 370, Jul. 9-10, 1948.

Salbit – 510, Jul. 16-17, 1948.

Sarafand Amar – 1,950, probably in mid-May 1948.

Sarafand Kharab – 1,040-1,130, Apr. 20, 1948.

Seidun – 210-230, Jan. 1, 1948.

Shahma – 280-310, May 14, 1948.

Shilta – 100, Jul. 17-18, 1948.

Tina – 750, Jul. 9-10, 1948.

Tira – 1,290, Jul. 10, 1948.

Umm Kalkha – 60, date not known.

Wadi Hunein – 1,620-1,770, Jan. 5-Apr. 17, 1948.

Yibna – 5,400-5,920, Jun. 4-5, 1948.

Zarnuqa – 2,380-2,600, May 27, 1948.

GAZA DISTRICT

Gaza Sub-District

Arab Sukreir – 390-430, Jan. 25, 1948.

Barbara – 2,410, Nov. 30, 1948.

Barqa – 890-980, May 13, 1948.

Batani Sharqi – 650-710, May 11-13, 1948.

Batani Gharbi – 980, Jun. 10-11, 1948.

Beit Affa – 700, May 23-Nov. 10, 1948.

Beit Daras – 2,750-3,010, May 11-12, 1948.

Beit Jirja – 940, Nov. 5, 1948.

Beit Tima – 1,060, May 29-31, 1948.

Bi'lin – 180, Jul. 9-10, 1948.

Bureir – 2,740-4,000, May 12, 1948.

Deir Suneid – 730, late October-early November 1948.

Dimra – 520, late October-early November 1948.

Faluja – 4,670, Oct. 16, 1948.

Hamama – 5,000, Jun. 9-Nov. 30, 1948.

Hatta – 970, Jul. 17-18, 1948.

Hirbiya – 2,240, Nov. 5-30, 1948.

Huj – 800-810, May 28, 1948.

Huleiqat – 420, May 12-Oct. 29, 1948.

Ibdis – 540, May 23, 1948.

Iraq Manshiya – 2,010, Oct. 16-17, 1948.

Iraq Suweidan – 660, Jul. 9-Nov. 10, 1948.

Isdud – 4,620, Nov. 30, 1948.

Jaladiya – 360, May 23-Jul. 9-10, 1948.

Jiya – 1,230, Nov. 5-30, 1948.

Julis – 1,030-1,130, May 23-Jun. 10-11, 1948.

Jura – 2,420, Nov. 5, 1948.

Juseir – 1,180, late May or early June 1948.

Karatiya, 1,370, May 23, 1948.

Kaufakha – 500, Aug. 16-Sept. 24, 1948.

Kaukaba – 680, May 12-Oct. 18, 1948.

Khirbat Khisas – 150, Nov. 30, 1948.

Masmiya Kabira – 2,520, Jul. 9-10, 1948.

Masmiya Saghira – 530, Jul. 9-10, 1948.

Muharraqa – 580-1,100, May 25-28, 1948.

Najd – 600-620, May 12, 1948.

Ni'ilya – 1,310, Nov. 5-30, 1948.

Qastina – 890, Jul. 9-10, 1948.

Sawafir Gharbiya – 1,000-1,030, May 15-18, 1948.

Sawafir Shamaliya, 680, May 11-18, 1948.

Sawafir Sharqiyya – 970, May 15-18, 1948.

Sumsum – 1,200-1,360, May 12, 1948.

Summeil – 950, Jul. 9-10, 1948.

Tell Turmus – 760, Jul. 9, 1948.

Yasur – 1,070, Jun. 10-11, 1948.

Beersheba Sub-District

Bir Asluj – Jun. 11, 1948.

Jammama – 150, May 22, 1948.

GALILEE DISTRICT (Sub Total)

Acre Sub-District 20,950-21,860

Beisan Sub-District 9,960-13,640

Nazareth Sub-District 7,230-7,540

Safad Sub-District 34,320-36,030

Tiberias Sub-District 17,430-17,940

HAIFA DISTRICT (Sub Total)

Haifa Sub-District 35,290-37,120

SAMARIA DISTRICT (Sub Total)

Jenin Sub-District 2,970-3,300

Tulkarm Sub-District 8,830-9,570

JERUSALEM DISTRICT (Sub Total)

Hebron Sub-District 19,040-19,670

Jerusalem-Sub-District 22,260-22,930

LYDDA DISTRICT (Sub Total)

Jaffa Sub-District 39,060-43,670

Ramle Sub-District 47,940-54,410

GAZA DISTRICT (Sub Total)

Gaza Sub-District 58,850-61,400

Beersheba Sub-District 150

Villages Total 324,280-349,230

Cities Total 247,403-248,403

Negev Bedouins 30,510

Refugees Settled in Israeli Localities other than their Original Sites 19,072

Palestine Grand Total: 583,121-609,071



Me Forum.Org

Palestine Betrayed

Palestine Betrayed......The truth about the nakba!

"None of the 170,000–180,000 Arabs fleeing urban centers, and only a handful of the 130,000–160,000 villagers who left their homes, had been forced out by Jews."

Efraim Karsh's new book, "Palestine Betrayed"

Nakba, the Arabic word for "catastrophe," has entered the English language in reference to the Arab–Israeli conflict. As defined by the anti-Israel website The Electronic Intifada, Nakba means "the expulsion and dispossession of hundreds of thousands [of] Palestinians from their homes and land in 1948."

Those who wish Israel to disappear actively promote the Nakba narrative. For example, Nakba Day serves as a mournful Palestinian counterpart to Israel's Independence Day festivities, annually publicizing Israel's alleged sins. So established has this day become that Ban Ki-moon, secretary general of the United Nations — the very institution that created the State of Israel — has sent his support to "the Palestinian people on Nakba Day." Even Neve Shalom, a Jewish-Palestinian community in Israel claiming to be "engaged in educational work for peace, equality, and understanding between the two peoples," dutifully commemorates Nakba Day.

The Nakba ideology presents Palestinians as victims without choices and therefore without responsibility for the ills that befell them. It blames Israel alone for the Palestinian "re MORE..fugee" problem. This view has an intuitive appeal, for Muslim and Christian Palestinians had long formed a majority on the land that became Israel, whereas most Jews were relative newcomers.

Intuitive sense, however, does not equal historical accuracy. In his new tour de force, Palestine Betrayed, Efraim Karsh of the University of London offers the latter. With his customary in-depth archival research — in this case, relying on masses of recently declassified documents from the period of British rule and of the first Arab–Israeli war, 1917–49 — clear presentation, and meticulous historical sensibility, Karsh argues the opposite case: that Palestinians decided their own destiny and bear near-total responsibility for becoming refugees.

In Karsh's words: "Far from being the hapless victims of a predatory Zionist assault, it was Palestinian Arab leaders who, from the early 1920s onward, and very much against the wishes of their own constituents, launched a relentless campaign to obliterate the Jewish national revival which culminated in the violent attempt to abort the U.N. partition resolution." More broadly, he observes, "there was nothing inevitable about the Palestinian–Jewish confrontation, let alone the Arab–Israeli conflict."

Yet more counter intuitively, Karsh shows that his understanding was the conventional, indeed the undisputed interpretation in the late 1940s. Only with the passage of time did "Palestinians and their Western supporters gradually rewr[i]te their national narrative," thereby making Israel into the unique culprit, the one excoriated in the United Nations, university classrooms, and editorials.

Karsh successfully makes his case by establishing two main points:

(1) the Jewish-Zionist-Israeli side perpetually sought to find a compromise while the Palestinian-Arab-Muslim side rejected nearly all deals; and
(2) Arab intransigence and violence caused the self-inflicted "catastrophe."

The first point is more familiar, especially since the Oslo Accords of 1993, for it remains today's pattern. Karsh demonstrates a consistency of Jewish goodwill and Arab rejectionism going back to the Balfour Declaration and persisting throughout the period of British rule. (To remind, the Balfour Declaration of 1917 expressed London's intention to establish in Palestine a "national home for the Jewish people," and the British conquest of Palestine just 37 days later gave it control of Palestine until 1948.)

In the first years after 1917, Arab reaction was muted, as leaders and masses alike recognized the benefits of the dynamic Zionist enterprise that helped revive a backward, poor, and sparsely populated Palestine. Then emerged, with British facilitation, the noxious figure who would dominate Palestinian politics over the next three decades, Amin al-Husseini. From about 1921 on, Karsh documents, Zionists and Palestinians had many choices to make; while the former invariably opted for compromise, the latter relentlessly decided on extermination.

In various capacities — mufti, head of Islamic and political organizations, Hitler ally, hero of the Arab masses — Husseini drove his constituents to what Karsh calls "a relentless collision course with the Zionist movement." Hating Jews so maniacally that he went on to join the Nazi genocide machine, Husseini refused to accept their presence in any numbers in Palestine, much less any form of Zionist sovereignty.

From the early 1920s, then, one witnessed a pattern still in place and familiar today: Zionist accommodation, "painful concessions," and constructive efforts to bridge differences, met by Palestinian anti-Semitism, rejectionism, and violence.

Complementing this binary dramatis personae, and complicating its stark contrast, stood the generally more accommodating Palestinian masses, the disgracefully anti-Semitic British mandatory authority, a Jordanian king eager to rule the Jews as subjects, feckless Arab state leaders, and an erratic American government.

Despite the radicalization of Palestinian opinion by the mufti and despite the Nazi rise to power, Zionists kept seeking an accommodation. It took some years, but the mufti's zero-sum policy and eliminationism eventually convinced reluctant Labor leaders, including David Ben-Gurion, that good works would not facilitate their dream of acceptance. Still, despite repeated failures, they continued the search for a moderate Arab partner with whom to strike a deal.

In contrast, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the forerunner of today's Likud party, already in 1923 understood that "there is not even the slightest hope of ever obtaining the agreement of the Arabs of the Land of Israel to 'Palestine' becoming a country with a Jewish majority." Yet even he rejected the idea of expelling Arabs and insisted on their full enfranchisement in a future Jewish state.

This dialectic culminated in November 1947, when the United Nations passed a partition plan that nowadays would be termed a two-state solution. In other words, it handed the Palestinians a state on a silver platter. Zionists rejoiced but Palestinian leaders, foremost the malign Husseini, sourly rejected any solution that endorsed Jewish autonomy. They insisted on everything and so got nothing. Had they accepted the U.N. plan, Palestine would be celebrating its 62nd anniversary this May. And there would have been no Nakba.

The most original part of Palestine Betrayed is the half that contains a detailed review of the flight of Muslims and Christians from Palestine in the years 1947–49. Here Karsh's archival research comes into its own, allowing him to present a uniquely rich picture of the specific circumstances of Arab flight. He goes one by one through the various Arab population centers — Qastel, Deir Yassin, Tiberias, Haifa, Jaffa, Jerusalem, Safad — and then takes a close look at the villages.

Israel's war of independence divides into two parts. Ferocious fighting began within hours of the United Nations vote to partition Palestine on Nov. 29, 1947, and lasted till the eve of the British evacuation on May 14, 1948. The international conflict began on May 15 (the day after Israel came into being), when five Arab state armies invaded, with hostilities lasting until January 1949. The first phase consisted largely of guerrilla warfare, the second primarily of conventional warfare. Over half (between 300,000 and 340,000) of the 600,000 Arab refugees fled before the British evacuation, and most of them in the final month.

Palestinians fled in a wide range of circumstances and for varied reasons. Arab commanders ordered noncombatants out of the way of military maneuvers; or they threatened laggards with treatment as traitors if they stayed; or they demanded that villages be evacuated to improve their standing on the battlefield; or they promised a safe return in a matter of days. Some communities preferred to flee rather than to sign a truce with the Zionists; in the words of Jaffa's mayor, "I do not mind destruction of Jaffa if we secure destruction of Tel Aviv." The mufti's agents attacked Jews to provoke hostilities. Families with the means to do so fled danger. When agricultural tenants heard that their landlords would be punished, they worried about being expelled and preempted by abandoning the land. Bitter internecine enmities hobbled planning. Shortages of food and other necessities spread. Services like water-pumping stations were abandoned. Fears spread of Arab gunmen, as did rumors of Zionist atrocities.

In only one case (Lydda) did Israeli troops push Arabs out. The singularity of this event bears emphasis. Karsh explains about the entire first phase of fighting: "None of the 170,000–180,000 Arabs fleeing urban centers, and only a handful of the 130,000–160,000 villagers who left their homes, had been forced out by Jews."

The Palestinian leadership disapproved of a population return, seeing this as implicitly recognizing the nascent State of Israel. The Israelis were at first ready to take back the evacuees but then hardened their position as the war progressed. Prime Minister Ben-Gurion explained their thinking, on June 16, 1948: "This will be a war of life and death and [the evacuees] must not be able to return to the abandoned places. . . . We did not start the war. They made the war. Jaffa waged war on us, Haifa waged war on us, Beisan waged war on us. And I do not want them again to make war."

In sum, Karsh explains, "it was the actions of the Arab leaders that condemned hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to exile."

In this book, Karsh establishes two momentous facts: that Arabs aborted the Palestinian state and that they caused the Nakba. In the process, he confirms his status as the preeminent historian of the modern Middle East writing today, and extends the arguments of three of his earlier books. His magnum opus, Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East, 1789-1923 (with Inari Karsh, 1999), argued that Middle Easterners were not, as usually thought, "hapless victims of predatory imperial powers but active participants in the restructuring of their region," a shift with vast political implications. Palestine Betrayed applies that book's thesis to the Arab–Israeli conflict, depriving Palestinians of excuses and victimhood, showing that they actively, if mistakenly, chose their destiny.

In Fabricating Israeli History: The "New Historians" (1997), Karsh exposed the shoddy work, even the fraudulence, of the school of Israeli historians who blame the 1948–49 Palestinian refugee problem on the Jewish state. Palestine Betrayed offers the flip side; if the earlier book refuted mistakes, this one establishes truths. Finally, in Islamic Imperialism: A History (2006), he showed the expansionist core of the Islamic faith in action over the centuries; here he explores that drive in small-bore detail among the Palestinians, connecting the supremacist Islamic mentality with an unwillingness to make practical concessions to Jewish sovereignty.

Palestine Betrayed re-frames today's Arab–Israeli debate by putting it into its proper historical context. Proving that for 90 years the Palestinian political elite has opted to reject "the Jewish national revival and [insisted on] the need for its violent destruction," Karsh correctly concludes that the conflict will end only when the Palestinians give up on their "genocidal hopes."



This article is originally appear at May 17, 2010, Daniel Pipes.Org

Mr. Pipes is a columnist for National Review Online, director of the Middle East Forum, and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Daniel Pipes

Arab and Jewish Refugees

The UN partition plan of 1947 was rejected by all the Arab countries. Arab leadership in Israel and in the countries surrounding Israel, planned a Jihad, holy war, against Israel and encouraged the Arabs to leave Israel promising their return after they purge the land of Jews. The great majority of Arabs left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier (see article and Arab sources that describe what happened during the war of 1948 that caused the Palestinian refugee problem).

During 1940's through 1950's nearly ALL the Jews had to flee from Arab countries to avoid persecution and pogroms. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab countries is estimated to be a million. This number is greater than the number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948, estimated as 343,000 (see Peters' book cited below).

Most of the Jewish refugees from Arab countries rapidly integrated into the modern society of Israel. This, despite the fact that Israel is a tiny country (about size of New Jersey) without any of the world's richest resources of petroleum in Arab countries. Today, the majority of the people in Israel are the descendants of Jews from Arab countries. (European Jews and their descendants constitute less than half the population of Israel).

The development of the Jewish community under British mandate led to economic growth in the region providing job opportunities for Arab workers. Consequently, the Arab population of Palestine swelled by the influx of Arab immigrants from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and other Arab countries until 1947 (The trend of Arab migration into Israel to find a job continues to the present day). While the British forces limited Jewish immigration, they allowed free entry of Arab migrants. The UN agency UNRWA defined a "Palestinian refugee", as any Arab who stayed in the country for two years prior to 1948. Thus, UNRWA included in their statistics migrant workers greatly swelling the ranks of so called "Palestinian refugees" (for best reference on the subject see: From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine by Joan Peters).

Arab refugee problem was created by the seven Arab countries that attacked Israel in 1948. Arab refugees were intentionally not integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the fact total territory of Arab countries is about 700 times greater than that of Israel. Out of about 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that has not been absorbed into their own peoples' lands. Arab nations still maintain generations of the descendants of the refugees in so called "refugee camps" under squalid conditions with the hope that someday they will dislodge the Jews in Israel. The money spent by the Arab countries on armaments would be sufficient to build houses for all so called "refugees". Arab countries should be encouraged to care for their poor population instead of spending their richest resources in the world on armaments and development of terrorist groups such as Osama Bin Laden from Saudi Arabia.

Since 1948, after three generations the descendants of the Arab refugees are still called "refugees" and are supported by UN "refugee" funds! With the highest birth rate in Arab countries this population has now grown to about four million. In negotiations, Arab leadership requests the "right of return" of this mass of millions into the tiny land of Israel. The settlement of millions of Arabs in Israel would immediately eliminate Israel as a Jewish state. This is the real aim of the Arab countries, to achieve by supposedly "peaceful" means what they could not achieve by unceasing violence in whole scale wars and daily terrorism.

The responsibility for keeping the Arab population who are descendants of the Arab refugees, rests only on the shoulders of the Arab countries that created the problem by attacking Israel in 1948.

Quote from Ralph Galloway, a former head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), in Amman, capital of Jordan, in August 1958:

"The Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as open sore, as an affront to the United Nations and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don't give a damn whether the refugees live or die."


http://www.science.co.il/arab-israeli-conflict.asp#Refugees