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Al Nakba Anatomy
The Palestinians’ dispossession
and wholesale ethnic cleansing of the population is
unparalleled in modern history. It is called al Nakba, a
Palestinian holocaust.
The gravity of this catastrophe is amplified by the fact that
it was not a single act of war (as the case for Nazi
atrocities). It is in fact a premeditated, carefully executed
and continuous process still being carried out to this day, 53
years after the first onslaught in 1948. Reading the
newspapers today or watching the TV news is a grim reminder of
the same dispossession and expulsion of 1948, albeit on a
different scale, style and location.
It is therefore important to understand how the original Nakba
took place. This is best illustrated in a series of maps.
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The
period from the passing of the Partition Plan (UN Resolution
181) on 29 November 1947 to the onset of the Zionist invasion
(Plan Dalet) around the end of March 1948
(Fig. 1):
The land under Jewish possession did not exceed 6% of
Palestine. The Zionist forces started occupying nearby Arab
villages to provide continuity and expand Jewish-held
territory. The population of 30 villages were expelled.
Naturally, all such territorial expansion, initiated by the
Jews only, took place at the expense of Arab land.
From the
Zionist invasion according to Plan Dalet, in early April, to
the end of the British Mandate and creation of the State of
Israel on 14 May 1948 (Fig. 2):
Under the watchful eye of the British Mandate government, the
Zionist forces initiated an organized operation for the
conquest of Palestine, starting with linking up scattered
Jewish colonies along the coastal strip, along Marj Ibn Amer
Plain, up along the river Jordan north of Tiberias, in the
form of a large N. Two hundred towns and villages were
occupied and their population expelled in this period. This
included key Palestinian towns: Jaffa, Haifa, Tiberias, Safad,
West Jerusalem (partly). Acre was occupied a little later.
Already over 50% of the refugees were expelled before a single
Arab regular soldier came to their rescue. The British
Government, whose Mandate was to protect the civilians, failed
to do so. The British High Commissioner, whose office was a
mere 5 km away from Deir Yassin, refused to interfere in the
ongoing massacre there.
The State of Israel was declared on 14 May 1948, without any
specific borders, on a captured territory of Palestine, not
exceeding 11%. All subsequent expansion (now 100%) is
considered illegal for those countries who gave de facto
recognition of Israel at the time.
Palestine
War: From 15 May to First Truce on 11 June 1948
(Fig. 3).
Contrary to Israeli myths, Zionist soldiers greatly
outnumbered the Arab regular forces at this period. Various
Arab regular forces entered Palestine without proper
coordination or joint command. This greatly accentuated the
Israeli superior numbers. The Arab forces failed to recapture
occupied villages and lost a further 90 villages. The
refugees’ number swelled to about 500,000. The first truce was
declared.
Palestine
War: From 12 June – 18 July 1948 (Fig. 4).
The Zionist forces (now called Israeli) felt emboldened as
they received more WWII veterans and war materiel in the first
truce. They outnumbered the Arabs in number and weaponry. They
broke the truce on 8 July and occupied two main central towns:
Lydda and Ramle and expelled their population (70,000) on the
express orders of Yitzak Rabin. They also occupied a corridor
to Jerusalem, parts of Galilee, including the historical
Nazareth city, and a pocket south of Haifa which remained
Palestinian till then.
Now Israelis were assured that their position was secure. The
next task was to solidify gains and expand to conquer as much
land as possible.
The number of refugees jumped to 630,000 (80% of the total).
They were expelled from 378 towns and villages. By this time
Israel occupied 3 times more Arab land than it had under its
possession in the Mandate period. This land was the most
fertile and the most heavily populated part of Palestine.
This explodes the Israeli myth that little David is fighting
for his existence against the onslaught of the giant Arab
Goliath. The falsehood of this claim was already known to the
British and American diplomats as early as January 1948.
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Palestine War: From 19 July – 24 October 1948
(Fig. 5)
After a long truce, Ben Gurion planned for the occupation of
the dominantly Arab Galilee, not allocated to Jews in the
Partition Plan, and the absolutely Arab South. The Israelis
attacked the Egyptians in the south, around Iraq Sweidan, on
15 October and occupied 7,700 sq. km. in one swoop without
interference from other Arab forces elsewhere. General Abdel
Nasser, later the celebrated national leader of Egypt, was
trapped in Faluja.
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Palestine War: From 24 October to 5 November 1948
(Fig. 6)
Now Ben Gurion turned his attention to Galilee in the north.
Israeli forces occupied what was left of Galilee and
advanced into Lebanon, occupying 13 Lebanese villages. In
Galilee, Israelis committed 25 massacres, out of reported
thirty five, in order to dislodge the population from their
villages. Many refused to leave and they form today the bulk
of Palestinians in Israel. By now, 700,000 refugees were
expelled from 443 towns and villages.
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Palestine war: From 5 November 1948 to 18 January 1949
(Fig. 7)
Israel turned south again, to the undefended Negev. It
occupied areas east of Beer Sheba down to Dead Sea. The area
occupied was 10,000 sq. km, or half the area of Israel
today, or 7 times the Jewish pre 1948 land. Yet, Israel’s
appetite was not satisfied. It turned west to attack Gaza
Strip which became the place of refuge for about a quarter
million refugees. But they were repulsed. Had they
succeeded, there would have been a horrible massacre and
Gaza Strip would not have existed. Egypt signed the
Armistice Agreement on 24 February 1949.
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Palestine War: From 19 January to 20 July 1949
(Fig. 8)
Immediately after signing the Armistice Agreement with
Egypt, Rabin proceeded south and occupied the remainder of
Negev till Aqaba Gulf. He planted the Israeli flag at Um
Rashrash (now Eilat). The Israeli-occupied area thus
expanded to 19,600 sq. km, 13 times the Jewish land. Under
the threat of Israeli attack on West Bank and Transjordan
and with the Arab (Jordanian) Legion under British officers
and with no ammunition, King Abdallah surrendered 436 sq. km
of very fertile and populated land in Wadi Ara in central
Palestine to Israel. Today, this is another Palestinian
enclave in Israel, with Um el Fahm, its principal city. Soon
thereafter, Lebanon, then Syria last, signed Armistice
Agreements with Israel. These Agreements are “temporary”
pending a final peace settlement. As their clauses state,
they do not confer any rights on any party or deprive it
from its rights. Israel turned the Armistice Line into
“borders” with Egypt and Jordan in accordance with the peace
agreements. In Palestine, the Armistice Line of 1949
separates Israel from the West Bank and Gaza. This Line has
been deceptively dubbed the Green Line by Israel in order to
strip it of its legal and factual meaning.
Thus ended the first chapter of al Nakba. Over 800,000
Palestinians were expelled from 531 towns and villages, in
addition to 130,000 from 662 secondary small villages and
hamlets, making a total of 935,000 refugees.
The Jews, who had dubious ownership of not more than 1,682
sq. km, have now occupied a total of 20,323, sq. km and
called it Israel. This means that 92% of Israel is
Palestinian.
By any standards this is the largest organized and still
maintained ethnic cleansing operation in modern history. No
understanding of the refugee problem is possible, let alone
any attempt to solve it, without understanding the graphic
and detailed sequence of dispossession and expulsion of
refugees. This is the ugly reality of Al Nakba anatomy.
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