Chapter 3: The first wave of the Arab exodus: December 1947 - March 1948

"The UN General Assembly resolution of 29 November 1947, which endorsed the partition of Palestine into two states, triggered haphazard Arab attacks against Jewish traffic. The first roadside ambushes occurred near Kfar Syrkin the following day, when two buses were attacked and seven Jewish passengers were shot dead. 1 The same day, snipers in Jaffa began firing at passers-by in Tel Aviv. The AHC, which flatly rejected the resolution and any thought of partition, declared a three-day general strike, beginning on 1 December, thus releasing the urban masses for action. On 2 December a mob, unobstructed by British forces, stormed the (Jewish) new commercial centre in Jerusalem, looting, burning shops and attacking Jews."

"Strategically speaking, the period December 1947 – March 1948 was marked by Arab initiatives and attacks and Jewish defensiveness, increasingly punctuated by Jewish reprisals. Arab gunmen attacked Jewish cars and trucks, from late December increasingly organised in British- and Haganah-protected convoys, urban neigbourhoods and rural settlements and cultivators. The attackers never pretended to single out combatants; every Jew was a legitimate target. The hostilities swiftly spread from a handful of urban centres to various parts of the countryside. The Haganah initially retaliated by specifically and accurately targeting the offending terrorist or militia group or village. But this often proved impossible and, in any case, failed to suppress Arab belligerence, and by February–March 1948 the organisation began to dispense with such niceties and to indiscriminately hit Palestinian traffic and villages, but still with relative restraint and in retaliation."

"Given the geographically intermixed populations, the presence in most areas of British forces and the militia-cum-underground nature of the opposing forces, the hostilities during December 1947 – March 1948 combined elements of guerrilla and conventional warfare, and terrorism. In the countryside, the Arabs gained the upper hand by intermittently blocking the roads between the main Jewish population centres and isolated communities, especially west Jerusalem, with its 100,000 Jews, the Etzion Bloc, south of Bethlehem, and the kibbutzim in western Galilee and the northern Negev approaches. The introduction by the Haganah of steel-plated trucks and buses in escorted convoys was more than offset, by late March, by improved Arab tactics and firepower. Moreover, the gradual British military withdrawal and continuing IZL-LHI attacks on British troops resulted in increasing British inability (and reluctance) to protect Jewish traffic. In a series of major successful ambushes in the last days of March, irregulars trapped and destroyed the Khulda, Nabi Daniel and Yehiam convoys, severely depleting the Haganah’s makeshift armoured-truck fleet. Ben-Gurion feared that now-besieged west Jerusalem might fall."

"By the end of March 1948, some 100,000 Arabs, mostly from the urban upper and middle classes of Jaffa, Haifa and Jerusalem, and from villages in Jewish-dominated areas such as the Jordan Valley and the Coastal Plain, had fled to Arab centres to the east, including Nazareth, Nablus, and Bethlehem, or out of the country altogether.

Wealthy urban Arab families began to get the jitters already during the countdown to the partition resolution. Some families, it was reported, wished to leave Nazareth already in the first week of November 1947. 2 The actual flight began on the first day of hostilities. On 30 November Haganah intelligence reported ‘the evacuation of Arab inhabitants from border neighbourhoods’ in Jerusalem and Jaffa.3 Jewish agents in Jaffa on 1 December 1947 reported the flight of families from several Jaffa border neighbourhoods"

"By 11 January 1948, according to Elias (Eliahu) Sasson, the director of the Arab Division of the Jewish Agency’s Political Department, Arab morale was low in all the main towns and their rural hinterlands. Sasson wrote to Transjordan’s King Abdullah:

Hunger, high prices, and poverty are rampant in a frightening degree. There is fear and terror everywhere. The flight is painful, from house to house, from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, from city to city, from village to village, and from Palestine to the neighbouring countries. The number of these displaced persons is estimated in the thousands. 11"

Yishuv policy, December 1947 - March 1948

"The Yishuv entered the war without a plan or policy regarding the Arab civilian population in its midst. To be sure, its leaders during the 1930s and 1940s had always taken for granted that the prospective Jewish state would have a substantial Arab minority and had always asserted that the Arab inhabitants would be treated fairly and as equals. But with- out doubt, come November 1947, they were unhappy with the prospect of having such a large Arab minority (some 400,000 Arabs alongside 500,000 Jews). As Yosef Nahmani, the director of the JNF office in eastern Galilee and a veteran Zionist defence activist, jotted down in his diary:

In my heart there was joy mixed with sadness. Joy that the peoples [of the world] had at last acknowledged that we were a nation with a state, and sadness that we lost half the country . . . and . . . that we have 400,000 Arabs . . .12"

Settlement committee: Assuming an Arab minority

"But during the first weeks of violence it was unclear to most observers, Jewish, British and Arab, that the two peoples, indeed, were now embarked on a war; most thought they were witnessing a recurrence of fleeting ‘disturbances’ 'a la 1920, 1929, or 1936. During December 1947 – January 1948, senior Mapai settlement figures (including Shimon Persky (Peres), Avraham Harzfeld, Levi Shkolnik (Eshkol), and Zalman Lifshitz (Lif), discussed the future Jewish state’s settlement policy and produced a blueprint entitled ‘Guidelines for a Development Plan for Agricultural Settlement in the Three Years 1949–1951’. It was assumed by the participants that their recommendations would serve as a basis for the state’s policies. The discussions took little account of the surrounding violence or that a war, which might radically change everything, was gradually unfolding outside the room. The report they produced assumed that the partition resolution would be implemented as written.

At the meeting of 23 December, Yosef Weitz addressed the demographic problem. ‘I have always been a supporter of transfer’, he said.

But today we won’t raise the matter even in a hint. Nonetheless, I believe that in the future a certain part of the Arab population will emigrate of its own free will and through the will of the rulers of neighbouring countries, who will have need of them [i.e., of such immigrants]. The Beit Shean [Beisan] area for example, will in the future empty of its beduins, as they wish to join their tribes across the Jordan, and there are others like them in other areas.

Weitz assumed throughout that the Jewish State’s borders would remain those laid down in the UN resolution.

Weitz added that the Jewish State ‘would not be able to exist with a large Arab minority. It must not amount to more than 12–15 per cent [of the total population]’. But he envisioned the growth of the Jewish percentage – despite the Arabs’ ‘overly high’ rate of natural increase – as attainable within 10–12 years through massive Jewish immigration. In all, both in the discussions and the final report (the ‘Guidelines’), the participants assumed that (a) there would be no coerced expropriation by the state of Arab lands, (b) the state would allocate to the Arabs substantial water resources (20 per cent of the total), and (c) that the state’s population, at least in its first years, would be 35 per cent Arab. Weitz’s thoughts notwithstanding, a transfer of population was neither assumed nor endorsed. 13

But throughout these first months of the civil war, there was also an underlying desire among Zionist officials and Haganah officers to see as few Arabs as possible remain in the country, and occasional concrete proposals designed to obtain this result were tabled. On 4 January 1948, Danin wrote: ‘D[avid] Hacohen [a senior Mapai figure] believes that transfer is the only solution. I, for my part, agree . . .’ 14 Tel Aviv District Haganah officer Zvi Aurbach’s recommendation of early January 1948 was perhaps atypical in its forthrightness, but not in its intent: ‘I propose . . . that Jaffa’s water reservoir be put out of commission . . . and by so doing we shall force a large number of Arabs to leave the city.’15 Similarly atypical, but telling, was Ben-Gurion’s description on 7 February of his recent visit to Jerusalem:

From your entry into Jerusalem through Mahane Yehuda, King George Street and Mea Shearim – there are no strangers [i.e., Arabs]. One hundred per cent Jews. Since Jerusalem’s destruction in the days of the Romans – it hasn’t been so Jewish as it is now. In many western [Jerusalem] Arab neighbourhoods – one sees not one Arab. I do not assume that this will change . . . [And] what has happened in Jerusalem . . . could well happen in great parts of the country – if we [the Yishuv] hold fast . . . And if we hold fast, it is very possible that in the coming six or eight or ten months of the war there will take place great changes . . . and not all of them to our detriment. Certainly there will be great changes in the composition of the population of the country. 16

Running through this passage is both an expectation and a desire.

But official policy assumed the continued existence of a large Arab minority in the state. This line was explicitly embodied in the JAE’s draft statement of 12 December 1947:

Many thousands of Arabs will be living in the Jewish State. We want them to feel, right from this moment, that provided they keep the peace, their lives and property will be as secure as that of their Jewish fellow-citizens. 17

Similarly, during January 1948 the Arab Department of the Histadrut, the powerful, Mapai-dominated trades union federation, distributed to ‘the Arab workers’ at least two leaflets calling for peace and cooperation among Jewish and Arab proletarians. The second leaflet stated that

the Arab worker, clerk and peasant in the Jewish state will be citizens with equal rights and duties . . . In this state there be no room for discrimination . . . Workers: Do not be led astray and pulled along like sheep after shepherds towards destruction. 18

The overarching, general assumption, then, during the war’s first weeks was that the emergent Jewish State would come to life with a large Arab minority. Certainly, the Yishuv did not enter the war with a master plan of expulsion. But developments over the following months – the most important of which were the unfolding Arab exodus itself and the Arab attacks on Jewish settlements, neighbourhoods and traffic – were to steadily erode this assumption. And the exodus itself was to be triggered not by an activation of some Jewish plan or policy but by constantly changing military and psychological realities on the ground in each sector along the time-bar. These realities were in some measure determined by changes in Haganah strategy and tactics, themselves by and large responses to Arab strategy, tactics and actions."

Yishuv military strategy: Restraint, November - December

"It is useful, in this respect, to look at the evolution of the Yishuv’s military strategy and tactics during the first stage of the civil war. During the war’s first days, it was agreed in the Defence Committee (va‘ad habitahon), the Yishuv’s supreme political supervisory body in defence matters, composed of representatives of the Haganah National Staff (hamate haartzi shel hahaganah) (HNS), the JA, the Histadrut and the National Council (hava‘ad haleumi), and the HGS, that:

the outbreaks should not yet be seen as the start of planned, systematic and organised Arab aggression . . . The Arab population does not want a disruption of peace and security and there is still no decision [by the Arab leadership to go to war]. We judged these outbreaks as of a local character . . . [We decided] that we did not want our behaviour to aid the AHC and the Mufti to suck into this circle [of violence] wider strata of the Arab population.

The Defence Committee and the Haganah commanders decided against ‘widening the circle of violence’. 19 This line conformed to the drift of the committee’s thinking during the first half of November 1947, before the eruption of hostilities. On 13 November the discussion focused on the Haganah’s Plan B (tochnit bet), which assumed an attack on the Yishuv by the Palestinian Arabs with some assistance, in manpower and weaponry, from the neighbouring states. Ya‘akov Dori, the Haganah’s chief of general staff, said that the plan provided for Haganah retaliatory strikes against Arab perpetrators or potential perpetrators and against Arab targets identical to those attacked by Arab terrorists, such as road traffic. Galili, head of the HNS, a quasi-military body sandwiched uncomfortably between the JAE (and its defence ‘minister’, Ben-Gurion), the Defence Committee, and the HGS, which actually ran the Haganah,
said:

Our interest, if disturbances break out, is that the aggression [i.e., violence], won’t spread out over time and over a great deal of space. From this perspective, the most important defensive measure is where we are attacked, there to retaliate; that will be the effective method of stamping out the fire.

Galili, in effect the Yishuv’s deputy defence minister, added that if effective retaliation could not be carried out at the time and place of the original Arab attack, then the Haganah must have ready plans of attack against

those . . . not . . . directly guilty . . . places . . . persons . . . villages . . . tending to [anti-Yishuv violence] . . . [But] the Haganah is not built for aggression, it does not wish to enslave, it values human life, it wants to hit only those who are guilty, it does not want to ignite, but to douse out flames . . . Occasionally, [moral values] are a burden on the Haganah’s operations, and [i.e., but] we must take them into account. 20

During the first week of hostilities, the committee continued to cleave to a policy of ‘not spreading the conflagration’ and against indiscriminate reprisal killings. As Ben-Gurion put it, ‘we shall retaliate by hitting their vehicles, not passengers . . . If their property is damaged, perhaps they will be deterred’. Ben-Gurion, like Hapoel Hamizrahi Party’s Moshe Shapira, was concerned lest over-reaction by the Haganah would push the Arab masses, until then uninvolved, to support Husseini and his gunmen."

Yishuv military strategy: Active Defence, From December

"If Ben-Gurion, Galili and Shapira represented a moderate middle way, a crystallising harder line was already audible. Shkolnik (Eshkol) argued that perhaps on 30 November and 1–2 December it had been possible to hope that what the Yishuv faced was a brief, transitory eruption; but this was no longer tenable. ‘From now on, if something happens, we [must] respond with full force, an eye for an eye, [if not] for the moment two eyes for one.’ Eliahu Elyashar, a Sephardi notable from Jerusalem, argued that ‘the Arabs don’t want disturbances, they want quiet, but the Arab – his nature is like a primitive man’s, if you make concessions, he thinks you are weak . . .’ Events in Jerusalem had only whetted Arab appetites. Yosef Sapir, of Ha’ihud Haezrahi Party, declared: ‘After several days [of Arab violence] have passed without response, we must not continue with this policy of restraint.’ 21 But the committee adopted Ben-Gurion’s line – to retaliate while ‘avoiding harming people’. 22"

"During the following months, HGS\Operations carefully modulated the brigades’ operations against Arab transportation. Occasionally, it ordered strikes on specific days against traffic on specific roads; 26 some- times, when the Jewish death toll from Arab ambushes mounted, it instructed the brigades to automatically retaliate along specific roads without further instructions;27 occasionally, the order went out to attack all Arab traffic along all roads. These orders, precipitated by ‘the increase in attacks on our transport in different parts of the country’, were designed to ‘quiet down the enemy’s activities’. But, down to the end of March, they were invariably superseded, within a day or two, by orders to halt or suspend attack.28

Galili signalled the limited gear-change at the meeting of the HNS on 10 December 1947: ‘The time has come for active defence [haganah pe‘ila], reprisals and punishment.’ 29 The meeting of the Defence Committee the following day was decisive. Galili said that the ‘assumption that [the flames] would either die down or be extinguished’ had not materialised. The Mufti’s hold on the Arab public had grown stronger and the Opposition was paralysed. ‘The fact that the events are getting worse necessitates a certain change in our . . . policy . . . [but] not an essential change . . .’ Arab losses had not deterred further attacks and they were interpreting the lack of Haganah reprisals as a sign of weakness. Moreover, the world might begin to think that ‘the Jews’ strength is insufficient [to hold on] and inside the Yishuv [too] they will cease to believe that we can weather the storm’. People would come to doubt the Haganah’s strength and perhaps shift their support to the more militant Revisionists. Galili proposed that the Haganah continue to defend itself ‘in the classical way’ but also retaliate against Arab targets, specifically attacking ‘[Arab] transportation . . . hitting the property of the responsible inciters [and] of the attackers . . .’."

"On 18 December, the Haganah summed up the limited change of strategy thus:

During the first week of disturbances we implemented an aggressive defence at the moment and place of [Arab] attack and we refrained from sharp reprisals which would have aided the inciters. We called upon the Arabs to maintain peace . . . We had to examine whether the outbreak was local, incidental, and ephemeral . . . [But] the spread of the disturbances and terrorism has forced us to add to the aggressive defence . . . attacks on the centres of Arab violence. That’s the stage we are in now. The reprisals in Karatiya, Balad al Sheikh, Wadi Rushmiya, Ramle and the Jerusalem-Hebron road must be seen in this light. 37"

Yishuv military strategy: Plan May

"The gradual limited shift in strategy during December 1947 in practice meant a limited implementation of ‘Plan May’ (Tochnit Mai or Tochnit Gimel), which, produced in May 1946, was the Haganah master plan for the defence of the Yishuv in the event of the outbreak of new troubles similar to those of 1936–1939. The plan included provision, in extremis, for ‘destroying the Arab transport’ in Palestine, and blowing up houses used by Arab terrorists and expelling their inhabitants. 39

The shift of the second week of December involved mounting retaliatory raids against militia concentrations and villages from which they had set out for attacks on settlements and traffic, with destruction of houses and killing of gunmen and unarmed or disarmed adult males; specific, limited but indiscriminate attacks on Arab transport in response to indiscriminate Arab attacks on Jewish transport; and active patrolling near and in Arab villages with the aim of deterrence. Villagers and townspeople who expressed a desire for peace were not to be harmed.
There is no trace of an expulsive or transfer policy. In most of the operations, the troops were specifically ordered to avoid causing casualties among women, children and the old, and in most operations the troops tried to cleave to the guideline. A widely disseminated circular by the Haganah’s northern brigade, ‘Levanoni’ (later split into the Carmeli and Golani brigades), stated:

We must avoid as far as possible killing plain civilians [stam ezrahim] and to make an effort as far as possible to always hit the criminals themselves, the bearer of arms, those who carry out the attacks . . . We do not want to spread the disturbances and to unite the Arab public . . . around the Mufti and his gangs. Any indiscriminate massacre of Arab civilians causes the consolidation of the Arab masses around the inciters. 40

This, in effect, was Yishuv–Haganah policy down to the end of March 1948."

Yishuv military strategy: Operation Zarzir

"Another element of the revised defensive strategy was planning for the assassination of Palestinian political and militia leaders, code- named ‘Operation Zarzir’. In early January, the Haganah command ordered all units to target and kill specific Husseini-affiliated leaders...The units were ordered to make it appear, if possible, as the work of fellow Arabs and were forbidden to carry out the assassinations in places of worship or hospitals. 41 But, in fact, not much energy was invested in ‘Zarzir’ and only one assassination attempt was ever carried out – Sheikh Nimr al Khatib, a senior Haifa Husseini figure, was ambushed and seriously injured by a Palmah squad outside Haifa in January 1948."

Yishuv military strategy: Destruction of villages

"The lobbying by various figures to adopt the destruction of villages, which necessarily entailed the eviction of their inhabitants, as part of the routine reprisals policy, was rejected by Ben-Gurion and the HGS. But two villages were levelled during the period November 1947 – March 1948; unusual circumstances accounted for both. The first instance followed a particularly savage Arab attack: on 9 January militiamen from the small village of ‘Arab Suqrir (‘Arab Abu Suwayrih) murdered 11 Haganah scouts on patrol outside Gan-Yavne. The local HIS man recommended: ‘The village should be destroyed completely and some males from the same village should be murdered.’ 42 The recommendation was endorsed by the director of the HIS AD, Ziama Divon: ‘The Arabs in the area “expect” a reprisal . . . A lack of response on our part will be interpreted as a sign of weakness.’43 On 20 January, the appropriate operational order was issued: ‘. . . Destroy the well . . . destroy the village completely, kill all the adult males, and destroy the reinforcements that arrive.’44 But as it turned out, the operation, in the early hours of 25 January, was bloodless. The Arabs had evacuated their womenfolk and children a few days before and the 30-odd men who had stayed behind to guard the village fled after getting wind of the approach of the raiders. The company-sized Haganah force ‘found the village empty’ and proceeded to destroy the houses, two trucks and the nearby well (‘the village, apart from a few relics, no longer exists’). 45 The operation apparently left a deep impression: ‘The memory of “the night of the thunder”,’ wrote an HIS officer, ‘will stay in the memories of the surrounding [Arab] villages a long time’. Moreover, the inhabitants of ‘Arab Suqrir were angry that ‘no village dared to come to their help and they asked how can the Arabs fight this way’.46 (Some of the villagers apparently returned to the site soon after, and finally left at the end of March. 47)"

Yishuv military strategy: Reprisal policy

"The main Haganah response to Arab attacks, down to the end of March 1948, remained the retaliatory strike, either against traffic or against specific villages. The reprisal policy was thoroughly aired in a protracted two-day meeting between Ben-Gurion and his military and Arab affairs advisers on 1–2 January 1948. The discussion was triggered, in some measure, by a series of unauthorised or ill-conceived Haganah attacks in which innocent civilians were killed. The guiding assumptions were to avoid extending the conflagration to as yet untouched areas, to try to hit the ‘guilty’, and retaliation as close as possible to the time, place and nature of the original provocation.48 The resultant definition and refinement of Haganah policy was embodied in a two-page memorandum by Yadin sent to all units, entitled ‘Instructions for Planning Initiated Operations’, dated 18 January 1948. The targets for reprisals were to be selected from those enumerated in ‘Tochnit May 1946’, but subject to two qualifications, namely (a) ‘not to spread the disturbances. . . to areas so far unaffected . . .’, and (b) there should be ‘an effort to hit the guilty, while acknowledging the impossibility of [precise] individual targeting; to distinguish between [friendly and unfriendly] Arab villages’. The order outlined the methods of operation – sabotage, ambushes, etc. – and the types of objects to be hit: blowing up public and residential houses, ‘identifying and killing gang leaders. Harassing a settlement by firing at it and mining. Organising ambushes to hit transport to and from the settlement. Punitive operation against a village in order to hit the adult male combatants.’ All attacks required HGS approval. The memorandum gave special attention to attacking economic objectives, including ‘flour mills, storehouses, water pumps, wells and waterworks, workshops . . .’, and to attacks on Arab transportation in retaliation for attacks on Jewish vehicles. ‘On no account should holy places, hospitals and schools be hit.’ The brigade and city commanders were ordered to prepare plans and submit a list of objectives to the HGS. 49"

"Another result of the 1–2 January gathering was the appointment, at Ben-Gurion’s suggestion, of ‘Arab affairs advisers’ to each Haganah district, battalion and brigade headquarters. 50 The appointments were to bear on the Haganah’s – and the Yishuv’s – policy towards the Arab population. On 20 January, Galili issued detailed instructions. The brigade and urban district commanders were ordered to ‘consult the adviser in the selection of targets . . . and the method of [attack]’. When asking for the general staff’s approval of a particular operation, the district
or brigade commander had to append the adviser’s written opinion. 51 In his ‘Instructions for Planning Initiated Operations’ of 18 January, Yadin had ordered the brigade and city OCs to consult their Arab affair advisers before embarking on any operations not requiring further HGS approval. 52 In the course of March, the advisers were also made responsible for advising the regional Haganah commanders on how to deal with Arab communities in their areas. 53"

"But if there was a shift to more forceful retaliatory responses in many areas, Haganah national strategy remained – and was to remain until the end of March 1948 – one which would restrict as far as possible the scope of the conflagration and to avoid reprisals in areas free of hostilities. Initially, the motive was to avoid an all-out war between the Jewish and Arab populations. Deliberately provoking violence in hitherto quiet areas could bring the Yishuv into conflict with the British – the last thing Ben Gurion wanted as he contemplated the countdown to statehood – and probably eventual war with the Arab states as well. Moreover, the Haganah, in February–March 1948, felt stretched enough on the ground without adding new battlegrounds. Palmon on 1 January 1948 had put it this way: ‘Do we want the Arab people to be united against us, or do we want to benefit from . . . their not being united? Do we want to force all the . . . Arabs to act against us, or do we want to give them the opportunity not to act against us?’ Allon agreed. ‘There are still untroubled places in the country. There is no need to hit an area which has been quiet for a long time . . . we must concentrate on areas where in effect we are at war.’"

Yishuv military strategy: Atrocities

"The problem of killing non-combatants continuously exercised the Haganah commanders. Occasionally, indeed, raids were aborted out of fear that atrocities might result (as when a unit that set out to blow up buildings in Kafr ‘Aqeb, north of Jerusalem, decided to withdraw when it heard ‘the voices and screams of children’ emanating from a house they were about to destroy 65 ). But more common were cases of excessive behaviour. On 12 January 1948, militiamen from Kibbutz Ramat Hakovesh, contrary to explicit Haganah orders, shot at two Arab women, perhaps cultivating a field, nearby; at least one was injured and may have died. The matter was the subject of an internal investigation. No one appears to have been punished. 66 At the end of February, Haganah guards murdered an Arab peasant and his wife near Kfar Uriah, ‘without any provocation’, according to HIS.67 On 24 January, four Palmahniks boarded a taxi in Tiberias and murdered the Arab driver (who may have been connected to irregulars). 68 Ben-Gurion was probably referring to such incidents when he criticised ‘condemnable acts against Arabs’ at a meeting of the Defence Committee in early February. 69

The murder of the taxi-driver was subsequently investigated. 70 By early February, a senior Haganah officer recommended that the organisation set up ‘an authorised’ institution which could pass judgement in ‘matters of life and death’, 71 and in mid-February Galili ruled that Haganah units were forbidden to murder Arabs in order to gain possession of vehicles or other assets – even if these were ‘destined for Knesset [i.e., Haganah] use’.72

However, these incidents were the exception. Haganah operations were usually authorised and effectively controlled by the general staff. Moreover, notwithstanding the British view of Haganah operations, the HGS, through December 1947 – March 1948, attempted to keep its units’ operations as ‘clean’ as possible. While coming to accept the general premise that retaliatory strikes against traffic and villages would inevitably involve the death and injury of innocent people, orders were repeatedly sent out to all Haganah units to avoid killing
women, children and old people. In its specific orders for each operation, the HGS almost always included instructions not to harm non- combatants, as, for example, in the attack on the village of Salama, outside Jaffa, in early January 1948, when Galili specifically forbade the use of mortars because they might cause casualties among non-combatants. 73"

Yishuv military strategy: Arab policy

"On 8 January, Ben-Gurion said that so far, the Arab countryside, despite efforts to incite it, had remained largely quiescent. It was in the Yishuv’s interest that the countryside remain quiet, and this depended in large measure on the Yishuv’s own actions. ‘We [must avoid] mistakes which would make it easier for the Mufti’ to stir up the villages, he said. 74 Regarding the countryside, the Haganah’s policy throughout February and March was ‘not to extend the fire to areas where we have not yet been attacked’ while at the same time vigorously attacking known bases of attacks on Jews and, in various areas, Arab traffic. 75 This policy also applied to the Negev. The JNF’s Yosef Weitz, the chairman of the Negev Committee (the Yishuv’s regional supervisory body), put it this way: ‘As to the Arabs, a policy has been determined: We extend our hand to peace. Every beduin who wants peace, will be satisfied. But if anyone dares to act contrariwise – his end will be bitter.’76 A few weeks earlier, on 12 February, the commander of the Negev Brigade, Nahum Sarig, instructed his officers:

(A) Our job is to appear before the Arabs as a ruling force which functions forcefully but with justice and fairness.
(B) We must encourage the Arabs to carry on life as usual.
(C) We must avoid harm to women and children.
(D) We must avoid harm to friendly Arabs.

In praxis, this meant allowing Arabs to graze flocks in their own fields or public land but to prevent them from grazing on ‘our fields’ by hitting ‘the flock with fire’ while avoiding firing at the shepherd or confiscating the herd. Searches in Arab settlements should be conducted ‘politely but firmly . . . If the search is a result of an attempt to hit our forces, you are permitted to execute any man found in possession of a weapon.’ Searches of Arab cultivators in fields near Jewish settlements should be conducted ‘with emphatic politeness, preferably accompanied by an explanation and encouragement to the Arab to continue his work . . .’. Searches of Arab cars were also to be conducted ‘politely but firmly’. Only arms, military uniforms and identification cards, and stolen property were to be confiscated. If the arms were for self-defence (a single pistol or grenade), they were to be confiscated and the driver or passenger allowed on his way; if ‘aggressive’ (mines, machineguns, etc.), the owner was to be detained for HIS questioning. Sums of money in excess of PL100 were to be confiscated. Vehicles suspected of belonging to irregulars were to be confiscated or destroyed. If Arabs resisted the search, force was to be use, including ‘intimidation, blows and even execution’. 77"

"Until mid-January, apparently, Arab workers were still dorming in Jewish settlements. On 15 January, a Haganah commander issued a prohibition against Arabs cow-hands sleeping in Jewish settlements. 79 But Arab work in the Jewish areas continued, by order of Galili (who was a member of Kibbutz Na‘an, in the same sub-district); such work was to be stopped in specific areas at specific times only if there was a crucial security need. 80 ‘Ephraim’ was annoyed by a report that in Ramatayim, a Jewish town in his sub-district, the local Haganah commander had ‘forbidden Arabs of ‘Arab Abu Kishk to buy in the settlement’s shops and had destroyed Arab produce and had forbidden them from bringing it into town’. ‘Ephraim’ instructed that such actions should not be taken without approval from on high unless there was an immediate security need.81

Another sub-district OC, in the Coastal Plain, at the beginning of January ordered his deputies not to ‘carry out a general stoppage of Arab work’ in their areas ‘until an order to the contrary was given’. 82 Indeed, in one or two areas, including the Samaria sub-district, Arab work in Jewish fields, vineyards and groves continued into April 1948. Only at the end of that month, ‘Naftali’ ordered a stoppage of Arab labour in Zikhron Ya‘akov, Givat ‘Ada and Bat-Shlomo – and immediately triggered protests that, in the absence of available Jewish laborers, the crops would suffer. The Arabs were not a security risk for now and if the situation changed, they would stop coming to work of their own volition, he argued. 83

But different policies were in place in different areas; a lot depended on the specific security situation in each area and on the commanders involved. In Jerusalem, for example, orders were issued in early January forbidding the sale of goods by Jews to Arabs and shopkeepers were threatened with punishment. 84 Indeed, already in mid-December 1947, Arabs working in Jewish enterprises were warned by Haganah men – on order of the district intelligence officer – that if they continued, their lives would be in danger.85

By March, there were two principal, inter-related questions: how to deal with the remaining Arab communities in the Jewish areas and what to do with the property of those who had left. 86 Regarding property, the HGS and HNS were unhappy with ad hoc local arrangements. The property was falling victim to pillage and vandalisation by Jewish (and Arab) neighbours and military units. Some local Haganah commanders had appointed ‘inspectors’ of Arab property. 87 But a streamlined, national approach was called for. During the last week of March, the general staff set up a national ‘Committee for Arab Property’...it was to be responsible for the abandoned property. 8

The murder by an Alexandroni Brigade roadblock of six Arabs on 1 or 2 March seems to have triggered a fresh look at the problematic issue of the remaining Arab communities. 89 ...There was need for ‘clear orders about the status of the Arabs in the area’, complained a kibbutz member. 90 In late March, the HIS issued an order completely forbidding the movement of Arabs inside Jewish settlements without special permission. 91 More significantly, Alexandroni officers complained that the quarantine imposed on the village of Sheikh Muwannis was being evaded at night by Arabs skirting Haganah patrols and roadblocks. Alexandroni’s OC replied that the matter was being dealt with by the HGS.92 At the beginning of March, Galili ordered the Arab affairs experts to hammer out clear guidelines. 93 On the basis of their recommendations he issued the following blanket order, on 24 March, to all brigade OCs:

Subject: The Arabs Living in the Enclaves.

The behaviour of the Knesset [i.e., Haganah] toward the Arabs living in the area earmarked for the Jewish state or in continuous Jewish areas, in which the Arabs live in enclaves, stems from the Arab policy of the Zionist movement which is: Recognition of the full rights, needs and freedom of the Arabs in the Hebrew state without discrimination, and a striving for coexistence with freedom and respect.

From this policy one may deviate in the course of battle only if security conditions and requirements necessitate this.

The high command [i.e., the HGS and HNS] has appointed a committee which is responsible for determining in each place, together with the brigade OC or his representative, the rules of behaviour (matters of supplies, transportation, identity documents, etc.) with the Arab settlements in the continuous Jewish area, with the intention that security needs be stringently preserved as well as the wellbeing and needs of the Arabs living in the Jewish sector."

"The Haganah’s difficulty during December 1947 – March 1948 was that while it sought to maintain quiet wherever possible, its reprisals, some- times misdirected, sometimes excessive, tended to suck into the maelstrom more and more Arabs. Only strong, massive, retaliatory action, it was felt, would overawe and pacify the Arabs. But the reprisals often hit the innocent along with the guilty, bred anger and vengefulness and made additional Arab communities amenable to the Husseinis’ militant- nationalist appeals, despite great initial reluctance to enter the fray. 96

By and large, however, until the end of March, the Haganah’s operations conformed to the general principle of restricting the conflagration, at least geographically, as much as possible. At the same time, Haganah reprisals tended to increase in ferocity as the months passed, as its units operated in increasingly larger formations and more efficiently, as Jewish casualties increased and as the Yishuv growingly realized it was engaged in a life and death struggle. But from December 1947 through March 1948 the organisation’s policy remained constant: to defend against Arab attack and to retaliate in so far as possible against the guilty, while seeking to limit the scope of the conflict. 97 On 3 February, Ben-Gurion spoke of prospective Jewish settlement in the Negev. He said that those beduin tribes ‘who live in peace with us, we will not fight them, we will not harm them, we will supply them with a little water, they will grow vegetables there, they will stay . . .’.98 And three weeks later, Galili said:

. . . There is great importance in choosing the objectives [for retaliation, we] must distinguish . . . between villages guilty of attacking us and villages that have not yet attacked us. If we don’t want to bring about an alliance between the Arabs of the country and the foreign [irregulars] – it is important to make this distinction."

Palestinian Arab policy, During November 1947 - March 1948

"Through the first months of the civil war, the JA and the Haganah publicly accused the Mufti of waging an organised, aggressive war against the Yishuv. The reality, however, was more nuanced, as most Zionist leaders and analysts at the time understood. In the beginning, Palestinian belligerency was largely disorganised, sporadic and localised, and for moths remained chaotic and uncoordinated, if not undirected. ‘The Arabs were not ready [for war] . . . There was no guiding hand . . . The [local] National Committees and the AHC were trying to gain control of the situation – but things were happening of their own momen- tum’, Machnes told Ben-Gurion and the Haganah commanders on 1 January 1948. He argued that most of the Arab population had not wanted hostilities. Sasson concurred, and added that the Mufti had wanted (and had organised and incited) ‘troubles’, but not of such scope and dimensions. 101 One senior HIS-AD executive put it this way:

In the towns the feeling has grown that they cannot hold their own against the superior [Jewish] forces. And in the countryside [the villagers] are unwilling to seek out [and do battle with] the Jews not in their area. [And] those living near the Jewish [settlements] are considered miskenim [i.e., miserable or vulnerable] . . . All the villages live with the feeling that the Jews are about to attack them . . . 102"

"‘Tsuri’, the HIS–AD officer in the north, reported that ‘during the past few years, the Galilee villager, be he Ghawarni [i.e., resident in the Hula Valley swampland], Matawali [i.e., Shi’ite], or Mughrabi [i.e., of Maghrebi origin], lacked any desire to get involved in a war with the Jews’. In general, ‘the Arab population of the Galilee is unable to bear the great and prolonged effort [of war] because of an absence of any internal organisation’. 106

In fact, the lack of organisation and weaponry was not restricted to the North. General Safwat, chairman of the Arab League Military Committee, in March 1948 had warned more generally of Palestinian Arab factionalism, with the proliferation of armed bands owing no obedience to the ‘general headquarters’ and of villagers acquiring arms to defend themselves against other Arabs, not the Jews. 107 Husseini lacked the tools to launch a fullscale assault on the Yishuv and limited himself to sanctioning minor attacks (in part to pressure the Arab states to come to the Palestinians’ aid), to tightening the economic boycott against the Yishuv and to organising the Arab community for defence. 108 Towards the end of December 1947, Husseini appears to have sent AHC member and Jerusalem NC leader Dr. Husayn Khalidi a letter explicitly stating that the purpose of the present actions was ‘to harass (and only to harass)’ the Yishuv, not , fullscale assault.109 He indicated that only at some un- specified future date the AHC would order a fullscale offensive though, meanwhile, preparations had to be taken in hand. 110 Khalidi didn’t need any pressing. He himself was ‘nervous, desperate and pessimistic’. According to HIS, Khalidi believed that in the disturbances of 1936–1939, 'the Arabs were . . . much readier, daring and willing to sacrifice. Now, by comparison, they demand payment for every action, are full of fear of the Jews and are constantly complaining.’ 111

Cunningham summarised matters fairly accurately five weeks into the war:

The official Arab policy is to stand on the defensive against Jewish attacks until aggression is ordered by the national leadership. That widespread assaults on Jews continue and are indeed increasing illustrates the comparatively feeble authority of most of [the National] Committees and of the AHC . . . The latter is anxious to curb Arab outbreaks but probably not to stop them entirely and is known to be worried at [sic] its lack of control . . . 112"

Palestinian Arab military strategy: Reluctance to fight

"Almost immediately, the Mufti’s attention was drawn to Arab Haifa and Jaffa, the two largest Arab centres; both were highly vulnerable to attack and siege. In both, the NCs and the monied middle and upper classes whom they represented, sought quiet, lest the Jews be provoked into reprisals that could harm their persons and property. Indeed, in Jaffa the NC and the orange grove owners had within days initiated a short- lived truce with their Jewish neighbours. 113 But the local leaderships were unsuccessful in reining in the militia groups that often operated on the towns’ peripheries. 114 Part of the Mufti’s concern regarding the two towns no doubt stemmed from reports about the beginning of flight by their inhabitants. During the second half of December 1947 and January 1948, the Mufti or his close associates appear to have tried to shift the focus of hostilities to the countryside. But the villagers were not rushing to join up115 (and, indeed, some of them sought to continue selling their produce to neighbouring Jewish towns 116 )."

"But the Mufti’s policy regarding the countryside was also characterised by ambiguity. In late January, according to Haganah intelligence, he told a delegation from the village of Masmiya al Kabira, in the south, ‘to keep quiet and not to clash with the Jews, unless attacked’. Similarly, Hajj Amin added: ‘So long as help from the Arab states is not assured, one should avoid battle with the Jews.’

The change in Arab strategy, of trying to move the focus of violence from the towns to the countryside, had come about, Sasson explained to Ben-Gurion, because of pressure on the Mufti by the townspeople. Sasson advised that the Haganah step up the pressure on the towns so that the urban notables would sue for a cease-fire. Attacks on villages, Sasson felt, would lead nowhere as the Mufti would be indifferent to ‘the death of fellahin’. 122"

"Both the AHC and the ALA during February-March seemed to signal Palestine’s Arabs that while low-level skirmishing by local militias and irregulars was fine and attacks on Jewish convoys, especially around Jerusalem, should be continued, a fullscale assault on the Yishuv was out of the question for the time being, though preparations for such an assault, to be unleashed just before or just after the British pullout, should be taken in hand."

Jewish and Arab peace-making efforts, December 1947 to March 1948

"Side by side with the Haganah’s policy during the war’s first months of trying to restrict the violence, various Jewish bodies – including the Arab Division of the JA-PD, the Histadrut Arab Workers’ Department, Mapam and local Jewish authorities – tried to maintain peace, or at least a cease- fire, in certain areas. In some measure, this was a carry-over from the efforts during the earlier part of the 1940s to achieve Jewish–Arab coexistence (which elicited limited, localised, and only occasionally favourable responses from the Arab side). In greater measure, these efforts were triggered by the outbreak of hostilities in November-December 1947. At the same time, the hostilities also engendered a significant upsurge in peaceful Arab overtures to Jewish neighbours, primarily by communities that felt isolated or under threat in predominantly Jewish areas and were keen on self-preservation."

"Soon after the start of the hostilities, the somewhat dormant Arab Workers’ Department of the Histadrut initiated contacts with Arabs in order to promote peace between neighbouring communities. The fraternity of workers of all nations lay at the core of the trade union federation’s ideology. On 21 January 1948, the Histadrut distributed a poster addressed to ‘all Arab workers’ to live in peace with the Jews and to turn their backs on their leaders, ‘who are leading you to destruction’. 133

In the early months of the war, the desire for calm in certain areas took a number of forms. Several villages concluded formal peace agreements with neighbouring settlements or urban neighbourhoods. The notables of Deir Yassin on 20 January 1948 met with leaders of Jerusalem’s Jewish Giv‘at Shaul neighbourhood and agreed to mutual non-belligerency. Deir Yassin took upon itself to keep out bands of ir- regulars and if, nonetheless, some appeared, to inform Giv‘at Shaul of their presence ‘in daytime by hanging out laundry . . . (two white pieces with a black piece in the middle)’ and ‘at night Deir Yassin’s people will signal three dots with a flashlight . . . and place three . . . [lanterns?]’. Similarly, patrols from Giv‘at Shaul near Deir Yassin were to be armed with a mutually agreed password. Giv‘at Shaul was responsible for the safety of Deir Yassin’s vehicles passing through the neighbourhood. 134 The founder of the Arab Workers’ Department, Aharon Haim Cohen, was instrumental in concluding this agreement as well as similar agreements that month and in February with the villages of al Qastal, Sur Bahir and al Maliha. 135"

"During the war’s first three months, more than two dozen Arab villages and tribes sent out feelers to Jewish officials to conclude local non-belligerency agreements. They were mainly motivated by fear of Jewish attack or reprisal; in some measure, by traditional economic ties they wanted to maintain."

"In the Beit Shean (Beisan) Valley, it was a British official who tried to bring together local Jewish and Arab representatives. The local HIS representative, Yehoshua Sulz, advised the regional bloc committee ‘to grasp the offered hand’, but other Haganah officers, while also interested in ‘preserving the peace’, advised that ‘one must first clarify who it is who is demanding peace... We must demand that they send respected representatives and not children or nonentities. It is important that the Arabs not come from one family or one class alone . . .’ 146"

"Generally, matters were more straightforward: local Arab dignitaries approached and met with local Jewish representatives. On 7 January, for example, the mayor of Lydda, flanked by the mukhtar of Haditha, met in his office with the headman of Ben-Shemen, the neighbouring Jewish agricultural boarding school, an enclave in the Arab-populated area. The HIS-AD transcript of the meeting quotes the mayor as saying: ‘We want peace with you and we have announced it in the town and its environs. But you know that there are people without sense and responsibility who might do silly things off their own bat.’ He asked the Ben-Shemen headman not to post guards on the road but only inside the school compound. The Ben-Shemen headman, for his part, asked that the Lydda authorities allow Jewish automobiles to pass through the town unhindered. Shihadeh Hassuna, the head of Lydda’s militia, then called and the mayor put Ben-Shemen’s headman on the telephone. Hassuna said:

We have spoken to all the mukhtars in the area and have warned them to avoid any harm to Ben-Shemen. You have sat among us now for many years and nothing [bad] has happened between us . . . your convoys will not be touched. The local inhabitants, especially the older ones, want peace, but all sorts of strangers come to town, who act on their own and are difficult to control . . .
[Ben-Shemen] headman: Among us too there are elements who do not obey [orders] and act on their own and I cannot be responsible for them, as you cannot, as you say, be responsible for strangers. 147

(As late as 19 March, Lydda’s leaders were opposing attacks on Ben Shemen convoys. 148 )"

"A similar discussion took place a week later between a local HIS- AD officer (probably David Karon) and the head of the NC in Tal as Safi, a large Arab village southwest of Jerusalem. The Arab notable, Haj Muhammad Khalil al ‘Azi, promised to keep out ‘strangers’ and to keep Arab shepherds away from Jewish fields. Al ‘Azi added, for good measure, that the Husseinis ‘had no future’ and ‘control’ would soon pass to Abdullah, king of Jordan. The local NC had ordered a group of beduins who had settled in Tal a Safi five-six years before to leave lest their grazing lead to clashes with the Jews. 149

A few weeks later, Tal as Safi notables hosted a meeting between representatives of the Haganah and Hassan ‘Abd al ‘Aziz Mahana of Masmiyya al-Kabira, a large and influential village to the west. Mahana, a leading member of the village’s main family, initiated the meeting. He promised that peace would reign in the area so long as the Mahana dominated the village and its environs. He asked that the guards in the Haganah convoys passing through ‘not wave or point their weapons’. Mahana complained about both the Jewish and Arab leaderships who had brought about partition and the disturbances. The Mahanas, he said, had ‘decided to strenuously oppose the Husseinis and build their political future on King Abdullah’. 150"

"During late March, April and May a driving force among villagers seeking a truce or peace with Jewish neighbours was the harvest: the villagers wanted calm in order to bring in their ripening crops. Such, at least, was one explanation proffered by an HIS-AD officer for the newfound willingness of at least some people in the village of Tantura, south of Haifa, to conclude a ceasefire in early May. (Another reason, in Tantura’s case, was the fear generated by the fall of Arab Haifa a fortnight before.): ‘Now is the harvest season and this is a good additional reason for “peace” with the Jews’, he reported. 154 (Interestingly, at this time Jews from Zikhron Ya‘akov ‘on their own volition’ approached Tantura’s Arabs for an agreement on the harvest.155 ) The impending harvest also underlay the talks between the village of Qaqun and Kibbutz Hama‘apil in early April. The Haganah’s Arab affairs advisers in the area added, however, that ‘to assure the existence of the ceasefire . . . Qaqun and Hama‘apil should collect the harvest from their fields simultaneously’. 156"

"In late May, the Haganah reported an argument in the Galilee Panhandle village of Salihiya between youngsters and village elders. The youngsters did not want to assist the invading Syrian Army and thought it best ‘to approach the Jews and hand over their arms and stay’. The elders, however, feared that if an Arab army nonetheless reached their area, they would be deemed traitors, ‘and the village would be destroyed’. 171 "

"The Haganah always had a problem with approaches for a truce or surrender. Often it was the initiative of only one faction or notable in a particular village: was the approach serious and credible? And even if the village mukhtar made the approach, was he fully authorised? Perhaps the move was merely tactical, designed to gain a temporary reprieve to allow the collection of crops or the arrival of a shipment of arms – after which the village would again join the militants? And what was the point in agreeing to a ceasefire with a particular isolated Arab community while in other areas, where Arabs had the upper hand, they rejected any thought of armistice and peace? After all, Haganah policy had to be determined by national, not local, considerations. So, often, such Arab approaches came to nought. By May, facing imminent invasion by the Arab states, the Haganah preferred not to take chances and leave Arab villages, whose sudden professions of acquiescence and loyalty were at best dubious, behind its front lines.

In any event, villagers usually preferred to avoid formal contact or agreements with the Haganah – acts that bespoke treachery in fellow Arabs’ eyes; only a small minority are recorded as having made such approaches. But many more effectively refrained from initiating violence against Jews or refused, when asked, to join in; many actively prevented irregulars from entering or using their villages as bases. Occasionally, Arab villagers appealed to neighbouring villagers not to make trouble. The main consideration among the dozens of non-belligerent villages was to avoid Jewish retaliation against themselves."

"Just before 28 January, ‘Abd al Qadir, at the head of a band of 400 armed men, encamped near Deir Yassin. Apparently they tried to recruit villagers. The village elders ‘were op- posed’, and the band moved off to Beit Jala. 179 Deir Yassin’s mukhtar was summoned by AHC representatives in Jerusalem to be questioned about the village’s relations with the Jews. The mukhtar said that ‘the village and the Jews lived in peace’.180 A fortnight later, on 13 February, an armed band entered Deir Yassin bent on attacking nearby Giv‘at Shaul. ‘The villagers opposed this and the gang’s reaction was to slaughter all the village’s sheep . . .’181 A month later, on 16 March, an AHC delegation composed of two men and (unusually) a woman visited the village and asked that it host a group of Iraqi and Syrian irregulars ‘to guard the site’. The villagers refused and the delegation left empty handed.182 Deir Yassin’s notables registered a similar refusal on 4 April.183"

"The AHC strongly opposed local peace initiatives and agreements. The Mufti may at times have wanted a reduction in the scale of the conflict, but he opposed anything that smacked of peace with, or recognition of, the Yishuv. The AHC stymied a number of local peace efforts. In mid-January, for example, the British Galilee District Commissioner reported that the notables of the town of Beisan and the surrounding Jewish settlements were interested in ‘an informal agreement of mutual restraint’ but the AHC vetoed the idea. 188 By and large, however, as the fighting spread, suspicion and antagonism between neighbouring, and in some cases traditionally friendly, settlements grew and the possibility of concluding local peace agreements or maintaining local cease-fires receded."

"By the end of March, the Husseinis had managed to still the moderate voices in the Arab camp and had gained control over almost all of Arab Palestine. Most of the country was engulfed in warfare. The Haganah, especially on the roads, was sorely pressed and on the defensive. While some local truces remained in force, most Arab villages were now dominated by elements hostile to the Yishuv and many harboured active irregular units. And where the Husseinis were not in control, the locals, fearing the Mufti’s wrath, preferred to have no truck with the Jews. Palmon told a meeting of the executives of the JA-PD that contacts with the Arabs had been almost completely severed and that ‘in general, the Arabs could be defined as united [behind the Husseinis] . . . Today, there is almost no area of the country where we can talk with the Arabs, even on local matters, to pacify and calm things down.’

Both Palmon and Danin thought that, in great measure, the situation was a product of ill-conceived Jewish military actions and over-reactions, and that by and large, the Arab affairs experts on the national level and in each locality had been, or were being, ignored by the military commanders. The situation was such, said Palmon, that in future, the Yishuv might find it difficult ‘to prove that we weren’t the aggressors’ apart from the Jerusalem area, where the violence was clearly a product of Arab initiative. Danin added that ‘as a result of several superfluous [Haganah] operations, which mainly hurt “good” Arabs who were in contact with us . . . the [Arab] mass exodus from all places was continuing. The Arabs have simply lost their faith [in our goodwill?].’

The situation had caused general demoralisation in the Political Department’s Arab Division, whose ambivalent functions included both peace-making contacts and intelligence-gathering. Danin said that if things continued as they were, the Division ‘should be closed down’. Ya‘akov Shimoni, a senior division official, said that the Haganah commanders had concluded that ‘war was war and that there was no possibility of distinguishing between good and bad Arabs’. 190"

The First Stage of the Exodus: December 1947 to March 1948: Haifa

"The UN partition resolution had earmarked Haifa, with some 65,000 Arab and 70,000 Jewish inhabitants and a joint municipality, to be part of the Jewish state. Without doubt, this demoralised the Arab inhabitants. Their exodus began in early December 1947, with the start of hostilities. A British intelligence unit reported that both Jews and Arabs were evacuating the border areas between the two communities and moving to safer neighbourhoods."

"By 10 December HIS-AD was reporting that ‘a panicky evacuation is taking place from the [Arab] border neighbourhoods’.192 Abandoning one’s home, breaking a major psychological barrier, paved the way for eventual abandonment of village or town and, ultimately, of country. Danin and Palmon on 11 December noted the start of the flight from Haifa. Most of the Arab movement out of Haifa was due to the fighting – sniping and bombings – and fears of fighting that marked life in the border neighbourhoods. But a few Christian Arab families who lived inside or on the edges of Jewish neighbour- hoods on Mount Carmel were intimidated into leaving their homes in mid-December by IZL threats and orders. 193 By 23 December, HIS was reporting that ‘the economic condition in Haifa is – bad. Some 15–20 thousand Arabs, especially from the Hauran [Syria] and Egypt and many rich people, have left the city. Many shops and businesses have closed . . . The AHC demanded that the Haifa NC stop the flight . . . The Christians in Haifa live in fear of the Muslims . . .’ 194"

"The 14-member Haifa NC was established on 2–3 December, with Rashid Haj Ibrahim, a Muslim, in the chair. He was to lead the committee until its demise in late April 1948. From a letter he wrote to Husseini in May 1947, Haj Ibrahim emerges as violently anti-Zionist, even anti-Semitic. He wrote: Jews in Europe became symbols of ‘baseness and cheating.’ The ‘Arab world faces destruction [because] . . . the Jews want to take over Egypt, because Moses came from there’, and Lebanon and Syria ‘because they built the Temple with Lebanese cedars, and they want Iraq because our forefather Abraham came from there and they [feel they] have a right to Hijaz because Ishmael came from there and they demand Transjordan, because it was part of Palestine and Solomon’s kingdom.’ He predicted – fairly accurately – that the Jewish state, if it emerged in Palestine, would establish a giant navy and giant air force, and build atomic weapons, with which to overawe the Arab world. 195 But from the start of hostilities in December 1947, Ibrahim was to preach and embody moderation and to relentlessly pursue a ceasefire in Haifa."

"The Lebanese and Syrian consulates in Haifa reportedly issued 8,000 entry visas during December, ‘and many thousand left [the country] without visas and passports’. 196"

"Some of the flight, no doubt, was due to the rapid deterioration in the economic situation. The price of a sack of flour rose during December from P£1.750 to P£6.500, ‘and it is difficult to get it at this price as well. Most shops are closed all day. The vegetable market is closed and [public] transportation has almost completely stopped.’ 197 105 Arabs died and 248 were seriously injured in the violence that month.

From the first, the NC took note of the exodus and acted to stem it. Already on 6 December, Ibrahim forbade the members of the committee to leave town without NC approval198 and on 14 December issued a ‘warning’ against the exodus.199 Five days earlier, the NC decided to appeal to the AHC to instruct Palestinians not to leave without permission of their local NCs.200"

The First Stage of the Exodus: December 1947 to March 1948: Haifa oil refinery massacre

"It was this situation that prompted the NC, represented by the senior magistrate Ahmad Bey Khalil and ‘Omar Taha, to seek and conclude a ceasefire with the Haganah on 28 December 1947. 201 But the ceasefire only held for a few hours. Late on the morning of 30 December, IZL gunmen threw bombs into an Arab crowd milling about the gate of the Haifa Oil Refinery. Six died and some 50 were injured. Immediately, a mob of Arab refinery workers, reinforced by Arabs who had survived the bombing, attacked their Jewish co-workers with sticks, stones and knives. Altogether, 39 Jews were murdered and 11 seriously injured in the hour-long pogrom.202

The Haganah massively retaliated on the night of 31 December 1947 – 1 January 1948, raiding the villages of Balad al Sheikh and Hawassa, in which many of the refinery’s workers lived. The raiding units’ orders were to kill ‘maximum adult males’. 203 The raiders penetrated to the centre of Balad al Sheikh, fired into and blew up houses, and pulled out adult males, and shot them. According to the HGS, ‘the penetrating units . . . were forced to deviate from the line agreed upon and in a few cases hit women and children’ after being fired upon from inside houses. The Haganah suffered two dead and two injured. Haganah reports put Arab casualties variously at ‘about 70 killed’ 204 and 21 killed (‘including two women and five children’) and 41 injured.205 Following the raids, many families fled the two villages to Nablus, Jenin and Acre. 206

The raid was criticised in the Yishuv’s Defence Committee. Riftin argued that many of the refinery workers had not participated in the pogrom; a few actually had protected Jews; but the raids on Balad al Sheikh and Hawassa were conducted indiscriminately ‘and there is no knowing who was hit’. Moreover, the incident had been provoked by the IZL bomb attack. Ben-Gurion responded that ‘discrimination is impossible. We are at war, and in war you cannot make individual differentiation . . .; between . . . villages, yes, but not between individuals.’ 207

Following this cycle of violence, the NC pushed to renew the ceasefire. Most Jewish and Arab employees had stopped going to work in mixed work places, including the municipality...At a meeting with Haganah representatives on 2 January, Arab notables, including Ahmad Bey Khalil, said that they had issued orders to avoid the recurrence of refinery-type incidents. Rashid Haj Ibrahim himself declared that ‘the Arabs were interested in quiet in Haifa . . .’. 208 The NC was interested in ‘a protracted truce’.209 But Arab militants, and Husseini- affiliated politicians, such as Nimr al Khatib and Hassan Shibalak (both members of the Haifa NC), continued to foment violence. 210 Daily, there were ambushes and exchanges of fire. Following a bomb attack on a Jewish bus (which left four wounded), the Haganah blew up two houses and a garage and poured mortar and sniper fire into the Arab neighbourhoods; dozens were killed, including women and children and the militia leader Muhamad Hijawi and the deputy head of the National Bank, Muhamad Kanafani.211 Arab public transport ceased, there was a shortage of goods and the flight from the city continued. 212 Businesses closed down, and shopkeepers began selling their stock to Jews at 25 per cent reductions in order to close up quickly. 213

The British, for whom Haifa was pivotal to their plans for withdrawal from Palestine, stepped up their patrols and things calmed down. But the Jewish retaliatory strikes had severely shaken Arab morale; they sorely felt the Jews’ topographical advantage (the Jews lived up Mount Carmel), and their superiority in organisation, arms and equipment. 214 ‘The Haifa Arab public began to feel the weakness of its position and there were residents who began to emigrate from the city. Of course, this had a dampening effect on those who remained’, recalled Nimr al Khatib. 215"

The First Stage of the Exodus: December 1947 to March 1948: Haifa: Arab disagreements over truce

"On 18 January, Ibrahim returned from a visit to Damascus, where his pro-truce stand had received significant endorsement. As he told the NC that day, Taha al Hashimi, the inspector general of the ALA, had supported his desire ‘to refrain from incidents’, given the local Haganah superiority. Hashimi and the Syrian president and war minister, with whom Ibrahim had met, had all ‘agreed to our course of action . . . Hashimi had stressed that clashes in Haifa were to be completely avoided and [the Arabs were to] act only in a defensive manner.’ But Ibrahim had failed to receive from the Mufti a similar endorsement of a ceasefire and proposed that a delegation travel to Cairo to try to pin Husseini down. 216 The NC meeting had been dominated by talk of Arab suffering and emigration. 217 The committee ‘believed that Haifa needs quiet, or at least not to jump to the head of the [Arab] war [effort]’ On 18 January, Ibrahim returned from a visit to Damascus, where his pro-truce stand had received significant endorsement. As he told the NC that day, Taha al Hashimi, the inspector general of the ALA, had supported his desire ‘to refrain from incidents’, given the local Haganah superiority. Hashimi and the Syrian president and war minister, with whom Ibrahim had met, had all ‘agreed to our course of action . . . Hashimi had stressed that clashes in Haifa were to be completely avoided and [the Arabs were to] act only in a defensive manner.’ But Ibrahim had failed to receive from the Mufti a similar endorsement of a ceasefire and proposed that a delegation travel to Cairo to try to pin Husseini down. 216 The NC meeting had been dominated by talk of Arab suffering and emigration. 217 The committee ‘believed that Haifa needs quiet, or at least not to jump to the head of the [Arab] war [effort]’ and that ‘it is in their interest to maintain peace in Haifa as long as
possible’. 218

Meanwhile, Khalil, flanked by ‘Omar Taha, and Haifa Jewish community representatives Ya‘akov Solomon and Naftali Lifshitz renewed their meetings. Solomon demanded an open, public agreement. Khalil said that the NC had decided to send a delegation, headed by the Greek Catholic Archbishop George Hakim, to talk with the Mufti – and to threaten resignation if the Mufti’s men continued to defy the NC’s writ and launch attacks. 219 Meanwhile, a de facto truce began.

Hakim, accompanied by Sheikh ‘Abdul Rahman Murad, the Haifahead of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Yusuf Sahayun, a Husseini supporter, left for Egypt on 20 January; according to HIS, ‘Rashid [Haj Ibrahim] demanded that the delegation explain to the Mufti that many of the leaders of the city wanted to leave if explicit orders were not received to stop the terror in the city, and if their arguments were not accepted, then the leaders would leave the country and in the end Arab Haifa would empty of its veteran inhabitants.’ 220

Husseini’s reaction to the delegation’s appeal is unclear; probably it was deliberately ambiguous. According to one Haganah informant, the Mufti had said the problem was national, not local, and had ended the meeting by suggesting that the Arab struggle against the Jews and the British ‘could [end by] destroying half the Arabs in Palestine’. The implication was that he opposed a ceasefire and ‘his whole person be- spoke war against the Jews to the bitter end. All his thought is focused on how to exploit the Arab peoples to reach this end . . . There is no talking [reason ? peace ?] to the Mufti.’ 221 His only practical advice to the Haifa delegation had been ‘to remove the women and children from the danger areas in order to reduce the number of casualties’. 222

This advice conformed with the general guideline adopted by the Political Committee of the Arab League, meeting in Sofar, Lebanon, in September 1947, in preparation for the expected outbreak of hostilities in Palestine. The committee, in its unanimously adopted published resolutions, recommended that the Arab states ‘open their gates to the absorption of, and care for, the babies, women and the old from among Palestine’s Arabs – if events occur in Palestine that necessitate it’. 223 The resolution was adopted for two reasons: to try to avoid death and in- jury to Arab non-combatants, and especially to avoid violation of women, a desire deeply rooted in Arab tradition and mores; 224 and to free the adult males from the burden of dependents whose presence in prospective combat zones would hamper them in battle. As it turned out, this guideline, which during the first months of the civil war was endorsed and adopted (though by and large, especially in the towns, not acted upon) by the AHC and various NCs and village leaders, helped fuel the mass exodus from Palestine. As we shall see, in the course of the civil war, and in some areas also during the subsequent conventional war, dozens of villages, at the prodding of the AHC and NCs or off their own bat, evacuated women, children and old folk. The importance of these evacuations, underpinned and legitimised by the endorsement of the Arab states and the Palestinians’ own governing institutions, cannot be exaggerated. By providing a model of behaviour and a pointer to assuring self-preservation, the evacuation of dependents had a crucial demoralising effect on the menfolk who stayed behind to fight or guard villages and towns, and at the same time ate away at their motivation to stay and fight; after all, they were no longer protecting their families.

At the meeting with the delegation, Husseini had apparently handed them a letter instructing the NC ‘to oppose the exodus of families from Haifa, to avoid panic and to issue a call to those who had emigrated to return’ 225 and had agreed to at least a temporary truce because ‘the Arabs were in need of supplies . . . and mainly because the English were still in Haifa and the Arabs don’t want to clash with them’. 226 Most likely, Husseini had conveyed a deliberate ambivalence, saying one thing and then its opposite, or, at least, different things to Hakim and Murad."

The First Stage of the Exodus: December 1947 to March 1948: Haifa: Christians

"Solomon and Lifshitz, who eventually met the notables, were de- briefed by Arazi. He believed that the de facto truce would not hold for long; the Arabs’ morale had risen following the entry into Palestine of ALA units. The NC would maintain non-belligerence only until the Arab militias were stronger or until the British withdrawal, but not thereafter. 228 Besides, the armed groups would continue to act without NC authorisation. Haifa’s Christian notables were disheartened. As a result of the disagreement in the NC about an end to the violence, ‘the rich Christians began to prepare to leave Haifa and the first was the merchant Amin Sahayun who moved his family with all their furniture in two large automobiles [trucks] to Lebanon. During the day many Christians said they will not stay in the town so long as Sheikh Nimr al Khatib’s gangs rule it.’ 229"

"The irregulars remained unruly, initiating attacks on Jewish targets and drawing down Haganah retaliation – which generated further flight. Christian–Muslim tensions increased, with the Christians angered by the radical Muslim NC members like Nimr al Khatib, who called them ‘traitors and pimps of the Jews’. 232 There was at least a grain of truth in the charge. As Yusuf Salim, a Christian notable, put it in early March:

the Jews must think hard before they push the Christian community into the conflict between them and the Muslim world . . . The Jews must discriminate between Muslim and Christian property [and not blow up Christian houses] . . . The Christian community . . . is still not cooperating in [the Muslim] aggression . . . 233

By early March, Haifa Christian morale had plummeted, mainly because of the entry of foreign (Muslim) irregulars into their neighbourhoods and the subsequent Haganah attacks, ‘and every family capable of leaving had left for Lebanon’. 234 Some families began to send away their children. Already in early February, according to HIS, the AHC had ordered the removal of the women and children from Haifa and arrangements were under way for their transfer to Lebanon and Syria.235...Husseini supported the evacuation of the non-combatants – but to sites inside Palestine, not out of the country. Hakim and the Haifa NC ignored his instructions. 243"

The First Stage of the Exodus: December 1947 to March 1948: Haifa: Ben-Gurion opposition to Truce

"The Haganah commanders (and Ben-Gurion) repeatedly brushed them aside, arguing that a truce would not be honoured by the irregulars and would be used by the Arabs to stockpile weaponry. In any case, Haifa was a place in which the Haganah clearly had the upper hand; a local truce could work only to the Arabs’ advantage. Ben-Gurion jotted down in his diary: ‘The Arabs are still leaving Haifa’ – seemingly making a connection between Haganah opposition to a truce and the idea that a truce might halt the exodus. 258"

The First Stage of the Exodus: December 1947 to March 1948: Haifa: Economic conditions

"The second half of March and the first half of April witnessed a further decline in the Arabs’ economic situation. Medicines and doctors were reportedly in short supply. Haifa doctors were demanding ‘at least P£1.5’ per house call. 259 (In general, by early April the flight of doctors was acutely felt throughout the country and the Arab Doctors Association in Jerusalem and the AHC were demanding that doctors who had fled return, threatening those who refused with (unnamed) punishment. 260 ) Bread and flour were scarce. The NC had requisitioned much of the flour allocated by the British authorities and given it to the militiamen. ‘Many merchants had refused to give part of [their] flour and responded that the strangers [i.e., foreign irregulars] should receive their livelihood from the neighbouring countries’, reported the Haganah. Some bakery- owners had fled to Safad and their bakeries had been confiscated by the NC. Nonetheless, militiamen complained that they were ‘hungry’. British troops were selling sugar and wheat from the government warehouses to Arabs. The NC of Jenin had demanded that the government’s food allocations to Haifa’s Arabs – flour, eggs, rice, sugar – be reduced as only ‘8,000 people had remained in Haifa’. Haj Ibrahim had checked and said there were ‘35-40,000’ Arab inhabitants left. Most other goods were said to be available.261 The tobacco manufacturers – Karaman, Dik and Salti – had all removed most of their machinery to Cyprus and Egypt; construction goods merchants refrained from opening shop because ‘there was no one to sell to’. ‘The rich, [including] the big merchants, were busy converting their [Palestine pounds] to gold and dollars and transferring them to the neighbouring countries’, reported the Haganah. 262 Telephones in the Arab sector often failed to work as the Jews had cut the lines. 263"

The First Stage of the Exodus: December 1947 to March 1948: Haifa: Concerns of refugees

The food shortages and the sense of military vulnerability and isolation caused by the Jewish settlements on the city’s access roads certainly contributed to the demoralisation that underlay the exodus of the upper and middle classes; so did the concomitant breakdown of law and order. The irregulars robbed and intimidated the locals, terrorising those they had been sent to protect, in the words of Nimr al Khatib. He blamed equally the irregulars, the British, for doing nothing, and the civilians who had fled, leaving behind houses that invited despoliation. 265 ‘Bands of robbers organised themselves . . . In March . . . waves of robbery and theft became frequent in Arab Haifa . . . From day to day, the feeling grew that Arab Haifa was on the verge of collapse. Anarchy and disorder prevailed in everything.’ The situation was aggravated that month by the wholesale desertion and flight of the city’s Arab constables, who usually took with them their rifles and ammunition.266 Without doubt, the exodus was linked to Haganah reprisals, Arab attacks and fears of subsequent Jewish retaliation, but for the better educated, especially the civil servants and professionals, there were also constant long-term considerations. Ephraim Krischer, a Mapam activist, identified a general fear of future ‘great disorder’ as the main reason for this early stage of the exodus, adding more specifically, that Arab municipal and Man- date employees feared that ‘in the Jewish state they wouldn’t have any chance of advancement in their careers because precedence would be given to Jews’. This feeling was reinforced by the fact that most Arab officials lacked fluent Hebrew.267

Mapam’s Arab Department, probably in part on the basis of Krischer’s report, in March analysed the flight from Haifa. The department noted the Arabs’ ‘fears . . . for their future’, both in the chaotic, transitional pre-State period and under Jewish rule, and pointed out that it was mainly ‘Christians, professionals, officials’ who were leaving. By 1 March, several mainly Christian districts were ‘almost completely’ empty. ‘The flight is less marked in the eastern parts of town, where the poorer classes, who are under the influence of the extremists, are concentrated’, stated the department. According to this analysis, the Christians were mainly worried about the transitional period, between the end of effective Mandate government and the start of effective Jewish government. They felt that they would then be ‘between the hammer and the anvil, the Arab terrorist operations and Jewish reactions’. 268

The First Stage of the Exodus: December 1947 to March 1948: Haifa: Failure of NC to stem exodus

"While the NC was clearly worried by the exodus, its efforts to stem it through most of December 1947 – early April 1948 appear to have been half-hearted and muted. In only one of the 12 communiques issued by the committee over the period did it urge the Arabs to remain. On 12 December the committee warned against ‘Fifth Columnists’ spreading defeatism and influencing people ‘to leave their properties and houses, which have become easy prey to the enemy who has seized and occupied them . . . Stay in your places’, the committee urged. In none of the communiques did the committee explicitly order the inhabitants not to leave. Over January–March 1948, the communiques failed altogether to order or urge the populace to stay at home or in the city. Several, however, urged Arabs to ‘stay at your posts’ – referring, apparently, to militiamen and officials. 269 It is only in the first half of April that we find the NC calling upon some of those who had fled to return. Indeed, on 1 April HIS was able to report that the remaining Arab notables were peeved at the municipal council members who had left ‘and abandoned the Arab interests precisely when the government’s powers were being transferred to the local authorities’. And it was Shabtai Levy, the city’s Jewish mayor, rather than the Arab notables, who issued a public call to Arab councilmen to return. 270"

"The NC’s failure to act strenuously to halt the exodus is easily understood. The committee lacked legal powers to curb emigration. More important, the pre-April 1948 exodus encompassed mostly the middle and upper classes – precisely the social strata from which the committee members were drawn. It was their relatives and friends, first and foremost, who were fleeing. Indeed, most of the NC itself had left. By 28 March, according to the Haganah, 11 of the 15 members had departed; efforts by chairman Ibrahim to lure them back had failed. 274 Indeed, Rashid Haj Ibrahim himself left Palestine in early April, never to return. 275 Those members who had remained behind were hardly in a position to vilify, condemn or punish would-be evacuees, however disruptive the exodus was understood to be to the Arab cause."

The First Stage of the Exodus: December 1947 to March 1948: Jaffa

"But as with Haifa, the exodus from the town was triggered by the start of hostilities, which were initiated by Jaffa’s militiamen, who began sniping into neighbouring Tel Aviv on 30 November 1947. The following day, dozens of Arabs assaulted Jewish houses bordering on the northern Manshiya neighbourhood and an Arab mob in Abu Kabir, a neighbourhood to the west, attacked a Jewish car and murdered its three passengers. Jewish retaliatory strikes followed. The Haganah’s Kiryati Brigade blew up a house in Abu Kabir on 2 December and the IZL torched several buildings four days later, killing at least two persons. 276

Jaffa’s inhabitants feared that worse was to come. The evacuation from Jaffa’s border districts began already at the beginning of December. As with Haifa, the initial flight was from the peripheral neighbourhoods to the city centre. ‘Families, with their belongings, are leaving Manshiya’, reported Palmah scouts on 1 December. 277"

"Jewish behaviour contributed: on 5 December British observers reported an Arab beaten to death ‘by a Jewish crowd’ near the Mughrabi Cinema and Arab-owned shops and houses were set alight in the Carmel Market area 280 and in or near the Hatikva Quarter (all in southern Tel Aviv).281 Uniformed IZL men toured neighbouring Petah Tikva and demanded that Jewish employers ‘throw out their [Arab] workers’.282 The British, too, marginally added to the displacement by warning Arabs living or working in Tel Aviv to leave for Jaffa.283"

"Jews in seam neighbourhoods were also displaced by the hostilities. By mid-January 1948, some 7,000 had been rendered homeless. Efforts by the authorities to persuade them to return home were unavailing. 284 By 9 December, HIS was reporting:

Economic conditions in Jaffa are bad. The price of flour has soared. Arab refugees sleeping in the streets of the city . . . Families of the well-to-do are leaving the cities – for the interior of the country. The rich are emigrating to Syria, Lebanon and even Cyprus. 285"

"By the end of December, HIS reported that some ‘60 per cent’ of Jaffa’s Christians had left. 288...On 23 December, HIS reported that ‘25,000’ had fled Jaffa, 290 but on 1 February the Arab Division felt that the estimate that ‘15–20 thousand had left’ was an exaggeration. 291"

The First Stage of the Exodus: December 1947 to March 1948: Jaffa: Differing Arab leaders

"HIS identified three power centres in Jaffa – Hawari, Heikal, and local Husseini supporters, who were busy organising the violence in each neighbourhood. And armed extortionists had taken to the streets, intimidating people to contribute to ‘the national cause’.294 One Arab informant told HIS that the AHC ‘had not intended the disturbances to reach the level they had reached . . . They made a mistake when they called for a three-day strike without taking account of the character of the Arab public.’ Many were out of work and, hearing about the killings and arson in Jerusalem, ‘an atmosphere was created conducive to such deeds in Jaffa as well’. The Jaffa mob ran amok and Hawari and Heikal were powerless. 295 Hawari, who may have been a HIS agent, and Heikal fell out. Hawari fled the country at the end of December. 296 Moderate and Opposition figures were afraid that the Husseinis would resume anti-Opposition terrorism a la 1937–1939.297

Most local notables, represented by the Jaffa NC, opposed hostilities against Tel Aviv, aware of their militias’ inadequacy and fearful of Jewish retaliation. They were especially concerned about the orange crop in the surrounding groves, much of it destined for export through Jaffa. Initially, they even organised patrols in the peripheral neighbourhoods to prevent clashes. 298 Heikal, a prot ´eg ´e of Musa al ‘Alami, a veteran Palestinian moderate, probably flew to Cairo in early December 1947 to obtain Husseini or Arab League permission to conclude a ceasefire 299 but the activists in the town were busy provoking incidents and undermining the NC.300"

"As in Haifa, by the third week of hostilities notables in southern Jaffa were trying to reach a ceasefire with Bat-Yam. A meeting took place on 16 December. The Arabs asked that the Jews refrain ‘from shutting off their water and blowing up their houses’. The Jews demanded that the Arabs stop sniping at traffic. The Arabs ‘promised to make sure that no one fired’ and that night, ‘for the first time, there was electricity in the Jibalya [neighbourhood]’. 301

However, Husseini apparently opposed any local truce and, though aware that the city stood no chance of holding out in the long run, wanted it to continue to harass Tel Aviv as best it could, but with a minimum investment of external resources. 302 Apart from a lack of flour and oil, 303 Jaffa seems to have suffered no severe food shortages during the first four months of the civil war. 304 One reason was the proximity of its satellite villages (such as Yazur and Kheiriya) and the access between them and the town; another was that the quick depletion of the population left those who remained with a surplus of food coupons and a surfeit of produce."

The First Stage of the Exodus: December 1947 to March 1948: Jaffa: Arab defeatism

"And there was an unwillingness to fight. One reason was the fear among Arab males that there would be no compensation or support for their widows and orphans. 311 People simply preferred to flee.

The refugees have no illusions. They refuse to endanger themselves [by staying in or returning to] Jewish areas. Their flight is spontaneous, not organised . . . [It causes] fright. There is no... use preaching against the exodus. People are fleeing to Nablus, to Nazareth, even to Egypt. 312

Haganah posters, threatening revenge and retribution, further undermined morale. 313 There was a ‘general feeling’ that Husseini ‘wanted to sacrifice Jaffa in order to stir up the Arab world against the Jews and against partition’.314 The efforts of the local NC and militia units to stem the floodtide of refugees – including the imposition of fines and property confiscations – failed. 315"

"A major landmark in the town’s demoralisation was the LHI’s 4 January 1948 demolition of the town hall (saraya), which housed a militia headquarters, with a powerful car bomb, which left dozens of dead 316 Utilities and municipal services broke down. With the flight of middle and upper class families, businesses closed and unemployment became rife. 317 HIS reported:

The town’s main markets, that in the past were crowded, are today desolate, the coffee shops are empty and the cinema houses closed. Road- blocks, with barbed wire, have been set up in the centre of town [and] . . . on its borders. The people in Jaffa live in fear – of the Jews’ bombs and internecine Arab attacks. Many Arabs, who lived on the peripheries . . . have left their places. It is estimated that from Manshiya alone fled three thousand families. Most moved to the old town, to the Nuzha and ‘Ajami [neighbourhoods]. They took over the houses by force and these houses are now crowded as in every room live more than ten people. Many families have left for Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, Cyprus and Egypt.318

Trains to and from Jaffa stopped running. 319 Labourers stopped commuting to Tel Aviv, aggravating the unemployment. The local leaders became despondent. They put no trust in the contingents of foreign volunteers and many ‘loudly proclaimed’ that they wanted King Abdullah to conquer Palestine. At the same time, the Husseinis silenced Opposition figures.320 The Lebanese consulate in Jerusalem reported that Heikal had said:

that the situation in Jaffa has reached its worst [sic]. The Arabs he added were about to raise the white banners of surrender . . . for lack of ammunition and the general feeling [morale?] was completely broken down [sic] after the last big explosion [i.e., the saraya] . . . and if . . . the Jews wanted . . . they could conquer the whole town without great difficulties. The economic situation is so bad that it could not be described . . . 321

An Arab informant told Sasson: ‘There is no work. Whoever could leave, has left, there is fear everywhere, and there is no safety. Robbery and theft are common’, and the NC had lost its authority and was expected to resign. 322"

The First Stage of the Exodus: December 1947 to March 1948: Jaffa: Attempts for truce

"Through January, and perhaps also early February 1948, important Jaffa notables sought a truce. But the Haganah was reluctant. As in Haifa, the Haganah had the upper hand and had no intention of letting Jaffa live in peace so long as the Arabs in other places, principally in Jerusalem, did not allow the Jews to live in peace. Moreover, the Jewish commanders believed, with justification, that concluding a truce with Jaffa’s civilian leaders would not necessarily lead to a cessation of operations by the irregulars. 328

And rifts among the Jaffa Arabs from the beginning subverted all efforts at peacemaking. In February, Ben-Gurion wrote to Shertok that Heikal, through a British intermediary, was trying to secure an agreement with Tel Aviv but that the new irregulars’ commander, ‘Abdul Wahab ‘Ali Shihaini, had blocked him. The mayor had said ‘that without agreement, Jaffa [would] be entirely destroyed’. According to Ben-Gurion, Shihaini had answered: ‘I do not mind [the] destruction [of] Jaffa if we secure [the] destruction [of] Tel Aviv.’ 329

The First Stage of the Exodus: December 1947 to March 1948: Jaffa: Behaviour of irregulars

As in Haifa, the irregulars intimidated the local population, echoing the experience of 1936–1939. ‘Most of the people who stayed with their commander, ‘Adel Nijam ad Din, behaved towards the inhabitants like conquerors. They confiscated their weapons and sold them, imposed fines and stole, and confiscated cars and sold them . . . The inhabitants were more afraid of their defenders-saviours than of the Jews their enemies’, wrote Nimr al Khatib. 330"

The First Stage of the Exodus: December 1947 to March 1948: Jaffa: Partial siege

"Between January and mid-April 1948, Haganah conquest of the town was out of the question; the British, it was understood, would prevent it. The Haganah restricted itself to a partial siege, limited reprisals and occasional harassment. It refrained from massive retaliation – save for the night of 12–13 February, when its units struck simultaneously at Abu Kabir, Jibalya and Tel a Rish, and the outlying village of Yazur...

These attacks, the general exodus and the withdrawal of the Iraqi and Syrian contingents prompted Heikal to make one last effort to save his city: he travelled to Amman to persuade King Abdullah to move Arab Legion units into Jaffa on 15 May or earlier. 342 By mid-April, HIS estimated that a full 50 per cent of the townspeople had fled. 343 The increasing efforts of the NC to stem the flow – including increased taxation against the evacuees (a tax on furniture, of P£12, was now added to the tax or ransom paid for each departee) – proved of no avail. Most of the important families had left – the Abu Khidras for Gaza, the Nabulsis and Dajanis for Egypt, the ‘Abd al Wahims for Beirut, the Baidases for Nablus. Without doubt, the flight of the middle and upper classes served to further demoralise the remaining masses. There was large-scale unemployment and those still in the city engaged in theft and looting to maintain their families. Food, while available, had soared in price; a sack of flour cost P£14 (a month before it had cost P£7). Relations between the various remaining leaders and between the various militia groups were bad.344"

The First Stage of the Exodus: December 1947 to March 1948: Jerusalem

"The Jewish population felt vulnerable and somewhat abandoned. Immediately following the passage of the resolution, the Jewish neighbourhoods, mostly in the western part of town, came under sniper fire from Arab quarters and, during the following months, the community was gradually strangulated by the blockade of the main road to Tel Aviv. By the end of March, despite the convoy system and occasional British military assistance, the city’s Jewish districts were under almost complete siege. However, the Haganah and the smaller IZL and LHI units in the town were relatively well-armed and organised, and in the fighting which erupted, the Arab neighbourhoods along the ‘seam’ between the two communities and the semi-isolated Arab quarters in mostly Jewish western Jerusalem, repeatedly hit by raids and mortar fire, were the ones that collapsed and emptied of their inhabitants. (But Jewish ‘seam’ neighbourhoods also were partially evacuated: in early January 1948, for example, some 75 per cent of the residents of north Talpiyot and Mekor Hayim had evacuated and one-third of the residents of Arnona and central Talpiyot. 345 )

Six weeks into the hostilities, on 10 January, Haganah intelligence tapped a revealing telephone conversation, between Dr Husayn Khalidi, the AHC and NC member, and an Arab merchant identified as ‘Abu Zaki’: ‘Everyone is leaving me. Six [AHC members] are in Cairo, 2 are in Damascus – I won’t be able to hold on much longer . . . Jerusalem is lost. No one is left in Qatamon, Sheikh Jarrah has emptied, people are even leaving the Old City. Everyone who has a cheque or a little money – is off to Egypt, off to Lebanon, off to Damascus’, said Khalidi. 346 Khalidi’s exaggerations regarding the extent of the flight were themselves symptomatic of the panic that had taken hold. Three days earlier, Haganah intelligence had reported that Arabs who turned to the authorities for arms were being turned away; there simply were none to hand out. In the Old City, the core of Arab Jerusalem, there were ‘depression, despair and anarchy’, and most of the population was unemployed. ‘Some say that it were better to turn to [King] Abdullah or even that the British stay in the country.’347"

"But the massive unemployment caused a rash of thefts and robberies as the poor couldn’t buy the produce in stock. 354 The government initially provided flour rations to each NC for distribution; but Arabs had robbed shipments of flour from government trains, so the high commissioner stopped the supply. 355 Apparently, there was also politically motivated discrimination in the distribution of the flour ration and some bakers were filling the bread with ‘other, strange and bad, elements’. 356 The Arab inspector responsible for the flour distribution to retailers, Martin Hadad, apparently stole large quantities and went into business for himself – selling ‘at inflated prices’, some apparently to Jews.357"

"The NC had organised a fund-raising campaign to cover war costs, including guard duty in each neighbourhood. Christian Arabs often felt they were being over-taxed or subject to extortion. But some Arabs simply paid P£2-3 per month to be exempted from guard duty (harking back to corrupt practices under the Ottomans). 358 There were also gangsters among the guard contingents who exploited their position to rob and steal. HIS reported that occasionally they would start shooting to precipitate panic and flight; then they would plunder the houses just abandoned.359 Irregulars also intercepted and robbed food shipments – as happened to one car-load of eggs and chickens bound for Jerusalem in early February. 360"

"The exodus of the Arabs from western Jerusalem can be said to have begun on 30 November, with the evacuation, in trucks, of three or four families from the mixed neighbourhood of Romema, which dominated the western entrance to the city and the beginning of the Jerusalem–Tel Aviv road. According to HIS-AD, the departees explained their evacuation as ‘preparatory to [military] operations on the part of the Arabs’. 366 The same day, a group of Arabs apparently ‘advised’ Jewish residents to leave the area’. 367 A week before, the Arab inhabitants of a house in Ethiopia Street in downtown (west) Jerusalem had ‘received instructions’ – apparently from Arab authorities – to evacuate and move to an Arab area; hostilities were imminent. 368"

The First Stage of the Exodus: December 1947 to March 1948: Jerusalem: Beginning of hostilities

"Hostilities began on 1 December, with Arab gunmen and stone throwers attacking Jewish buses at the Jaffa Gate and Mahane Yehuda and with a mob attack, on 2 December, against the downtown New Commercial Centre, where dozens of shops and workshops were torched and looted, and 24 Jews were injured. British troops and police failed to intervene against the rioters but arrested 16 Haganah men who had. 369 That night, IZL men reportedly looted Arab shops in west Jerusalem370 and a Jewish mob set fire to the Rex Cinema and adjoining Arab houses.371"

"On 4 December, some Arab families evacuated Lifta and several Jewish families evacuated the mixed, prosperous district of Talbiye, in the centre of west Jerusalem. 374 Lifta was apparently told by Arab authorities to evacuate its women and children and to prepare to house a militia company. A gang of some 20 oriental Jewish youths and a Jewish mob, consisting, according to Haganah observers, of ‘some 200 persons, children and adults from oriental communities’, rampaged in downtown west Jerusalem, torching Arab shops. 375 British police and Haganah men apparently tried to stop them. More Arab families were seen evacuating Romema.376 In Jerusalem’s Old City, some 1,500 of the Jewish Quarter’s 3,500 Jewish inhabitants (almost all ultra-orthodox) fled in organised fashion to west Jerusalem while Arab families living in and around the quarter moved to Arab areas, many of their homes (and some Armenians’ homes) being quickly garrisoned by Arab militiamen.377 By the second week of December, firefights between the seam neighbourhoods and inside the Old City were a daily occurrence; Arab irregulars began ambushing traffic along the Tel Aviv–Jerusalem road; and IZL operatives began to throw bombs at Arab crowds inside the city.378 Arab families were reported evacuating the Qatamon and Mekor Hayim neighbourhoods. The Mekor Hayim evacuees told Jewish interlocutors that they had been ‘ordered’ to do so, presumably by Arab authorities. 379 Jewish families in the southern Jerusalem neighbourhood of Talpiyot were ‘advised’ by Arab neighbours to evacuate their homes; they refused.380"

The First Stage of the Exodus: December 1947 to March 1948: Jerusalem: Romema

"The cycle of violence that precipitated Romema’s evacuation began with attacks on Jewish traffic leaving Jerusalem and the Haganah killing on 24 December of Atiya ‘Adel, the owner, from Qaluniya village, of the petrol station at Romema who, using a motorcycle, doubled as a scout and informant for the Arab irregulars about Jewish convoys. 392 The following day, villagers avenged the attack by throwing a grenade at a Jewish bus. From then on, there were daily exchanges of fire in and around Romema (and Lifta) and the Haganah, IZL and LHI repeatedly raided the two sites. Romema was struck by two Haganah raids on the night of 26 December393 and by the IZL (which destroyed a petrol station and coffee shop, killing at least five Arabs) on 27 December. 394 Some inhabitants apparently evacuated under British protection and in orderly fashion.395 By the beginning of January, HIS reports spoke of Romema as empty396 though some militiamen had apparently stayed and inhabitants kept returning, at least for brief visits, to inspect their property. 397 Threatening letters and telephone calls by the Haganah and LHI also, apparently, contributed to the neighbourhood’s depopulation. 398"

The First Stage of the Exodus: December 1947 to March 1948: Jerusalem: Talbiye

"Talbiye, southeast of Rehavia, contained a mixture of prosperous Jewish and (mainly Christian) Arab families who had lived in relative harmony before 1948. The hostilities gradually undermined the coexistence, though for a time both groups tried to preserve it in face of the tide of belligerence washing over the city. At the start of January, a meeting of the neighbourhood’s Arabs decided to boycott Arab peddlers, saying that ‘they introduced conflict into the neighbourhood. They decided to call on the Jews to join them in this’. 407 They also proposed setting up a joint Arab-Jewish-British police station in situ. 408 But the Arabs came under growing pressure from Arabs outside, who ‘informed [them] that they would take revenge against them if they kept up the good relations with the Haganah and [continued] giving [the Haganah] men tea’. When the Talbiye Arab housewives went shopping in the neighbouring German Colony area, irregulars from Hebron threatened them ‘that the time would come when they would arrange [through provocations] that the Jews kill them . . . Many Christians want to leave their homes and the city but have been warned that if they do this, [other Arabs] will destroy their houses and steal all their possessions.’ And Jews, too, occasionally intimidated the inhabitants, according to one HIS-AD report. Some families living in Karm al Ruhban, an area adjoining Talbiye to the west, were ‘told’ by Jews in early February to leave their homes. Specifically, a group of 10–13 Jews entered the home of George Mashbak, searched it and ‘behaved rudely. Similarly, the Wahaba family received a warning to leave immediately.’ 409 By 20 January, Zablodovsky was able to report that ‘Talbiyeh is . . . increasingly becoming Jewish, though a few Arabs remain’.410

The Arab attack on 10 February on Yemin Moshe, a Jewish neighbourhood just east of Talbiye, proved decisive...Either during the battle or immediately in its wake, Arab families were seen evacuating Talbiye with their belongings. 412 On 11 February, a Haganah car mounting a loudspeaker ‘drove around Talbiye and warned the Arabs of Haganah retaliation. The Arabs began to flee.’ The Arab national institutions opposed the flight and, using threats and persuasion, ‘demanded that the inhabitants stay put and summoned the [British] Army. When the police arrived . . . they arrested the car’s passengers.’ The Arab authorities apparently feared that once established in Talbiye, the Haganah would push southwards, taking additional Arab, or partly Arab, neighbourhoods, such as the German Colony and Bak‘a. 413 Some Talbiye Jews told their neighbours ‘that they had nothing to fear’ – but ‘60–70 [Arab] families left’, only three remaining. The Arab authorities were highly critical, saying that the evacuation had been ‘shameful and hurried’. Moreover, there was talk of taking revenge ‘against the rich Arabs “who had cooperated with the Jews in Talbiye”. All efforts to persuade the inhabitants to stay had failed and the feeling of shame is great.’414 The AHC decided – and apparently publicised – that every Talbiye house abandoned by its owners would pass under its control and would be garrisoned by irregulars. 415 But additional families left during the following days 416 and while a number of families were reported to have returned (perhaps only temporarily to guard or pack and collect belongings),417 in effect the neighbourhood had been evacuated. A few Arab males remained, ‘sitting on their packed belongings and ready to leave at a moment’s notice’. The Arab city OC had forbidden them to leave. The remaining Arabs sought to persuade the Haganah to agree to deem Talbiye a neutral, non-combat zone. 418 The Haganah apparently declined and they eventually departed."

The First Stage of the Exodus: December 1947 to March 1948: Jerusalem: Defeatism

"Already by mid-January, ‘a spirit of depression and panic’ had gripped the Arab districts of Jerusalem, reported the Haganah; the mere rumour of a Jewish bomb led to panic flight from whole neighbourhoods. Even the non-prosperous were beginning to flee and the AHC was imposing heavy fines on the relatives of those leaving the country. Many Christians were saying out loud that ‘Jewish rule was better than the rule of the [Husseini] extortionists’.419"

The First Stage of the Exodus: December 1947 to March 1948: Jerusalem: Qatamon

"Qatamon, another prosperous, almost completely Arab neighbourhood, was largely abandoned during the first four months of the civil war. The neighbourhood’s handful of Jewish inhabitants left during the war’s first weeks, either out of fear or under Arab intimidation. 433 The Haganah reported Muslim Arabs leaving Qatamon already on 10 December 434 and ‘Lower Qatamon’ empty – with the British assisting the evacuation – by the beginning of January. 435 But the main precipitant to flight during the first months was, without doubt, the Haganah raid on the night of 5–6 January, in which the Semiramis Hotel was blown up. The Haganah believed that several irregulars’ commanders lived there and, possibly mistakenly, that the hotel served as the neighbourhood militia HQ. 436 Some two dozen Arabs – who may have included several Iraqi irregulars 437 – died in the explosion (as did the Spanish vice-consul, Manuel Allende Salazar). The Mandate Government denied that the hotel had served as an Arab militia HQ and condemned the attack as ‘dastardly and wholesale murder’.438 Cunningham called in Ben-Gurion for a dressing down; he called it ‘an offence to civilisation’ and the Haganah perpetrators, ‘murderers’. Ben-Gurion, ‘clearly upset’, said that the operation ‘had been carried out without central direction’. 439 The JA officially expressed ‘regret at the loss of innocent lives’ but criticised the government’s public announcement, saying that it had failed to condemn similar Arab outrages.440 Ben-Gurion informed Cunningham that the Haganah officer responsible – deputy Jerusalem OC Mishael Shechter (Shaham) – had been removed from command. 441

The operation had a shattering effect on Qatamon’s morale. It ‘deepened the sense of insecurity . . . Many who previously spoke of the Palestine question and of defending the country to their last drop of blood pass in the street with bent heads and are ashamed to look their friends in the face.’ 442 Immediately after the explosion, HIS reported that

many families are leaving [Qatamon], some for Egypt, some for Lebanon . . . Many decided that . . . the Husseinis had pulled them into a maelstrom . . . The economic situation is very bad. There are no eggs, no bread, etc. The explosion of the houses in the area had instilled fear in all the people of Qatamon. They argue that the Jews are well-organised economically and the Arabs cannot withstand such organisation. 443

Most of those fleeing were women, children and the old. 444 The Arab authorities tried to stem the flight445 and many of the young men who had fled to the Old City returned to Qatamon. 446 Some veteran inhabitants held on: ‘Whenever we saw people moving away, we tried to encourage them to stay’, recalled Hala Sakakini. ‘We would tell them: “You ought to be ashamed to leave. This is just what the Jews want you to do; you leave and they occupy your houses and then one day you will find that Qatamon has become another Jewish quarter!” ’ 447 But gradually, most of the neighbourhood emptied, families moving to the Old City or out of town altogether; a few moved to the southern end of Qatamon, around the Iraqi consulate, which was defended by an Arab Legion contingent. 448 LHI and Haganah raiders blew up additional Qatamon houses on the nights of 9 and 13 March. 449 By the end of March, only a handful of families remained, guarded by irregulars based in the San Simon Monastery, near the Iraqi consulate.450"

The First Stage of the Exodus: December 1947 to March 1948: Jerusalem: Conclusion

"The major precipitant of the flight of the bulk of the Arab inhabitants in western and southern Jerusalem were Jewish military attacks and fears of attack. A secondary factor, without doubt, were Christian–Muslim and (in part overlapping) Opposition–Husseini, tensions, with Christian and Opposition families – the majority in these neighbourhoods – assailed by Muslim militia suspicions, intimidation and extortion. The spectre of 1936–1939, in which Husseini gunmen had terrorised Opposition and Christian families, was prominently in their minds. 454 There was also a more general fear of the future."

The beginning of the Exodus of the Arab rural population: December 1947 to March 1948: The Coastal Plain

"The first village to be fully evacuated in the Tel Aviv area was Summeil, just north of the city, on 25 December. The villagers moved to nearby Jammasin, probably causing demoralisation among their hosts. 466 Some villagers had evacuated Jammasin already on 1 December. 467 Arab authorities ordered traditionally friendly Jammasin to stop trading with the Jews; 468 no doubt the inhabitants felt trapped between a rock and a hard place. The village appears to have tried to keep out irregulars but within weeks ‘small armed gangs’ of outsiders were spotted in its alleyways by Haganah scouts, and on 2 January they began sniping at passing Jewish buses. The Haganah sent in a patrol. It en- countered an Arab who asked whether it was dangerous to stay. The Jews responded ‘that there was nothing to fear’. The Arab said that all the women, children and farm animals had been evacuated to ‘Arab Abu Kishk, a large village to the north, and only troublemakers and militia- men had remained.469 That day or the next, the remaining inhabitants began ‘to leave in panic’. 470 The village mukhtar, along with the mukhtar of nearby Summeil, were reportedly in detention in Jaffa for trafficking with the Jews.471 The remaining inhabitants left in March-April, moving to Kafr Qasim and Jaljulya. 472"

The beginning of the Exodus of the Arab rural population: December 1947 to March 1948: Sheikh Muwannis

"As we have seen, in the area immediately to the north, the large village of al Sheikh Muwannis, just north of the Yarkon River, and the large tribe of ‘Arab Abu Kishk, living between the Yarkon and Herzliya-Ra‘anana, had accepted Haganah protection during the first weeks of the war, and agreed to live in peace and keep out irregulars. The two communities – the Abu Kishk had migrated to Palestine from Egypt in the mid-19th century and by 1948 were largely fellahin, living in houses or huts, though many still lived in tents – had traditionally enjoyed friendly relations with their neighbours. (But relations had not always been easy. In 1946 three men from Sheikh Muwannis had raped a Jewish girl. Parallel to Mandate court proceedings, the Haganah had shot and wounded one of the attackers and then kidnapped and castrated one of the others (and then deposited him in a hospital 473 ).) The start of hostilities in
the area gradually undermined these relations. Inhabitants were seen leaving Sheikh Muwannis, which dominated Tel Aviv’s airfield, Sdeh Dov, and the main Tel Aviv-Haifa coast road, already on 1 December 1947 474 but, by and large, the villagers stayed put, trusting in their agreement with the Haganah. The villagers rejected a request from Jaffa’s AHC leader Rafiq Tamimi that they set up their own NC. 475 During January- February, shots were occasionally (and inconsequentially) fired from Sheikh Muwannis or its environs in the direction of Jewish houses. The villagers quickly proffered this or that explanation, and the Haganah kept its peace. Nonetheless, they agreed to move some inhabitants who were living, probably temporarily, in a plot of land just south of the Yarkon River. The Haganah allowed the villagers to fish in the river (which was adjacent to Tel Aviv).476 Abu Kishk refused to allow entry to ALA irregulars, telling their emissary that ‘the Arabs of the area will cooperate with the Jews against any outside force that tries to enter’. 477 The ALA area commanders in Qalqilya, Madlul Bek and Sa‘id Bek, apparently knew of, and accepted, Abu Kishk’s relations with the Jews (‘given [Abu Kishk’s] special position’) and were themselves unenthusiastic about initiating hostilities. They had promised to inform Abu Kishk before any large scale ALA attack.478 One notable, Tawfiq Abu Kishk, was instru- mental in brokering a ceasefire between the settlement of Magdiel and the Arab village of Biyar Adas. 479 By mid-March, fearful that ALA units would enter the area, the Alexandroni Brigade imposed a ‘quarantine’ around Sheikh Muwannis, Abu Kishk and two smaller, satellite villages, Jalil al Shamaliya and Jalil al Qibliya 480 and Alexandroni even considered purchasing several houses in Sheikh Muwannis to house a small garrison.481 It is possible that several houses on the edge of the village were actually occupied by Alexandroni. 482

But Alexandroni’s cordon sanitaire may have had an additional purpose: to protect Sheikh Muwannis from IZL and LHI depredations 483 – for on 12 March LHI gunmen kidnapped five village notables. The inhabitants, according to HIS-AD, thus ‘learned that it was not sufficient to reach an agreement with the Haganah and that there were “other Jews” [i.e., dissidents] of whom one had to beware and perhaps of whom to beware of more than of the Haganah, which had no control over them’. 484 Sheikh Muwannis was gripped by fear. On 22 March the refugees from Summeil and Jammasin were seen evacuating Sheikh Muwannis485 and the Haganah’s Arab affairs experts reported that the villagers themselves ‘wanted to leave but stayed in place because of pressure by Jaffa’s NC’. Sheikh Muwannis was said to be ‘waiting for orders’ from the NC. 486 Haganah policy, as enunciated by Galili, remained unchanged – to leave in place and protect the Arab communities ‘in the enclaves’, inside Jewish-dominated territory. 487 And the kidnapped notables appear to have been released already on 23 March into Haganah hands and returned to Sheikh Muwannis.488 But the confidence of the inhabitants of the swathe of villages north of the Yarkon had been mortally undermined. During the following days, the inhabitants of Sheikh Muwannis and Abu Kishk began to evacuate and move to Qalqilya and Tulkarm489 after giving ‘power of attorney’ to Yosef Sutitzky of Petah Tikva to negotiate Haganah protection for their abandoned properties.490 Tawfiq Abu Kishk and his men held a large, parting 'banquet’ with their Jewish friends on 28 March; ‘the sheikh took his leave from the place and the [Jewish] people with moving words’. 491 For their part, the Yishuv’s leaders almost immediately set about allocating Sheikh Muwannis’s lands for Jewish use.492

A few days later, the Abu Kishk leaders explained their evacuation as stemming from ‘(a) the [Haganah] roadblocks . . . , (b) the [Haganah] limitations on movement by foot, (c) the theft [by Jews?] of vehicles, and (d) the last kidnapping of Sheikh Muwannis men by the LHI’. 493"

The beginning of the Exodus of the Arab rural population: December 1947 to March 1948: Qisarya

"As we have seen, Haganah policy until the end of March was non-expulsive. But there were one or two local, unauthorised initiatives. In early January, in the Hadera-Hefer Valley area, certain Jews apparently issued a ‘severe warning’ to their Arab neighbours ‘to leave their present.

And there was one authorised expulsion. The inhabitants of Qisarya, south of Haifa, lived and cultivated Jewish (PICA) and Greek Orthodox church lands. One leading family evacuated the village on 10 January. 519 Most of the population left – apparently for neighbouring Tantura – immediately after the 31 January LHI ambush of a bus that had just pulled out of Qisarya in which two Arabs died and eight were injured (one of the dead and several injured were from the village). 520 The Haganah decided to occupy the site because the land was PICA-owned. 521 But after moving in, the Haganah feared that the British might eject them. The commanders asked headquarters for permission to level the village. 522 Yitzhak Rabin, the Palmah’s head of operations, opposed the destruction – but he was overruled. On 19–20 February, the Palmah’s Fourth Battalion demolished the houses. The 20-odd inhabitants who were found at the site were moved to safety and some of the troops looted the abandoned homes. 523 A month later, the Arabs were still complaining to local Jewish mukhtars that their stolen money and valuables had not been returned.524 The Qisarya Arabs, according to Aharon Cohen, had ‘done all in their power to keep the peace . . . The villagers had supplied agricultural produce to Jewish Haifa and Hadera . . . The attack was perceived in Qisarya – and not only there – as an attempt by the Jews to force them (the Arabs) living in the Jewish area, to leave . . .’ 525

But some evacuations were precipitated by Arab orders or advice. In late December 1947, the Arab guards in Jewish groves around Hadera were ordered by the regional NCs, reportedly fearing for their safety, to move out along with their families, and some reportedly left. 526 Jaramla was partially evacuated in early February ‘on the order of the [Arab] gangs’ and finally abandoned, out of ‘fear’, on 1 April. 527 The inhabitants of Bureika, southeast of Zikhron Ya‘akov, were apparently ordered at the beginning of March by the AHC to evacuate so that the village might serve as a base for attack by irregulars on the Haifa-Tel Aviv road. 528 But most or all of the villagers appear to have stayed put."

Flight from other Rural communities: December 1947 to March 1948

"‘There is a tendency among our neighbours . . . to leave their villages’, Yosef Weitz wrote on 31 March 1948 to JNF chairman Avraham Granovsky (Granott). Weitz was writing after a visit to the North. He cited the departure of the inhabitants of (traditionally friendly 529 ) Qumya in the Jezreel Valley.530...

The Arab ‘tendency’ to depart was promoted by Weitz himself. Soon after the start of hostilities, he realised that the circumstances were ripe for the ‘Judaisation’ of tracts of land bought and owned by Jewish institutions (JNF, PICA) on which Arab tenant farmer communities continued to squat. Under the British, the Yishuv had generally been unable to remove these inhabitants, despite offering generous compensatory payments. Indeed, on occasion, Arab tenant farmers accepted compensation and then continued to squat. The conditions of war, anarchy and gradual British withdrawal in early 1948, Weitz understood, at last enabled the Yishuv to take possession. Often there was pressure by Jewish neighbours to remove the tenant farmers so that they could take hold of the land. Weitz related that at the end of March, settlers from Nahalal, the Beit Shean (Beisan) Valley and Kfar Yehezkeel had come to him to discuss ‘the problem of our lands . . . and their liberation from the hands of tenant farmers. We agreed on certain lines of action . . .’. 532

However, Weitz was not merely the voice of the Jewish settlements; he was an executive, an initiator of thinking and policy. His views on how to solve the tenant problem began to crystallise in early January. After meeting with JNF officials in the North, Weitz jotted in his diary:

Is not now the time to be rid of them [he was referring specifically to tenant farmers in Yoqne‘am and Daliyat ar Ruha]? Why continue to keep in our midst these thorns at a time when they pose a danger to us? Our people are considering [solutions]. 533"

"In March, Weitz, on his own initiative, began to implement his solution. First he tried, and failed, to obtain an HGS decision in principle to evict the tenants. Then, using his personal contacts in the settlements and local Haganah units, and HIS officers, he organised several evictions. At Yoqne‘am, southeast of Haifa, he persuaded HIS officer Yehuda Burstein to ‘advise’ the local tenant farmers and those in neighbouring Qira wa Qamun to leave, which they did. Weitz and his JNF colleagues in the North then decided to raze the tenants’ houses, to destroy their crops and to pay the evictees compensation. 535 At the same time, he organised with the settlers of Kibbutz Kfar Masaryk the eviction of the squatting Ghawarina beduin in Haifa Bay, and the eviction of small tenant communities at Daliyat ar Ruha and Buteimat, southeast of Haifa. 536

Towards the end of March, Weitz began pressing the military-political leadership – Galili, Ben-Gurion and Shkolnik – for a national-level decision to expel the Arabs from the partition plan Jewish state area, but his continuous representations and lobbying met with resistance or deflection: The leaders either rejected, or were unwilling to commit themselves to, a general policy of expulsion. 537 Weitz was left privately to promote local evictions. On 26 March, for example, at a meeting with JNF officials, he called for the expulsion of the inhabitants of Qumiya and neighbouring Tira, arguing that they were ‘not taking upon themselves the responsibility of preventing the infiltration of irregulars . . . They must be forced to leave their villages until peace comes.’ 538"

The Arab authorities' responses to the Exodus: December 1947 to March 1948

"The Arab reactions to the first months of the exodus were confused and uncoordinated – mirroring the confusion and lack of cooperation between the Arab states, between the states, the AHC, the NCs and the municipalities, between the various civilian authorities and the different armed bands, and between the various local militias and bands of irregulars.

The exodus at first appeared merely to reproduce what had happened in 1936–1939, when 25-40,000 Palestinians had temporarily fled the country. 549 As then, the evacuees who reached the Arab states during the first months of the war were mainly middle and upper class families, whose arrival was barely felt and was certainly not burdensome to the host countries. The rural evacuees from the Coastal Plain and the north mainly headed, at least initially, for Arab centres of population and villages to the east, inside Palestine (Nazareth and ‘the Triangle’). Most of the evacuees probably regarded their dislocation as temporary.

Hence, until the end of March, the exodus had only a slight impact In the Arab states and troubled their leaders little, if at all. The states did nothing to precipitate flight from Palestine, but, feeling obliged to accept fellow Arab refugees from a holy war with the Jews, they also did nothing, initially, to bar entry to the refugees. Indeed, before the war, in September 1947, the Arab League Political Committee, meeting in Sofar, Lebanon, had resolved that ‘the Arab states open their doors to absorb babies, women and old people from among Palestine’s Arabs and to care for them – if events in Palestine necessitate this’. 550 Some Arab leaders may have begun to display a glimmer of concern.551 But Arab League decisions were binding and so it was only natural that during the war’s initial months, the Arab states would by and large refrain from barring refugees from their territory, even though the AHC generally opposed the exodus and argued against giving refugees entry visas. 552

On 8 January, the AHC issued a proclamation denying allegations that it had ordered the evacuation of civilians from certain areas, claiming that it had endorsed only the evacuation of children and the old from villages on the firing line. Women, the proclamation stated, should stay put and help their fighting menfolk. 553

The problem was that not only dependants but army-age males were also leaving. But their numbers initially were too small to cause major concern, and it was only in the second half of March 1948 that the Arab governments began to address the problem. Around 22 March, the Arab governments apparently agreed among themselves that their consulates in Palestine would issue entry visas only to old people, women, children and the sick. Lebanon ordered that its borders be closed to Palestinians other than women and children. 554 In Haifa, it was reported on 23 March, the local Lebanese and Syrian consulates refused to give visas to ‘the many’ Haifa inhabitants who applied that day.555

But as seen from Palestine, the problem was far from marginal. Already in December 1947 we find the AHC and various NCs struggling against the exodus. There was especial concern about the flight of army-aged males. On 24 December an informant told the HIS that there was ‘a secret directive [presumably from the AHC] . . . forbidding all Arab males capable of participating in the battle to leave the country. A trip abroad will require the personal permission of the Mufti.’ 556 Rich families, mostly Christian, but also Arabs of ‘lower classes’, according to HIS, were also leaving. The AHC was ‘doing its best to prevent trips abroad’ and was forcing family members of those who had left for Syria or Egypt to pay ‘very high taxes’.557 In late January, British military intelligence noted that the AHC was worried by the phenomenon. Those who had left, the British reported, had been ordered by the Mufti to return home ‘and, if they refuse, their homes will be occupied by other [foreign] Arabs sent to reinforce [defenses] . . .’. 558 The Haganah made propaganda capital in its Arabic broadcasts out of the flight of the wealthy – and the AHC ‘Public Instruction Department’, headed by Abdullah Rimawi, issued a disclaimer, saying that the ‘Arabs emigrating abroad were not fleeing but merely joining the fighters’ camp [i.e., being trained before returning to fight] or travelling on national business’. 559 (The AHC apparently was not worried about movement from one part of Palestine to another, only by departures from the country.560)"

The Arab authorities' responses to the Exodus: December 1947 to March 1948: NC's prevent flight

"In each town, the NCs oversaw daily life, and in each neighbourhood its representatives or local militia groups put the guidelines into effect. By and large, the NCs, sometimes at AHC urging, sometimes independently, tried to combat the exodus, occasionally punishing departees by burning abandoned belongings or confiscating homes. 562 In Jerusalem’s Musrara neighbourhood, for example, the local militiamen in early January 1948 forbade the inhabitants from evacuating and told them to ‘guard their houses like the Jews [guard theirs]’.563 A few days later, after the demolition of the Semiramis Hotel, an order went out to ‘the youth of Qatamon to return to their places’. But few returned and the commander of the local militia threatened to resort to ‘drastic means’. He further threatened with fines and corporal punishment parents who prevented their children from returning.564 By late March, a fair number had been dragooned into returning565 and no one was being issued a permit to leave. One person was allowed to take his family to Lebanon but was forced to pay P£1,000 to the NC and had to promise that he himself would return.566 In Jerusalem’s Talbiyeh neighbourhood, ‘the Arab institutions tried every means of persuasion and threat to have the inhabitants stay but with no success’. 567 Indeed, the AHC decided that any house abandoned would ‘pass into its control’ 568 but the inhabitants ‘were continuing to evacuate . . .’.569

In Haifa, the NC already on 14 December 1947 decided to ‘issue . . . a warning concerning movement out of the city’. 570 In January, the preacher Sheikh Yunis al Khatib ‘attacked the rich who had fled the city out of fear that money would be demanded of them to finance those harmed [in the fighting]. He declared that according to Islamic law the property of anyone fleeing a jihad should be expropriated.’ 571 In Jaffa, too, the NC imposed fines on would-be leavers, and threatened to confiscate the property of departees.572"

The Arab authorities' responses to the Exodus: December 1947 to March 1948: Inconsistency and failure of Arab policy

"But just as often, NCs or ALA commanders ordered villagers to evacuate villages for this or that reason. Usually, as in the case of the ALA and Sabbarin in early March, 576 and Jerusalem and Beit Safafa at about the same time,577 the militiamen wanted the villagers to evacuate so that their houses would be available to irregulars for bivouac or as positions. At other times, the evacuation was prompted by an unwillingness to leave communities under Jewish control, as with the order in December 1947 by the Tulkarm NC to the ‘Arab al Balawina to ‘be ready to leave their place at any moment’ 578 and, in February 1948, to the ‘Arab al Fuqqara ‘to leave’ (‘but they refused’) 579 and, more generally, to ‘all the Arabs in the area . . . to leave their places, and it is being carried out’. 580 A similar order was issued by the Gaza NC to the Wahidat beduin. 581

During December 1947 – February 1948, the Mufti and the AHC and most of the NCs did not mount a clear, consistent and forceful campaign against the exodus. The struggle against flight was at best lackadaisical. Perhaps some officials were not overly perturbed by a phenomenon that was still relatively small-scale. Perhaps, also, the Husseinis were not altogether unhappy with the exodus of many middle and upper class families who were traditionally identified with the Opposition. Moreover, the early exodus included Husseini-affiliated families and included many AHC members: to condemn them too strongly for fleeing might prompt backbiting within the Husseini camp. In general, the Palestinian leaders were quicker to condemn flight from villages than from the towns. In addition, the AHC had only an infirm grip in many localities. The fact that the Mufti disapproved of flight was no assurance that local NCs or irregulars would do much to stop it. As we have seen, the local leaderships and militias often had their own set of concerns and priorities. In various areas, especially in the cities, NCs were hampered in halting the exodus by the fact that many of the evacuees were from among their own kith and kin. Indeed, NC members were prominent among the evacuees. Nonetheless, in general, the local leaderships and militia commanders, whether in obedience to the AHC or independently, discouraged flight, even to the extent of issuing formal threats and imposing penalties, but it all proved of little avail.

A major reason for the failure of the Arab institutions to stem the exodus was the provision endorsed by the states, the Mufti and some of the NCs regarding women, the old and children. Husseini at times explicitly permitted and even encouraged the evacuation of women, children and old people from combat zones or prospective combat zones in order to reduce civilian casualties – in line with pre-war Arab League directives. He may also have believed, mistakenly, that the departure of dependents would heighten the males’ motivation to fight.

It was only in March 1948 that Husseini issued detailed, direct, personal orders to the NCs to halt the exodus. Husseini wrote to the NC of Tiberias:

The AHC knows that a large number of Palestinians are leaving the country for the neighbouring ‘sister’ countries . . . because of the situation . . . The AHC regards this as flight from the field of honour and sacrifice and sees it as damaging to the name of the holy war movement and damages the good name of the Palestinians in the Arab states and weakens the aid of the Arab peoples for the Palestinian cause, and leaves harmful traces in the economy and commerce of Palestine in general.

. . . The Arab governments have complained to the AHC in this matter.

The AHC has studied this important question from all angles and has decided that the good of the nation requires the Palestinians to continue their activities and work in their own country and not to leave it except in the event of necessity for the general good such as [reasons of] political or commercial or medical importance, with the consent of the AHC in consultation with the national committees.

Husseini added that ‘in areas where there was real danger to women, children and old people, they should leave the area for areas far from the source of the danger’. Those nonetheless wishing to travel out of the country should submit a request to their local NC, the NC would study it, and then pass it on, with a recommendation, to the AHC offices in Cairo or Jerusalem – and the AHC would then decide. 582

A similar (or identical) order went out to Jerusalem’s NC. The gist was: ‘The Mufti knows that a large number of Arabs is leaving the country. He opposes this because this exodus creates a bad impression about Pales tine’s Arabs in public opinion in the Arab states.’ Husseini wrote that only people with ‘an important political, economic or medical reason’ would be allowed to leave. In the event that there was danger in one part of Palestine, it was permissible to move women and children to other, safer parts, ‘but on no account should Arabs be allowed to leave Palestine’. 583 On 29–30 March, HIS reported that ‘the AHC was no longer approving exit permits for fear of [causing] panic in the country’. 584 On 31 March, a Galilee HIS officer was reporting: ‘Every Arab leaving the country is regarded as a traitor and would be put on trial in Syria. Everyone wishing to leave the country had to obtain permission from the Arab [National] Committee in Haifa.’ 585 The HIS surmised that it was this spate of orders that prompted Syria and Lebanon to close their borders to refugees toward the end of March.586"

The Arab authorities' responses to the Exodus: December 1947 to March 1948: Conclusion

"In general, NC members who had remained in Palestine regarded the exodus with misgivings. Their approach was perhaps embodied in an article in Al Sarikh, an Iraqi-financed Jaffa paper, on 30 March:

The inhabitants of the large village of Sheikh Muwannis and of several other Arab villages in the neighbourhood of Tel Aviv have brought a terrible disgrace upon all of us by quitting their villages bag and baggage. We cannot help comparing this disgraceful exodus with the firm stand of the Haganah in all localities in Arab territory . . . Everyone knows that the Haganah gladly enters the battle while we always flee from it.588"

"The Arab evacuees from the towns and villages left largely because of Jewish – Haganah, IZL or LHI – attacks or fear of impending attack, and from a sense of vulnerability. The feeling prevailed that the Arabs were weak and the Jews very strong, and there was a steady erosion of the Arabs’ confidence in their military power. Most of the evacuees, especially the prosperous urban families, never thought in terms of permanent refugeedom and exile; they contemplated an absence similar to that of 1936–1939, lasting until the hostilities were over and, they hoped, the Yishuv was vanquished. They expected the intervention, and possibly victory, of the Arab states.

Only an extremely small, almost insignificant number of the refugees during this early period left because of Haganah or IZL or LHI expulsion orders or forceful ‘advice’ to that effect. Many more – especially women, children and old people – left as a result of orders or advice from Arab military commanders and officials. Fears for their safety rather than a grand strategy of evacuation underlay these steps. And few were ordered or advised to leave Palestine; generally, the orders or advice were merely to move to safer areas within the country, where Arabs were demographically predominant.

Neither the Yishuv nor the Palestine Arab leadership nor the Arab states during these months had a policy of removing or moving the Arabs out of Palestine. With the exception of tenant farmers, the few expulsions that occurred were dictated by Jewish military considerations; the cases where Arab local commanders ordered villages to be wholly evacuated were motivated by both military and political considerations.

In general, before April 1948, the Palestinian leadership struggled, if not very energetically, against the exodus. The AHC and, by and large, the NCs opposed the flight. But there was no stopping it."

Chapter 4: The Second Wave: The mass exodus, April - June 1948