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

Plan Dalet

"The Yishuv looked to the end of March with foreboding: Its back was to the wall in almost every sense. Politically, the United States appeared to be withdrawing from its earlier commitment to partition, and was pressing for ‘trusteeship’ – an extension of foreign rule – after 15 May. Militarily, the Palestinian campaign along the roads, interdicting Jewish convoys, was slowly strangling West Jerusalem and threatening the existence of clusters of outlying settlements. The Galilee Panhandle settlements could be reached only via the Jordan Valley road and the Nahariya–Upper Galilee road; both were dominated by Arab villages. Nahariya and the kibbutzim of Western Galilee were themselves cut off from Jewish Haifa by Acre and a string of Arab villages. Haifa itself could not be reached from Tel Aviv via the main coast road as a chain of Arab villages dominated its northern stretch...The British evacuation, which would remove the last vestige of law and order in the cities and on the roads, was only weeks away, and the neighbouring Arab states were mobilising to intervene. The Yishuv was struggling for its life; an invasion by the Arab states could deliver the coup de grace.

It was with this situation and prospect in mind that the Haganah chiefs, in early March, produced ‘Tochnit Dalet’ (Plan D), a blueprint for securing the emergent Jewish state and the blocs of settlements outside the state’s territory against the expected invasion on or after 15 May. The battle against the militias and foreign irregulars had first to be won if therewas to be a chance of defeating the invading armies. To win the battle of the roads, the Haganah had to pacify the villages and towns that dominated them and served as bases of belligerency: Pacification meant the villages’ surrender or depopulation and destruction. The essence of the plan was the clearing of hostile and potentially hostile forces out of the interior of the territory of the prospective Jewish State, establishing territorial continuity between the major concentrations of Jewish population and securing the future State’s borders before, and in anticipation of, the invasion. The Haganah regarded almost all the villages as actively or potentially hostile."

"Plan D was not a political blueprint for the expulsion of Palestine’s Arabs: 1 It was governed by military considerations and geared to achieving military ends. But, given the nature of the war and the admixture of populations, securing the interior of the Jewish State and its borders in practice meant the depopulation and destruction of the villages that hosted the hostile militias and irregulars.

The plan called for ‘operations against enemy settlements which are in the rear of, within or near our defense lines, with the aim of preventing their use as bases for an active armed force’. Given Palestine’s size and the nature of the war, almost every village in or near the territory of the prospective Jewish state sat astride a main road or a border area or was located on or near one of the Arab armies’ potential axes of advance. Plan D provided for the conquest and permanent occupation, or levelling, of villages and towns. It instructed that the villages should be surrounded and searched for weapons and irregulars. In the event of resistance, the armed forces in the village should be destroyed and the inhabitants expelled. In the event of non-resistance, the village should be disarmed and garrisoned. Some hostile villages were to be destroyed ‘([by] burning, demolition and mining of the ruins) – especially . . . villages that we are unable to permanently control’. The Haganah wanted to preclude their renewed use as anti-Yishuv bases. 2

The plan gave each brigade discretion in its treatment of villages in its zone of operations. Each brigade was instructed:

In the conquest of villages in your area, you will determine – whether to cleanse or destroy them – in consultation with your Arab affairs advisers and HIS officers . . . You are permitted to restrict – insofar as you are able – cleansing, conquest and destruction operations of enemy villages in your area.3

The plan was neither understood nor used by the senior field officers as a blanket instruction for the expulsion of ‘the Arabs’. But, in providing for the expulsion or destruction of villages that had resisted or might threaten the Yishuv, it constituted a strategic–doctrinal basis and carte blanche for expulsions by front, brigade, district and battalion commanders (who in each case argued military necessity) and it gave commanders, post facto, formal, persuasive cover for their actions. However, during April–June, relatively few commanders faced the moral dilemma of having to carry out the expulsion clauses. Townspeople and villagers usually fled their homes before or during battle and Haganah commanders rarely had to decide about, or issue, expulsion orders (though they almost invariably prevented inhabitants, who had initially fled, from re- turning home after the dust of battle had settled).

In effect, Plan D was carried out during the eight weeks following 2 April. But most of the units mounting these offensives and counter- offensives were unaware that they were, in fact, carrying out parts of the grand design; most thought in terms of their own, local problems and perils, and their amelioration. Only the Alexandroni Brigade, responsible for the Coastal Plain from just north of Tel Aviv to just south of Haifa, appears from the start to have regarded its offensive operations, starting in early April, as parts of Plan D. "

"Plan D aside, there is no trace of any decision-making by the Yishuv’s or Haganah’s supreme bodies before early April in favour of a blanket, national policy of ‘expelling the Arabs’. Had such a decision in principle been taken by the JAE, the Defence Committee, the HNS or the HGS, it would have left traces in the documentation. Nor – perhaps surprisingly, in retrospect – is there evidence, with the exception of one or two important but isolated statements by Ben-Gurion, of any general expectation in the Yishuv of a mass Arab exodus from the Jewish part of Palestine. Such an exodus may have been regarded by most Yishuv leaders as desirable; but until early April, it was not regarded as likely or imminent. When it did occur, it surprised even the most optimistic and hardline Yishuv executives, including such a leading advocate of transfer as Yosef Weitz. On 22 April 1948, he visited Haifa, witnessed the start of the mass flight from the city, and wondered about ‘the reason . . . Eating away at my innards are fears . . . that perhaps a plot is being hatched [between the British and the Arabs] against us . . . Maybe the evacuation will facilitate the war against us.’ The following day, he wrote: ‘Something in my unconscious is frightened by this flight.’ 5 A few weeks later, Ben-Gurion told his cabinet: ‘Acre has fallen and not many Arabs have remained in it. This phenomenon is difficult to understand. Yesterday I was in Jaffa – I don’t understand how they left such a city . . .’ 6 Ben-Gurion was especially surprised by the rural evacuations: ‘. . . the assumption [among us] was that a village cannot be moved from its place, but the fact is that Arab villages were evacuated also where there was no danger. Sheikh Muwannis [for example] was not imperiled and nonetheless was evacuated.’

But a vital strategic change occurred during the first half of April: Clear traces of an expulsion policy on both national and local levels with respect to certain key districts and localities and a general ‘atmosophere of transfer’ are detectable in statements made by Zionist officials and officers. They are discernable, too, in the actions of Haganah units around the country. A vital shift occurred in the mindset of the political and military leadership. During 4–9 April, Ben-Gurion and the HGS, under the impact of the dire situation of Jewish Jerusalem and the ALA attack on Mishmar Ha‘emek, and under pressure from settlements and local commanders, decided, in conformity with the general guidelines of Plan D, to clear out and destroy the clusters of hostile or potentially hostile villages dominating vital axes...

As one IDF intelligence officer coyly put it: ‘There is an opinion that we must step up the eviction of Arabs from the territory of the State of Israel as it renders Arab administrative functioning far more difficult and, as well, the morale of the population declines with each new wave of refugees.’ 8"

"In general, the decision about the movement back into the area of Arabs who had left was postponed until the next meeting (the local OCs were ordered to set up roadblocks to ‘check’ incoming Arabs, implying that all or some would be permitted to enter). Should a unit, for military reasons, have to set up positions on Arab-owned lands, the owners should be ‘told and promised’ that there ‘is no intention to harm their property [or their rights over it].’ Lastly, a decision regarding the possible displacement of tenant-farmers from Jewish-owned lands was postponed, pending talks with the JNF. In other words, at the end of March, the advisers were still unclear about future relations with the local Arabs and the implication was that the status quo – with Arabs continuing to live in the Jewish areas or moving back into them – was to be maintained...

By 6 April, when the advisers met again, the policy had substantially changed. ‘An explicit order was issued that Arabs were not to be allowed into the area to reap [grain crops]’, and those ‘who had evacuated the area were not to be allowed back . . .’, it was decided."

"On 4 May, Ben-Gurion, in a public speech, spoke of the ‘great ease’ with which the Arab masses had fled their towns and villages (while the Yishuv, to date, had not abandoned a single settlement). ‘History has now shown’, he said, ‘who [i.e., which people] is really bound to this land and for whom this land is nothing but a luxury, to be easily abandoned.’19 But Zionist agency had considerably contributed to the Arabs’ demoralisation. During April, the HGS’s ‘Psychological Warfare Department’ had prepared and recorded six speeches, which were broadcast time and again by the Haganah’s radio station and loud- speaker vans...None of the recordings called upon the Arabs to flee. 20 But they were desiged to cause demoralisation – and HGS\Operations proposed to ‘exploit’ this demoralisation (it didn’t say how).21 "

Counter-policy: Shitrit

"Alongside the mainstream ‘atmosphere of transfer’ and the Haganah’s general guideline and tendency to drive out Arabs and destroy villages along main roads and border areas, there surfaced during April–June a secondary tendency or counter-policy – to leave in place friendly or surrendering Arab communities. This tendency, which never became official Yishuv or Haganah policy and only infrequently guided the executive agencies in their operations, centred around the person of Bechor Shitrit, from 15 May Israel’s minister of police and minority afairs, and his Minority Ministry officials. Mapam’s Arab Department and certain Mapam kibbutzim also periodically acted as spoilers, curtailing the unfettered activation of the mainstream tendency.

Already on 22 April, the authorities – probably the JA-PD Arab Division – issued a set of formal guidelines relating to the occupation of surrendering villages: ‘In the course of events, we may face the phenomenon of surrendering villages or individuals who demand [Haganah] protection and the right to stay in the Jewish area.’ If the appellants live ‘in the border area or front line they must be moved to the rear’, where they could be properly guarded, states the guideline. Once transferred inland, their freedom of movement would have to be restricted and they should not be allowed contact with other Arabs, for reasons of intelligence. The Haganah was cautioned that ‘in every case of an approach to receive Jewish protection [hasut], it must be carefully weighed whether the Arabs can be left in place or [have to be] transferred to the rear’. 22 However, these guidelines were generally not taken seriously by Haganah units, though the inhabitants of a handful of surrendering villages at this time were ultimately allowed to remain."

"Less than three weeks later, on 10 May, Shitrit submitted a memorandum to the People’s Administration (the JAE’s successor as the Yishuv’s ‘Cabinet’), within days to become the ‘Provisional Government of Israel’. It appears that the memorandum was never debated by that body, which had its hands full preparing for the declaration of statehood and the impending invasion. The document was entitled ‘Memorandum of the Ministry for Minority Affairs, Subject: The Arab Problem’. The Zionist leaders had long announced their desire to live in peace with their neighbours and to give them ‘equal civil rights’, wrote Shitrit. The Jewish people, which had suffered centuries of oppression, would be judged according to how it treated its own minority. It was incumbent upon the new state to protect the property abandoned by the Arabs who had fled and ‘to maintain fair and proper relations with those who had stayed or who will want to stay among us or return [to live] among us’. Shitrit acknowledged that ‘criminal deeds’ had been committed in places captured by the Yishuv; he alluded specifically to looting. But the Zionist leadership had to look to the future and had to ‘restrain our evil drives’.

Shitrit demanded that matters relating to Arab property and existing communities be placed under his jurisdiction, including ‘the evacuation’ of villages, ‘the return of Arabs to their places’, and the ‘cooption [of Arabs] in government institutions and in the state’s economy if circumstances allow’. Close cooperation must be instituted with the defence forces.

IDFA files contain a second document produced at this time, possibly also by Shitrit or his officials, detailing the requisite behaviour of the military upon conquering an Arab towns and villages. The memorandum called for the immediate cooption into the staff of the IDF governor of any occupied zone a Minority Ministry official. Contact should immediately be established with the local Arab authorities; outsiders and combatants should be arrested and arms, fuel and vehicles confiscated. The authorities should provide the inhabitants with food and medical care, if necessary. ‘It must be remembered that cooperation with the local population will save on manpower needed for other operations’, states the memorandum. Places of worship and holy sites should be protected. The memorandum drew a sharp distinction between sites within the partition borders and communities outside them. Within the Jewish state, ‘governors’, not ‘military governors’, should be appointed. 24

The assumptions underlying these memoranda were that Israel would not oppose the continued presence within the state of (peaceful) Arab communities, that there would be a sizable minority, and that Israel would be open to a return of Arab refugees. But this was not, and not to be, the policy of the mainstream leadership. However, neither did Ben-Gurion, the People’s Administration\Provisional Government nor the Haganah\IDF GS formally adopt or enunciate a contrary policy. So Shitrit was left believing, or partly believing, that his guidelines were acceptable to Ben-Gurion and his colleagues – and briefly and hap- hazardly acted upon them. But the decisive institutions of state – the Haganah\IDF, the intelligence services, the kibbutz movements – as we shall see, acted in a contrary manner, promoting the Arab exodus in a variety of ways. It took Shitrit months to catch on and, reluctantly, follow suit.

Shitrit was only marginally effective in imposing his benign will, as the Haganah\IDF moved from conquest to conquest. By and large, in the countryside, military commanders were unhappy about leaving in place Arab communities, whom they would have to garrison, guard against and protect from Jewish depredation. So they normally didn’t. "

"The Giv‘ati, Harel and Yiftah brigades almost invariably ascertained that no Arab inhabitants remained in areas they had just conquered; the Golani Brigade, on the other hand, acted with far less consistency."

Arab role

"Whatever the reasoning and attitudes of the Arab states’ leaders, I have found no contemporary evidence to show that either they or the Mufti ordered or directly encouraged the mass exodus of April–May. As to the Palestinian leaders, it may be worth noting that for decades their policy had been to hold fast to the soil and to resist the eviction and displacement of communities. But two qualifications are necessary. During April, the AHC and some NCs stepped up their pressure on villages in various areas and in some towns to send away women, children and the old to safety, and in some areas there was compliance. And in several areas, Arab military or political leaders ordered the complete evacuation of villages.

During April, the irregulars and at least some of the NCs, apparently at the behest of the AHC, continued to promote, either out of inertia or in line with reiterated policy, the departure from combat and potential combat zones of women, children and the old. Ben-Gurion took note – and explained (regarding Coastal Plain villages): ‘Possibly it is being done because of pressure from the gangs’ commanders out of Arab strategic needs: Women and children are moved out and fighting gangs are moved in.’ 37"

"Until the last week of April, the AHC and the Arab governments, at least publicly, did not seem to be unduly perturbed by the exodus. ‘Azzam Pasha, secretary general of the Arab League, to be sure, in April used the flight and the massacre at Deir Yassin (see below) to drive home anti- Zionist propaganda points, but there seems to have been no feeling that something momentous was happening. The Arab states did nothing: en large, they acted neither to aggravate the exodus nor to stem it. 95"

"The AHC during April and May was probably driven by a set of contradictory interests. On the one hand, its members – almost to a man out of Palestine by the end of April – were unhappy at the sight of the steady dissolution and emigration of their society. The exodus dashed their hopes of a successful Palestinian resistance to the Yishuv. On the other hand, led by the Mufti, by late April they understood that all now depended on the intervention of the Arab states. Husseini well knew the essential fickleness of the Arab leaders, and understood that Egypt’s Farouk, Jordan’s Abdullah, Lebanon’s Prime Minister Riad Solh and the rest were not overly eager to do battle in Palestine. Husseini may well have reasoned, as 15 May approached, that the bigger the tragedy, the greater would be the pressure – by public opinion at home, by the other states and by the demands of Arab ‘honour’ – on these leaders to abide by their commitment to intervene. Nothing would bind them to their word like a great Palestinian disaster. Moreover, the AHC was unhappy at the prospect of Arab communities surrendering and accepting Jewish rule. Pulled hither and thither by such considerations, during April and the first half of May Husseini and the AHC remained largely silent about the unfolding exodus.

Given the lack of clear direction from the Arab states and the AHC, the burden of decision-making fell mainly on the shoulders of local leaders, both civil and military. It is largely to the local leadership, therefore, that one must look for decision-making concerning staying or leaving by this or that Arab community during April 1948. Local leaders may have been motivated in part by what they thought the AHC would want them to decide, as in Haifa on 22 April, but in general, they were left to their own devices.

In most cases, the NCs during April–May acted to curb flight from their localities, especially of army-aged males. In Jerusalem, in late April the NC ordered militiamen to stop vehicles with fleeing inhabitants and to haul them back, 96 and issued the following communique:

There are people sowing false rumours and as a result [have] forced some Arabs to leave the city . . . These rumours help the enemy in our midst . . . The committee declares herewith that the state of Arab defences in the towns is relatively strong, and it demands of the citizens not to pay attention to the false rumours and to stay in their places. 97

The committee also resolved to punish satellite villages from which there was unauthorised flight; the villagers were ordered to ‘stay in place and not leave’. 98 In mid-May, as the Haganah occupied areas in central Jerusalem and threatened the Old City, masses of Arabs assembled in front of the NC building, demanding permits to leave. NC officials ‘refused’ and armed men were sent after vehicles fleeing the town without permits.99

Haifa’s NC acted similarly. The chairman appealed to NC members who had left to return 100 and threatened shopkeepers who had left that it would revoke their licenses. 101 Jaffa’s NC tried to halt flight by imposing fines and threatening property confiscation. Departing families were forced to pay special taxes. 102 The efforts to halt the evacuation seem to have ended with the IZL attack of 25–27 April"

"A few days before, perhaps under the cumulative impact of the fall of Arab Haifa and the mass evacuation of Jaffa, ALA headquarters in Ramallah issued a blanket proscription against flight. The Arab states, too, suddenly awakened to the problem. Already in late April, the Haganah noted that Abdullah was pressing beduin refugees from the Beit Shean Valley to return home. 124 On 5–6 May, the ALA, in radio broadcasts and newspapers, forbade Ramallah area villagers from leaving their homes: The homes of fleeing villagers would be demolished and their fields confiscated. Inhabitants who had fled were ordered to return.125 Jordan endorsed the order. According to the Haganah, the population of Ramallah was about to take flight, so the ALA was blocking the roads out: ‘The Arab military leaders are trying to stem the flood of refugees and are taking stern and ruthless measures against them’, reported the Haganah. On 5 May, Radio Jerusalem and Damascus Radio broadcast the ALA orders to those who had fled to ‘return within three days’.126 Haganah Radio, capitalising on the order, on 6 May broadcast that ‘in an endeavour to put a stop to the flight . . . the Arab command has issued a statement warning that . . . any Arab leaving . . . will be severely punished’. 127

During 5–15 May, King ‘Abdullah, ‘Azzam Pasha, and, more hesitantly, the AHC, in semi-coordinated fashion issued similar announcements de- signed to halt the flight and induce refugees to return. A special appeal, also promoted by the British Mandate authorities, was directed at the refugees from Haifa. On 15 May, Faiz Idrisi, the AHC’s ‘inspector for public safety’, issued orders to Palestinian militiamen to fight against ‘the Fifth Column and the rumour-mongers, who are causing the flight of the Arab population’. On 10–11 May, the AHC called on officials, doctors and engineers who had left to return and on 14–15 May, repeating the call, warned that officials who did not return would lose their ‘moral right to hold these administrative jobs in the future’. Arab governments began to bar entry to the refugees – for example, along the Lebanese border. 128

By the end of May, with their armies fully committed, the Arab states (and the AHC) put pressure on the refugee communities encamped along Palestine’s frontiers to go home. According to monitored Arab broadcasts, the AHC was arguing that ‘most of the [abandoned] villages had been made safe thanks to Arab victories’. 129 However, the sudden pan-Arab concern came too late, was never enunciated as official policy and was never translated into systematic action. Moreover, the Arab League Political Committee persisted in prodding member states to ‘grant asylum . . . to women, children and the elderly’ (while urging them to bar adult males).130 Having failed to halt the mass exodus at birth, the states proved powerless to curb its momentum, let alone reverse the process."

"The borders had become continuous front lines with free-fire zones separating the armies, and the victorious Yishuv was resolved to bar a return. Thus, the pressure by some of the Arab countries to push the refugees back across the borders, reported by IDF intelligence in early June, had little effect.131 And by August, indeed, the AHC was arguing against the repatriation of the refugees lest this would represent ‘recognition of the State of Israel’ and place repatriates at the mercy of the Jewish authorities. 132 But in the main, what the Arabs states, the AHC, the ALA, the NCs and the various militias did or did not do during April–June to promote or stifle the exodus was only of secondary importance; the prime movers throughout were the Yishuv and its military organisations. It was their operations that were to prove the major precipitants to flight."

The Cities: Tiberias

"On 4 December 1947, a leading notable, Sheikh Naif Tabari – the Tabaris, originating in Ajlun, Transjordan, were the town’s most prosperous and respected family 133 – initiated talks with local Jewish leaders to conclude a local ‘peace pact’. 134 Nonetheless, Arab families, fearing trouble, began to leave their homes, some moving to purely Arab neighbourhoods and others, such as the small Shi‘ite community, leaving town altogether.135 Jewish families also fled the predominantly Arab ‘Old City’; by early February 1948, only a quarter of the Old City’s Jews were still in place...

The Tabaris, who controlled the NC, consistently stymied efforts by hotheaded youngsters to unleash hostilities 137 and preached peaceful coexistence.138 Yosef Nahmani, one of the Jewish community leaders and head of the JNF office in eastern Galilee, confirmed that they sought continued peace though Jewish youngsters were continually provoking the Arabs, which could lead to an ‘explosion’ and ‘a disaster’, he warned...

the NC, led by Sidqi Tabari, met with the town’s Jewish leaders, including Mayor Shimon Dahan, and concluded a non-belligerency agreement.139 But both the ‘mindless’ local Haganah commanders, ac- cording to Nahmani, and the shabab, according to the HIS, were un- happy with the pact. 140 Nonetheless, quiet was restored and one visiting HIS-AD operative was struck by how Arabs, including beduin, moved about freely in the Jewish markets, rode on Jewish buses, and conducted commerce with Jews, as if the two communities ‘know or hear nothing of what is happening between the Jews and the Arabs in the rest of the country’.141

The fragile truce collapsed in mid-March. Shooting erupted in down- town Tiberias on the 12th, apparently following efforts by Jewish policemen to disarm Arabs. The fighting went on intermittently for three days and the leaders of the two communities met in the town hall on 14 March. The Arabs charged that the Jews had provoked the shooting and Nahmani, in his heart (and diary), ‘endorsed the Arabs’ charges’. 142 Quiet resumed, with Israel Galili apparently endorsing the new pact: ‘It’s good that you’ve done this’, he told the Tiberias Jewish leaders, ‘because we have plenty of fronts and we would rather not spread ourselves [too thin].’ 143...

The (final) battle of Tiberias began on 8–9 April, when shooting once again erupted in the downtown area. On 10 April the Haganah bombarded ‘the Arab population [i.e., residential area]’ with mortars. 147 The British tried to mediate a truce but failed...The orders were ‘to destroy the enemy concentration’ in the village. During the four-hour skirmish, in which the Haganah met unexpected resistance, most of the population fled to Tiberias, and the village was occupied. The Haganah recorded 22 Arabs killed, six wounded and three captured (Haganah casualties were two lightly wounded).148 The Arabs subsequently alleged that ‘there had been a second Deir Yassin’ 149 in Nasir ad Din – and, indeed, some non-combatants, including women and children, were killed.150 The arrival of the Nasir ad Din refugees helped to undermine the morale of Arab Tiberias. 151 Nahmani reacted by jotting down in his diary:

I cannot justify this action by the Haganah. I don’t know whether there was justification for the assault and the killing of so many Arabs. The flight of the women and children of the village in panic made a bad impression on me.152

The British had not intervened in Nasir ad Din. The Haganah decided to pacify Arab Tiberias, which blocked the road to the Galilee Panhandle settlements. 153 On the night of 16\17 April, units of Golani and the Palmah’s 3rd Battalion, freshly introduced into Tiberias, attacked in the Old City, using mortars and dynamite, blowing up eight houses. The attack caused ‘great panic’. Arab notables apparently sued for a truce but the Haganah commanders refused to negotiate; they wanted a surrender.154 The Arabs appealed to the British to lift the Haganah siege on the Old City and to extend their protection to the Arab neighbourhoods. The British said that they intended to evacuate the town within days and could offer no protection beyond 22 April...

On 21 April, an HIS-AD officer reported that one of Tiberias’s militia leaders, Subhi Shahin Anqush, had left Tiberias on 17 April and had returned the following day ‘with a large number of buses from various Arab [transport] companies in Nazareth’. This might indicate that the idea of a complete evacuation had germinated on 17 April – rather than at British suggestion on 18 April. 158 It was Shahin, according to the HIS officer, who had made sure, using ‘threats and force’, that the evacuation of Tiberias would be complete after some 700 inhabitants had initially wanted to raise ‘the white flag’ and stay put. 159...

One Golani intelligence officer was sufficiently intrigued, or perturbed, to write during the following days a two-page analysis and explanation entitled ‘Why the Arabs had Evacuated Tiberias’. Strikingly, he made no mention at all of Arab orders (or even rumours of orders) from ‘outside’ or ‘from on high’ or of advice by the British, as the cause of the exodus. It was, he explained, the end result of a cumulative process of demoralisation. The exodus, which, he argues, began immediately after Nasir ad Din, was caused by (a) a sense of military weakness, stemming from the diffusion of power among three separate, and often rival, militias; (b) economic conditions, worsened by Haganah control of the access roads into town, and price rises; (c) societal ‘rottenness’ and the flight of the leaders; (d) the non-arrival of reinforcements from the hinterland; (e) the steadfastness of the Haganah contingent in the Old City, which held on, despite British threats and Arab siege and harassment; (f) the fall of Nasir ad Din and the demoralisation caused by the arrival of its refugees, with their ‘imaginative oriental stories’ of Jewish atrocities; and (g) the successful Haganah offensive of 16–18 April, which had included the demolition of the Tiberias Hotel. 160"

"In any event, at around noon on 18 April, a de facto truce took hold and the British imposed a four-hour curfew...That evening, a Golani patrol reported: ‘We have completed a reconnaissance of the whole of the lower city. There are no strangers [i.e., Arabs] on the site.’ The unit reported that it was guarding Arab shops and homes against looting. ‘Our morale is high.’163

But within hours, ‘the Jewish mob descended upon [the evacuated areas] and began to pillage the shops . . . The looting was halted by the armed intervention of the Jewish police . . .’ 164 HIS-AD reported that both Jewish residents and Haganah soldiers participated in the ‘robbery, on a large scale. There were disgusting incidents of robbery by commanders and disputes among people who fought over the loot.’ The looting continued intermittently during the following days and several malefactors were arrested; 165 a number were seriously injured by
Haganah troops. In one incident, a Haganah man shot a Sephardi looter (who later died). The largely Sephardi townspeople remarked ‘that the Ashkenazis shoot only Sephardis . . .’. Looting was resumed on 22 April, when the Haganah and the police completely lost control. 166 Nahmani jotted down in his diary:

Groups of dozens of Jews walked about pillaging from the Arab houses and shops . . . The Haganah people hadn’t the strength to control the mob after they themselves had given a bad example . . . [It was as if] there was a contest between the different Haganah platoons stationed in Migdal, Genossar, Yavniel, ‘Ein Gev, who came in cars and boats and loaded all sorts of goods [such as] refrigerators, beds, etc. . . . Quite naturally the Jewish masses in Tiberias wanted to do likewise . . . Old men and women, regardless of age . . . religious [and non-religious], all are busy with robbery . . . Shame covers my face . . .167"

"The Jewish troops had not been ordered to expel the Arab inhabitants, nor had they done so. Indeed, they had not expected the population to leave. At the same time, once the decision had been taken and once the evacuation was under way, at no point did the Haganah act to stop it...

Three days later, Jamal Husseini informed the UN that the Jews had ‘compelled the Arab population to leave Tiberias’ Years later, the OC of the Golani Brigade obliquely concurred when he recalled that the brigade’s conquest of the key Arab military position in the town had ‘forced the Arab inhabitants to evacuate’. 170 On the other hand, Elias Koussa, a Haifa Arab lawyer, in 1949 charged that ‘the British authorities forcibly transported the Arab inhabitants [of Tiberias] en masse to [sic] Transjordan.’ Instead of forcefully restoring order in the town, as was their ‘duty,’ they had ‘compelled the Arabs to abandon their homes and belongings and seek refuge in the contiguous Arab territory’. 171 How- ever, to judge from the evidence, the decision to evacuate Tiberias was taken jointly by the local Arab leaders and the British military authorities. It is possible that the idea of evacuation, under British protection, was first suggested by British officers – but it was the Arab notables who had decided whether to stay or go. The British unwillingness – actually, inability – to offer long-term protection and their announcement of impending withdrawal probably acted as spurs. The flight, before and at the start of the battle, of leading Tiberias notables, the real and alleged events at Nasir ad Din (reinforced by news of the massacre, a week before, in Deir Yassin) and the Haganah conquest on 10 April of the village of al Manara, to the south, cutting the road to Jordan, all probably contributed to the exodus.172"

The Cities: Haifa

"The departure of the town’s Arabs, who before the war had numbered 65,000, by itself accounted for some 10 per cent of the Arab refugee total."

"The mass exodus of 21 April – early May must be seen against the backdrop of the gradual evacuation of the city by some 20,000–30,000 of its inhabitants, including most of the middle and upper classes, over December 1947 – early April 1948; most NC members and municipal councillors, and their families, were among the departees. Haifa was especially vulnerable to the gradual closure of the Mandate Government camps, installations and offices, which sharply increased unemployment during March–April. 180 This, and the months of skirmishing, bombings, food shortages (especially of flour and bread) and sense of isolation from the Arab hinterland, had combined to steadily unnerve the remaining population.181

During the first week of April, Palmah intelligence reported, 150 Arabs were leaving a day. 182 Sometime during the first half of April, NC chair- man Rashid al Haj Ibrahim, left, apparently after quarrelling with the new militia commander, the Lebanese Druse officer Amin ‘Izz a Din Nabahani.183 Haganah intelligence reported that ‘more than 100’ militiamen, mostly Syrians and Iraqis, who had failed to receive their wages, left during the third week of April. 184 "

"Plan D called for the consolidation of the Jewish hold on the mixed cities by

gaining control of all government property and services, the expulsion of the Arabs from the mixed districts and even from certain [all-Arab] neighbourhoods that endanger our lines of communication in these cities or that serve as staging grounds for attack. Also [Plan D called for] the sealing off of the Arab population – in a part of the city that will be surrounded by our forces.

The plan assigned the neutralisation of Arab Haifa to the Carmeli Brigade, which was specifically instructed

to conquer and take control of Elijah’s Cave, the Old City, the German Colony, Jaffa Street, the old and new commercial districts, Nazareth Street, Wadi Rushmiya, the ‘shacks neighbourhood’ [i.e., Ard al Ghamal] and [the village of] Balad al Sheikh. 188"

"According to Nimr al Khatib, in ‘the early morning’ of 21 April a British officer had informed the NC of the ‘impending’ British redeployment. 194 Similar informal notice may have been given to the Haganah. More formally, Stockwell at 10:00 hours summoned Jewish and, subsequently, Arab leaders and handed them a prepared statement announcing the redeployment, which had already been completed. He asked both to end the hostilities and vaguely promised British assistance in maintaining peace and order. At the same time, he said that the British security forces would refrain from involvement in the clashes. 195

The sudden British redeployment triggered a hurried consultation in Carmeli headquarters. During the morning and early afternoon Mivtza Bi‘ur Hametz (Operation Passover Cleansing) was hammered out. In part, it was based on a plan drawn up in late March, Pe‘ulat Misparayim (Operation Scissors), which had provided for a multi-pronged assault on militia positions and the neutralisation of the irregulars’ power to disrupt traffic and life in the Jewish neighbourhoods. The objective of Scissors was to damage and shock rather than to conquer; Operation Passover
Cleansing aimed at ‘breaking the enemy’ by simultaneous assault from several directions, ‘to open communications to the Lower City [i.e., the downtown area and the port] and to gain control of Wadi Rushmiya in order to safeguard the link between Haifa and the north . . .’. 196 The planning did not call for, or anticipate, the conquest of most of Arab Haifa; the Carmeli commanders, led by brigade OC Moshe Carmel, deemed such an objective over-ambitious and probably unattainable, because of Arab strength and possible British intervention."

"In preparation for the assault, around midnight 21\22 April, the Haganah had let loose with a 15-minute, 50-round barrage of heavy mortars on the lower city, triggering ‘great panic . . . and the mass exodus began’. Further barrages were released periodically during the night and in the morning of 22 April. By the early afternoon, the attacks had broken the back of Arab resistance. Hours earlier, at 09:00, 22 April, Haganah units had reached Hamra Square and found it deserted: ‘All was desolate, the shops closed, no traffic . . . only several sick old Arab men and women moved about, confused.’198

Just before, at 06:00, a mass of Arabs had rushed into the harbour, and by 13:00 some 6,000 had boarded boats and set sail for Acre. A Palmah scout, who had been in the (Arab) Lower City during the battle, later reported:

[I saw] people with belongings running toward the harbour and their faces spoke confusion. I met an old man sitting on some steps and crying. I asked him why he was crying and he replied that he had lost his six children and his wife and did not know [where] they were. I quieted him down and told him that he mustn’t cry so long as he knew nothing [of their fate]. It was quite possible, I said, that the wife and children were transported to Acre but he continued to cry. I took him to the hotel . . . [and] gave him P£2 and he fell asleep. Meanwhile, people [i.e., refugees] arrived from Halissa . . .199

The panic-stricken rush of inhabitants from the Lower City into the harbour was later described by Nimr al Khatib:

Suddenly a rumour spread that the British army in the port area had declared its readiness to safeguard the life of anyone who reached thport and left the city. A mad rush to the port gates began. Man trampled on fellow man and woman [trampled on] her children. The boats in the harbour quickly filled up and there is no doubt that that was the cause of the capsizing of many of them. 200"

"The Haganah command issued orders to the troops to treat places of worship with respect, especially mosques, and to refrain from looting. 203

Throughout, the Haganah made effective use of Arabic language broadcasts and loudspeaker vans. Haganah Radio announced that ‘the day of judgement had arrived’ and called on the inhabitants to ‘kick out the foreign criminals’ and to ‘move away from every house and street, from every neighbourhood, occupied by the foreign criminals’. The Haganah broadcasts called on the populace to ‘evacuate the women, the children and the old immediately, and send them to a safe haven’. 204 The vans announced that the Haganah had gained control of all approaches to the city and no reinforcements could reach the embattled militiamen, and called on the Arabs to lay down their arms, urging the irregulars ‘from Syria, Transjordan and Iraq’ to ‘return to [their] families’. 205

Jewish tactics in the battle were designed to stun and quickly over- power opposition; demoralisation was a primary aim. It was deemed just as important to the outcome as the physical destruction of the Arab units. The mortar barrages and the psychological warfare broadcasts and announcements, and the tactics employed by the infantry companies, advancing from house to house, were all geared to this goal. The orders of Carmeli’s 22nd Battalion were ‘to kill every [adult male] Arab encountered’ and to set alight with firebombs ‘all objectives that can be
set alight. I am sending you posters in Arabic; disperse on route.’ 206"

"Towards the end of April, one branch of British intelligence assessed that ‘the hasty flight of Amin Bey ‘Izz a Din . . . [was] probably the greatest single factor’ in the demoralisation of the Arab community. 211 This was also the judgement of the High Commissioner. On 26 April, Cunningham devoted a whole telegram to Colonial Secretary Creech-Jones on the flight of the leaders from Haifa and Jaffa.212 The British view was succinctly expressed on 6 May: ‘The desertion of their leaders and the sight of so much cowardice in high places completely unnerved the [Arab] inhabitants [of Haifa].’ 213 American diplomats sent Washington similar reports: ‘The Arab Higher Command all [reportedly] left Haifa some hours before the battle took place.’ Vice-consul Lippincott was comprehensively contemptuous of the Arab performance: ‘The Haifa Arab, particularly the Christian Arab . . . generally speaking . . . is a coward and he is not the least bit interested in going out to fight his country’s battles.’ 214"

The Cities: Haifa: Arab leaders order exodus

"Against the backdrop of militia collapse and mass flight, early on the morning of 22 April members of the NC asked to see Stockwell with ‘a view to . . . obtaining a truce with the Jews’. Stockwell contacted lawyer Ya‘akov Salomon, the Haganah liaison, and asked to know the Jewish ‘terms [for an Arab] surrender’. Carmel was astounded; the Arabs, though strongly pressed, did not appear on the verge of collapse. The situation did not seem to warrant surrender ‘and the idea of our complete conquest of all of Haifa still appeared so fantastic as to be incomprehensible’. Nonetheless, Carmel jotted down terms and sent them to Stockwell, ‘who . . . said that he thought they were fair . . . and the Arabs would accept them . . .’. 217"

"According to the British reports, the Arabs merely sought Stockwell’s help in obtaining a truce, but the delegation feared that some might see this as a treacherous surrender. Hence, they wanted the onus to fall on the British. Stockwell had to be manoeuvred into declaring that the Arabs had been ‘forced’ to accept a truce. The Arabs would ask the British to fight the Haganah or allow in reinforcements; Stockwell would refuse; and the Emergency Committee, bowing to force majeure, would accede to the truce terms. This, at least, is how Stockwell viewed the meeting. ‘They felt that they in no way were empowered to ask for a truce, but that if they were covered by me, they might go ahead.’ The general recorded that the Arabs ‘wanted [him] to say’ that he would not intervene against the Haganah or allow in Arab reinforcements. Stockwell did as he was asked: He stated that he could not intervene or allow in reinforcements. 220 From the Stockwell and Marriott reports it emerges that the interests and views of the British and the Arab notables dovetailed that morning. Both feared, and opposed, a renewal of major fighting; both understood that the Arabs had lost; both feared that the arrival of Arab reinforcements would not tip the scales but merely cause additional bloodshed; both wanted a truce. And Stockwell was willing to ‘play along’.

The Arabs then asked to see the Haganah terms. Stockwell presented them and the notables left to talk it over in Khayyat’s home. They agreed to meet British and Jewish representatives at the town hall at 16:00 hours. Apparently, they felt that immediate acceptance would open them to charges of betrayal. Through the Syrian consul, Thabet al Aris, who had a radio transmitter, they attempted to contact the Arab League Military Committee in Damascus and the Syrians for instructions. But Damascus failed to respond. 221 Instead, Damascus activated the Lebanese Government, which summoned the British Minister in Beirut, Houstoun Boswall, to complain of British inaction against ‘Jewish aggression’. At the same time, the Syrian president, Shukri al Quwatli, flanked by his senior ministers, hauled in the British Minister, Philip Broadmead, and read him two telegrams by al Aris. The telegrams described the Jewish offensive and warned of ‘a massacre of innocents’. The president charged that the British were ‘doing nothing’ and implicitly threatened Syrian intervention. Broadmead warned him against taking ‘stupid action’.222

Broadmead left but was immediately summoned back, and Quwatli, saying he was ‘bewildered’, showed him a further cable from al Aris, who related that Stockwell had rejected the notables’ appeal for intervention or to allow in reinforcements. They sought ‘instructions’ in preparation for the town hall meeting. Quwatli said that he was ‘very nervous’ about Syrian public opinion and asked Broadmead ‘what instructions he [Quwatli] could send. What did I [Broadmead] suggest?’ Broadmead said he did not know the facts and urged moderation, and then asked London for ‘something’ that would ‘calm [Quwatli’s] mind’. 223 Quwatli had no idea what to instruct Haifa’s remaining Arabs: To surrender? To reject the Haganah terms? To stay put and accept Jewish sovereignty? To evacuate the city? Each option was acutely problematic. So he simply refrained from responding.

Meanwhile, Stockwell reviewed the Haganah terms, was ‘not entirely satisfied’, and sent for the Jewish representatives. Beilin, Salomon, and Mordechai Makleff, OC Operations of the Carmeli Brigade, arrived and, after discussion, accepted Stockwell’s amendments. The final version called for the disarming of the Arab community (with the arms going to the British authorities who only on 15 May would transfer them to the Haganah); the deportation of all foreign Arab males of military age; the removal of all Arab roadblocks; the arrest of European Nazis found in Arab ranks; a 24-hour curfew in the Arab neighbourhoods to assure ‘complete disarming’; freedom for

each person in Haifa . . . to carry on with his business and way of life. Arabs will carry on their work as equal and free citizens of Haifa and will enjoy all services along with the other members of the community. 224"

"The British were represented by Stockwell, Marriott, and a handful of senior officers; the Jews by mayor Shabtai Levy, Salomon, Makleff, and a number of officials; and the Arabs by Khayyat, Sa‘ad, Koussa, Anis Nasr, Muhammad Abu Zayyad (a businessman), Mu‘ammar, and Sheikh Abdul Rahman Murad, head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Haifa...According to Stockwell and Marriott, both delegations ‘unanimously agreed’ to a ceasefire, which amounted to an Arab surrender. Mayor Levy opened by declaring that ‘members of both communities in Haifa should live in peace and friendship together’. Stockwell read out the Haganah terms. A discussion ensued: The Arabs wished to retain licensed arms and asked that the curfew and house-to- house searches to be conducted by the British rather than the Haganah. They also ‘objected most strongly’ to recording on paper the eventual handover of the Arab arms to the Haganah. ‘This was evidently to protect themselves against the displeasure of the AHE [i.e., AHC]’, commented Stockwell.226 The Jews insisted that the clause remain, as formulated, but agreed to compromise on most other issues. The Arabs ‘haggled over every word’, recorded Beilin. 227

Stockwell thought that the Jewish representatives had been ‘conciliatory’. Marriott, who was soon to turn fiercely anti-Israeli, was even more emphatic. ‘The Jewish delegation’, he wrote, ‘made a good impression by their magnanimity in victory, the moderation of their truce terms, and their readiness to accede to the modifications demanded by General Stockwell.’"

"The meeting recessed at 17:30 hours, the Arabs asking for 24 hours in which to consider the terms. The Jews demurred. At the GOC’s insistence, it was agreed that the Arabs would have an hour. The delegates reassembled at 19:15, with the Arabs – now consisting only of Christian notables, the Muslims, Abu Zayyad and Murad, staying away – stating

that they were not in a position to sign a truce, as they had no control over the Arab military elements in the town and that . . . they could not fulfill the terms of the truce, even if they were to sign. They then said as an alternative that the Arab population wished to evacuate Haifa . . . man, woman and child. 22

The Jewish and British officials were surprised, even shocked. Levy appealed ‘very passionately . . . and begged [the Arabs] to reconsider’. He said that they should not leave the city ‘where they had lived for hundreds of years, where their forefathers were buried and where, for so long, they had lived in peace and brotherhood with the Jews’. But the Arabs said they ‘had no choice’. 230 According to Carmel, who was briefed on the meeting by Makleff, Stockwell ‘went pale’ when he heard the Arabs’ decision, and also appealed to them to reconsider and not make ‘such a grave mistake’. He urged them to accept the terms: ‘Don’t destroy your lives needlessly’, he said. He then turned to Makleff, and asked: ‘What have you to say?’ Makleff replied: ‘It’s up to them [i.e., the Arabs] to decide.’231 Salomon, in his recollection of events, wrote that he also appealed to the Arabs to reconsider, but to no avail. 232

Israeli chroniclers of these events subsequently asserted that the Haifa Arab leadership on 22 April had been ordered by the AHC to evacuate the city. Carmel wrote that sometime after 22 April,

we learned that during the intermission [in the meeting, the Arabs] had contacted the AHC and asked for instructions. The Mufti’s orders had been to leave the city and not to accept conditions of surrender from the Jews, as the invasion by the Arab armies was close and the whole country would fall into [Arab] hands. 233

Some Jewish officials, flustered by the unexpected exodus from Haifa, at the time believed that it was part of a comprehensive Arab or Anglo- Arab plot, which also accounted for the mass flight from other parts of Palestine in late April. 234 On 23 April Sasson cabled Shertok, who was in New York:

Mass flight of Arabs now witnessed here there Palestine, as Tiberias, Haifa, elsewhere, is apparently not consequence of mere fear and weakness. Flight is organised by followers of Husseinites and outcarried cooperation foreign ‘fighters’ with object: (1) Vilifying Jews and describing them as expellants who are out outdrive Arabs from territory Jew[ish] State. (2) Compelling Arab States intervene by sending regular armies. (3) Create in Arab world and world opinion in general impression that such invasion undertaken for rescue persecuted Pal[estinians].

Sasson also asserted that the flight of the Arab commanders at the start of each battle was part of the plot to ‘spread chaos, panic’ among the Arabs, leading to flight. 235

However, if Sasson meant that the exodus was orchestrated or ordered from outside Palestine, the weight of the evidence suggests that this is incorrect. As we have seen, the local notables had tried and failed to obtain instructions from Damascus. Damascus preferred silence. Nor is there any persuasive evidence that orders came from Husseini or the AHC. Haifa’s Arabs were simply left to decide on their own 236 and it is probable that the local Husseini-supporting, Muslim notables – perhaps doing what they thought the AHC\Husseini would have wanted them to do – intimidated and ordered their fellow Christian notables gathered at the town hall after 19:00, 22 April, to reject a truce or anything smacking of surrender and acquiescence in Jewish rule, and to opt for evacuation."

"But if the weight of the evidence suggests that the initial order to evacuate had come from the local leadership, there is a surfeit of evidence that the AHC and its local supporters endorsed it ex post facto during the following days, egging on the continuing evacuation. On 25 April, Lippincott, reported: ‘Local Mufti dominated Arab leaders urge all Arabs leave city . . .’, and added the following day: ‘Reportedly AHC ordering all Arabs leave.’ 237 British observers concurred. Cunningham on 25 April reported to Creech-Jones: ‘British authorities at Haifa have formed the impression that total evacuation is being urged on the Haifa Arabs from higher Arab quarters and that the townsfolk themselves are against it.’ The Sixth Airborne Division was more explicit: Probable reason for Arab Higher Executive [i.e., AHC] ordering Arabs to evacuate Haifa is to avoid possibility of Haifa Arabs being used as hostages in future operations after May 15. Arabs have also threatened to bomb Haifa from the air."

"Most widespread was a rumour that Arabs remaining in Haifa would be taken as hostages by the Jews in the event of future Arab attacks on other Jewish areas. And an effective piece of propaganda with its implied threat of Arab retribution when the Arabs recapture the town, is that people remaining in Haifa acknowledged tacitly that they believe in the principle of the Jewish State. It is alleged that Victor Khayyat is responsible for these reports

said one British intelligence unit. But for these ‘rumours and propaganda spread by the National Committee members remaining in the town’, many of the Arabs ‘would not have evacuated Haifa’ over 22–28 April, according to the British Army’s 257 and 317 Field Security Section. 239"

The Cities: Haifa: Exodus and reaction

"Haganah intelligence also monitored what was happening: ‘The Arabs in Haifa relate that they have received an order from the AHC to leave Haifa as soon as possible, and not to cooperate with the Jews.’ 242

The present Haifa Arab leadership, while speaking to our people of bringing life back to normal, their practical policy is to do the maximum to speed up the evacuation . . . Higher Arab circles relate that they have received explicit instructions to evacuate the Arabs of Haifa. The reason for this is not clear to us . . . The [Arab] masses explain the order to evacuate Haifa as stemming from [the prospect that] Transjordanian forces intend to commit wholesale massacre. (Artillery, airplanes, and so on). 243

HIS reported that Arab residents were receiving ‘threatening letters’ in which they were ordered to leave; otherwise they would ‘be considered traitors and condemned to death’. 244

HIS periodically described the mechanics of the AHC encouragement of the exodus. On 25 April ‘Hiram’ reported that on the afternoon of 23 (or 24) April, Salomon and Mu‘ammar jointly went to ‘refugees’ in Abbas Street and urged women, children and men aged over 40 ‘to return to their homes’. The refugees were about to return home when Sheikh Murad and another Muslim figure appeared on the scene. Murad, according to HIS, told the refugees:

The Arab Legion has volunteered to give 200 trucks to take the refugees to a safe place outside Haifa, where they will be housed and given food and clothes aplenty and all without payment, and he threatened that if they stayed in Haifa, the Jews would kill them and not spare their women and children.

The crowd changed its mind and many made their way to the evacuation point in the harbour. 245"

"Some 15,000 Arabs probably evacuated Haifa during 21–22 April. Most of them left by sea and land to Acre and Lebanon well before the notables had announced the decision to evacuate. By nightfall, 22 April, there were still some 30,000–40,000 Arabs in the town (the Emergency Committee spoke of ‘37,000’ 247 )...

At the beginning of the mass evacuation, Arab leaders even appealed to the Jewish authorities for help in organising the departure as the British, they complained, were not supplying enough transport. Beilin responded enthusiastically: ‘I said that we would be more than happy to give them all the assistance they require.’ 251

However, Beilin, at this stage, was unrepresentative of the local Jewish leadership that, for the most part, was clearly embarrassed and un- easy about the exodus. Several municipal (and, apparently, Haganah) figures during 22–28 April tried to persuade Arabs to stay. One Jewish officer was reported by HIS to be ‘conducting propaganda among the refugees in the Abbas area not to leave’. 252 Salomon later recalled that on the morning of 23 April, he had gone to Abbas Street and Wadi Nisnas, after receiving ‘instructions . . . to go to the Arab quarters and appeal to the Arabs not to leave’. He did not say who issued the instructions – the Haganah, Shabtai Levy, or someone else – but noted that he was accompanied by ‘a Haganah officer’. Despite warnings from his friends that it was still dangerous, Salomon ‘went from street to street and told the Arabs . . . not to leave. [But] the net result was that during that day and the next few days many Arabs left . . .’ 253 The man who accompanied Salomon may have been Tuvia Lishansky, a senior HIS officer. Lishansky later recalled ‘a feeling of discomfort . . . As soon as we capture a city . . . the Arabs leave it. What will the world say? No doubt they will say – “such are the Jews, Arabs cannot live under their rule”.’ Lishansky recalled trying to persuade the Arabs to stay. 254 These efforts did not go unnoticed. On 25 April, Baghdad Radio reported that ‘the Haganah is trying to persuade [the Arabs] to stay in Haifa’.255 And on 28 April, the British police were still reporting: ‘The Jews are . . . making every effort to persuade the Arab populace to remain and settle back into their normal lives . . .’256

British military intelligence concurred:

The Arab evacuation is now almost complete. The Jews have been making extensive efforts to prevent wholesale evacuation, but their propaganda appears to have had very little effect. [In trying to check the Arab exodus, the Haganah] in several cases [had resorted] to actual intervention . . . Appeals have been made on the [Jewish] radio and in the press, urging Arabs to remain in the town; the Haganah issued a pamphlet along these lines and the Histadrut, in a similar publication, appealed to those Arabs previously members of their organisation [sic], to return. On the whole, [however] Arabs remain indifferent to this propaganda. 257"

"Both the British, including Cunningham, and Lippincott believed, at least initially, that the Jews of Haifa wanted the Arabs to stay mainly for economic reasons. The Jews feared ‘for the economic future of the town’ once its Arab working class had departed, reported the High Commissioner. 261 More explicitly, Lippincott wrote that unless the Jews succeeded in persuading the Arabs to stay or return, ‘acute labour shortage will occur’. 262 (The Jews also wanted the Arabs to stay ‘for political reasons, to show democratic treatment’, thought Lippincott. 263 ) British units reported that ‘the Jews are being forced to man the factories and places of essential work with their own people where Arabs worked before and this is proving most unsatisfactory for them as Arab labour was much cheaper’.264"

"But the Haganah was not averse to seeing the Arabs evacuate...Carmel’s commanders were keenly aware that an exodus would solve the brigade’s main problem – how to secure Jewish Haifa with very limited forces against attack by forces from outside the town while having to deploy a large number of troops inside to guard against insurrection by a large, potentially hostile Arab population. 267"

"But the situation in Haifa between 23 April and early May was confused and complex... Initial Jewish attitudes towards the Arab evacuation changed within days; and what Jewish liaison officers told their British contacts did not always conform with the realities on the ground or with those quickly changing attitudes. The local Jewish civilian leadership initially sincerely wanted the Arabs to stay (and made a point of letting the British see this). But the offensive of 21–22 April had delivered the Arab neighbourhoods into Haganah hands, relegating the civil leaders to the sidelines and for almost a fortnight rendering them relatively ineffectual in all that concerned the treatment of the Arab population. At the same time, the attitude of some of these local leaders radically changed as they took stock of the historic opportunity afforded by the exodus – to turn Haifa permanently into a Jewish city. As one knowledgeable Jewish observer put it a month later, ‘a different wind [began to] blow. It was good without Arabs, it was easier. Everything changed within a week.’ 269 At the same time, the Haganah commanders from the first understood that an Arab evacuation would greatly ease their strategic situation and workload."

"In Haifa, for days, the civilian authorities were saying one thing and the Haganah was doing something quite different. Moreover, Haganah units in the field acted inconsistently and in a manner often unintelligible to the Arab population. The Arabs, who had coexisted with Jewish civilians for decades, were unaccustomed to Jewish military behaviour or rule, which was only lifted on 3 May. 276 The Arabs did not grasp the essential powerlessness of the civilian authorities during the previous fortnight"

"Carmeli reported that he was continuing to promote evacuation by ‘reducing’ the bread ration issued by the warehouses under his control (while profiting from this). 280"

"By 27–28 April, there was a substantial improvement in conditions in the Arab quarters. Most of those still in the city had been allowed to return to their homes, although martial law remained in force. They needed special travel passes, obtainable only after a long wait in a queue and close questioning, to move from neighbourhood to neighbourhood. There was no electricity in most Arab areas (and, hence, Arabs could not hear radio), no Arabic newspapers, no buses, and Arabs were not allowed to drive cars – the Haganah arguing that the IZL might confiscate them. Arrests and house searches were common."

"On 28 April, the Histadrut published an appeal, in Hebrew and Arabic, to Haifa’s Arabs to resume the coexistence with the Jews and stay:

Do not destroy your homes . . . and lose your sources of income and bring upon yourselves disaster by evacuation . . . The Haifa Workers Council and the Histadrut advise you, for your own good, to stay . . . and return to your regular work. 282

But most Arabs were not responding. British police reported long queues waiting in the harbour for places on boats to Acre: ‘Some families have lived and sleep on the quaysides for several days waiting a chance to get away.’ 283 But in the days following the resumption of civilian rule, the situation did not much improve. The Committee for Arab Property and Golda Meir, the acting head of the JA-PD, appointed a local committee of Jews to care for the remaining Arabs and look after Arab property. A joint meeting of Meir, the Committee for Arab Property and the newly appointed local committee resolved ‘to treat the remaining Arab inhabitants as citizens with equal rights’. The local committee spawned a host of well-meaning sub-committees (‘Committee for Prisoners and Detainees’, ‘Committee for Supervision of Holy Places’, and others). 284

But nothing seems to have changed. Carmeli reported at the end of the first week of May:

The Arabs of Haifa are in despair. No one knows what to do. Most of the Christians are waiting for the government salaries and think of leaving. Anyone staying is regarded as a traitor. In town, sanitary conditions are terrible. Most of the houses have been broken into and robbed. There are still corpses [lying about] . . ."

"But were Haganah actions, over 23 April – early May, motivated by a calculated aim to egg on the evacuation? At the level of Carmeli head- quarters, no orders, as far as we know, were ever issued to the troops to act in a manner that would precipitate flight. Rather the contrary. Strict, if somewhat belated, orders were issued forbidding looting, and leaflets calling on the Arabs to remain calm and return to work – if not explicitly to stay in the city – were distributed. 288 But if this was official policy, there was certainly also an undercurrent of expulsive thinking, akin to the IZL approach. Many in the Haganah cannot but have been struck by the thought that the exodus was ‘good for the Jews’ and must be encouraged. A trace of such thinking in Carmeli headquarters can be discerned in Yosef Weitz’s diary entries for 22–24 April, which he spent in Haifa. ‘I think that this [flight prone] state of mind [among the Arabs] should be exploited, and [we should] press the other inhabitants not to surrender [but to leave]. We must establish our state’, he jotted down on 22 April. On 24 April, he went to see Carmel’s adjutant, who informed him that the nearby Arab villages of Balad ash Sheikh and Yajur were being evacuated by their inhabitants and that Acre had been ‘shaken’. ‘I was happy to hear from him that this line was being adopted by the [Haganah] command, [that is] to frighten the Arabs so long as flight-inducing fear was upon them.’289 There was a dovetailing here of Jewish interests, as perceived by Weitz and likeminded Yishuv figures, with the wishes of the local Arab leaders and the AHC, who believed that the exodus from the city would serve the Palestinian cause (or, at least, that the non-departure of the inhabitants would serve the Zionist cause). Weitz, it appears, had struck a responsive chord in Carmeli headquarters. It made simple military as well as political sense: Haifa without Arabs was more easily defended and less problematic than Haifa with a large minority."

"The memorandum’s authors argued for urgency both because such an opportunity ‘might not recur in our time’ and because it would be cheaper, in terms of expected compensation suits, to carry out the demolitions swiftly: ‘One may assume as well that for lack of evidence, not many suits for compensation will be launched.’ The detailed list of buildings earmarked for destruction included 46 ‘small houses’ in the Vardiya neighbourhood, which endangered Jewish traffic and health (lack of sewage)

...On 16 June, Ben-Gurion met with Uriel Friedland, a factory manager and senior Haifa Haganah officer, and urged that the project be taken in hand ‘immediately with the [final] British evacuation’. 321 IDF Planning Branch immediately ordered the start of the demolitions – to insure a convenient and safe route . . . between Hadar Hacarmel and the industrial part [of the city] and the krayot [i.e., the northern suburbs], to safeguard the route to the harbour, and to reduce the manpower needed now for guard duty in the city.322

...Meanwhile, Levy was brought around, persuaded by Interior Minister Gruenbaum of the necessity, and benefit of the operation – designated by the IDF ‘Operation Shikmona’. And his mind was laid to rest on the compensation issue; Gruenbaum explained that the operation was military rather than civilian, so compensation was not required by law. 325"

The Cities: Jaffa

"Through the civil war, the Haganah believed that there was no need to frontally assault Jaffa. While firing from the town occasionally disturbed south Tel Aviv, it posed no strategic threat. The Haganah felt that the inhabitants’ sense of isolation and the realities of siege would eventually bring it to its knees; it would fall like a ripe plum the moment the British withdrew. Plan D did not call for the conquest of Jaffa but rather for penning in its population and conquering its suburbs of Manshiya, Abu Kabir and Tel al Rish.330 The Haganah planners failed completely to anticipate, let alone plan for, the exodus of the population.

But the Haganah was not to have the decisive say. Since the start of April, when the Haganah went over to the offensive, the IZL had been looking for a major objective, partly to demonstrate that the Haganah was not the Yishuv’s only effective military force. "

"Writing shortly after the battle, Begin claimed that the mortar- men were ordered to avoid hitting ‘hospitals, religious sites’ and consulates.340 But as the IZL’s fire control and ranging were at best amateur, even if restrictions had been imposed, they would have been meaningless. In any case, the objectives of the three-day barrage, in which 20 tons of ordnance were delivered, were clear: ‘To prevent constant military traffic in the city, to break the spirit of the enemy troops, [and] to cause chaos among the civilian population in order to create a mass flight’, is how Amihai Paglin, the IZL head of operations, put it in his pre-attack briefing. The mortars were aimed roughly at ‘the port area, the Clock Square, the prison, King George Boulevard and ‘Ajami’.341 Cunningham wrote a few days later: ‘It should be made clear that IZL attack with mortars was indiscriminate and designed to create panic among the civilian inhabitants.’ 342 And, indeed, most of the casualties were civilians, according to Haganah intelligence. 343 "

"At the end of April, Shertok, in an address to the UN General Assembly, charged that in both Tiberias and Jaffa ‘the mass evacuation had been dictated by Arab commanders as a political and military demonstration . . . The Arab command ordered the people to leave.’ With regard to Jaffa, there is little evidence for this assertion; 353 rather, an obverse process seems to have occurred. The shelling ‘had produced results beyond expectation’. It had ‘caused dread and fear among the inhabitants’, precipitating flight.354"

"The IZL assault on Jaffa, following hard upon the fall of Arab Haifa, had placed the British in a difficult position, eventually sparking a mi- nor crisis in Whitehall. Arab leaders in Palestine and outside blamed the British for what had happened in Haifa: they claimed that Stock- well had conspired with the Haganah, or at least had played into Jewish hands, by his sudden redeployment of troops out of the city centre; that he had prevented the entry of Arab reinforcements; that he had failed to halt the Haganah offensive, which, the Arabs alleged, had included ‘massacres’; and that he had promoted the truce, which was effectively a surrender. In general, the Arabs argued that Britain was officially and legally in control of Palestine until 15 May and should have acted accordingly. 356

Cunningham, Stockwell and the War Office rejected the charges. As the War Office succinctly put it:

After defeat at Haifa[,] in order to excuse their own ineptitude, Arab leaders accused us of helping Jews and hindering Arabs although it was actually due to inefficient and cowardly behaviour of Arab Military Leaders and their refusal to follow our advice and to restrain themselves. Consequently[,] Anglo-Arab relations have considerably deteriorated. 357

This deterioration, which took place against the backdrop of the impending withdrawal from Palestine, was acutely felt in Whitehall, and led directly to a clash between Bevin and the army chiefs and to British intervention in the battle for Jaffa. The Foreign Office felt that the Haifa episode had undermined Britain’s position throughout the Arab world. On the evening of 22 April, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), Field Marshal Montogmery, was summoned to 10 Downing Street, where he was apparently forced to admit that he had not been kept posted by his generals about events in Haifa. Bevin ‘became very worked up; he said 23,000 [sic] Arabs had been killed and the situation was catastrophic’. Montgomery said he would try to ascertain what was happening. 358

The Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, Bevin and Montgomery reconvened the following morning at 10 Downing Street, with Bevin, according to the Field Marshal, ‘even more agitated’. Bevin thought the army should have stopped the Haganah: ‘The massacre of the Arabs had put him in an impossible position with all the Arab states.’ Bevin concluded his attack by saying that ‘he had been let down by the Army’. 35"

"Whitehall squabbling aside, the chief upshot of Haifa was to be forceful British intervention in Jaffa. Its aim was to ‘compensate’ for Britain’s alleged role in Haifa and to restore the prestige and goodwill lost in the Arab world. When the first news of the IZL attack reached London, Bevin ‘got very excited . . . and [instructed] the CIGS . . . to . . . see to it that the Jews did not manage to occupy Jaffa or, if they did, were immediately turned out’. Such was Bevin’s fear of a re-enactment of Haifa that he had bypassed normal channels (the Defence Minister and High Commissioner) in trying to get the army to act. 361 On 27 April, the British military – who had no direct lines to the IZL – informed Tel Aviv Mayor Yisrael Rokah and the HIS that they intended to ‘save Jaffa for the Arabs at all costs, especially in the light of the fact that the Jews had conquered Haifa’. 362

The following day, the British went into action. Some 4,500 troops, with tanks, moved into the city; Spitfires swooped overhead and fired some bursts; warships anchored in Jaffa harbour; and British mortars shelled IZL positions. In tripartite negotiations between Britain, the Haganah and the IZL, the British demanded the IZL’s withdrawal from Manshiya. On 30 April, agreement was reached, the IZL withdrew – after blowing up the local police fort – and British troops were left in control of the city. Haganah intelligence reported that the IZL had left behind ‘badly mutilated . . . Arab corpses’ 363 and that the British were looting the abandoned houses.364"

"One reason the British were unsuccessful was Mivtza Hametz (Operation Hametz), the Haganah’s offensive during 28–30 April against a cluster of villages just east of Jaffa...the fall of these villages further undermined the morale of the 15,000–25,000 inhabitants still left in the town; 375 it was completely cut off and any possibility of Arab military relief had vanished. The rural hinterland that had supplied the town’s food was no more. 376"

"By 8 May, Jaffa was almost a ghost town, with convoys of evacuees departing daily, its streets dominated by British soldiers and looting militia gangs. Bands of robbers pillaged the town’s warehouses, often after bribing British guards. 382 Only some 5,000 inhabitants remained, many of them ‘ill, poor, handicapped and old’. 383 Kiryati’s intelligence officer provided a concise portrait of the dying city:

In Jaffa – complete anarchy and collapse. The mayor [Heikal] has fled the city. All the municipal departments, banks and the government hospital have shut down . . . The court buildings are being evacuated. The postal offices have been occupied by the British Army. The robbery and looting continue. Armed irregulars – apparently Iraqis – break into shops and steal food from the port area. [British] soldiers too appear to be taking part in the robbery. Food and fuel supplies are disastrous. 384

Cunningham wrote that ‘nearly all councillors and members of National Committee have fled’. The remaining notables apparently hoped that the Jews would take over and restore order – but were afraid to say so publicly. 385 Nimr al Khatib wrote that the ALA contingent, headed by Michel al Issa, which arrived at the end of April, ‘acted as if the town was theirs, and began to rob people and loot their houses. People’s lives became worthless and women’s honour was defiled. This prompted many inhabitants to leave . . .’ 386 Cunningham concluded that ‘Jaffa is the fruit of the premature military action against which the Arab Governments have been repeatedly warned and that further premature action on their part will only add to the sufferings of the Arabs of Palestine . . .’.387"

"On 12 May, the members of the ‘Jaffa Arab Emergency Committee’ – Amin Andraus, Salah al Nazer and Ahmad Abu Laban – crossed into Tel Aviv and met Kiryati officers to smooth the way for the Jewish takeover and discuss terms... In the ‘Agreement’ that was signed, Ben-Gal committed the Haganah to abide by ‘the Geneva Convention and all International Laws and Usages of War’; the Arab signatories endorsed the ‘instructions’ the brigadier was about to issue. The ‘Instructions to the Arab Population by the Commander of the Haganah, Tel Aviv District, given on 13th May 1948’ included the handover of all arms and the punishment of those not complying, the screening of all adult males, and the internment of ‘criminals or persons suspected of being a danger to the peace’. Lastly, Ben-Gal stated that adult males wishing to return would be individually screened, implying that women and children could return to Jaffa without such screening. 392"

"On 13 May, Kiryati issued the operational order for ‘Operation Dror’ 393 and on 14 May Haganah units, accompanied by token IZL forces, occupied Jaffa in an orderly, uncontested deployment. Kiryati issued a special ‘order of the day’: ‘Jaffa is almost empty of inhabitants. We have promised to allow the inhabitants to live peacefully, with respect, and each of us must abide by this promise.’ 394 Yitzhak Chizik was appointed military governor. On 18 May, Ben-Gurion visited the town and commented: ‘I couldn’t understand: Why did the inhabitants . . . leave?’ 395

Chizik did his best to protect the population – a quick census registered some 4,100 inhabitants – from the occupying troops: He stationed guards outside public buildings, organised Military Police patrols, and ordered homes and businesses that had been checked to be secured against looters and vandals. But the following days saw a great deal of unpleasantness, and some brutal behaviour, vis- ´a-vis the occupied population, which was arbitrarily pushed about, screened, and concentrated in one or two areas behind barbed wire fences, and its property vandalised, looted and robbed. Troops briefly used inhabitants for forced, unpaid labour. 396

On 25 May, 15 Arab men were found dead in the Jibalya neighbourhood, near the waterfront: All had been shot and four had on them ID cards issued by the Military Governor’s office, indicating that they – and probably all 15 – had been killed after the Haganah had occupied the town. Three doctors who examined the bodies two days later determined that they had been shot a week or so before. 397 On 14 or 15 May, a 12-year-old girl was raped by two Haganah soldiers; 398 there were also a number of attempted rapes. There was widespread institutional and private looting by Haganah and IZL troops and Tel Aviv citizens who infiltrated the town, there was robbery on the roads by patrolling Jewish troops (with ‘watches, rings, cash, etc.’ taken) and there was widespread vandalisation of property. In general, the inhabitants complained, they were ‘being incessantly molested’. 399 The looting was so bad that Chizik appealed directly to Ben-Gurion, who on 22 May ordered the IZL and the Haganah to obey Chizik’s instructions. 400 A senior Kiryati officer, Zvi Aurbach, made a point of washing his hands of any responsibility for property in Jaffa.401 On 25 May, one official reported: ‘During the whole day I walked about the streets . . . I saw soldiers, civilians, military police, battalion police, looting, robbing, while breaking through doors and walls . . .’402

...A month earlier, a senior IDF officer – possibly Ben-Gal – had told the Red Cross that he was aware of all the ‘incidents’ that had occurred, including the rape, and assured him that those responsible had been put on trial. He added that this was his fourth war and that conditions in Jaffa, compared to the terrible things he had seen elsewhere, were ‘like paradise’. 405 But few if any trials had actually occurred. On 21 June Chizik complained that ‘despite the many cases of soldiers being caught stealing . . . I have not yet received a single report showing a verdict against any of the perpetrators’. Chizik, clearly, believed that no one had actually been punished. 406"

The Small Towns: Safad

"On 16 April, the British evacuated Safad and on 28 April, nearby Rosh Pina. On 21 April, three days after the exodus from Tiberias, Palmah OC Allon flew in to review the situation. The following day he recommended to Yadin and Galili launching a series of operations, in line with Plan D, that would brace the area for the expected Arab invasion. He recommended ‘the harassment of Beit Shean [i.e., Beisan] in order to increase the flight from it . . . [and] the harassment of Arab Safad in order to speed up its evacuation.’ Both were sensitive border towns – Beisan was five kilometres from Jordan and Safad 12 kilometres from Syria – and Allon did not want to leave Palestinian population centres immediately behind what would be HIS front lines. 410"

"The minister’s cable elicited from London a response similar to that following the IZL attack on Jaffa. Colonial Secretary Creech-Jones, presumably after consulting with Bevin, authorised Cunningham to intervene militarily to prevent a Jewish victory:

The Arab states are clearly most concerned at the possibility of an Arab disaster and it is of the greatest importance to our relations with them to avoid anything of this kind. Such a disaster would almost certainly involve the entry of forces of Arab states into Palestine before the end of the Mandate. If you would in your judgement warrant it[,] you and the G.O.C. are authorised to use all practical means including air action to restore the situation.’ 437

But the Haganah attack failed and the British did not intervene."

"It was later reported that some of the commanders had ‘advised’ the inhabitants to flee. 443 The Palmah ‘intentionally left open the exit routes for the population to “facilitate” their exodus . . . The 12,000 refugees (some estimate 15,000) . . . were a heavy burden on the Arab war effort’, recalled Allon.444 reinforcements made its way to Safad – and met the stream of departing inhabitants, ‘loaded down with parcels, women carrying their children in their arms, some going by foot, others on ass and donkey-back’. The en- counter surely did little for the troops’ morale – and most reportedly fled Safad hours after arriving. 445 The Haganah also apparently dropped a handful of makeshift bombs from reconnaissance aircraft and fired some mortar rounds at or near the columns of refugees to speed them on their way.446"

"A major cause of the collapse of Arab resistance and the exodus was the absence and\or flight of militia commanders. On 11 May, fleeing irregulars complained of ‘the treachery of their commanders who fled at the start of the battle’. 449"

"The Palmah troops scouring the abandoned quarters found about 100 Muslims, ‘with an average age of 80’, according to Safad’s newly ap- pointed military governor, Avraham Hanochi, of Kibbutz Ayelet Hashahar. They were expelled to Lebanon later that month. 452 Only 34–36 Christian Arabs remained. Distancing themselves from the ‘the Arabs who had migrated’, they pleaded to stay on, under Jewish rule 453 and, initially, refused to budge.454 HIS saw them as an intelligence risk and recommended their transfer to Haifa. 455 On 13 June, this last remnant of the Arab community was shipped to Haifa and deposited in two convents – Les Filles de la Charit ´e de la Sacr ´e Cour and Les Dames de Nazareth – with the Arab Affairs Committee of Haifa providing some of the maintenance costs. The matter caused a bureaucratic wrangle, with the Foreign Ministry demanding that the IDF allow them back to Safad ‘to improve our relations with our minorities’. The ministry was also worried about the effect that the eviction might have on relations with the churches. But the army refused.456 Shertok, uncharacteristically, persisted. His stand, as conveyed by his aide-de-camp Yehoshafat Harkabi, was that while Israel absolutely refused ‘to accept back Arab refugees from outside Israel, we must behave towards the Arabs inside the country with greater moderation. Through this will be tested our ability to govern the Arab minority.’ Shertok, supported by the Minority Affairs Ministry, demanded that at least some of the Christians be allowed back. 457 But, against the backdrop of the start of the settlement of new Jewish immigrants in the abandoned quarters, the army rejected the request. The Safad group remained in Haifa, welfare cases maintained by the municipality, local Arabs and the Haifa convents. Of this group three were in their eighties and six in their seventies. By spring 1949, three had died, five were hospitalised and two women had become demented, according to Marriott.458"

The Small Towns: Beit Shean

"On the night of 10\11 May, Golani units occupied Beisan’s two main satellite villages, Farwana and al Ashrafiya, the inhabitants fleeing to Jordan as the troops approached. Haganah sappers began to blow up the houses. The following night, Golani units mortared Beisan and stormed Tel al Husn, a hill dominating the town from the north. Faruqi appears to have fled that night, taking with him P£9,000 of tax revenues. 469 During the fight for Tel al Husn, a Haganah officer telephoned the Beisan militia HQ and ‘advised’ surrender. A militia officer responded defiantly. But following the hill’s fall, the Arabs repeatedly pleaded with the Haganah for a ceasefire. The Haganah agreed and at a meeting on the morning of 12 May, presented terms – surrender of weapons and expulsion of foreign irregulars.470 The Arabs apparently were ‘told that any inhabitant wishing to stay . . . could do so’; 471 those wishing to leave were offered safe passage. The notables – Hanna Nimri, Hashim al Solh and Mayor Rashad Darwish – said they had to obtain agreement from the HQ in Nablus (or Jenin) and a delegation left for the Triangle. Meanwhile, the ALA troops and most of the inhabitants fled, mainly to Jordan. The notables announced the town’s surrender and Israeli troops moved in the next day.472

Some 1,000–1,200 inhabitants initially remained, 473 much to Weitz’s chagrin.474 The Haganah provided them with water and food. 475 Martial law and a curfew were imposed, arms were collected, and a committee of local Jewish settlers was appointed to oversee property and life in the town. Shmuel Govrin, of Kibbutz Kfar Ruppin, was appointed civilian governor. An Arab police force was appointed.476

But the presence of this concentration of Arabs just behind the lines and the constant coming and going of Beisan residents and former residents – who plundered the abandoned houses – troubled Haganah commanders. They sought and obtained authority, probably from HGS, to expel the remaining inhabitants. ‘There was a danger that the in- habitants would revolt in the rear, when they felt a change in the military situation in favour of the [Arab] invaders, [so within days] an order was given to evict the inhabitants from the city’. Most were apparently expelled around 15 May across the Jordan. 477

Govrin later recalled:

. . . I received an order to clear the town of Arabs, we went from house to house and we told the [townspeople] with loudhailers that they had to leave by the following morning. They were very frightened. There were no vehicles there and I had to order them to go by foot to the Sheikh Hussein Bridge, and to throw them across. It was hard seeing the old people with the bundles, the women and the children. A difficult eviction– not brutal, but difficult . . . I gave them food. The last to leave was a priest . . . Suddenly the town had emptied, had turned into a ghost town surrounded by mines. 478

An HIS-AD agent, ‘Giora’, visited Beisan on 18 May and reported the town ‘completely empty’, but for some 300 persons, many of them Muslims. Jewish inspectors had pinned yellow tags on shop doors to signify that they had been checked; Arab inspectors wandered around with yellow armbands. ‘Giora’ commented that both reminded him of the ‘mark of shame’ which he ‘wished to avoid’. But the officer was pleasantly received by the local Qadi and Mayor Rashad, who both praised the governor’s behaviour. But Rashad appeared ‘very depressed’, ‘Giora’ commented. 479 On 28 May the remaining inhabitants were given the choice of transfer to Jordan or Nazareth (at the time also outside Jewish territory). The majority, perhaps Christians, preferred Nazareth, to which the IDF trucked them the same day. 480 Beisan had reverted to being Beit Shean.

To keep it Jewish, the Haganah began systematically to mine the approaches and alleyways, to prevent infiltration back. On 10 June, a Haganah commander reported that on the previous night marauding Arabs (and dogs and donkeys) had set off no less than 11 mines, with a commensurate loss of life and injuries. 481 The returning exiles, who also torched and vandalised buildings, 482 were motivated by hunger and poverty.483"

The Small Towns: Acre

"As in Haifa, most members of the NC, including the mayor, Hussein Halifi, had opposed attacks on Jewish neighbours or traffic, fearing reprisals. But local and foreign irregulars flouted him. 487 On 20 January, members of the NC visited al Sumeiriya, to the north, and cautioned the villagers not to clash with their neighbours, Regba and Shavei Zion, arguing that the Jews could cut the Acre–Lebanon road. 488 Halifi asked the British police to mediate a local ceasefire. 489 But Jewish ambushes outside Acre eventually triggered retaliation by militiamen, in which a Jewish driver was killed. The cycle of violence resulted in the departure from town of ‘several families’. 490 In the second half of March, Haganah forces effectively isolated Acre by blowing up a series of bridges, preventing people from going to work and causing an increase in crimes against property.491 HIS reported that there was no flour to be had, until a large shipment arrived on 8 April. But there were plenty of meat and vegetables.492 The NC again sought a truce. 493"

"The fall of Haifa and its repercussions prompted the British to seek to prevent the fall of Acre (as of Jaffa) before their scheduled pullout. At the end of April, the British repeatedly intervened to frustrate Jewish attacks on the town. But the exodus to Lebanon continued. "

"A further precipitant to flight was the outbreak of typhoid (possibly caused, directly or indirectly, by Haganah actions, which forced the inhabitants to dig unsanitary wells). 502 At the end of April, British observers had predicted an outbreak of disease in the overcrowded town.503 Cunningham feared ‘a very large number of cases’ of typhoid. Indeed, in early May conditions were such that many refugees wanted to return to Haifa, but were being prevented, according to the British, by ‘strong [anti-return Arab] propaganda’. At the same time, Cunningham, the Haganah and the Haifa civil authorities thought such a return from Acre ‘inadvisable’ precisely because of fear of an epidemic. 504 But the outbreak was contained. HIS estimated that ‘the panic that arose following the rumours of the spread of the epidemic’ was more important in generating flight than the cases themselves.505"

"During the First Truce (11 June), the front between the Haganah/IDF and the ALA stretched along a line 7–10 kilometres to the east of Acre. As the truce neared its end and renewed hostilities loomed, IDF Northern Front sought to evict the inhabitants of Acre, either to Jaffa or across the border. The IDF did not want a large Arab civilian concentration just behind its lines and lacked the manpower to oversee and provide for the inhabitants. The army asked the Foreign Ministry’s opinion. Ya‘akov Shimoni, acting head of the Middle East Department, turned to Foreign Minister Shertok. Shertok, recorded Shimoni, ‘had no objection in principle to the transfer of [Acre’s] Arab inhabitants to another place (Jaffa), in order to free our soldiers . . .’. But who would care for them? Shimoni approached Shitrit. 527 Shitrit was upset: This was the first he had heard of a possible eviction of Acre’s inhabitants – and, after all, they were part of his ‘constituency’. Indeed, there was a standing IDF-GS order (of 6 July, see below), he informed Shimoni, that no inhabitants

were to be uprooted . . . without a written order from the Defence Minister . . . So long as the Defence Minister has not . . . issued a written order, the local army authorities must not evacuate a complete town and cause suffering, wandering and upset to women, children and the old.

The population could not be evicted. Nor, he added, could Jaffa serve as a dumping ground for transferees. And his ministry could not care for their maintenance. Lastly, Jaffa’s empty houses were needed for resettling Jews. 528

And Shitrit did not limit himself to argumentation; he sought and obtained the powerful support of Finance Minister Kaplan. Kaplan called the eviction proposal ‘strange’. 529 Shitrit had made a stand and, in effect, dared Ben-Gurion to issue an explicit transfer order. Ben-Gurion backed down and shelved the idea. It is worth noting that throughout 1948, Ben-Gurion had always avoided personally issuing explicit expulsion or transfer orders."

Operation Nahshon

"During December 1947 – March 1948, irregulars and militiamen from the villages dominating the eastern half of the Tel Aviv – Jerusalem road (including Deir Muheisin, Beit Mahsir, Suba, al Qastal and Qaluniya) had intermittently attacked Jewish traffic to and from Jerusalem. By late March, Jewish Jerusalem, despite occasional British intervention, was under siege, its 100,000 inhabitants sorely pressed for food, fuel and munitions.

On the night of 31 March – 1 April, Ben-Gurion and the HGS decided that the Haganah’s first priority was to relieve the pressure on Jerusalem. Representatives of Jerusalem’s Jews had appealed to the JA for ‘real action’. The community was ‘already hungry and if, heaven forbid, their morale should break there was a danger of a general collapse of the Haganah front line’. 531 At Ben-Gurion’s insistence, a force of 1,500 troops was mobilised for the largest Jewish offensive to date. The objective was to push several large convoys through to Jerusalem. Strategically speaking, as a senior Haganah officer later put it, Nahshon marked the transitional stage between the prior, defensive, ‘policing’ approach of safeguarding Jewish convoys by manning them with guards and the ‘military’ approach of protecting the convoys by conquering and holding the routes themselves and the heights dominating them. 532"

"Yadin, OC Haganah\Operations, was empowered to instruct the Nahshon troops ‘to try so far as possible to take up positions near villages and not to conquer them. If no such possibility exists – then conquer them.’ 537 Yadin was still perturbed by the notion of conquering villages and queried his political masters. Galili responded:

1) If securing the Jerusalem road requires that our units take control of villages whose inhabitants have abandoned them – it must be done.
2) Regarding villages not abandoned by their inhabitants and that securing the road requires that they be isolated and surrounded and intimidated by our units – it should be done.

If the British Army intervened and ordered the Haganah to evacuate villages, the Haganah should use delaying tactics – but ultimately, it must comply. 538 Underlying these equivocations was fear of British intervention."

"Operation Nahshon began, in effect, with the Palmah Fourth Battalion’s unopposed conquest of al Qastal on the night of 2\3 April. The village, which dominated the approach to Jerusalem, had for weeks been involved in hostilities. On 16 March it was raided by Palmah troops. On 1 April, militiamen attacked Jewish positions around Motza. Haganah counter-fire and fear of assault resulted in the flight that night of almost all of Qastal’s inhabitants. The Haganah feared that foreign irregulars would occupy the village, so Palmah troops moved in in the early hours of 3 April.539 The troops were instructed that ‘if there is no opposition, do not to blow up the village’s houses’. This conformed to the Plan D guide- line not to destroy villages that offered no resistance. The commander at the site appealed against the order, saying that leaving the houses intact made ‘the defence of the place difficult’. 540 But permission to raze the village was not granted; the local Palmah company commander, Uri Ben-Ari, was subsequently to define the non-demolition of the village as ‘a decisive mistake’.541 And, indeed, on 8 April, the site was retaken by Arab irregulars following repeated assaults; among the dozens of Arabs killed was ‘Abd al Qadir al Husseini, the Palestinian Jerusalem District OC, who was shot while walking toward a Palmah-held house during a lull in the fighting. 542 The ‘mistake’ – of not demolishing Qastal after its initial conquest – was rectified on 9 April, after the village fell to a renewed Palmah attack: ‘The blowing up of all the houses not needed for defence of the site was immediately begun’, reported the commander. 543

The lesson of Qastal was extended to other sites. On 11 April Palmah units conquered neighbouring Qaluniya, whose inhabitants had fled on 2 April. The village was held by foreign irregulars. The attackers were ordered to kill everyone they found and to blow up the village. Some Arabs may have died in the attack; others, it would appear, possibly including two Egyptians, an Iraqi and an Englishman (identified by the Palmah as ‘Taylor?’) found at the site, were captured and executed. Haganah units spent that day and the next blowing up the village."

"On 6 April – the official start of Nahshon – Khulda and Deir Muheisin fell to Haganah forces. After the battles for Qastal, the hesitancy regarding the fate of the villages gave way to a growingly definite resolution, with an appropriate shift in the terminology employed. By 10 April, Haganah orders explicitly called for the ‘liquidation’ [hisul] of villages. 546 By 14 April, Operation Nahshon HQ, within the context of ‘cleansing [tihur]’ operations, generally ordered ‘the continuation of intimidation and cleansing activities as a first stage in operations [geared to] the destruction and conquest of enemy forces and bases [i.e., villages]’."

"Operation Nahshon was a strategic watershed, characterised by an intention and effort to clear a whole area, permanently, of hostile or potentially hostile villages. The destruction of the Jerusalem Corridor villages both symbolized and finalized the change in Haganah strategy. The change was epitomised in the successive orders regarding Qastal: The Etzioni Brigade order, of 2 April, not to destroy the village if there was no resistance, was superceded by the orders of 8–10 to level the village (and neighbouring Qaluniya). In practice, the Plan D provision to leave intact non-resisting villages was superceded by the decision to destroy villages in strategic areas or along crucial routes regardless of whether or not they were resisting. The Qastal episode had powerfully and expensively demonstrated why the harsher course had to be adopted; intact villages could quickly revert to becoming Arab bases. Initially, the architects of Nahshon, mindful of possible British intervention, had thought of securing the road by occupying positions on dominant hillsides and in abandoned villages and by positioning am- bushes near villages from which militia bands might strike. But mid-way through the operation, HGS and Nahshon HQ changed strategy, ordering the occupation and destruction of villages that were or might represent a threat to the convoys. Indeed, from 9–10 April onwards, the emphasis of Nahshon HQ orders was on levelling villages. Levelling villages, of course, assumed the evacuation or expulsion of their inhabitants – and assured that they, and irregulars, would have nowhere to return to.

The strategic change represented by the evolving nature of the Operation Nahshon orders had a wider significance. If, at the start of the war, the Yishuv had been (reluctantly) willing to countenance a Jewish State with a large, peaceful Arab minority, by April the Haganah’s thinking had radically changed: The toll on Jewish life and security in the battle of
the roads and the dire prospect of pan-Arab invasion had left the Yishuv with very narrow margins of safety. It could not afford to leave pockets of actively or potentially hostile Arabs behind its lines. This was certainly true regarding vital roads and areas such as the Jerusalem Corridor. No comprehensive expulsion directive was ever issued; no hard and fast orders went out to front, brigade and battalion commanders to expel ‘the Arabs’ or level ‘the Arab villages’. But the demographic by-product and implications of the implementation of Plan D were understood and accepted by the majority of Haganah commanders at this juncture, when the Yishuv faced, and knew it faced, a life and death struggle. The gloves had to be, and were, taken off. The process of taking off the gloves is embodied in the shift in Nahshon orders from hesitancy (3–6 April) to village levelling, expulsive resolve (8–15 April).

Operation Nahshon was partially successful. It briefly opened the Tel Aviv – Jerusalem road and enabled the Haganah to push through three large supply convoys to the besieged city. But the hills and some villages were quickly reinvested by irregulars and the door to Jerusalem once again slammed shut. So Nahshon was followed, in the second half of April and in May, by operations Harel, Yevussi and Maccabi, all aimed at re-securing and widening the Jewish-held corridor and wresting from Arab control further areas in and around Jerusalem."

Deir Yassin

"The attackers encountered unexpectedly strong resistance and, being relatively inexperienced, suffered four dead and several dozen wounded before pacifying the village after a full day of fighting. The units had advanced from house to house, lobbing grenades and spraying the interiors with fire, in the routine procedure of house-to- house combat.558 They blew up several houses with explosives. 559 The attackers shot down individuals and families as they left their homes and fled down alleyways. 560 They apparently also rounded up villagers, who included militiamen and unarmed civilians of both sexes, and murdered them, and executed prisoners in a nearby quarry. On 12 April, HIS OC in Jerusalem, Yitzhak Levy, reported:

The conquest of the village was carried out with great cruelty. Whole families – women, old people, children – were killed . . . Some of the prisoners moved to places of detention, including women and children, were murdered viciously by their captors. 561

The following day he added: ‘LHI members tell of the barbaric behaviour of the IZL toward the prisoners and the dead. They also relate that the IZL men raped a number of Arab girls and murdered them afterward (we don’t know if this is true).’ 562 The HIS operative on the spot, Mordechai Gichon, reported on 10 April:

Their [i.e., the IZL?] commander says that the [initial] order was: To take prisoner the adult males and to send the women and children to Motza. In the afternoon [of 9 April], the order was changed and became to kill all the prisoners . . . The adult males were taken to town in trucks and paraded in the city streets, then taken back to the site and killed with rifle and machine-gun fire. Before they [i.e., other inhabitants] were put on the trucks, the IZL and LHI men . . . took from them all the jewelry and stole their money. The behaviour toward them was especially barbaric [and included] kicks, shoves with rifle butts, spitting and cursing (people from Givat Shaul took part in the torture).

Gichon reported that the HIS’s ‘regular informer’, ‘the mukhtar’s son’, was ‘executed [in front of his mother and sisters] after being taken prisoner’. 563 Meir Pa‘il, a Palmah intelligence officer who claimed to have spent part of the afternoon of 9 April in Deir Yassin as a ‘guest’ of the
LHI, reported on 10 April:

In the quarry near Givat Shaul I saw the five Arabs they had paraded in the streets of the city. They had been murdered and were lying one on top of the other . . . I saw with my own eyes several families [that had been] murdered with their women, children and old people, their corpses were lying on top of each other . . . The dissidents were going about the village robbing and stealing everything: Chickens, radio sets, sugar, money, gold and more . . . Each dissident walked about the village dirty with blood and proud of the number of persons he had killed. Their lack of education and intelligence as compared to our soldiers [i.e., the Haganah] was apparent . . . In one of the houses at the centre of the village were assem- bled some 200 women and small children. The women sat quietly and didn’t utter a word. When I arrived, the ‘commander’ explained that they intended to kill all of them. [But] in the evening I heard that the women and children had been transported and released in Musrara. 564"

"Altogether about 100–120 villagers died that day. 566 The IZL and LHI troops subsequently transported the remaining villagers in trucks in a victory parade through west Jerusalem before dumping them in the Musrara Quarter, outside the Old City walls.567 The weight of the evidence suggests that the dissidents did not go in with the intention of committing a massacre but lost their heads during the protracted combat. But from the first, the IZL’s intention had been to expel the inhabitants."

Deir Yassin Aftermath

"The massacre was immediately condemned by the mainstream Jewish authorities, including the Haganah, 568 the Chief Rabbinate, 569 and the JA; the agency also sent a letter of condemnation, apology and condolence to King Abdullah. 570

News of what had happened immediately reached the Mandate authorities, the Arab states and the West through the survivors who reached east Jerusalem, and Zionist and Red Cross officials. For days and weeks thereafter, the Arab media broadcast the tale of horror and atrocity as a means of rallying public opinion and governments against the Yishuv. 571 Cunningham wrote that ‘the bitterness resulting from the massacre has produced an atmosphere in which local Arabs are little inclined to call off hostilities’. The massacre and the way it was trumpeted in the Arab media added to the pressure on the Arab states’ leaders to aid the embattled Palestinians and hardened their resolve to invade Palestine. The news had aroused great public indignation – which the leaders were unable to ignore. However, the most important immediate effect of the massacre and of the media atrocity campaign that followed was to trigger and promote fear and further panic flight from Palestine’s villages and towns. 572"

"On 14 April, an IZL radio broadcast repeated the message: The sur- rounding villages had been evacuated because of Deir Yassin. ‘In one blow we changed the strategic situation of our capital’, boasted the organisation. 574 A few months later, the LHI declared: ‘Everybody knows that it was Deir Yassin that struck terror into the hearts of the Arab masses and caused their stampede . . .’ 575 Begin, who denied that civilians had been massacred, later recalled that the ‘Arab propaganda’ campaign had sowed fear among the Arabs and ‘the legend was worth half a dozen battalions to the forces of Israel . . . Panic overwhelmed the Arabs of Eretz Yisrael . . . [It] helped us in particular in . . . Tiberias and the conquest of Haifa.’576

IZL leaders may have had an interest, then and later, in exaggerating the panic-generating effects of Deir Yassin, but they were certainly not far off the mark. In the Jerusalem Corridor area, the effect was certainly immediate and profound. Haganah intelligence reported on 14 April that the episode was ‘the talk of the Old City’ and the horrors were being amplified and exaggerated in the Arab retelling. 577 More specifically, HIS reported that ‘fear of Deir Yassin’ had fallen upon the village of al Fureidis, which immediately appealed to the Haifa NC for arms.578"

"The British noted that the Haganah, whether or not involved in Deir Yassin, had ‘profited from it. The violence used so impressed Arabs all over the country that an attack by Haganah on Saris met with no opposition whatsoever.’ 585"

The Battle of Mishmar Ha'emek

"The battle of Mishmar Ha‘emek, over 4–15 April, was initiated by Qawuqji’s ALA. It began as a desperate Jewish defence and turned into a Haganah counteroffensive conforming with Plan D guidelines. The available evidence indicates that here, for the first time, Ben-Gurion explicitly sanctioned the expulsion of Arabs from a whole area of Palestine (though, as we shall see, the expulsion was largely preempted by mass flight sparked by the fighting)."

"On 7 April, the ALA agreed to cease fire for 24 hours and called on the kibbutz to surrender its weapons and submit to Arab rule. During the ceasefire, the kibbutz evacuated its children. 589 At the same time, the Arab commanders – and the British intermediary – demanded that the Jews promise ‘not to take reprisals against local villages’ or traffic. 590 The kibbutz responded that it would not attack the neighbouring villages but could not vouch for Haganah forces outside. In any case, the kibbutz leaders said, they needed to consult Tel Aviv. 591 A few hours later they added: ‘The men of Mishmar [Ha‘emek] have agreed to nothing.’ 592 Meanwhile, on 8 or 9 April, as the HGS hastily began to organise a counteroffensive, a delegation of Mishmar Ha‘emek leaders came to Ben-Gurion and, according to Ben-Gurion,

said that it was imperative to expel the Arabs [in the area] and to burn the villages. For me, the matter was very difficult. [But] they said that they were not sure [the kibbutz could hold out] if the villages remained intact and [if] the Arab inhabitants were not expelled, for they [i.e., the villagers] would [later] attack them and burn mothers and children.

Ben-Gurion related this story in July, within the context of polemics with Mapam, which was accusing him of implementing a policy of expulsion. He charged the Mapam leaders with hypocrisy, arguing that during Mishmar Ha‘emek they had come to realise that ideology (i.e., Jewish–Arab brotherhood) was one thing and strategic necessity another. ‘They faced a cruel reality . . . [and] saw that there was [only] one way and that was to expel the Arab villagers and burn the villages. And they did this. And they were the first to do this.’ 593

In reality, HGS began thinking of destroying the villages around the kibbutz shortly after Qawuqji launched his attack. On 5 April, HGS\Operations instructed the Golani Brigade: ‘You must tell the following villages . . . that we cannot assure their safety and security, and that they must evacuate forthwith.’ Among the four villages named were Abu Shusha, next to Mishmar Ha‘emek, and Daliyat al Ruha and Rihaniya, 4–5 kilometres to the west-northwest. 594

Ben-Gurion and HGS decided to reject the ALA proposal, to mount a comprehensive counterattack, and to drive the ALA and the Arab inhabitants out of the area and level their villages, permanently removing the threat to Mishmar Ha‘emek and denying an invading force from Jenin easy passage to Haifa. "

"The battle of Mishmar Ha‘emek had left a bitter taste in the mouths of some of the local kibbutzniks. On 14 April, Eliezer Bauer (Be’eri), a Middle East scholar and member of Hazore‘a (Mapam), dispatched a pained letter to senior Mapam defence figures:

Of course in a cruel war such as we are engaged in, one cannot act with kid gloves. But there are still rules in war which a civilised people tries to follow . . . [Bauer focused on events in Abu Zureiq a day or two earlier.] When the village was conquered, the villagers tried to escape and save themselves by fleeing to the fields of the [Jezreel] Valley. Forces from the nearby settlements sortied out and outflanked them. There were exchanges of fire in which several of these Arabs were killed. Others surrendered or were captured unarmed. Most were killed [i.e., murdered]. And these were not gang members as was later written in [the Mapam daily] Al Hamishmar but defenceless, beaten peasants. Only members of my kibbutz [Hazore‘a] took prisoners . . . Also in the village, when adult males were discovered hiding hours after the end of the battle – they were killed . . . It is said that there were also cases of rape, but it is possible that this is only one of those made-up tales of ‘heroism’ that soldiers are prone to. Afterwards, all the village’s houses and the well were blown up . . . Of the property in the houses and the farm animals left without minders, they took what they could: One took a kettle for coffee, another a horse, a third a cow . . . One may understand and justify, if they took cows from the village for Mishmar Ha‘emek for example, or if soldiers who conquered the village would slaughter and fry chickens for themselves. But if every farmer from a nearby moshava [the allusion is to Yoqne‘am] takes part in looting, that is nothing but theft . . .

Bauer called on the Mapam leaders to make sure that the troops were ordered to abide by the Geneva Conventions. 610

Bauer’s letter, and the events described, were roundly discussed in the general members’ meetings at Hazore‘a on 18 and 20 April. One member, Yosef Shatil, spoke out against the looting; another, ‘Arnon’, said he was not happy with what had happened to Abu Zureiq and nearby Qira wa Qamun; ‘Fritzie’ condemned the cruel treatment meted out to the prisoners at Abu Zureiq. But Fritzie added, at the second meeting, that the members should refrain from ‘argument about transfer’. 611"

"An epilogue to the battle was provided by the IZL, whose units from Zikhron Ya‘akov, Hadera, Binyamina and Netanya on 12 May attacked and cleared the last Arab villages in the Hills of Menashe, overlooking Mishmar Ha‘emek from the west... At Sindiyana, whose inhabitants continued until early May 1948 to work in Zikhron Ya‘akov and which had barred Syrian irregulars, 615 the mukhtar and some 300 inhabitants stayed put and raised a white flag. A few days before they had proposed to their Jewish neighbours that they jointly ‘stage’ a Jewish attack on themselves, which would enable them to sur- render honourably.616 "

The Coastal Plain

"The inhabitants of the large village of Miska, northeast of Qalqilya, had enjoyed a special dispensation and in early April were allowed to stay. 637 But on the 19th, after sniping from the village and several Haganah dead, the headman of neighbouring Kibbutz Ramat Hakovesh ordered the inhabitants ‘to depart within two hours’. The order was softened by members of the Committee for Arab Property, who proposed, instead, that the villagers hand over their arms, accept Jewish rule, and move inland, to Khirbet al Zababida, inside the Jewish area. But they refused and opted for evacuation eastwards. On 20–21 April, the villagers departed, as described in one Yishuv logbook: ‘That day and the next the movement of motor vehicles, donkeys and camels from Miska to Tira did not cease.’ Haganah troops moved in on the evening of the 21st. 638"

"A few days later, a few kilometres to the south, the small village of Jaramla was evacuated ‘out of fear of Jewish assault’.643 In early April, in view of the impending harvest, the large village of Fajja, bordering on Petah Tikva, had sued for a truce with its Jewish neighbours. 644 But the inhabitants were under pressure from the ALA, which demanded that they sever their ties with the Jews645 and contribute ‘volunteers’ for the ‘gangs’. The mukhtar, Abdullah al Haj, was reluctant, fearing retaliation, 646 and was interrogated by the ALA commanders in Ras al ‘Ein. 647 The villagers evacuated just after 10 April, but a handful returned a few days later, to mount guard.648 They were fearful both of the ALA and the Jews, who periodically pillaged the empty houses. 649"

"on 13 May Alexandroni units took Kafr Saba, prompting a mass evacuation. The village had lived in ‘dread’ of Haganah assault for some time, and was guarded by a small ALA detachment. 654 Nonetheless, the attack caught them by surprise and triggered a ‘panic flight’. The local Syrian ALA commander stood at the exit to the village and extorted P£5 from each evacuee. 655 Nine old men and women, incapable of speedy flight or of paying up, were left in the village656 and were later expelled."

Tantura

"At the last minute – probably prompted by the start of the pan-Arab attack on Israel and the failure of the Haganah to offer them terms – the villagers (along with those of ‘Ein Ghazal, Jab‘a and Ijzim) decided to ‘stay . . . and fight’. 661 The villagers worked on fortifications, laying mines on the approach roads; inhabitants of hamlets in the area were ordered to concentrate in, and help defend, Tantura and Ijzim.662

"Alexandroni HQ issued the operational order for the attack on 22 May; no mention was made of the prospective fate of the civilian inhabitants 663 – though there can be little doubt that the troops went in with the intention of driving out the inhabitants. The village was not offered the option to surrender quietly. The attack began that night with a barrage of machine-gun fire; infantry companies then moved in simultaneously from north, east and south, with a naval vessel blocking escape from the sea. The villagers offered serious resistance but the battle was over by 08:00, 23 May. Dozens of villagers were killed. The initial report spoke of ‘300 adult male prisoners’ and ‘200 women and children’. 664

As usual, the fall of the village was followed by looting by settlers from nearby, and Haganah efforts to stop it...There was also widespread destruction of property. 666 For days, the village and its environs remained strewn with human and animal corpses, creating a health hazard.667"

"Some of the villagers fled to Arab-held territory. Hundreds of others, mostly women and children, were moved to al Fureidis, an Arab village to the east that had earlier surrendered, where hundreds of Tantura refugees were already encamped. On 31 May, Minority Affairs Minister Shitrit asked Ben-Gurion whether to expel these women and children, as maintaining them in Fureidis was a problem. 668 HIS-AD also applied pressure; the Tantura evictees were leaking intelligence to neighbouring, unconquered, villages and there were problems of overcrowding and sanitation. 669 Ben-Gurion’s reply, if any, is unknown. But on 18 June, some 1,000 Tantura ‘women, children and old Arabs’ (together with ‘80’ detainees from elsewhere) were expelled from Fureidis to Iraqi- held Tulkarm in Samaria. 670 Another 200 women and children, probably with menfolk still in Israeli detention, stayed on in Fureidis. 671"

Operation Yiftah

"During the second half of April and in May, as part of Plan D, the Haganah secured the border from Metula to the Sea of Galilee in expectation of the Syrian invasion. In the course of Operation Yiftah, as it was eventually called, the Arab population of eastern Galilee – earmarked for Jewish sovereignty in the partition resolution – was evicted."

"The inhabitants of the Shi‘ite village of Hunin, who had for years maintained good relations with Jewish neighbours and bad relations with Sunni Safad, were ordered to evacuate within six days – apparently by Arab, perhaps Lebanese, authorities. 688 A fortnight later a Palmah raid on the village resulted in the flight of most of the inhabitants. 689 (About 400 remained. Shitrit thought that Israel should foster special relations with the (Palestinian) Shi‘ites, 690 but the army thought otherwise."

"In his report of 22 April, Allon had recommended, among other things, ‘an attempt to clear out the beduin encamped between the Jordan [River], and Jubb Yusuf and the Sea of Galilee’. With Safad now targeted, this sub-operation became imperative. 694 On 4 May, Allon launched Operation Broom (Mivtza Matate). The nomadic and semi-settled inhabitants – al Qudeiriya, ‘Arab as Samakiya, ‘Arab as Suyyad, ‘Arab al Shamalina and the Zanghariya – had for months harassed Jewish traffic between Tiberias and Rosh Pina. Operation Yiftah HQ defined the objectives as ‘(a) the destruction of bases of the enemy . . . (b) to destroy points of assembly for invading forces from the east [and] (c) to join the lower and upper Galilee with a relatively wide and safe strip’ of continuous, Jewish territory. The order to the company commanders stated that Zanghariya and Tabigha, and the ‘Arab al Shamalina, should be attacked, ‘their inhabitants expelled and the[ir] houses blown up’. Friendly Arabs and churches ‘should on no account be harmed’. 695"

"The Syrians informed the British that the operation had created a further 2,000 refugees. 699 As ‘Azzam Pasha had understood and predicted, Allon was ‘driving out the inhabitants’ from areas ‘on or near roads by which Arab regular forces could enter the country . . . The Arab armies would have the greatest difficulty in even entering Palestine after May 15th.’700"

"Safad’s fall also helped Allon in the biggest psychological warfare operation of the war:

The echo . . . carried far . . . The confidence of thousands of Arabs of the Hula [Valley] was shaken . . . We had only five days left . . . until 15 May. We regarded it as imperative to cleanse the interior of the Galilee and create Jewish territorial continuity in the whole of Upper Galilee. The protracted battles reduced our forces, and we faced major tasks in blocking the invasion routes. We, therefore, looked for a means that would not oblige us to use force to drive out the tens of thousands of hostile Arabs left in the Galilee and who, in the event of an invasion, could strike at us from behind. We tried to utilise a stratagem that exploited the [Arab] defeats in Safad and in the area cleared by [Operation] Broom – a stratagem that worked wonderfully.

I gathered the Jewish mukhtars, who had ties with the different Arab villages, and I asked them to whisper in the ears of several Arabs that giant Jewish reinforcements had reached the Galilee and were about to clean out the villages of the Hula, [and] to advise them, as friends, to flee while they could. And the rumour spread throughout the Hula that the time had come to flee. The flight encompassed tens of thousands. The stratagem fully achieved its objective . . . and we were able to deploy ourselves in face of the [prospective] invaders along the borders, without fear for our rear. 704

...HIS-AD estimated that ‘18%’ of the exodus from the panhandle was due to the ‘whispering campaign’. "

"In all, the traumatic effect of the fall of the regional ‘capital’, Safad, Jewish attacks and a general fear of being caught up in a crossfire were probably more significant as causes of demoralisation and departure than the deliberate whispering campaign; or, put another way, the psychological warfare ploys were effective because they came on top of the other factors, which included orders for partial or full evacuation by local commanders and the Syrians. The picture that emerges from the IDF intelligence analysis of June 1948 of the evacuation is more complex than Allon’s subsequent recollection – that the exodus was simply the result of the orchestrated whispering campaign."

The South, April - June 1948

"In the south, the Haganah and, later, the IDF, remained on the defensive throughout the period. No major offensives were undertaken and, from the Egyptian invasion of 15 May, the Negev and Giv‘ati brigades had their hands more or less full averting a Jewish collapse. However, both brigades mounted sporadic, local attacks on the peripheries of their zones, usually with specific tactical aims, to facilitate defence against expected or continuing Egyptian advances. These attacks, especially those east of Majdal (Ashkelon) and Isdud by Giv‘ati, caused the flight of tens of thousands of local inhabitants.

Plan D’s guidelines to the Giv‘ati Brigade gave Lt. Col. Avidan wide discretion. In order to stabilise his lines, the plan stated ‘you will deter- mine alone, in consultation with your Arab affairs advisers and Intelligence Service officers, [which] villages in your zone should be occupied, cleansed or destroyed’. 733 During May – early June, before and after the invasion, Avidan moved to expand his area of control westwards and southwards."

"The inhabitants of ‘Arab Abu Fadl (‘Arab al Satariyya), northwest of Ramle, were unenthusiastic about assisting the Husseinis but felt trapped between the Haganah, which demanded neutrality or submission, and the nearby commanders of Ramle, who urged belligerence. Families began to leave in December 1947. In late April 1948, the mukhtar, Sheikh Salim, appealed for Haganah protection. 748 But before the Haganah could respond, the authorities in Ramle, perhaps sensing that treachery was afoot, ordered the villagers to evacuate. 749 By 9 May, ‘Arab al Satarriya (along with the nearby village of Bir Salim) evacuated.750"

"By late June, both Sawafir al Gharbiyya and Sawafir al Sharqiyya were once again ‘full of Arabs’. 774

The problem of leaving conquered villages both ungarrisoned and intact, with villagers simply returning after the Haganah had left, continued to plague Giv‘ati. On 23 May, for example, HIS-AD reported that the Sawafir villagers, and those of nearby Beit Daras, Jaladiya, Summeil, and Juseir, slept at night in the fields and returned to the villages to work during the days. 775 Nonetheless, the Haganah attacks, the flight of inhabitants and the partial destruction of the villages drove the inhabitants to despair776 and contributed to their eventual permanent exodus."

"In coordination with Giv‘ati’s local pushes southwards, the besieged Palmah Negev Brigade during May carried out a number of small pushes northwards and eastwards. Burayr, northeast of Gaza, was taken on 12–13 May. Its inhabitants fled to Gaza. The 9th Battalion troops killed a large number of villagers, apparently executing dozens of army-age males. They appear also to have raped and murdered a teenage girl. 777 The same day, the inhabitants of neighbouring Sumsum and Najd, to the west, were driven out. In Sumsum the occupying troops found only a handful of old people. They blew up five houses and warned that if the village’s weapons were not handed over the following day, they would blow up the rest. 778 But inhabitants repeatedly returned to the village, either to resettle or to cultivate crops. At the end of May, a Negev Brigade unit, with orders to expel ‘the Arabs from Sumsum and Burayr and burn their granaries and fields’, swept through the villages, encountering resistance in Sumsum, and killed ‘5’ (or, according to another report, ‘20’) and blew up granaries and a well. 779 The troops returned to Sumsum yet again, on 9 or 10 June, again burning houses and skirmishing with Arabs.780

"The inhabitants of Huleiqat and Kaukaba, to the north, fled westwards in mid-May under the impact of the fall of Burayr. 781 A fortnight later, on the night of 27\28 May, Negev Brigade units raided al Muharraqa and Kaufakha, south of Burayr, driving out or expelling their inhabitants. 782 The villagers of Kaufakha had earlier repeatedly asked to surrender, accept Jewish rule and be allowed to stay, to no avail. 783 The Haganah generally regarded such requests as insincere or untrustworthy; with the Egyptian army nearby, it was felt that it was better not to take a chance.

Beit Tima, north of Burayr, was conquered by the Negev Brigade’s 7th Battalion on 30\31 May; some 20 Arabs were killed, and the granary and a well were destroyed.784 On 31 May, the brigade expelled the villagers of Huj, seven kilometres south of Burayr, to the Gaza Strip. Huj had traditionally been friendly; in 1946, its inhabitants had hidden Haganah men from a British dragnet. In mid-December 1947, while on a visit to Gaza, the mukhtar and his brother were shot dead by a mob that accused them of ‘collaboration’.785 But at the end of May 1948, given the proximity of the advancing Egyptian column, the Negev Brigade decided to expel the inhabitants – and then looted and blew up their houses. 786"

"But Haganah\IDF behaviour in various parts of the country was not monolithic. The Giv‘ati and Negev brigades tended to expel communities near their front lines against the backdrop of the approach or proximity of the invading Egyptians, whom HGS for weeks believed to be far stronger than they were. But Golani’s and Carmeli’s operations were anything but uniform in character or effect. On 16 May, hours after Iraqi and Syrian troops invaded, Golani captured the villages of ‘Indur and Kaukab al Hawa. At ‘Indur (biblical ‘Ein Dor, home of the witch), most of the inhabitants probably fled at the start of the battle and several who were captured and ‘[later] tried to escape’ were shot. Three rifles were captured. The commander briefly left a small garrison in place and, he reported, ‘the [remaining] population is being transferred in the direction of Nazareth’. 803 A fortnight later, on 7 June, a large Golani patrol, mounted on an armoured car and three buses, swept through ‘Indur, where it encountered ‘no foreign force’ and blew up two houses. Moving on, the force entered the large village of Tamra, where it found only women and children (the men had fled as the column approached). The troops demanded that the villagers hand over their arms – or ‘depart . . . within half an hour’. But the commander relented and gave them several days. The patrol moved on to Kafr Misr, where it managed to surprise the menfolk. The commander demanded that their arms be delivered up within half an hour – or all the menfolk would have to leave. The villagers handed over eight rifles and promised to deliver several more the following day. ‘The inhabitants asked permission to continue the harvest and to [be able to] move freely to Nazareth. I said that they would receive an answer after they delivered the arms.’ The patrol then drove to Na‘ura, south of Tamra. Most of the males had left and the mukhtar said that he would give up the arms to two local officers. The commander opined that ‘there is no need to expel these inhabitants but to reach an agreement with them after they deliver up their arms’. 804

But other Golani troops behaved differently (if also somewhat erratically). A few days earlier, on 4 June, two platoons of Golani’s 12th (‘Barak’) Battalion, commanded by Haim Levakov and mounted on three trucks and a jeep, swept through the villages of Hadatha, ‘Ulam, Sirin, and Ma‘dhar, some10 kilometres west-southwest of Samakh. In Hadatha, ‘Ulam and Ma‘dhar, the force found a handful of Arabs busy with the harvest. All had written permission to stay. In Sirin they found about 100 inhabitants. The troops checked identity cards, searched for weapons (finding only some knives) and left; no hostile irregulars were found and the inhabitants were left in place – though the battalion’s in- telligence officer, in his report, recommended that ‘the Arabs should be ejected from the area, the young men should be arrested, and the crops confiscated . . .’. 805

A half a century later, one of the Israeli participants, Victor ‘Oved, described this or a similar patrol:

On one of the hot summer days as part of the effort to clear areas of hostile Arabs, we set out at midnight to check a number of Arab villages above Ramat Yavniel . . . We approached . . . on foot . . . From a distance we began to smell the special smell of the Arab village, to hear the chickens and the braying of donkeys . . . and the barking of tens of dogs. In a number of minutes we’re on the outskirts . . . dozens of villagers . . . start screaming: The Jews have come . . . The mukhtar is summoned to the commander and is given an order to evacuate the village in reasonable time. Thus we moved from village to village and carried out a meticulous search from house to house, but without success. At the last and largest village, the mukhtar was given an order as in the other villages, to prevent the entry of hostile enemy forces.

As the Israeli force was about to leave, an Arab approached the commander, ‘began to kiss his hands and feet’, and complained that during the search, a batch of bank notes had disappeared from the pocket of a coat that had been hanging in his house. The commander announced to the assembled platoons that the force would not move out until the money was returned and that the culprit would not be punished. Suddenly, the money was dropped on the floor. The villager was given back his money and he then kissed the commander’s feet and hands ‘again and again . . . We return to base satisfied but with a bitter taste.’ Soon afterwards, according to ‘Oved, the villagers left, taking whatever they could with them, including livestock, ‘doors [and] windows . . . During [the subsequent] fighting, this area was quiet and this saved the IDF a lot of troops and, of course, unnecessary clashes.’ 806"

"From the foregoing, it appears that Golani and Carmeli had no over- all, monolithic guideline about how to relate to Arab communities behind and along the front lines (save to disarm them): Some units expelled villagers or made sure that villages stayed empty, while others merely occupied or searched and disarmed them. Unlike in Giv‘ati’s zone of operations, arms confiscation operations did not invariably result in expulsion. And while some communities initially left in place were subsequently expelled, other communities were left in place permanently and these large Muslim villages remain to this day (al Makr, Judeida and others)."

Conclusion

"From the foregoing, it emerges that the main, second wave of the exodus, resulting in 250,000–300,000 refugees, was not the result of a general, predetermined Yishuv policy. The exodus of April–May caught the Yishuv leadership by surprise, though it was immediately seen as a phenomenon to be exploited. As Galili put it on 11 May:

Up to 15 May and after 15 May we must continue to implement the plan of military operations [i.e., Plan D] . . . which did not take into account the collapse and flight of Arab settlements following the route in Haifa . . . [But] this collapse facilitates our tasks. 812

A major shift in attitudes towards Arab communities can be discerned in the Haganah and among civilian executives during the first half of April, when, reeling from the blows of the battle for the roads, the Yishuv braced for the expected Arab invasion. The Plan D guidelines, formulated in early March, to a certain degree already embodied this new orientation. Their essence was that the rear areas of the State’s territory and its main roads had to be secured, and that this was best done by driving out hostile or potentially hostile communities and destroying swathes of villages. During the first half of April, Ben-Gurion and the HGS approved a series of offensives – in effect, counterattacks (Operation Nahshon and the operations around Mishmar Ha‘emek) – embodying these guidelines. During the following weeks, Haganah and IZL offensives in Haifa, Jaffa, and eastern and western Galilee precipitated a mass exodus.

During its first months, the exodus was regarded by the Arab states and the AHC as a passing phenomenon of no particular consequence. Palestinian leaders and commanders struggled against it, unsuccessfully. The transformation of the exodus in April into a massive demographic upheaval caught the AHC and the Arab states largely unawares
and caused great embarrassment: It highlighted the AHC’s (and the Palestinians’) weakness and the Arab states’ inability, so long as the Mandate lasted, to intervene. At the same time, it propelled these states closer to the invasion about which they were largely unenthusiastic. There is no evidence that the Arab states and the AHC wanted a mass exodus or issued blanket orders or appeals to flee. At the same time, the AHC and the Arab states often encouraged villagers (and, in some places, townspeople) to send their women, children and old people out of harm’s way. Local political and military leaders also ordered some villages to evacuate in order to forestall their (treacherous) acceptance of Jewish rule. In certain areas (around Jerusalem, and along the Syrian border), the Arab states ordered villages to uproot for strategic reasons. The picture that emerges is complex and varied, differing widely from place to place and week to week. In trying to elucidate patterns, it is necessary to distinguish between the towns and the countryside.

The evacuation of the towns during April–May must be seen as the culmination of a series of processes and events and against the backdrop of the basic weaknesses of Palestinian society: The Arab inhabitants of Haifa, Jaffa, Tiberias and, to a lesser extent, Safad, Beisan and Acre had for months suffered from a collapse of administration and law and order, difficulties of communications and supplies, isolation, siege, skirmishing and intermittent harassment at the hands of Jewish troops. In the case of Jaffa, Haifa and Jerusalem, the steady exodus of the middle and upper classes over December 1947 – March 1948 considerably demoralised the remaining inhabitants and provided a model for their own departure once conditions became intolerable. The urban masses (and the fellahin) had traditionally looked to the notability for leadership.

A major factor in the exodus from the towns was the earlier fall of and exodus from other towns. The exodus from Arab Tiberias served as a pointer and model for Haifa’s Arab leaders on the eve of their own decision to evacuate. It also undermined morale in Safad. Even more telling were the fall and exodus of Arab Haifa: These strongly affected the in- habitants of Jaffa, and also radiated defeatism throughout the north, affecting Safad, Beisan and Acre. If mighty Haifa could fall and be up- rooted, how could relatively unarmed, small communities hope to hold out? Moreover, the exodus from the towns demoralised the surrounding hinterland"

"The ‘atrocity factor’ certainly fuelled the process. What happened, or allegedly happened, at Nasser ad Din demoralized Arab Tiberias. In a more general way, the massacre at Deir Yassin, and the exaggerated descriptions broadcast on Arab radio stations for weeks undermined morale throughout Palestine, especially in the countryside.

A major factor in the urban exodus was the dissolution and flight of the local civil and military leadership just before and during the final battles. The flight of the Tabaris from Tiberias; the flight of the NC and the commanders from Arab Haifa just before and during the battle; the flight of Jaffa’s leaders during and after the IZL assault; and the departure from Safad and Beisan of prominent local families and commanders – all contributed to the mass exodus from each town and its hinterland."

"Undoubtedly, as was understood by IDF intelligence, the most important single factor in the exodus of April–June was Jewish attack. This is demonstrated clearly by the fact that each exodus occurred during or in the immediate wake of military assault. No town was abandoned by the bulk of its population before the main Haganah\IZL assault. In the countryside, while many of the villages were abandoned during Haganah\IZL attacks and because of them, other villages were evacuated as a result of Jewish attacks on neighbouring villages or towns; they feared that they would be next.

In general, Haganah operational orders for attacks on towns did not call for the expulsion or eviction of the civilian population. But from early April, operational orders for attacks on villages and clusters of villages more often than not called for the destruction of villages and, implicitly or explicitly, expulsion. And, no doubt, the spectacle of panicky flight served to whet the appetites of Haganah commanders and, perhaps, the HGS as well. Like Ben-Gurion, they realised that a transfer of the prospective large minority out of the emergent Jewish State had be-
gun and that with very little extra effort and nudging, it could be expanded. The temptation proved very strong, for solid military and political reasons.

By and large, when it came to ejecting Arab communities, Haganah commanders exercised greater independence and forcefulness in the countryside than in the towns. This was due partly to the greater distance from headquarters, where senior officers and officials, as exemplified by Ben-Gurion, were reluctant to openly order or endorse expulsions, and partly, to the guidelines set down in Plan D, which enabled local commanders to expel and level villages but made no provision for wholesale expulsions from towns.

During April–June, a time factor clearly influenced Haganah behaviour. The closer drew the 15 May British withdrawal deadline and the prospect of invasion by the Arab states, the readier became commanders to resort to ‘cleansing’ operations and expulsions to rid their rear areas, main roads, and prospective front lines of hostile and potentially hostile civilian concentrations. After 15 May, the threat and presence of the Arab regular armies near the Yishuv’s population centers dictated a play-safe policy of taking no chances with communities to the rear; hence, the Giv‘ati Brigade’s expulsions in May–June near Rehovot. In general, however, the swift collapse of almost all the Palestinian and foreign irregular formations and of civilian morale, and the spontaneous panic and flight of most communities meant that Jewish commanders almost invariably did not have to face the dilemma of expelling: Most villages were completely or almost completely empty by the time they were conquered."

Chapter 5: Deciding against a return of the refugees, April - December 1948