It appears that Israel was created by the violent dispossession of land from the people who had been living there.
Quick Facts: The Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe)
- The Nakba (“catastrophe” in Arabic) refers to the violent expulsion of approximately three quarters of all Palestinians from their homes and homeland by Zionist militias and the new Israeli army during the state of Israel’s establishment (1947-49).
- The Nakba was a deliberate and systematic act intended to establish a Jewish-majority state in Palestine. Amongst themselves, Zionist leaders used the euphemism “transfer” when discussing plans for what today would be called ethnic cleansing.
- The roots of the Nakba and the ongoing problems in Palestine/Israel today lie in the emergence of political Zionism in the late 1800s when some European Jews, influenced by the nationalism then sweeping the continent, decided that the solution to antisemitism in Europe and Russia was the establishment of a state for Jews in Palestine. They began emigrating to Palestine as colonists, where they started dispossessing indigenous Muslim and Christian Palestinians.
- In November 1947, following World War II and the Holocaust, the newly-created United Nations approved a plan to divide Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, against the will of the majority indigenous Palestinian Arab population. It gave 56% of the land to the proposed Jewish state, despite the fact that Jews owned only about 7% of the private land in Palestine and made up only about 33% of the population, a very large percentage of whom were recent immigrants from Europe. The Palestinian Arab state was to be created on just 42% of Palestine, even though Muslim and Christian Palestinians made up a large majority of the population and were indigenous to all of the land. Jerusalem was to be governed by a special international administration. (See here for map of the partition plan and 1949 armistice lines.)
- Almost immediately after the partition plan was passed, the expulsion of Palestinians by Zionist militias began, months before the armies of neighboring Arab states became involved. By the time these militias and the new Israeli army finished, the new state of Israel covered 78% of Palestine. The remaining 22%, comprising the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, fell under the control of Jordan and Egypt, respectively. In the 1967 War, the Israeli military occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, which Israel began colonizing shortly afterwards.
The Palestinian “Nakba” (“catastrophe” in Arabic) refers to the mass expulsion of Palestinian Arabs from British Mandate Palestine during Israel’s creation.
imeu.org
No Problem. Your al-Narrative sukks.
The Arabs rejected the Partition in 1947 (UN Res 181), the Jews accepted the roughly half split and declared statehood.
The Arabs attacked trying to wipe out Israel and the Jews in it.
They lost.
"The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but, instead, THEY ABANDONED THEM, FORCED THEM TO EMIGRATE AND TO LEAVE THEIR HOMELAND, Imposed upon them a political and ideological blockade and Threw them into Prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live in Eastern Europe, as if we were condemned to change places with them; they moved out of their ghettos and we occupied similar ones. The ARAB States succeeded in scattering the Palestinian people and in destroying their unity. They did Not Recognize them as a unified people until the States of the world did so, and this is Regrettable".
- by Abu Mazen/Abbas, Curent PA/WB leader.. from the article titled: "What We Have Learned and What We Should Do", published in Falastin el Thawra,
the official journal of the PLO, of Beirut, March 1976
...
"The Arab streets are Curiously deserted and, ardently following the poor example of the more moneyed class there has been an exodus from Jerusalem too, though not to the same extent as in Jaffa and Haifa."
- London Times, May 5, 1948
"Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa not more than 5,000 or 6,000 remained. Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the -Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit.. . .
It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as Renegades."
- The London weekly Economist, October 2, 1948
"It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees' flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem."
- Near East Arabic Broadcasting Station, Cyprus, April 3, 1949
"The mass evacuation, prompted partly by fear, partly by order of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarter of Haifa a ghost city...By withdrawing Arab workers their leaders hoped to paralyze Haifa."
- Time, May 3, 1948, p. 25
The Arab exodus, initially at least, was encouraged by many Arab leaders, such as Haj Amin el Husseini, the exiled pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem, and by the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine.....
- Kenneth Bilby, in New Star in the Near East (New York, 1950), pp. 30-31
I do not want to impugn anybody but only to help the refugees. The fact that there are these refugees is the Direct Consequence of the action of the Arab States in opposing Partition and the Jewish State. The Arab States agreed upon this policy unanimously and they must share in the solution of the problem,
Emil Ghoury, Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee, the Official leadership of the Palestinian Arabs, Beirut, Daily Telegraph, Sept 6, 1948
The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies.
-Falastin (Jordanian newspaper), February 19, 1949 (recently cited by Dereez)
We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down.
- Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said, quoted in Sir Am Nakbah by Nimr el Hawari, Nazareth, 1952
"The Arab governments told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in."
- Jordan daily Ad Difaa, Sept 6, 1954
"The Arab civilians panicked and fled ignominiously. Villages were frequently abandoned before they were threatened by the progress of war.
- General Glubb Pasha, in the London Daily Mail on August 12, 1948
"[The Arabs of Haifa] fled
in spite of the fact that the Jewish authorities Guaranteed their Safety and rights as citizens of Israel."
- Monsignor George Hakim, Greek Catholic Bishop of Galilee, according to Rev. Karl Baehr, Executive Secretary of the American Christian Palestine Committee, New York Herald Tribune, June 30, 1949
"The Arabs did not want to submit to a truce they rather preferred to abandon their homes, their belongings and everything they possessed in the world and leave the town. This is in fact what they did."
- Jamal Husseini, Acting Chairman of the Palestine Arab Higher Committee,- UNSC Official Records (N. 62), April 23, 1948, p. 14
"the military and civil authorities and the Jewish representative expressed their profound Regret at this grave decision [to evacuate]. The [Jewish] Mayor of Haifa made a passionate appeal to the delegation to reconsider its decision"
- The Arab National Committee of Haifa/Arab League, quoted in The Refugee in the World, Schechtman, 1963
"The existence of these refugees is a Direct Result of the Arab States' Opposition to the partition plan and the reconstitution of the State of Israel.
The Arab states adopted this policy unanimously, and the responsibility of its results, therefore is theirs.
...The flight of Arabs from the territory allotted by the UN for the Jewish state began immediately after the General Assembly decision at the end of November 1947. This wave of emigration, which lasted several weeks, comprised some 30,000 people, chiefly well-to-do-families."
- Emil Ghory, secretary of the Arab High Council, Lebanese daily Al-Telegraph, 6 Sept 1948
"Since 1948 it is we who demanded the return of refugees... while it is we who made them to leave...
We brought disaster upon... Arab refugees, by inviting them and bringing pressure to bear upon them to leave...
We have rendered them dispossessed...
We have accustomed them to begging...
We have participated in lowering their moral and social level...
Then We exploited them in executing crimes of murder, arson, and throwing bombs upon... men, women and children - all this in service of Political purposes..."
- Khaled al Azm, Syria's Prime Minister after the 1948 war
"As early as the first months of 1948 the Arab League issued orders exhorting the people to seek a temporary refuge in neighboring countries, later to return to their abodes in the wake of the victorious Arab armies and obtain their share of abandoned Jewish property."
- bulletin of The Research Group for European Migration Problems, 1957
One morning in April 1948, Dr. Jamal woke us to say that the Arab Higher Committee (AHC), led by the Husseinis, had warned Arab residents of Talbieh to leave immediately. The understanding was that the residents would be able to return as Conquerors as soon as the Arab forces had thrown the Jews out. Dr. Jamal made the point repeatedly that he was leaving because of the AHC's threats, not because of the Jews, and that he and his frail wife had no alternative but to go.
Commentary Magazine -- January 2000
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