The Mass Flight of the Palestinians

Was there a secret Zionist plan to transfer all the Palestinians out of their land once they could? Did the Hatikvah have a secret line? "From the river to the sea, all of Israel will be free!" One thing is indisputable. There was no plan required to eliminate the Palestinian ruling class? They were gone before anyone had time to think about it.

On November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 (II) to partition Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states. On November 30, 1947, Arab militants attacked two Egged buses near Fajja (near modern-day Petah Tikva), killing seven Jewish passengers. The State of Israel was officially established on May 14, 1948, with its independence declared by David Ben-Gurion in Tel Aviv.

Anyone who bothers to read the 436 pages of Palestine 1948: War, Escape and the Emergence of the Palestinian Refugee Problem by Yoav Gelber and tries to keep track of all the confusion, wrong understandings, conflicting ideas and uncertainties that beset the Israeli leaders in 1948 will be as confused and uncertain as they were.

Running away from conflict in Palestine was the norm for the notables and the middle class. There was no solidarity between the Caananite felaheen and the Arabian effendi families who lived off them. From the outset of the civil war, civilians abandoned their homes to escape the danger. While the Yishuv soon overcame this flow and in most cases succeeded in checking it, Palestinian leadership lost control of the situation and the escape of Arab civilians assumed huge proportions.

This flight astonished the Haganah's command and the Yishuv's leadership. They did not understand why the civil population ran away. Attempting to explain the phenomenon, they raised several conjectures that would later become pillars of the Israeli argumentation on the issue. These assumptions also had a considerable influence on the early historiographic works on this topic.'
Early in January 1948, he noted in his diary information from British sources that about 15,000 to 20,000 Arabs - mostly foreigners or well-to-do - had left Haifa."

Refugeeism was a familiar spectacle in Palestine. During the First World War, thousands of Jews and Arabs left the country or were expelled by the Ottoman authorities. Most of them returned after the British occupied the country. Druze rebels escaping from the French authorities in Syria found shelter in Transjordan and amidst their brethren in Palestine. Thousands of Palestinians had fled from the country during the rebellion of 1936-9. The British expelled politicians and agitators. Wanted terrorists crossed the borders to avoid arrest. Others sought to join Hajj Amin al-Hussayni in his exile in Lebanon. The rebels' gangs terrorized many to leave their homes. Others were simply fed up with the anarchy and went abroad. Most escapees and deportees returned overtly or secretly during and after the Second World War. Naturally, at the onset of the desertion in December 1947 all interpreted the phenomenon in the familiar terms of the past and regarded it as a repetition of the conventional response to the hardships of war.

From the outset of fighting, those who could afford to had sent their families to neighbouring countries, and joined them later when the situation deteriorated. Others moved from the vicinity of the front lines to less exposed areas of the Arab sector, particularly if they had relatives there to receive them. Thousands of foreign Arab immigrants and temporary residents - Egyptians, Lebanese and Syrians - returned to their home countries to avoid the hardships of war. First-generation emigrants from rural hamlets to urban centres - mostly day labourers who were the first to lose their jobs because of the economic chaos returned to their villages. They all set a model and created an atmosphere of desertion that soon embraced wider circles. Between half to two-thirds of the Arab inhabitants in cities such as Haifa or Jaffa had abandoned their homes before the Jews discharged the final blow and occupied the towns.

Dependence on towns that had fallen to the Jews, the impossibility of maintaining the agricultural routine and rumours of atrocities exacerbated mass flight to the countryside. Many hamlets that the Haganah stormed in April-May 1948 were empty. Under the pressure of the fighting, their tenants had gradually left during the campaign's earlier stages. At this point in time, running away was for the most part voluntary. So far, the Haganah's use of intimidation and other methods of psychological warfare was sporadic. Quantitatively, most of the Palestinian refugees fled under these circumstances of an inter-communal civil war. The Arab armies' invasion on 15 May 1948 terminated this phase of the flight. In certain places, escapees who had not gone far returned to their deserted homes in the wake of the invading troops.

During the civil war, the Palestinians' behaviour stood in sharp contrast to the Yishuv's performance. Not a single Jewish settlement was deserted before the invasion. Only a dozen kibbutzim in the Galilee and in Gush Etzion near Jerusalem sent mothers and children to safer places in the interior. In all other instances, the central leadership took measures to reinforce vulnerable posts and secure their capacity to survive. - Palestine 1948: War, Escape and the Emergence of the Palestinian Refugee Problem - Yoav Gelber

It will also be said that the Arabs of Palestine have proved themselves weak and impotent; that no sooner had the first bombs fallen than they fled in utter rout, evacuated their cities and their strongholds, and surrendered them to the enemy on a silver platter, that a large number of them had fled even before the battle and had taken refuge in the other Arab countries and in remote regions of Palestine.
The explanation of the victory which the Zionist have achieved-and only a person who deceives and blinds himself can deny the victory-lies not in the superiority of one people over another, but rather in the superiority of one system over another. The reason for this victory is that the roots of Zionism are grounded in modern Western life while we for the most part are still distant from this life and hostile to it. They live in the present and for the future while we continue to dream the dreams of the past and to stupefy ourselves with its fading glory. - Mena al-Nakbah The Meaning of the Disaster by Constantine K. Zurayk, August 1948
If ultimately the Palestinians evacuated their country, it was not out of cowardice, but because they had lost all confidence in the existing system of defense. They had perceived its weakness, and realized the disequilibrium between their resources and organization, and those of the Jews. They were told that the Arab armies were coming, that the matter would be settled and everything return to normal, and they placed their confidence and hopes in that. Moreover, they had before them the specter of Deir Yassin
These same weaknesses were the source of weakness in our defense in the second phase, that of the Arab armies: disunity, lack of a unified command, improvisation, diversity of plans, and on top of all a slackness and lack of seriousness in winning the war - The Message of Palestine, Musa al-Alami, The Middle East Journal, Volume 3, No. 4, October 1949, pp. 373-405
Within hours of the UN vote, there were signs that some Arabs were leaving their homes, although the intention was a temporary absence rather than permanent exile. In anticipation of further increases in violence, the better-off Arab families-in areas next to Jewish neighbourhoods in Jaffa and Jerusalem, for example-were packing their bags to go and stay somewhere more peaceful until the violence blew over. Civilians were being killed randomly and some areas were becoming dangerous places to bring up a family. Many of the wealthier Palestinians had friends or relatives in other parts of Palestine or in Syria or Egypt. They felt that a short stay away would be a sensible precaution. - Palestine: A Personal History - Karl Sabbagh
The Arabs living in the prosperous western district of Qatamon began evacuating their homes after the Haganah bombing of the Semiramis Hotel on the night of 4-5 January 1948. The Haganah suspected, mistakenly, that the hotel served as the headquarters of the local irregulars. Several Arab families, and the Spanish consul in the city, died in the explosion, and a sharp dispute broke out inside the Haganah and with the British authorities…The bombing caused major panic in Qatamon. Many flats were evacuated, but … only by women, the old and children. The young men stayed.
   Hala Sakakini, then a young woman living in Qatamon, described the mayhem in her neighbourhood following the Hotel Semiramis bombing:
   All day long you could see people carrying their belongings and moving from their houses to safer ones in Qatamon or to another quarter altogether. They reminded us of pictures we used to see of European refugees during the war. People were simply panic- stricken. The rumor spread that leaflets had been dropped by the Jews saying that they would make out of Qatamon one heap of rubble. Whenever we saw people moving away we tried to encourage them to stay. We would tell them: "You ought to be ashamed to leave. This is just what the Jews want you to do; you leave and they occupy your houses and then one day you will find that Qatamon has become another Jewish quarter!"
   The Haganah proceeded to bomb many private Arab residences in Qatamon.65 Sami Hadawi, who also lived in Qatamon, said that although fourteen buildings were blown up around his house, he remained in the neighbourhood.66 Another resident recalled that, after the Semiramis bombing, his father prepared the family to leave for a safer place. Ibrahim Abu Dayyeh, the head of the Qatamon resistance, approached his father and entreated him to stay, saying that if his family - one of the few Muslim families in the neighbourhood - left, more would follow suit. So they held on in the neighbourhood for the time being.
   The situation of Jerusalem's Arabs was dire. On January 13, 1948, Husein al- Khalidi informed the Mufti of the crisis in Jerusalem: "The position here is very difficult. There are no people, no discipline, no arms, and no ammunition. Over and above this, there is no tinned food and no foodstuffs. The black market is flourishing. The economy is destroyed … This is the real situation, there is no flour, no food … Jerusalem is emptying out." In January, practically all the wealthy Palestinian Arab residents of West Jerusalem fled from the neighbourhoods of Qatamon, Deir Abu Tor, and Baq'a. They had the means to travel and reside outside Jerusalem or abroad and intended to return when the fighting subsided.
   An estimated 30,000 Palestinian Arabs evacuated Jerusalem, Haifa and some villages near the Mediterranean coast between January and March 1948. - Jerusalem 1948, ed. Salim Tamari
These few families and their clans of more distant relatives and retainers played the part of the political parties and groupings in modem countries. The Husseinis, the Nashashibis, the Khalidis and about half a dozen other clans held the country under their complete economic and political sway. They led the opposition against Zionism, and at the same time sold their land to the Jews, through middlemen, at high profits. In 1948 it was the same effendi class which called their followers to a holy war against the Jews, and when the first shots were fired sneaked away to Beirut, leaving the masses leaderless and thereby sealing the fate of Arab resistance in the civil war. The effendis were the political leaders, administrators and vocal chords of Arab Palestine. If they sold their birthright for a mess of pottage they could not claim to have acted in ignorance as Esau did.
As in the neighbouring Arab countries, the Third Estate carried as yet no political weight. The Arab middle-class of professional men, business men and newspaper editors were a thin layer sandwiched in between the feudal landlords on the one hand, with, on the other, the politically illiterate but easily fanaticized mass of hard-working fellaheen and the leisurely drones of the shuks. - Promise & Fullfilment:Palestine - Arthur Koestler
Ill-armed, outnumbered, however desperate their circumstances, the Jews stood fast. The Arabs very early began to run away. First the wealthiest families went; it was estimated that 20,000 of them left the country in the first two months of internal hostilities. By the end of January, the exodus was already so alarming that the Palestine Arab Higher Committee in alarm asked neighboring Arab countries to refuse visas to these refugees and to seal the borders against them. While the Arab guerrillas were moving in, the Arab civilian population was moving out. The movement was soon to take on a momentum and reach massive proportions. In the next six weeks - from April 1 to May 15 - virtually the entire Arab population of Tiberias, Haifa, Safad, Jaffa, and Jerusalem were to flee the country. - page 26, This Is Israel - I. F. Stone
Lt Col C.R.W. Norman said Arab soldiers were "following the cowardly example of their inept leaders" by fleeing in their thousands as Jewish forces advanced. In his final fortnightly intelligence report before the British mandate for Palestine was due to end, he reported that the Arabs "deserted positions and jettisoned arms and equipment" in the Battle of Haifa." In his explanation of their actions, Lt Col Norman stated: "The desertion of their leaders and the sight of so much cowardice in high places completely unnerved the inhabitants." But the British military chief went on to explain that the Arabs blamed Britain for losing the battle. "Their leaders immediately set about endeavouring to save their face rather than their only deep water sea port, and the blame for the whole action was placed on the head of the British," he wrote on May 6 1948. The records on Palestine, released at the National Archives in Kew - Press Association, 26 April 2013
These "great changes" took place in four stages. The first was between December 1947 and March 1948, when the Yishuv was on the defensive and upper-and middle-class Arabs-perhaps as many as seventy-five thousand- fled, mainly from the mixed cities, or sent their dependents to the West Bank, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, or Transjordan. In this context there can be no exaggerating the detrimental effect on Arab morale of the IZL and LHI bombing campaigns in the big towns.
   These families had the wherewithal to settle comfortably in Cairo, Nablus, Amman, or Beirut, and in any case most viewed their exile as temporary. As in the exodus of 1936-39, they expected to return once the hostilities had ended. Many notable families also resented or feared the domination of the Husseinis, and indeed may have feared a Husseini-ruled Palestine as much as they did life under Jewish rule. It was at this time that many of the political leaders and/or their families left the country-including most members of the AHC and of the Haifa National Committee. Jewish-Arab hostilities were only one aspect of a more general breakdown of law and order in Palestine after the UN Partition Resolution. There was also a gradual collapse of public services and a withdrawal of British authority, and an influx into both urban and rural districts of Arab irregulars, who extorted money from prosperous families and occasionally abused people in the streets.
   Arabs also abandoned a number of villages in areas earmarked for Jewish statehood and with a Jewish majority, such as the coastal plain. In villages on the edge of Jewish urban centers, a combination of fear of the Jews and actual intimidation, principally by the IZL and LHI, prompted flight. In at least one case there was also outright expulsion by the Haganah-on February 20 at Caesarea, midway between Tel Aviv and Haifa.
   The flight of the upper and middle classes entailed the closure of schools, clinics and hospitals, businesses and offices, and in turn engendered unemployment and impoverishment. This was the background to the second stage, the mass flight from urban neighborhoods and rural areas overrun by the Jewish forces during spring 1948. The earlier flight of the elite sapped popular morale and gave the masses an example to emulate. - Righteous Victims: a History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict-1881-2001 - Benny Morris
Flight was the earliest and most concrete expression of Palestinian demoralization. Within twenty-four hours of the start of the (still low-key) hostilities, Arab families began to abandon their homes in mixed or border neighborhoods in the big towns. Already on 30 November 1947 the HIS reported "the evacuation of Arab inhabitants from border neighborhoods" in Jerusalem and Jaffa. Arabs were also reported leaving the area around the Jewish Quarter of Safad (the town was predominantly Arab) and fleeing the villages of Jammasin and Sheikh Muwannis, bordering Tel Aviv. By 9 December, the HIS was reporting that "Arab refugees were sleeping in the streets [of Jaffa]" and "wealthy families were leaving the [coastal] citiesheading inland. [Many initially fled to the family's village of origin.] Rich people are emigrating to Syria, Lebanon, and even Cyprus." In one or two sites, there was deliberate Jewish intimidation of Arab neighbors to leave.
Despite the haphazard efforts of some Arab local authorities, the following months were marked by increasing flight from the main towns and certain rural areas. By the end of March 1948 most of the wealthy and middleclass families had fled Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem, and most Arab rural communities had evacuated the heavily Jewish Coastal Plain; a few had also left the Upper Jordan Valley. Most were propelled by fear of being caught up, and harmed, in the fighting; some may have feared life under Jewish rule. It is probable that most thought of a short, temporary displacement with a return within weeks or months, on the coattails of victorious Arab armies or international diktats. Thus, although some (the wealthier) moved as far away as Beirut, Damascus, and Amman, most initially moved a short distance, to their villages of origin or towns in the West Bank or Gaza area, inside Palestine, where they could lodge with family or friends. During this period Jewish troops expelled the inhabitants of only one village-Qisariya, in the Coastal Plain, in mid-February (for reasons connected to Jewish illegal im migration rather than the ongoing civil war)- though other villages were harassed and a few specifically intimidated by IZL, LHI, and Haganah actions (much as during this period Jewish settlements were being harassed and intimidated by Arab irregulars). Altogether some seventyfive thousand to one hundred thousand Arabs fled or were displaced from their homes during the first stage of the civil war, marking the first wave of the exodus. - 1948 - Benny Morris
In 1947-1948, there were about 747,000 "Arabs" in Israel-to-be (including for the purposes of the calculations Areas II and IV, which were included in the territory of Israel but contained few Jews); of that number, about 57,000 were nomads, 37,000 were immigrants reported by the government, and 1 70,000 were in-migrants from Arab areas of Western Palestine.The remainder totaled about 483,000 Arabs. This figure represents the number of Arabs in Israel, then, in 1947-1948 who were neither nomads nor those immigrants who were reported by the British Mandatory Government. That group constituted the maximum Arab "settled" population in Israel in 1948.
   During the 1948 exodus of Arab refugees, 140,000 Arabs remained in the Jewish-settled areas, becoming "Israeli Arabs." According to the calculations, then (747,000 "Arabs" were counted in the areas included in Israel minus 263,- 000: nomads, in-migrants, and reported immigrants), 483,000 settled Arabs were in the Jewish-settled areas in 1947. A total of 140,000 Arabs in the Jewish-settled areas remained in Israel after the 1 948 war; the balance of roughly 343,000 Arabs (out of 483,000), who fled in 1948, according to the calculations, is the maximum number possible of genuine refugees-not nomads, not in-migrants originating from areas of Western Palestine outside Israel (outside "Jewish-settled areas"), and not recorded as immigrants in the British reports.
   Now that the relevant areas of Western Palestine have been delineated, their populations identified, and their numbers calculated to the extent feasible, we see an Arab "settled" population of possibly 483,000 in Israel-to-be in I 947-194812 -a population present from roughly 1893. Of that 483,000, 343,000 fled in 1948. Thus only 343,000 of the Arab refugees in 1 948 were fleeing from Jewish-settled territory in which they had presumably lived permanently-or since 1893, after Jewish settlement had commenced and the large Jewish immigration wave of 1872-1882 had begun.That 343,000 figure is a maximum number, as explained earlier: 1) because of the probable inclusion of Arab immigrants who came later, attracted by opportunities for employment in Jewish settlements, and 2) because the rate of natural increase assumed in the calculations was possibly higher than the actual rate in non-Jewish Western Palestine.
   It should especially be noted that the maximum figure of 343,000 is less than half the number of refugees claimed by the Arabs immediately after their leaving, before the numbers were reportedly further "inflated" in the refugee camps. - From Time Immemorial - Joan Peters
"Every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab populace to stay and carry on with their normal lives, to get their shops and businesses open and to be assured that their lives and interests will be safe." - British district superintendent of police, April 1948
But in fact Arab flight from Haifa began well before the outbreak of these hostilities, and even before the UN partition resolution.
   On October 23, 1947, over a month earlier, a British intelligence brief was already noting that "leading Arab personalities are acting on the assumption that disturbances are near at hand, and have already evacuated their families to neighboring Arab countries." By November 21, as the UN General Assembly was getting ready to vote, not only "leading Arab personalities" but "many Arabs of Haifa" were reported to be "evacuating their families to neighboring Arab countries in anticipation of the period of disorder they foresee." And as the violent Arab reaction to the UN resolution gathered force, eradicating any hope of its peaceful implementation, this stream of refugees turned into a flood.
   By mid-December 1947, some 15,000-20,000 Arabs had fled. A month later, according to Arab sources, this had swollen to 25,000 people, creating severe hardship for those remaining. Economic and commercial activity ground to a halt as the wealthier classes converted their assets into gold or US dollars and transferred them abroad. Merchants and industrialists moved their businesses to Egypt, Syria, or Lebanon, causing unemployment and shortages in basic necessities. Entire areas were emptied of their residents. The situation was exacerbated by the deep schisms within the Arab populace.
   Not only did the city's Muslims and Christians lead a mutually antagonistic and largely segregated existence, but both communities were beset by a string of socio-economic and religious divisions - between rich and poor, veterans and newcomers, urbanites and villagers, and so on and so forth. - Palestine Betrayed - Efraim_Karsh

Palestinians and 1948 - Rashid Khalidi
Palestine 1948: War, Escape and the Emergence of the Palestinian Refugee Problem - Yoav Gelber
Mena al-Nakbah The Meaning of the Disaster by Constantine K. Zurayk
The Message of Palestine, Musa al-Alami
Palestine: A Personal History - Karl Sabbagh
Jerusalem 1948, ed. Salim Tamari
Promise & Fullfilment:Palestine - Arthur Koestler
This Is Israel - I. F. Stone
National Archives in Kew - Press Association
Righteous Victims: a History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict-1881-2001 - Benny Morris
1948 - Benny Morris
From Time Immemorial - Joan Peters
Palestine Betrayed - Efraim_Karsh