The Beginnings of the Palestinians' Mass-Flight
Palestine 1948: War, Escape and the Emergence of the Palestinian Refugee Problem - Yoav Gelber
page 74: 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 theories 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.
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 rebel 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.
Before the outbreak of the disturbances, several clues indicated that Palestinian Christians and Hajj Amin's opponents were preparing their escape from a new chaotic period. The murder of Sami Taha, an activist
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of the Arab workers' movement, and an attempt on the life of Rafiq al Tamimi, a prominent partisan of the Mufti, intensified fears of domestic Arab terrorism in the manner of 1936-9. After the hostilities had flared up, it was evident, however, that the Arabs were running away from the Jews and not only from their brethren. At this early stage, the primary causes for departure were the generally deteriorating conditions, the unstable economic situation and growing unemployment.
Dreams of the Arabs eventual vanishing from the future Jewish state under the circumstances of war had emerged from the outset of fighting, before the stream developed into mass-flight. Yet, talk at the time about exchanging populaces probably meant the removal of Arabs from the Jewish state to its Palestinian twin and not their expulsion to adjacent Arab countries.'
Early in the morning of 3 December 1947, the second day of the Arabs' strike, Haganah lookouts in Jerusalem spotted civilians leaving the small hamlet Sheikh Badir (the site of the present Israeli Knesset and government buildings). They left by lorries, pickups and donkeys, heading for the larger nearby village Malkha. On the next day, the villagers of Lifta at the western approaches to the city extricated their wives and children and admitted a Najada group that henceforth garrisoned the village. A few days later Arabs moved from the Armenian quarter inside the city walls and from other houses bordering on the Old City's Jewish quarter. The Arabs also evacuated children from the vicinity of Government's House.'
This early current also gripped Jaffa. Notables dispatched their kin to safer havens: Egypt, Gaza and Nazareth. Many families left for Nablus.s People moved from neighbourhoods bordering on Tel Aviv to inner quarters. At first, the national committee absorbed them in improvised assembly points. When the burden became too heavy, it prevailed upon them to return to their homes, threatening to halt supplies to the refugee centres, but in vain.
Abd al-Ghani al-Karmi, a Palestinian journalist well acquainted with events and moods in Jaffa, described the city as a bedlam, suffering from want and unemployment. The streets were full of aimlessly roving people and the effect of the dynamics of loose talk on the mood of the street was rampant: "Every day there is a new scare and a new tale of gallantry."
Similarly, an escape began from Haifa. Haifa's Arab population amounted to 71,000 persons of whom 41,000 were Muslims and 30,000 Christians. They constituted a little less than half the town's total population, numbering 145,000 inhabitants.s Upon the outbreak of disturbances, Arab residents evacuated streets adjoining Jewish quarters and panic spread to the inner neighbourhoods. By mid-December, judge Ahmad al-Khalil conveyed that 20,000 Arabs had already left the town.
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Although the number seemed exaggerated, other sources later endorsed it. In the first month of hostilities, the Syrian and Lebanese consulates had issued 8,000 visas to residents who planned their departure or actually left the city. Rashid al-Hajj Ibrahim, Chairman of Haifa's national council, doubted his community's ability to endure under conditions of civil war. He journeyed to Lebanon to report to the Mufti on the desertion and urged him to devise means of checking the escape.'
The Haganah, IZL and LHI's retaliations terrified the Arabs and hastened their flight. Fear of Jewish reprisals drove fellaheen out of several villages after Arab ambushes had assaulted Jewish vehicles in their vicinity. Palestinian newspapers amplified the panic by publicizing preparations for evacuation across the country and reporting on the arrival of refugees in the heart of Arab regions.
Already at this early phase, Ben-Gurion was aware of the Palestinians' running away and informed Shertok in New York: "Arabs are fleeing from Jaffa and Haifa. The Bedouins in Sharon are migrating to the exclusive Arab areas." 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.
These figures were excessive for foreign Arabs and wealthy Palestinians only. Many deserters from the cities were fellaheen who had recently immigrated to the towns and were not yet fully settled in their new places of residence. Unemployment and the deteriorating situation drove these day labourers who lived mostly on the outskirts of the towns, back to their home villages where they felt safer and could at least give a hand in tilling their family's land.
The Arab section ascribed the desertion to a shortage of supplies and a dread of spreading lawlessness. Rumours spread that the Hussaynis were planning to bring in bands of fellaheen to take over the towns. These stories were reminiscent of the domestic terrorism in 1936-9, and non-Palestinian Arabs returned to their native countries to avoid being caught up in a purely Palestinian conflict.
Late in December 1947, the flight fanned out from the towns to the countryside. Yadin inaccurately observed that "many regions have been abandoned, especially those having a predominantly Jewish population." Inhabitants fled also from places having an overwhelmingly Arab majority. Palestinians moved from the border zone between the Jewish and Arab quarters in Safed, although they outnumbered the Jews and enjoyed topographical advantages over their neighbours. A local source relayed that wealthy citizens had sent their families to Lebanon. The frenzied lower classes intended to bar the departure of these women and children, claiming that "no discrimination should be made between the rich and the poor". Safed's district officer, the Druze Abdullah al-
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Khair, set a bad model by sending his own wife and children to Beirut."
Apparently fearing vengeance, the inhabitants of Dir Mukhayzin temporarily abandoned their village following the assassination of two senior Haganah officers in separate incidents in the vicinity of the village. Early in January 1948, the villagers evacuated Qalandia, north of Jerusalem and adjacent to the Jewish settlement of Atarot. A handful of village youth stayed behind to keep an eye on the property. In the wake of Qalandia, the remaining residents of Lifta moved to Ramallah. The last fallabin left Sheikh Badir in mid-January and a group of militiamen replaced them. As in the cities, the leading families in the villages were often the first to leave, setting a model to others.
Following the raid on Hissass in Upper Galilee on 18 December, the tenants abandoned the site. Soon, the Bedouin of Hula valley copied their example. An incursion on Balad al-Sheikh and Hauwasa to retaliate the massacre of 39 Jewish employees on the premises of the Haifa refineries drove away many of the inhabitants. Bedouin who had encamped in Jewish areas departed and non-combatants moved out of villages in battle zones, thus turning them into exclusively military strongholds. After the ALA's abortive attack on Tirat Zvi in Jordan valley on 16 February, the Bedouin neighbours of the kibbutz withdrew to the small town Bisan or crossed the river to Transjordan. While common people wandered from village to village or at times, went over to Lebanon, Syria and Transjordan, the rich departed abroad through Lydda's airport or Haifa and Jaffa's harbours.
By late December 1947, the flight became a matter of public knowledge in Palestine and in the Arab countries. Jewish newspapers described the emigration of Arabs from the cities and analysed the composition and numbers of emigrants. According to the Lebanese press, the Arab governments demanded the AHC halt the escape and encourage Palestinians to stay put and fight." Several newspapers called for banning the entrance of refugees, quoting Palestinian spokesmen who had denounced "the rats abandoning the sinking ship". On 8 January 1948, the AHC denied allegations that it had ordered the evacuation of certain areas. Hajj Amin and his associates claimed that they had only allowed the removal of children and aged people to safety from villages under extreme danger. This proclamation established that women should stick to their homes and help the combatants.
National committees tried on their own initiative, or at the AHC's urging, to discourage the departure and to reassure the population. Several committees publicly reprimanded the escape and took firm measures against deserters, such as burning their left-behind belongings and confiscating their abandoned houses. Their efforts were, however, futile. Condemnations or punishments could not placate the population's
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growing panic. Although the Palestinians' morale rose steeply following the arrival of ALA units, this upsurge was confined solely to the fellaheen and the urban proletariat. Panic among the middle classes persisted and a steady exodus of those who could afford to leave the country continued.
Naturally, in this Jewish-Palestinian civil war under a British umbrella, the civilian population was the main victim. The antagonists still lacked organized armies and could hardly direct their blows at any specific military targets. Their assaults were, therefore, directed against economic objectives and other civilian installations, traffic and lodgings. While several Jewish settlements successfully repelled Arab assaults, Haganah raids as well as isolated outrages by the IZL and LHI had a tremendous effect on the Palestinians. After the demolition of the Semiramis hotel in Jerusalem, a senior Haganah officer told Ben-Gurion: "The Arabs have started to run away. We encourage this desertion."
A resident of Qatamon, Khalil al-Sakakini, sketched in his diary the citizens' eagerness to defend their neighbourhood, but completely ignored the flight. Tapped telephone calls from the AHC's office portrayed a different picture, corroborating the information that had been reported to Ben-Gurion. In one of these conversations Hussayn Khalidi muttered: "Jerusalem is lost. No one has remained in Qatamon. Sheikh Jarah has been vacated. People abandon even the Old City. He who has some money - Yaalla to Egypt, Yaalla to Lebanon, Yaalla to Damascus." Although at face value as a true portrayal of prevailing conditions, Khalidi's desperate discourse should not be taken with more than a grain of salt, it does reflect the current mood among the Palestinian elite. Mere hearsay of an act said to be contemplated by the Haganah against an Arab quarter was sufficient to provoke its residents to run away.
At this preliminary phase, the flight from the cities resulted primarily from economic hardships. Describing the situation in Jaffa, an Arab journalist reported: "There is no labour, no commerce. Those who could afford to leave have already left." Another reason for the middle classes' escape, according to an official of Lebanon's consulate in Jerusalem, was apprehension lest the Arab governments might stop issuing visas to Palestinians.
At the end of January 1948, the Jewish Agency's deputy in Haifa, Tuvia Arazi, told Ben-Gurion that according to his Arab sources 25,000 people had left the town. Arazi's own estimate was 20,000: "Merchants, intellectuals and foreign labourers … the rich have gone to Lebanon and the others to Nazareth and to Jenin." The flow abated when a local delegation went to Egypt to confer with the Mufti, but resumed its previous rate after the delegates returned without permission to conclude a truce. Rumours spread in the city that the AHC was planning an all-out evacu-
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ation of women and children from Haifa to Syria and Lebanon.33
Wealthy Christian Arabs, fearing the Muslims no less than they feared the Jews, departed also from Jerusalem. An AHC employee residing in Baq'a quarter indicated that the rich inclined "not only to quit the neighbourhood, but to leave Jerusalem and even to depart from the country. Many want to go to the United States." In February, citizens began to vacate another prosperous quarter of Jerusalem - Talbiya - after Haganah loudspeakers urged them to clear out from their homes. The last Arabs left the spot late in April, after Haifa's fall. Only mixed Arab-Jewish families, foreign consuls and British officials remained.
The Haganah's retaliations against Arab villages encouraged their inhabitants to run away. Raiding parties often found their targets empty since the populace had expected revenge and hastened to flee. Following an IZL attack on Feja near Petah Tiqva early in February, the national committee of the larger nearby village Kafr Qassim ordered the tenants to abandon several small hamlets around the Jewish settlement. This was an opening for evacuating isolated Arab hamlets in predominantly Jewish areas. Their inhabitants moved to the predominantly Arab parts of the country, or moved to nearby larger villages where they felt safer and could also remain close to their homes and fields, while waiting for the storm to pass.
Thus, for example, the fellaheen of Caesaria went to nearby Tantura. Since a Jewish company (PICA) owned Caesaria's lands, the Haganah decided to occupy the spot permanently, thereby establishing a precedent. Galili explained that if the villagers wished to return, they might do so, but it was essential to deny the gangs any access to the site.
Following a raid on Bet Zafafa, south of Jerusalem, on 13 February, many inhabitants moved to Hebron, in the centre of an exclusively Arab area, leaving behind mercenary guards to watch their homes. Hebron's relative safety attracted refugees from Jerusalem and even from Jaffa. Ramallah was another asylum for runaways who flocked from Haifa, Jaffa and Jerusalem. Many escapees were Muslims and their arrival in the hitherto overwhelmingly Christian town provoked tension, amplifying apprehension among Christians of eventual domination by Moslems.
Parallel to meandering within the country, departures abroad continued and were intensified. Buses went daily to Transjordan, carrying women and children from Bethlehem, Bet Jala and elsewhere. Now and then word spread that another clan of Palestinian upper class was preparing to depart with the withdrawing British. Other notables left, or prepared to leave for Lebanon or Egypt!
The ALA embarked on a systematic evacuation of non-combatants from several frontier villages in order to turn them into military strongholds. In areas close to the borders, women and children crossed to the
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opposite side. Thus, for instance, the ALA removed non-combatants from hamlets in Galilee to Shi'ite villages in southern Lebanon. So far, the wanderers still strayed in both directions. In several localities, the inhabitants refused to obey the instructions of Abd al-Qadir al-Hussayni or the ALA to vacate their homes. In other places the evacuees returned, fearing that the Jews would seize the hamlets in their absence.
By February 1948, estimates of the scope of escape from Jaffa ranged between 15,000 to 25,000. The national committee struggled to stop the stream by imposing a special tax on departures. Muslim Brethren's guards were deployed at the port to collect the levy. The municipal militia threatened defectors with expropriation and even with capital punishment. According to a British intelligence summary, the AHC also attempted to check the flight by threatening deserters with confiscating their houses.
A conflict between the town council under the Mayor, Yussuf Haikal, and the national committee under Rafiq al-Tamimi, increased anarchy in Jaffa. To bring an end to their feuding, the Mufti removed Tamimi from the town and posted him to the AHC office in Beirut. Nonetheless, quarrels between the Hussaynis and Abdullah's partisans in the city persisted. Obeying no authority, hooligans of all kinds ransacked the streets and terrorized the citizenry. The Muslim Brethren ventured to enforce their own strict code of behaviour and purge the city of whores and alcoholic beverages in the process, looting merchandise in the port under the pretext that it was bound for Jewish hands. The citizenry was furious, but could do little to resist. Under such circumstances, families who could afford to do so, left town and moved elsewhere.
Aware of the escape, the Haganah's high command pondered underlying motivations for the phenomena. Israel Amir, Jerusalem district's commanding officer, explained to Ben-Gurion that the flight had already spread to several Arab neighbourhoods.! Ben-Gurion suspected the departure to be nothing but a conspiracy concocted to frustrate retaliatory raids by the Jews and diminish their effect by removing Arab women and children from the country. Until April 1948, he regarded the escape as a calculated withdrawal of non-combatant population upon the orders of Arab commanders and out of military considerations. This perception of the process as a premeditated and organized exodus was erroneous. Although there were a few such instances, these cases were not characteristic of the general situation.
At first, the Arab section underestimated the significance of flight and doubted stories of its scope. While admitting the fact of the Arabs' escape, Sasson maintained that it embraced thousands, not tens of thousands. News from the field, however, contradicted his estimate. Agents in Lydda airport reported a substantial rise in the number of Arab families departing by air to Beirut and to Cairo. Izhak Navon composed lists of
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Arab dignitaries who had left Jerusalem for Arab countries. Despite attempts at checking the desertion, the AHC and the national committees were unable to examine the pretexts for travelling abroad and lost control of this movement.
British observers confirmed meandering within Palestine and the escape of the middle classes to adjacent countries. In London, Glubb Pasha explained the situation in familiar terms, warning of the likelihood of "another Bengal": Jews and Arabs would flee to their respective areas in a manner reminiscent of events in the wake of Britain's recent withdrawal from India.
Concurrent with the departure of the towns' indigenous inhabitants, refugees from the surrounding countryside flocked into the cities and multiplied the chaos. Women and children from quarters and villages outside the walls of Jerusalem gathered in the Old City. After the United States suspended its support of the partition plan, the panic diminished temporarily. Nonetheless, many families were still making their way out of the country. In Jerusalem, the AHC permitted 25 households of notables to depart for Transjordan, but delayed distribution of permits to avoid alarm. The Arab League had allegedly instructed the national committees to make escape as difficult as possible: "Businessmen must get the approval of the Chamber of Commerce. The women must appear in person if they want an exit permit."
Concurrent to trying to hold back the unmanageable flight, the AHC inspired an orderly evacuation of women and children from battle-ridden regions. In mid-March it had sanctioned the departure of women, children and elderly men from Jerusalem." At the end of the month, it ordered evacuation of women and children from Qastel. A few days later the PALMAH occupied the village, finding it empty of men as well. By contrast, the villagers of nearby Bet Naquba refused an order to move out their families and appealed to Abd al-Qadir al-Hussayni to overrule the directive.
In Haifa, Bishop Hakim sponsored the transfer of Christian children to Lebanon. Two thousand children registered, and a first group departed on 11 March. The national council sent a special team to Syria and Lebanon to attend to the necessary arrangements for admitting Haifa's children. The Mufti intervened and demanded Hajj Ibrahim evacuate the non-combatants to safer areas inside Palestine and not abroad. Haifa's national committee preferred to disobey his instruction and undertook to complete the extrication of 3,000 children by the end of April.
This organized withdrawal of children was an exception. As a rule, the escape from Haifa emanated from trepidation and was very disorderly. One day, on 30 March, 800 fugitives from the city arrived without any previous notice in Shafa'amr, a large village 10 miles northeast of Haifa.
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Apparently, they sought the protection of the ALA's Druze regiment that arrived at the site on the same day.
Rashid al-Hajj Ibrahim and four other members of the national committee left in late March and early April for the neighbouring countries and did not return - bolstering the tempo of the departure. More groups of children left for Lebanon and the daily desertion rate from Haifa rose to 150. Apart from abandoning the town for Syria, Lebanon and Samaria, people moved from insecure neighbourhoods close to the frontline, into the heart of the city's Arab area where they occupied the escapees' houses.
Excluding a few attempts - mostly ineffectual - at organizing an evacuation of the non-combatant population, the flight during this phase of the civil war still resembled previous reactions to anarchy in Palestine, and in the Middle East in general. No one expelled the escapees or occupied their homes and lands, except for their own quasi-administrations. No massacres or deliberate intimidation of any kind took place yet. The people that had abandoned their homes in the towns and villages were confident that they would be back shortly.
Throughout that period, no enemy territory could have been occupied by either side, even temporarily. First signs that this situation was about to change were visible by early March. ALA's officers from Samaria visited Arab hamlets near Jaffa to plan their defence and ordered the inhabitants to evacuate their wives and children. Only men of service age should have stayed in these front-line positions. Abandonment of these hamlets sparked for the first time the dangerous prospect of the ALA deploying in such proximity to the Yishuv's centre in Tel Aviv, provoking suggestions within the Jewish camp of occupying Arab villages to preempt their seizure by the ALA. Subsequently, the Haganah occupied two small hamlets on the city's northern outskirts, Sumeil and Sheikh Munis (now the site of the Tel Aviv University campus).
Anticipating the conquest of more Arab hamlets, Galili instructed Haganah field commanders about treatment of residents who had not escaped. He established a principle that behaviour vis-a-vis these Arabs should be compatible with the Zionist movement's basic program of fully recognizing their personal rights. Deviation from this directive might be justified only on grounds of security and military exigencies.
Galili's guidelines were the first expression since the outset of hostilities of Israel's future disposition towards its prospective Arab minority. This policy derived from the status of Jews as a minority and ensuing problems in Europe between the two world wars. Israel's leaders, however, soon realized that several principles were inapplicable under Middle Eastern conditions. In contrast with the Jewish communities in Europe, Israel's Arab minority in 1948 did not seek integration and assim-
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ilation, but was hostile and affiliated to an antagonistic surrounding majority.
The significance of the issue of the civilian population grew during April when the fighting entered a new stage. The war took on a different essence with which the Palestinians had no previous experience. They responded to escalation in hostilities in their traditional manner, unaware of the unavoidable consequences.
The Message of Palestine, Musa Alami, The Middle East Journal, Volume 3, No. 4, October 1949, pp. 373-405
- 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 - The Message of Palestine, Musa Alami, The Middle East Journal, Volume 3, No. 4, October 1949, pp. 373-405
- 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
Report of Lt Col C.R.W. Norman, Chief Intelligence Officer
- 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
- Palestinians and 1948 - Rashid Khalidi
- The Arab-Israeli Conflict: The Palestine War 1948 - Efraim Karsh