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Reclaiming a Historical Truth: Arab Villagers Were Ordered Out by Local Leaders

(Ha'aretz) Efraim Karsh - The tragedy befalling the Palestinian Arabs in 1948 was exclusively of their own making. Large numbers of them were driven from their homes by their own leaders and/or the "Arab Liberation Army" that had entered Palestine prior to the end of the Mandate. Of this there is an overwhelming and incontrovertible body of contemporary evidence - intelligence briefs, captured Arab documents, press reports, personal testimonies and memoirs. In the largest and best-known example of Arab-instigated exodus, tens of thousands of Arabs were ordered or bullied into leaving the city of Haifa (on April 21-22) on the instructions of the Arab Higher Committee, the effective "government" of the Palestinian Arabs. Only days earlier, Tiberias' 6,000-strong Arab community had been similarly forced out by its own leaders. In Jaffa, Palestine's largest Arab city, the municipality organized the transfer of thousands of residents by land and sea; in Jerusalem, the AHC ordered the transfer of women and children, and local gang leaders pushed out residents of several neighborhoods. In the words of a British intelligence report: "Many would not have responded to the call for a complete evacuation but for the rumors and propaganda spread by the [Arab] National Committee." The deliberate depopulation of Arab villages and their transformation into military strongholds was a hallmark of the Arab campaign from the onset of hostilities. The writer is research professor of Middle East and Mediterranean studies at King's College London, and director of the Middle East Forum (Philadelphia).
2011-06-10 00:00:00
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