Ilan Pappe

Dr. Ilan Pappe is a Profesor of History at Haifa University. This article
is based upon the transcript of a lecture presented by Dr. Pappe to the
Right To Return Coalition - Al Awda UK, held at the School for Oriental
and African Studies in London Monday 16th September 2002. It is hereby
published after receiving Dr. Pappe's consent and editorial remarks. [BTL]
 

I have come here to present the comprehensive story of the history of the
expulsion and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in 1948 and its
relevance to the present and future agenda to peace in Palestine. 

For Israelis, 1948 is a year in which two things happened which contradict
each other: On the one hand, it was the climax of Jewish aspirations to
have a state or to fulfill a long dream of returning to a homeland after
what they regarded as 2000 years of exile. In other words, it was
considered a miraculous event that only positive adjectives could be
attached to, and that you could only talk about and remember as a very
elated kind of event. On the other hand, it was the worst chapter in
Jewish history. Jews did in 1948 in Palestine what Jews had not done
anywhere for 2000 years prior. The most evil and most glorious moment
converged into one. What Israeli collective memory did was to erase one
side of the story in order to co-exist or to live with only the glorious
chapter. It was a mechanism for solving an impossible tension between two
collective memories. 

Because so many of the people who live in Israel lived through 1948, this
is not a distant memory. It is not the genocide of the Native Americans in
the United States. People know exactly what they did, and they know what
others did. Yet they still succeed in erasing it totally from their own
memory while struggling rigorously against anyone trying to present the
other, unpleasant, story of 1948, in and outside Israel. If you look at
Israeli textbooks, curricula, media, and political discourse you see how
this chapter in Jewish history - the chapter of expulsion, colonization,
massacres, rape, and the burning of villages - is totally absent. It is
not there. It is replaced by a chapter of heroism, glorious campaigns and
amazing stories of moral courage and superiority unheard of in any other
histories of people's liberation in the 20th century. So whenever I speak
of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948, we must remember that not
just the very terms of "ethnic cleansing" and "expulsion" are totally
alien to the community and society from which I come and from where I grew
up; the very history of that chapter is either distorted in the
recollection of people, or totally absent. 

Zionist Leaders' Strategy: Settlement and Expulsion

Now, when you start reading the diaries of the leaders of Zionism, and
researching their ideologies and ideological trends since the movement's
conception in the late 19th century, you see that from the very beginning
there had been the realization that the aspiration for a Jewish state in
Palestine contradicts the fact that an indigenous people had been living
on the land of Palestine for centuries and that their aspirations
contradicted the Zionist schema for the country and its people. The
presence of a local society and culture had been known to the founding
fathers of Zionism even before the first settlers set foot on the land. 

Two means were used in order to change the reality in Palestine, and
impose the Zionist interpretation on the local reality: the dispossession
of the indigenous population from the land and its re-populating with
newcomers - i.e. settlement and expulsion. The colonization effort was
pushed forward by a movement that had not yet won regional or
international legitimacy and therefore had to buy land, and create
enclaves within the indigenous population. The British Empire was very
helpful in bringing this scheme into reality. Yet from the very beginning
of Zionist strategy, the leaders of Zionism knew that settlement is a very
long and measured process, which may not be sufficient if you want to
revolutionize the reality on the ground and impose your own
interpretation. For that, you needed something more powerful. David
Ben-Gurion, the leader of the Jewish community in the 1930s and later the
first Prime Minister of Israel, mentioned more than once, that for that
[imposing your interpretation on the ground] you need what he called
"revolutionary conditions". He meant a situation of war - a situation of
change of government, a twilight zone between an old era and the beginning
of a new one. It is not surprising to read in the Israeli press today that
Ariel Sharon thinks that he is the new Ben Gurion who is about to lead his
people into yet another revolutionary moment - the war with Iraq - in
which expulsion, and not a political settlement, can be used to further,
indeed, to complete the process of de-Arabizing Palestine and Judaizing
it, which had begun in 1882. 

Towards the end of the British Mandate, there was a need to make these
more theoretical and abstract ideas about expulsion into a concrete plan.
I have been writing about 1948 since 1980, and for much of that time have
been concerned with the question of whether there had or hadn't been a
Zionist master plan to expel the Palestinians in 1948. Then I realized,
(largely as a result of what I have learned in the last two years), that
this was not the right track: neither for academic research nor from more
popular ideological research of what has happened in the past. Far more
important for ethnic cleansing is the formulation of an ideological
community, in which every member, whether a newcomer or a veteran, knows
only too well that they have to contribute to a recognized formula: the
only way to fulfill the dream of Zionism is to empty the land of its
indigenous population. 

Mass Ideological Indoctrination Behind '48 Nakba

Master plans are not the most important component in preparing yourself
for that time of a revolutionary juncture or for the contingency plans of
how to practically make the idea of expulsion a reality. You need
something else: you need an atmosphere, you need people who are
indoctrinated, you need commanders in every link of the chain of command
who would know what to do even if they don't have explicit orders when the
time comes. Most of the preparations before the '48 War were less about a
master plan (although I do think there was one). The commanders were busy
compiling intelligence files for each Palestinian village for the use of
Jewish commanders on all levels, so they would know how wealthy and how
important each particular village was as a military unit etc. Armed with
such intelligence, they were also aware of what was expected from them by
the man who stood at the top of the Jewish pyramid in Palestine, David Ben
Gurion and his colleagues. These leaders wanted only to know how each
operation contributed to the Judaization of Palestine, and they made it
perfectly clear that they did not care how it was done. The expulsion plan
worked very smoothly exactly because there was no need for a systematic
chain of command that had to check whether a master plan was fully
implemented. Anyone who has done any research on ethnic cleansing
operations in the second half of the 20th century knows that this is
exactly how ethnic cleansing is achieved: by creating the kind of
education and indoctrination systems that ensures that every soldier and
every commander, and everyone with his individual responsibility, knows
exactly what to do when they enter a village, even if they haven't
received any specific orders to expel its inhabitants. 

Just recently, as a result of reading testimonies not only of Palestinians
but also of Israeli soldiers, it became clear to me that the master plan,
although significant in itself, pales in comparison to the whole machinery
of indoctrination of a community. In 1948, the Yishuv's [the pre-'48
Zionist community] population was a little more than half a million, and
before 1948 was even less. Those who had an active role in the military
aspects of their community knew precisely what to do when the moment came
and not one moment too soon. 

But it should be remembered that the plan was successful not only because
of the ideological indoctrination. It was done under the eyes of the UN,
which had been committed ever since its General Assembly adopted
Resolution 181 to the safety and welfare of those 'cleansed'. The UN was
obliged to protect the life of the Palestinian people who were supposed to
live in the areas allocated to the Jewish State (they were meant to make
up almost half of the population of the prospective state). Out of 900,000
Palestinians living both in these areas and additional areas occupied by
Israel from the designated Arab states, only 100,000 remained. Within a
very short period during the time in which the UN was already responsible
for Palestine, a massive expulsion operation took place within a very
short period of time. 

We have yet to be told the most horrific stories of 1948, although so many
of us have been working as professional historians on that. We haven't
talked about the rape. We haven't talked about the more than 30 or 40
massacres which popular historiography mentions. We haven't yet decided
how to define the systematic killing of several individuals that took
place in each and every village in order to create the panic that should
produce the exodus. Is this a massacre or not when it is systematically
repeated in every village? It is quite possible that some chapters will
never be revealed, and many of them do not depend on archives, but rather
on the memory of people whom we are loosing each day as vital witnesses.
There were not specific orders written, only an atmosphere that has to be
reconstructed. A glimpse into that atmosphere can be found on the
bookshelves of almost every house in Israel - in the official books that
glorify the Israeli army in its activity in 1948. If you know how to read
them, you can see how the Palestinians were de-humanized to such a degree
that you could rely on the troops, and that they would know what to do. 

Israeli and Palestinian Leaders Accept the American Game:
Shrinking Palestine Physically & Morally

Noam Chomsky was correct in his analysis that we in Palestine/ Israel and
the Middle East as a whole were eagerly playing the American game ever
since they decided to take an active role in the peace process, beginning
in 1969 with the Rogers Plan, and then with the Kissinger initiatives.
Ever since then, the peace agenda has been an American game. The Americans
invented the concept of the peace process, whereby the process is far more
important than peace. America has contradictory interests in the Middle
East, which include protecting certain regimes in the area that preserve
American interests (therefore entailing paying lip service to the
Palestinian cause) while also has a commitment to Israel. In order not to
find itself facing these two contradictory agendas, it is best to have an
ongoing process which is not war and not peace but something which you can
describe as a genuine American effort to reconcile between the two sides -
and God forbid if this reconciliation works. 

We were playing this game not only because the Americans invented it, but
also because the replacement of peace with a "peace process" became the
main strategy of the Israeli peace camp. When the peace camp of the
stronger party in the local balance of power accepts this interpretation
then the world at large follows suit. 

Such a process, which can and should go on forever, coached by the only
superpower and supported by the peace camp of the stronger party in the
conflict, is presented as peace. One of the best ways of safeguarding the
process from being successful is to evade all the outstanding issues at
the heart of the problem. In such a way it was possible to erase the
events of 1948 from the peace agenda and focus on what happened in 1967. 

The outstanding issue became the territories Israel occupied in the 1967
war. The concept of "territories for peace" was invented simultaneously in
Tel Aviv, London, Paris and New York for United Nations Resolution 242. It
presents a very concrete variable, in fact about 20% of Palestine, while
wiping out the remainder 80% from the formula and juxtaposes it against
"peace", which is in fact the never-ending peace process. A process that
was not meant to bring a solution, let alone reconciliation. In return for
a peace process, the Palestinians would be allowed to talk about and maybe
gradually build something of a political entity on 20% of Palestine. 

In 1988 [after the PNC accepted UN 242 in Algiers] and 1993 [at the Oslo
Accords] even the Palestinian leadership joined this game. No wonder then
that after Oslo, the American policy makers felt that they could round up
the whole story. They had Palestinian and Israeli leaderships that
accepted the name of the American game. This was the beginning of the
process, which culminated with the "the most generous Israeli offer ever
made about peace" in the Camp David summit in the summer of 2000. Had this
process been successful, history would have witnessed not only the
expulsion of the Palestinians from their homeland in 1948 but the
eradication of the refugees, as well as of the Palestinian minority in
Israel, and maybe even Palestine, from our collective memory. 

It was a process of elimination that succeeded to a certain extent, were
it not for the second uprising. I wonder what would have happened had the
second Intifada not broken out. If the Palestinian leadership continued to
partake in the ploy to shrink Palestine, physically and morally, it would
have succeeded. The second Intifada was trying to stop this. Whether or
not it will succeed, we do not know. 

Agenda for Peace Activists in the Shadow of Transfer Scheme

The problem for us as peace activists, is that any coordinated pressure on
Israel to stop its plans, can in an absurd way lead the Israelis to
accelerate their plans for wiping out Palestine, namely to feel that the
revolutionary circumstances have arrived. This is my greatest fear for the
second Intifada. I fully support it and regard it as a popular movement
determined to stop a peace process which would have destroyed Palestine
once and for all. The uprising, and certainly on top of it the coming war
against Iraq, have produced in the minds of Israelis - of all walks of
life not only within the circles of the Right-wing camp - the idea that
"we have reached yet another fortuitous juncture in history where
revolutionary conditions have developed for solving the Palestine question
once and for all." You can see this new assertion talked about in Israel:
the discourse of transfer and expulsion which had been employed by the
extreme Right, is now the bon ton of the center. Established academics
talk and write about it, politicians in the center preach it, and army
officers are only too happy to hint in interviews that indeed should a war
against Iraq begin, transfer should be on the agenda. 

This brings me to chart what I think are three agendas of peace, for
anyone involved in supporting peacemaking in Israel and Palestine,
otherwise we may miss the train, so to speak. 

The first agenda is the most urgent one: we must all take the danger of a
recurrence of the 1948 ethnic cleansing very seriously. This is not just
paranoia when I directly - not indirectly - link the war against Iraq with
the possibility of another Nakba. 

Take it seriously, believe me. There is a serious Israeli
conceptualization of the situation in which Israeli leaders say to
themselves, "we have a carte blanche from the Americans. The Americans
will not only allow us to cleanse Palestine once and for all, they even
will help create the window of opportunity for implementing our scheme. We
will be condemned by the world, but this will be short-lived and
eventually forgotten. This is a rare opportunity to 'solve' the problem." 

The second agenda is the immediate one, and that is ending the occupation.
We should be very careful in adopting the American, the Israeli Peace Now,
and I'm sorry to say, the Palestinian Authority discourse about a
two-state solution. Because the two-state solution nowadays is not the end
of the occupation but continuing it in a different way. It is meant to be
the end of the conflict with no solution to the refugee problem and the
complete abandonment of the Palestinian minority in Israel. Anybody who
has not learned this after the Oslo Accords has a problem of understanding
and interpreting reality. We have to make sure that the idea of peace is
not hijacked by people who are seeking indirect ways of continuing the
present situation in Palestine. This is not easy because the western media
has already adopted within its main vocabulary that anyone who wants to
present himself as a peacemaker or as a supporter of peace, must talk
about a two-state solution. 

Only after the occupation ends can we talk about what it entails. Then it
is possible to discuss the political structure best needed to prevent a
reoccupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. But it should be clear
that the political structure needed to end the conflict is a different
one. It has to be one that enables us to end refugeehood and the apartheid
policies against the Palestinians inside Israel. We have to be sure not to
get caught in the same cul de sac that Yassir Arafat found himself in Camp
David when he was asked to equate the end of occupation (when it wasn't
even the end of occupation) with the end of the conflict. 

Finally, and this is our third agenda, we have to keep on thinking about
how to devise concrete plans for making the Right of Return feasible and
for making possible the end of discrimination against Palestinians in
Israel. These are the two pillars of a comprehensive settlement and they
have to be specified. I think it is quite clear that we haven't done that
job yet: we are still stuck with slogans of the 1960's, of a secular
democratic state. These slogans have to be updated according to the
reality of 2002. What was meant in the 1960's by a secular democratic
state is a possible vision for the distant future. Our focus on the urgent
and immediate agenda should not absolve us from long-term strategies. What
people need to hear from us are concrete plans, even if they sound utopian
given the situation on the ground. This is a delicate enterprise which
entails not only creating a political culture and structure that would
rectify past evils, and prevent another catastrophe, but also one which
would not inflict another evil, or replace the past evil with a new one.
We are not calling for the expulsion of the Jews. We do want the Right of
Return. We do want equal rights for the Palestinian citizens. 

I think many of us who think in such a long-term span would like to see
one state or a political structure which has one state in it. But you
cannot disseminate these ideas by just giving highlights, nuggets or
slogans. There needs to be a very serious and detailed presentation of
such a solution, to convince people of its feasibility. 

Finally I want to come back to where I started. In the collective Israeli
memory there are two 1948s: one is totally erased, and one is totally
glorified. But there is a young generation in Israel - and I have ample
opportunities to meet with young audiences - who may prove to have a
potential to look differently at the reality in the future. The fact that
you have generations of young people who are basically willing to listen
to universal principles, provides the opportunity to break the mirror and
show them what really happened in 1948, and what is going on in 2002. I
think we shall eventually find partners, even to our wildest dreams, on
how a solution should look like. 

The problem is of course, that while we do this - educate, disseminate
information etc. - the government of Israel is preparing a very swift and
bloody operation. If it succeeds, even our best dreams and energies would
be wasted.