Palestinian Exodus 1949 to 1956

The Palestinian Exodus 1949-1956 was the continuation of the 1948 1949 exodus of Palestinian Arabs from Israeli controlled territory after the signing of the Cease fire agreements. This period of the Exodus was characterised by predominantly forced expulsion during the consolidation of the state of Israel.

Between 1949 and 1956, Israel displaced and sometimes expelled a few tens of thousands Palestinians. Several Hundred villages along the cease fire line were also leveled.

Israel argued this was motivated by security considerations linked with the .
Background
On 30 May 1948 Yossef Weitz, head of the Settlement Department of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) recorded in his Diary:

"We have begun the operation of cleansing, removing the rubble and preparing the villages for cultivation and settlement. Some of these will become parks"

Immediately after the Arab-Israeli conflict, Israel started on a process of Nation building with General elections held in January 1949. Chaim Weizmann was installed as and Ben-Gurion as head of the Mapai party attained the position he had held in the provisional Government of Israel that of Prime minister of Israel. Ben-Gurion emphatically rejected the return of refugees in the Israeli Cabinet decision of June 1948 reiterated in a letter to the UN of 2 August 1949 containing the Text of a statement made by Moshe Sharett on 1 August 1948 where the basic attitude of the Israeli Government was that a solution must be sought, not through the return of the refugees to Israel, but through the resettlement of the Palestinian Arab refugee population in other states.

The continued exodus
In March 1949 as the Iraqi forces withdrew from Palestine and handed over their positions to the smaller Jordanian legion, 3 Israeli brigades manoeuvred into threatening positions in Operation Shin-Tav-Shin in a form of coercive diplomacy. The operation allowed Israel to renegotiate the cease fire line in the Wadi Ara area of the Northern West Bank in a secret agreement reached on 23 March 1949 and incorporated into the General Armistice Agreement. The green line was then redrawn in blue ink on the southern map to give the the impression that a movement in the green line had been made. It has been estimated that 15 villages were ceded to Israel and a further 15,000 Palestinian Arabs became refugees.

The villages of al Mansura, Tarbikah, Iqrit and Kafr Bir'im in Galilee were entered by IDF forces during late October early November, 1948 after Operation Hiram. The villages being located in an area, 5km deep parallel to the Israel Lebanon border, were to be evacuated of their Palestinian Arab population. The Israeli forces wanted, for security reasons, the villages populated primarily by Jews. On 13 November 1948 the inhabitants of Kafr Bir'im were requested to evacuated by the IDF "temporarily" in expectation of an Arab counter-attack. The villagers of Kafr Bir'im initially sought protection in a near by cave. The then Minister of Police Bechor Sheetrit on seeing the elderly, women and children living in the cave suggested that the villagers move to the town of Jish further south "until the military operations are over". Archbishop Elias Chacour originally a resident of Iqrit relates in his autobiography how IDF in the spring of 1949 rounded up all the men and older boys in the village (including his own father and three eldest brothers), and trucked them to the border with Jordan. There they were let out and ordered to go to Jordan. The soldiers opened fire, aiming just above their heads, meaning to drive them from their homeland for good. However, Chacour's father and brothers managed to make it back three months later.

In 1953 the (by now former) inhabitants of Kafr Bir'im pleaded to the Supreme Court of Israel to allow them to return to their village. Early in September 1953 the Supreme Court decided that the authorities had to answer to why the inhabitants were not allowed to return home. The result was devastating: on September 16, 1953 the Israeli air force and army in a joint operation bombed the village until it was completely destroyed. At the same time it was announced that 1,170 hectares of land belonging to the village had been expropriated by the state. (Ref. given by Sabri Jiryis: "Kouetz 307 (27. Aug. 1953): 1419")

During the Lausanne Peace Conference The US consul, William Burdett, reported on a meeting of the Jordan/Israel Armistice Commission which dealt with a case where 1,000 Palestinian Arab inhabitants of Baq'a el Gharbieh had expelled and forced across the cease fire line.

In January/February 1949 approximately 700 people from Kfar Yassif were expelled across the Jordanian/Israeli cease fire line as they had moved into Kfar Yassif from the surrounding villages during the period of fighting in 1948.

On 17 August 1950 the remaining Palestinian Arab population of Majdal were served with an expulsion order (The Palestinians had been held in a confined area since 1948) and the first group of them were taken on trucks to the Gaza Strip. Majdal was then renamed Ashkelon by the Israelis in an on going process of de-Arabisation of the topography as described by Meron Benvenisti. Egypt accepted the expelled civilian Palestinian Arabs from Majdal on humanitarian grounds as they would otherwise have been exposed to "torture and death". That however did not mean their voluntary movement. Furthermore, testimony of the expelled Arabs and reports of the Mixed Armistice Commission clearly showed that the refugees had been forcibly expelled.

From the statistics taken from the official records of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan/Israel Mixed Armistice Commission for the period of June 1949 through December 1952 it is found that Jordan complained of 37 instances of expulsion of Arabs from Israel. For the period 1 January 1953 through to 15 October 1953 it is found that Jordan complained of 7 instances of expulsion of Arabs from Israel involving 41 people.

Ilan Pappé reports that the last gun-point expulsion occurred in 1953 where the residents of Umm al-Faraj were driven out and the village destroyed by the IDF. "

In 1954 Israel "evacuated" the Palestinian villages of Baqqara and Ghannama in the central sector of the Israel/Syria demilitarized zone the Chief of Staff of the UNTSO made a report in January 1955 to the United Nations where it was decided that:-

*"(a) Decides that Arab civilians who have been removed from the demilitarized zone by the Government of Israel should be permitted to return forthwith to their homes and that the Mixed Armistice Commission should supervise their return and rehabilitation in a manner to be determined by the Commission; and
*"(b) Holds that no action involving the transfer of persons across international frontiers, armistice lines or within the demilitarized zone should be under-taken without prior decision of the Chairman of the Mixed Armistice Commission..."

30 October 1956 When Israel attacked Egypt across the Sinai peninsula in co-ordination with an Anglo-French attack on Suez. The remainder of the Palestinians living in the DMZs were driven into Syria. The villages of Baqqara and Ghannama now lie as rubble and are empty.

The es-Sani are returned to Israel
From the signing of the General Armistice Agreements in 1949, Jordan and Egypt had complained on many occasions that Israel had been reducing the Arab population of the Negeb by driving Bedouins and even Arab villagers across the cease fire lines into the Egyptian Sinai and the Jordanian held West Bank. Israel had been condemned by the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation (UNTSO) in some instances but had taken no steps to allow the return of the Arabs. On 17 September 1952, the senior Jordan Military Delegate to the Mixed Armistice Commission, Major Itzaq, inform the MAC that the Israelis had expelled ten families of the es-Sani tribe and that they were now situated inside the Jordan border south of Hebron. On 22 September Commander Hutchison USNR of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan/Israel Mixed Armistice Commission (HKJMAC) went into the area and counted over 100 families, nearly 1,000 members of the es-Sani tribe. Sheikh El Hajj Ibrahim informed the MAC that the es-Sani had been forced off their cultivated lands southeast of Beersheba, at El Sharia, to El Laqiya, north-east of Beersheba. On the new area at El Laqiya, for the next three years the es-Sani had made it productive to the extent that Israel then declared a quantity of their grain as surplus crop and demanded that it be sold to the Israeli government at a fixed price. The Military Governor of Beersheba, Lt. Colonel Hermann, informed Sheikh El Hajj Ibrahim that Israel was going to establish a settlement at El Laqiya and that his tribe would have to move to Tel Arad. Sheikh El Hajj Ibrahim had then led the es-Sani over the Jordan/Israel cease fire land rather that move to the inferior land around Tel Arad.

The Sheikh's story of the court action was true. On September 28, 1952, under the heading, * 'Bedouin Tribe Moved/' the Israel press announced that "Tribesmen of the Kiderat El Sana Teljaha tribe were last week moved from their former homes at El Laqiya, east of the Beersheba-Hebron road, to a new site at Tel Arad. ... On September 15, the High Court in Jerusalem issued an order 'nisi* against the Military Governor and the Ministry of Defence against the enforced move of the tribe."

After negotiations lasting days it was arranged for the es-Sani to return to Israel; although the Israelis wanted the es-Sani transported inside Jordan to a point opposite and closer to Tel Arad which the Jordanians refused to do this and it was finally settled that the transfer would be made at the original point of crossing, on the Hebron-Beersheba road.

Encouraged Exodus
The Jewish National Fund under Yosef Weitz actively encouraged Palestinian Arab emigration. In the village of Ar'ara 2,500 dunums (625 acres) were purchased. The Purchase price was paid in Jordanian currency the Palestinian Arabs were then transported to the cease fire line with their luggage and from there transported to Tulkarem.

See also

* 1948 Palestinian exodus
* Palestinian refugees
* Arab Israelis

Foot Notes

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