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Portrait of a Palestinian Town
In 1948, the Israeli army marched through Wadi Fukin and forcibly evacuated the small Palestinian town. With no weapons to resist, its residents fled to the surrounding hills. Among them was 25-year-old Yousef Manasra. He and his budding family moved into tents provided by the United Nations. They survived by drinking water from nearby streams and sneaking into their village at night to harvest their fields.
More than once Manasra and the rest of the townspeople tried to return to their homes, only to be driven out again.
“The people of Wadi Fukin were kicked out of their homes so many times, I can’t even count,” Manasra says.
Finally, in 1953, an Israeli border patrol unit dynamited the town, destroying all but a few of the houses.
By that time Manasra was living in the Dheisheh refugee camp a few miles away, near Bethlehem and beyond the border of the new state of Israel. He and thousands of other refugees had been forced to flee their towns by the Israelis.
In 1972, he finally returned home. The camp in Dheisheh was overflowing with refugees from Gaza, so the residents of Wadi Fukin were told to go home.
Neighbors all worked together until new houses were rebuilt. It was the only time, as far as Palestinians can recall, that residents rebuilt a town destroyed in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
Today, at 82, Manasra fears history is about to repeat itself in Wadi Fukin. At the end of 2006, Israel’s separation barrier is scheduled to reach this town, which sits just on the Palestinian West Bank side of the Green Line. The barrier will cut off Wadi Fukin and four nearby towns from the rest of the West Bank, which is these towns’ main source for health care, jobs and higher education.
Instead of the 30-foot-high concrete wall in other parts of the West Bank, the barrier around Wadi Fukin will be a complex series of electrified fences, razor wire, motion sensors, military patrol roads and trenches up to 300 feet wide.
The Barrier’s Impact
Manasra and the rest of the 1,200 people who live in the small town will have to pass through two tunnels and a guarded checkpoint to reach Bethlehem. On a good day, officials estimate, the checkpoint alone will take 30 minutes to get through. The entire trip could take hours. If security is escalated, residents could be prevented from crossing altogether.
The wall the Israelis are building now and the town’s being destroyed by them back during the war are the same thing, says Manasra. But this time, he says, instead of two-inch mortars destroying people’s houses, “the wall will destroy people’s will to live here.”
Until the late 1970s, Wadi Fukin and surrounding villages were the breadbasket for Bethlehem. The town grew everything from grapes to cauliflower and eggplant to wheat.
But more recently, because of flying checkpoints, “it’s not feasible for people to work on their land all year long and then simply to be closed off, denied the markets to market their harvest by an Israeli checkpoint,” says Suhail Khalilieh, a research assistant with the Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem, a Palestinian think tank. Unlike permanent barriers, flying checkpoints are mobile -- often nothing more than a military jeep blocking the road -- and they can be set up anywhere at any time.
Many residents have been forced out of farming and into other jobs to make a living. More than half of the men in Wadi Fukin now work either in Israel or in an Israeli settlement. Most of them earn their living working construction. In the Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank, only 14 percent of the men from Wadi Fukin still survive in farming.
And many who find work in Israel or Israeli settlements don’t have permits to enter. “Residents of the western rural villages of Bethlehem, or any other Palestinians for that matter, have a financial drain,” says Khalilieh. “Ironically, they have to sneak into Israel to work in settlements or work on the wall.”
Wael Manasra, 34 and the father of four boys, is Yousef Manasra’s grandson. He supports his family by working as a repairman in the Abu Ghneim settlement near Jerusalem. He’s tried twice to get a permit and was turned down both times.
Wael earns about 150 shekels, or $32, each day he works. Along with his father, Ibrahim, who drives a dump truck in the nearby settlement of Betar Illit, Wael helps support his entire extended family of 11 people. Altogether, the family usually lives on about 6,000 shekels a month, or a little over $1,300.
Because it’s too dangerous to sneak into and out of the settlement each day, Wael often stays in the settlement for four or five days at a stretch, hiding at night in any dark nook he can find in one of the buildings where he works. Each night, he sets his cell phone to ring at 12:40 a.m. to warn him that the next shift of guards is coming on duty. They often come looking for workers hiding in the buildings.
“Of course if working in agriculture would allow me to survive, I would stay in Wadi Fukin,” he says. “But it doesn’t.”
The wall also poses a problem for medical care. Wadi Fukin has a medical clinic, but, according to a World Bank study, most people still travel to Bethlehem for major treatments. All the women receive their prenatal care in Bethlehem, and most deliver their children there. When the wall is built and the only access to Bethlehem is through a permanent checkpoint, many fear that during an emergency, they will be unable to reach medical services in time.
There is a school in Wadi Fukin that serves grades K-12, but students must travel to Bethlehem or other West Bank cities to go to college.
Organizing Resistance
Community organizers suspect the barrier will eventually destroy Wadi Fukin’s economy.
“I think the Palestinian people have a high level of resilience, but life in this area is going to be very difficult,” says Ibrahim Ibraigheth, the director of the Community Development Program for the five villages.
Residents have already started resistance efforts. Their first target is the expansion of the Betar Illit Israeli settlement, one of 19 settlements in the area, which sits just to the southeast. Built on land that used to belong to Wadi Fukin and other villages, Betar Illit is home to 26,300 people and scheduled to more than double in population.
Every morning except Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, the people of Wadi Fukin wake to the sound of jackhammers digging out chunks of the hill to make room for rows of five-story, tan-and-red-roof settlement apartments. The expansion of Betar Illit will encircle Wadi Fukin on the opposite side from the barrier and most likely will cut off the town’s southern exit.
The settlement’s sewage system has already clogged several times, sending raw sewage flowing into Wadi Fukin, ruining valuable farmland. The millions of tons of dirt moved to make room for the new apartment buildings have piled up and threaten to come sliding onto Wadi Fukin’s land, according to villagers.
Along with Friends of the Earth Middle East, an international environmental nonprofit organization, and residents of the nearby Israeli town of Tsur Hadassah, which sits just across the Green Line, activists in Wadi Fukin have hired lawyers to investigate the environmental impacts of the settlement, including increasing strain on the valley’s water resources.
Some Tsur Hadassah residents oppose the barrier as well, and they have circulated a petition asking Israeli officials not to build it or to at least construct it in such a way so as not to affect Wadi Fukin so adversely.
“I didn’t want to feel that I witnessed what was going on and didn’t do anything about it,” says Dudy Yehuda Tzfati, 44, one of several Israeli residents who have mobilized to help. “I feel responsible as an Israeli for what I see as crimes being done in my name.”
What the Future Holds
The Israeli government defends the barrier, saying it’s essential to combating terrorism. “The Security Fence is a central component in Israel’s response to the horrific wave of terrorism emanating from the West Bank, resulting in suicide bombers who enter into Israel with the sole intention of killing innocent people, says Israel’s Ministry of Defense.”
Others, including organizations such as B’tselem, an Israeli human rights group, have argued that rather than basing the route on security concerns, Israel based the route on extraneous considerations completely unrelated to the security of Israeli citizens and that a major aim was to build the barrier east of as many settlements as possible, to make it easier to annex them into Israel.
The United Nations has reported that approximately 5,000 Palestinians already live on land that lies between the barrier and the Green Line. If the barrier follows its planned route, including the sections that are still under consideration, 10 percent of the entire landmass of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, along with nearly 50,000 Palestinians in 38 villages, will be stranded. If Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert follows his proposed plan to make Israel’s permanent border follow the barrier, these areas will be annexed.
The U.N. report also says that in the north, where the wall is already built, access across the barrier has been slow and unreliable. Ibraigheth and Khalilieh fear that if the same is true for Wadi Fukin, much of the town will eventually give up and move to Bethlehem or other cities on the Palestinian side of the barrier in search of a better life.
But Wael Manasra is resolved to stay. “We suffered to return to Wadi Fukin, so I will never go,” he says. “This is my village and my land. Even if I can only eat one small piece of bread, and I can’t get more than this, I will never leave.”
His younger brother, Wisam, doesn’t agree. “If I have to leave to find work, I will, because I think any other life is better than the one here,” he says. “I want to help my family, and I want to help myself.”
Wisam says he might eventually like to return to Wadi Fukin, but he also would like to attend a university and study journalism. And for now, supporting his family is most important. “I feel bad about all of this, working in settlements or leaving,” he says. “But there really isn’t any other way.”
Ibraigheth and Khalilieh believe that if the younger generation decides to leave, much of Wadi Fukin’s land will go uncultivated and could be taken over by Israel. According to the United Nations, Israel uses a law based on an old Ottoman code that allows the state to claim any land that goes uncultivated for three years.
“The older generations are going to be completely isolated,” says Khalilieh. “They will be the only ones there to protect the land, but they will not be able to do so for so many years. That’s when the Israelis will move in and declare the lands as state land under the absentee property law and take it over.”
Some of the younger generation still have hope. Madi Manasra, 13, a cousin of Wael and Wisam, says he wants to finish high school, then attend the university in Bethlehem. He eventually would like to work as a tourist guide. “I’m afraid sometimes the separation will keep me from completing my education,” he says. “But I want to tell people that a just solution is not impossible.”
Others, such as Mohammed Manasra, Wael and Wisam’s youngest brother, see no good options and don’t know what they’ll do. Mohammed wants to be near his family, but fears he’ll never find work. He doesn’t give much thought to attending a university -- or even to what the future may hold.
“With the barrier about to arrive,” he says, “we cannot imagine anything. We cannot dream about anything.”
SOURCES: United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs; PLO Negotiations Affairs Department; Israeli Ministry of Defense; Friends of the Earth Middle East; World Bank; Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem, B’tselem.
--------------
Read more on Israel's Security Barrier.
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/palestine503/sidebar_jakob.html
“The people of Wadi Fukin were kicked out of their homes so many times, I can’t even count,” Manasra says.
Finally, in 1953, an Israeli border patrol unit dynamited the town, destroying all but a few of the houses.
By that time Manasra was living in the Dheisheh refugee camp a few miles away, near Bethlehem and beyond the border of the new state of Israel. He and thousands of other refugees had been forced to flee their towns by the Israelis.
In 1972, he finally returned home. The camp in Dheisheh was overflowing with refugees from Gaza, so the residents of Wadi Fukin were told to go home.
Neighbors all worked together until new houses were rebuilt. It was the only time, as far as Palestinians can recall, that residents rebuilt a town destroyed in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
Today, at 82, Manasra fears history is about to repeat itself in Wadi Fukin. At the end of 2006, Israel’s separation barrier is scheduled to reach this town, which sits just on the Palestinian West Bank side of the Green Line. The barrier will cut off Wadi Fukin and four nearby towns from the rest of the West Bank, which is these towns’ main source for health care, jobs and higher education.
Instead of the 30-foot-high concrete wall in other parts of the West Bank, the barrier around Wadi Fukin will be a complex series of electrified fences, razor wire, motion sensors, military patrol roads and trenches up to 300 feet wide.
The Barrier’s Impact
Manasra and the rest of the 1,200 people who live in the small town will have to pass through two tunnels and a guarded checkpoint to reach Bethlehem. On a good day, officials estimate, the checkpoint alone will take 30 minutes to get through. The entire trip could take hours. If security is escalated, residents could be prevented from crossing altogether.
The wall the Israelis are building now and the town’s being destroyed by them back during the war are the same thing, says Manasra. But this time, he says, instead of two-inch mortars destroying people’s houses, “the wall will destroy people’s will to live here.”
Until the late 1970s, Wadi Fukin and surrounding villages were the breadbasket for Bethlehem. The town grew everything from grapes to cauliflower and eggplant to wheat.
But more recently, because of flying checkpoints, “it’s not feasible for people to work on their land all year long and then simply to be closed off, denied the markets to market their harvest by an Israeli checkpoint,” says Suhail Khalilieh, a research assistant with the Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem, a Palestinian think tank. Unlike permanent barriers, flying checkpoints are mobile -- often nothing more than a military jeep blocking the road -- and they can be set up anywhere at any time.
Many residents have been forced out of farming and into other jobs to make a living. More than half of the men in Wadi Fukin now work either in Israel or in an Israeli settlement. Most of them earn their living working construction. In the Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank, only 14 percent of the men from Wadi Fukin still survive in farming.
And many who find work in Israel or Israeli settlements don’t have permits to enter. “Residents of the western rural villages of Bethlehem, or any other Palestinians for that matter, have a financial drain,” says Khalilieh. “Ironically, they have to sneak into Israel to work in settlements or work on the wall.”
Wael Manasra, 34 and the father of four boys, is Yousef Manasra’s grandson. He supports his family by working as a repairman in the Abu Ghneim settlement near Jerusalem. He’s tried twice to get a permit and was turned down both times.
Wael earns about 150 shekels, or $32, each day he works. Along with his father, Ibrahim, who drives a dump truck in the nearby settlement of Betar Illit, Wael helps support his entire extended family of 11 people. Altogether, the family usually lives on about 6,000 shekels a month, or a little over $1,300.
Because it’s too dangerous to sneak into and out of the settlement each day, Wael often stays in the settlement for four or five days at a stretch, hiding at night in any dark nook he can find in one of the buildings where he works. Each night, he sets his cell phone to ring at 12:40 a.m. to warn him that the next shift of guards is coming on duty. They often come looking for workers hiding in the buildings.
“Of course if working in agriculture would allow me to survive, I would stay in Wadi Fukin,” he says. “But it doesn’t.”
The wall also poses a problem for medical care. Wadi Fukin has a medical clinic, but, according to a World Bank study, most people still travel to Bethlehem for major treatments. All the women receive their prenatal care in Bethlehem, and most deliver their children there. When the wall is built and the only access to Bethlehem is through a permanent checkpoint, many fear that during an emergency, they will be unable to reach medical services in time.
There is a school in Wadi Fukin that serves grades K-12, but students must travel to Bethlehem or other West Bank cities to go to college.
Organizing Resistance
Community organizers suspect the barrier will eventually destroy Wadi Fukin’s economy.
“I think the Palestinian people have a high level of resilience, but life in this area is going to be very difficult,” says Ibrahim Ibraigheth, the director of the Community Development Program for the five villages.
Residents have already started resistance efforts. Their first target is the expansion of the Betar Illit Israeli settlement, one of 19 settlements in the area, which sits just to the southeast. Built on land that used to belong to Wadi Fukin and other villages, Betar Illit is home to 26,300 people and scheduled to more than double in population.
Every morning except Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, the people of Wadi Fukin wake to the sound of jackhammers digging out chunks of the hill to make room for rows of five-story, tan-and-red-roof settlement apartments. The expansion of Betar Illit will encircle Wadi Fukin on the opposite side from the barrier and most likely will cut off the town’s southern exit.
The settlement’s sewage system has already clogged several times, sending raw sewage flowing into Wadi Fukin, ruining valuable farmland. The millions of tons of dirt moved to make room for the new apartment buildings have piled up and threaten to come sliding onto Wadi Fukin’s land, according to villagers.
Along with Friends of the Earth Middle East, an international environmental nonprofit organization, and residents of the nearby Israeli town of Tsur Hadassah, which sits just across the Green Line, activists in Wadi Fukin have hired lawyers to investigate the environmental impacts of the settlement, including increasing strain on the valley’s water resources.
Some Tsur Hadassah residents oppose the barrier as well, and they have circulated a petition asking Israeli officials not to build it or to at least construct it in such a way so as not to affect Wadi Fukin so adversely.
“I didn’t want to feel that I witnessed what was going on and didn’t do anything about it,” says Dudy Yehuda Tzfati, 44, one of several Israeli residents who have mobilized to help. “I feel responsible as an Israeli for what I see as crimes being done in my name.”
What the Future Holds
The Israeli government defends the barrier, saying it’s essential to combating terrorism. “The Security Fence is a central component in Israel’s response to the horrific wave of terrorism emanating from the West Bank, resulting in suicide bombers who enter into Israel with the sole intention of killing innocent people, says Israel’s Ministry of Defense.”
Others, including organizations such as B’tselem, an Israeli human rights group, have argued that rather than basing the route on security concerns, Israel based the route on extraneous considerations completely unrelated to the security of Israeli citizens and that a major aim was to build the barrier east of as many settlements as possible, to make it easier to annex them into Israel.
The United Nations has reported that approximately 5,000 Palestinians already live on land that lies between the barrier and the Green Line. If the barrier follows its planned route, including the sections that are still under consideration, 10 percent of the entire landmass of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, along with nearly 50,000 Palestinians in 38 villages, will be stranded. If Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert follows his proposed plan to make Israel’s permanent border follow the barrier, these areas will be annexed.
The U.N. report also says that in the north, where the wall is already built, access across the barrier has been slow and unreliable. Ibraigheth and Khalilieh fear that if the same is true for Wadi Fukin, much of the town will eventually give up and move to Bethlehem or other cities on the Palestinian side of the barrier in search of a better life.
But Wael Manasra is resolved to stay. “We suffered to return to Wadi Fukin, so I will never go,” he says. “This is my village and my land. Even if I can only eat one small piece of bread, and I can’t get more than this, I will never leave.”
His younger brother, Wisam, doesn’t agree. “If I have to leave to find work, I will, because I think any other life is better than the one here,” he says. “I want to help my family, and I want to help myself.”
Wisam says he might eventually like to return to Wadi Fukin, but he also would like to attend a university and study journalism. And for now, supporting his family is most important. “I feel bad about all of this, working in settlements or leaving,” he says. “But there really isn’t any other way.”
Ibraigheth and Khalilieh believe that if the younger generation decides to leave, much of Wadi Fukin’s land will go uncultivated and could be taken over by Israel. According to the United Nations, Israel uses a law based on an old Ottoman code that allows the state to claim any land that goes uncultivated for three years.
“The older generations are going to be completely isolated,” says Khalilieh. “They will be the only ones there to protect the land, but they will not be able to do so for so many years. That’s when the Israelis will move in and declare the lands as state land under the absentee property law and take it over.”
Some of the younger generation still have hope. Madi Manasra, 13, a cousin of Wael and Wisam, says he wants to finish high school, then attend the university in Bethlehem. He eventually would like to work as a tourist guide. “I’m afraid sometimes the separation will keep me from completing my education,” he says. “But I want to tell people that a just solution is not impossible.”
Others, such as Mohammed Manasra, Wael and Wisam’s youngest brother, see no good options and don’t know what they’ll do. Mohammed wants to be near his family, but fears he’ll never find work. He doesn’t give much thought to attending a university -- or even to what the future may hold.
“With the barrier about to arrive,” he says, “we cannot imagine anything. We cannot dream about anything.”
SOURCES: United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs; PLO Negotiations Affairs Department; Israeli Ministry of Defense; Friends of the Earth Middle East; World Bank; Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem, B’tselem.
--------------
Read more on Israel's Security Barrier.
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/palestine503/sidebar_jakob.html
For more information:
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/...
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Thanks Indybay.
First, Let me say that the photography is spectacular! Schiller has an eye as a photographer which is superb. But the content is so one-sided, soppy, emotional, and by it's nature, fundamentally dishonest that I cannot recommend it.
There is not even a hint of journalistic integrity for Schiller, a self-labeled secular Jew, to fact check the stories he is told by the villagers. He says they were "forced out and made to live in refugee camps." WHO "forced" them out? The Israeli historians have ample evidence of Arab leaders of the time urging the Arabs to flee. All news services and on the spot war correspondants of the time reported NO Israeli military forces driving thousands, much less hundreds of thousands of Arab civilians from their homes and businesses. Schiller expects us to swallow the big lie: That it was the Jews that drove the Arabs from their homes even as 8 Arab armies were attempting to drive the Jews from their homes!
The bulk of Schiller's work has been activism directed against Israel's security barrier, which Schiller acknowledges is not a wall. "Instead of the 30-foot-high concrete wall in other parts of the West Bank, the barrier around Wadi Fukin will be a complex series of electrified fences...." Despite this, both Schiller and all the Palestinians he interviews continue to call it a "wall."
Yet nowhere does Schiller provide even a passing reference to either the series of suicide bombers for which the barrier was erected, nor that even with the barrier incomplete, suicide bombings have been already been decreased from 40 to 5 in only one year.
But Schiller is not a journalist. He is a propagandist.
Schiller writes: "The United Nations has reported that approximately 5,000 Palestinians already live on land that lies between the barrier and the Green Line."
BECKY: So what is the fuss? It sure sounds like the barrier is being built so close to the green line that in a country of 9 million people, only 5,000 are on the wrong side of the fence. That is 0.05% of the population that is inconvenienced. Not killed. Not gassed. Not tortured. Not enslaved. Not raped. Not mutilated. No village burned to the ground. No mass executions.
Schiller should go to Darfur and he can do some REAL journalism.
Does Schiller tell his readers that the Israeli government approached Palestinian towns on the border of the proposed barrier and asked them which side they wanted to be on. To the chagrin of the Palestinian Authority, they invariably chose to be on the Israeli side.
That means the disaffected Palestinians are the ones who remain on the Palestinian side.
A fence, put up to stop waves of suicide bombers, can be taken down once the Palestinians abandon them.
There is not even a hint of journalistic integrity for Schiller, a self-labeled secular Jew, to fact check the stories he is told by the villagers. He says they were "forced out and made to live in refugee camps." WHO "forced" them out? The Israeli historians have ample evidence of Arab leaders of the time urging the Arabs to flee. All news services and on the spot war correspondants of the time reported NO Israeli military forces driving thousands, much less hundreds of thousands of Arab civilians from their homes and businesses. Schiller expects us to swallow the big lie: That it was the Jews that drove the Arabs from their homes even as 8 Arab armies were attempting to drive the Jews from their homes!
The bulk of Schiller's work has been activism directed against Israel's security barrier, which Schiller acknowledges is not a wall. "Instead of the 30-foot-high concrete wall in other parts of the West Bank, the barrier around Wadi Fukin will be a complex series of electrified fences...." Despite this, both Schiller and all the Palestinians he interviews continue to call it a "wall."
Yet nowhere does Schiller provide even a passing reference to either the series of suicide bombers for which the barrier was erected, nor that even with the barrier incomplete, suicide bombings have been already been decreased from 40 to 5 in only one year.
But Schiller is not a journalist. He is a propagandist.
Schiller writes: "The United Nations has reported that approximately 5,000 Palestinians already live on land that lies between the barrier and the Green Line."
BECKY: So what is the fuss? It sure sounds like the barrier is being built so close to the green line that in a country of 9 million people, only 5,000 are on the wrong side of the fence. That is 0.05% of the population that is inconvenienced. Not killed. Not gassed. Not tortured. Not enslaved. Not raped. Not mutilated. No village burned to the ground. No mass executions.
Schiller should go to Darfur and he can do some REAL journalism.
Does Schiller tell his readers that the Israeli government approached Palestinian towns on the border of the proposed barrier and asked them which side they wanted to be on. To the chagrin of the Palestinian Authority, they invariably chose to be on the Israeli side.
That means the disaffected Palestinians are the ones who remain on the Palestinian side.
A fence, put up to stop waves of suicide bombers, can be taken down once the Palestinians abandon them.
For the moment, let's assume that the Palestinian refugees were not terrorized out of their homes, but left based on their free will. The questions that many Palestinians ask:
* Is that a good reason to confiscate their homes, farms, and business?
* Is that a good reason to block their return to their homes?
* Is that a good reason to nullify their citizenship in the country they were born?
Let's us pose the question the other way around. For a very long time, the Zionist movement encouraged Jews from Europe and the Middle East to emigrate to Israel:
* Is that a good reason to confiscate their homes, farms, and business in their respective countries?
* Is that a good reason to block their return to their homes if they choose to do so?
* Is that a good reason to nullify their citizenship in the countries they were born?
The just and fair answer to all of these questions is a big fat no. Nobody has the right to usurp the political and civil rights of another citizen PERIOD, regardless of the circumstances.
Neither the Israeli Army boot camps, nor the Israeli schools dares to disclose the truth to its subjects. The truth is most Palestinians were terrorized out of their homes, farms, and businesses.
Since the inception of Zionism, its leaders have been keen on creating a "Jewish State" based on a "Jewish majority" by mass immigration of Jews to Palestine, primarily European Jews fleeing from anti-Semitic Tsarist Russia and Nazi Germany. When a "Jewish majority" was impossible to achieve, based on Jewish immigration and natural growth, Zionist leaders (such as Ben Gurion, Moshe Sharett, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, and Chaim Weizmann) concluded that "population transfer" was the only solution to what they referred to as the "Arab Problem." Year after year, the plan to cleanse Palestine away from its indigenous people became known as the "transfer solution." David Ben-Gurion, the first Israeli Prime Minister, eloquently articulated the "transfer solution" as the following:
* In a joint meeting between the Jewish Agency Executive and Zionist Action Committee on June 12th, 1938:
"With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement] .... I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it." (Righteous Victims p. 144).
* In a speech addressing the Central Committee of the Histadrut on December 30, 1947:
"In the area allocated to the Jewish State there are not more than 520,000 Jews and about 350,000 non-Jews, mostly Arabs. Together with the Jews of Jerusalem, the total population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment, will be about one million, including almost 40% non-Jews. such a [population] composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish State. This [demographic] fact must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. With such a [population] composition, there cannot even be absolute certainty that control will remain in the hands of the Jewish majority .... There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60%." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 176 & Benny Morris p. 28)
* And on February 8th, 1948, Ben-Gurion also stated to the Mapai Council:
"From your entry into Jerusalem, through Lifta, Romema [East Jerusalem Palestinian neighborhood]. . . there are no [Palestinian] Arabs. One hundred percent Jews. Since Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, it has not been Jewish as it is now. In many [Palestinian] Arab neighborhoods in the west one sees not a single [Palestinian] Arab. I do not assume that this will change. . . . What had happened in Jerusalem. . . . is likely to happen in many parts of the country. . . in the six, eight, or ten months of the campaign there will certainly be great changes in the composition of the population in the country." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 180-181)
* In a speech addressing the Zionist Action Committee on April 6th, 1948:
"We will not be able to win the war if we do not, during the war, populate upper and lower, eastern and western Galilee, the Negev and Jerusalem area ..... I believe that war will also bring in its wake a great change in the distribution of Arab population." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 181)
* In speech to the Jewish Agency on June 12, 1948, Ben-Gurion stated:
"I am for compulsory transfer; I don't see anything immoral in it." For tactical reasons, he was against proposing it at the moment, but "we have to state the principle of compulsory transfer without insisting on its immediate implementation." (Simha Flapan, p. 103)
For the moment, assume that the above evidence is nothing but an Arab propaganda. We ask the reader to contemplate what Yitzhak Rabin, one of Israel's Prime Ministers, had written in his diary soon after the occupation of Lydda and al-Ramla on July 10th-11th, 1948:
"After attacking Lydda [later called Lod] and then Ramla, .... What would they do with the 50,000 civilians living in the two cities ..... Not even Ben-Gurion could offer a solution .... and during the discussion at operation headquarters, he [Ben-Gurion] remained silent, as was his habit in such situations. Clearly, we could not leave [Lydda's] hostile and armed populace in our rear, where it could endangered the supply route [to the troops who were] advancing eastward.
Ben-Gurion would repeat the question: What is to be done with the population?, waving his hand in a gesture which said: Drive them out! [garesh otem in Hebrew]. 'Driving out' is a term with a harsh ring, .... Psychologically, this was on of the most difficult actions we undertook". (Soldier Of Peace, p. 140-141 & Benny Morris, p. 207) .
Later, Rabin underlined the cruelty of the operation as mirrored in the reaction of his soldiers. He stated during an interview (which is still censored in Israeli publications to this day) with David Shipler from the New York Times on October 22, 1979:
"Great Suffering was inflicted upon the men taking part in the eviction action. [They] included youth-movement graduates who had been inculcated with values such as international brotherhood and humaneness. The eviction action went beyond the concepts they were used to. There were some fellows who refused to take part. . . Prolonged propaganda activities were required after the action . . . to explain why we were obliged to undertake such a harsh and cruel action." (Simha Flapan, p. 101)
Just before the 1948 war, the residents of the twin cities, Lydda and al-Ramla, almost constituted 20% of the total urban population in central Palestine, inclusive of Tel-Aviv. Currently, the former residents and their descendents number at least a half a million, who mostly live in deplorable refugee camps in and around Amman (Jordan) and Ramallah (the occupied West Bank). According to Rabin, the decision to ethnically cleanse the twin cities was an agonizing decision, however, his guilty conscious did not stop him from placing a similar order against three nearby villages ('Imwas, Yalu, and Bayt Nuba ) 19 years later. The exodus from Lydda and al- Ramla was portrayed firsthand by Ismail Shammout, the renowned Palestinians artist from Lydda itself.
In order to excuse themselves from any responsibility of war crimes, Zionists have concocted a myth that Palestinians were ordered by their leaders to abandon their homes. As it will be proven below, this version of events was conclusively proven wrong based on Israeli declassified documents. According to the Israeli historian Benny Morris:
* 'In general, during the first months of the war until April 1948 the Palestinian leadership struggled, if not very manfully, against the exodus: "The AHC [Arab Higher Committee] decided .... to adopt measures to weaken the exodus by imposing restrictions, penalties, threats, propaganda in the press [and] on the radio .... [The AHC] tried to obtain the help of neighboring countries in this context ..... [The AHC] especially tried to prevent the flight of army-age young males," according to IDF intelligence'. (Benny Morris, p. 60)
* 'Whatever the reasoning and attitude of the Arab states' leaders, I have found no contemporary evidence to show that either the leaders of the Arab states or the Mufti [Hajj Amin al-Husseini] ordered or directly encouraged the mass exodus during April [1948]. It may be worth noting that for decades the policy of the Palestinian Arab leaders had been to hold fast to the soil of Palestine and to resist the eviction and displacement of Arab communities'. (Benny Morris, p. 66)
* 'In Kafr Saba [early May 1948], the locals, under threat from Haganah attack, wanted to leave, but were ordered to stay by the ALA [Arab Liberation Army] garrison. According to Haganah sources, the ALA, with the population of Ramallah about to take flight, blocked all roads into the Triangle: "The Arab military leaders are trying to stem the flood of refugees and taking stern and ruthless measures against them." Arab radio broadcast, picked up by the Haganah, conveyed orders from the ALA to all Arabs who had left their homes to "return within three days. The commander of Ramallah assembled the mukhtars [official leaders] from the area" and demanded they strengthen morale in the their villages. The local ALA commanders turned back trucks which were coming to take families out of Ramallah. .... Haganah intelligence on May 6 reported that "Radio Jerusalem in its Arabic broadcast (14:00 hours, 5 May) and Damascus [Radio] (19:45 hours, 5 May) announced in the name of the Supreme Headquarters: 'Every Arab must defend his home and property .... Those who leave their places will be punished and their homes will be destroyed.'. The announcement was signed by [Fawzi al-]Qawukji.' (Benny Morris, p. 68-69)
Similarly, Simha Flapan (the Israeli writer and politician) stated according to declassified Israeli document and to the November 6th, 1948 edition of the Israeli newspaper Davar:
". . . after April 1948, the flight acquired massive dimensions. Abd al-Rahman Azzam Pasha, secretary general of the Arab League, and King Abdullah both issued public calls to the Arabs not to leave their homes. Fawzi al-Qawukji, commander of the Arab Liberation Army, was give instructions to stop the flight by force and to requisition transport for this purpose. The Arab government decided to allow entry only to women and children and to send back all men of military age (between eighteen and fifty). Mohammad Adib al-Umri, deputy director of Ramallah broadcasting station, appealed to the Arabs to stop the flight from Jenin, Tulkarm, and other towns in the Triangle that were bombed by the Israelis. On May 10, Radio Jerusalem broadcasted orders on its Arab program from Arab commanders and AHC to stop the mass flight from Jerusalem and the vicinity." (Simha Flapan, p. 86-87)
* 'The various National Committees issued bans on flight. The Ramle National Committee set up pickets at the exits to the town to prevent Arabs departing. The inhabitants of the villages east of Majdal (Beit Daras, the Sawafirs, ..etc) were warned not to allow in with their belongings. On 15 May [1948], Faiz Idris, AHC's "inspector for public safety," issued ordered to militiamen to help the invading Arab armies and to fight against " the Fifth column and the rumour-mongers, who are causing the flight of the Arab population' (Benny Morris, p. 69)
* 'On 10-11 May [1948], the AHC [Arab Higher Committee] called on officials, doctors, and engineers who had left the country to return on 14-15 May, repeating the call, warned the the officials who did not return would lose their " moral right to hold these administrative jobs in the future." Arab governments began to bar entry to the refugee -as happened, for example, on the Lebanese border in the middle of May'. (Benny Morris, p. 69)
* 'The fall of Safad and the flight of its inhabitants shocked the [Palestinian] Arab villagers of the Hula Valley, to the north. [Yegal] Allon launched a psychological warfare campaign ("If you don't flee immediately, you will all be slaughtered, your daughters will be raped," are the like), and almost all the villagers fled to Lebanon and Syria.' (Righteous Victims, p. 213)
* According to a Jewish Agency's Arab section report from January 3, 1948, at the beginning of the flight:
"The Arab exodus from Palestine continues, mainly to the countries of the West. Of late, the Arab Higher Executive has succeeded in imposing close scrutiny on those leaving for Arab countries in the Middle East." Prior to the declaration of the "Jewish state," the Arab League's political committee, meeting in Sofar, Lebanon, recommended that the Arab states " the doors to . . . women and children and old people if events in Palestine make it necessary." (Simha Flapan, p. 85)
As Moshe Sharett was ending his career in the mid-1950s, he came to the conclusion that Israel cannot be ruled without deceit as if it's essential for the Jewish state's survival. He wrote just before resigning:
"I have learned that the state of Israel cannot be ruled in our generation without deceit and adventurism. These are historical facts that cannot be altered. . . In the end, history will justify both the stratagems and deceit and the acts of adventurism. All I know is that I, Moshe Sharett, am not capable of them, and I am therefore unsuited to lead this country." (Simha Flapan, p. 52-53)
Finally, it must be emphasized that Israel tried Adolf Eichmann for atrocities committed as a Nazi leader, it included charges of forcible expulsion (ethnic cleansing), which were classified as war crimes and crimes against humanity. It's ironic how often Israelis and Zionists are selective in the interpretation of war crimes against humanity in a way that fits their political agenda.
* Is that a good reason to confiscate their homes, farms, and business?
* Is that a good reason to block their return to their homes?
* Is that a good reason to nullify their citizenship in the country they were born?
Let's us pose the question the other way around. For a very long time, the Zionist movement encouraged Jews from Europe and the Middle East to emigrate to Israel:
* Is that a good reason to confiscate their homes, farms, and business in their respective countries?
* Is that a good reason to block their return to their homes if they choose to do so?
* Is that a good reason to nullify their citizenship in the countries they were born?
The just and fair answer to all of these questions is a big fat no. Nobody has the right to usurp the political and civil rights of another citizen PERIOD, regardless of the circumstances.
Neither the Israeli Army boot camps, nor the Israeli schools dares to disclose the truth to its subjects. The truth is most Palestinians were terrorized out of their homes, farms, and businesses.
Since the inception of Zionism, its leaders have been keen on creating a "Jewish State" based on a "Jewish majority" by mass immigration of Jews to Palestine, primarily European Jews fleeing from anti-Semitic Tsarist Russia and Nazi Germany. When a "Jewish majority" was impossible to achieve, based on Jewish immigration and natural growth, Zionist leaders (such as Ben Gurion, Moshe Sharett, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, and Chaim Weizmann) concluded that "population transfer" was the only solution to what they referred to as the "Arab Problem." Year after year, the plan to cleanse Palestine away from its indigenous people became known as the "transfer solution." David Ben-Gurion, the first Israeli Prime Minister, eloquently articulated the "transfer solution" as the following:
* In a joint meeting between the Jewish Agency Executive and Zionist Action Committee on June 12th, 1938:
"With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement] .... I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it." (Righteous Victims p. 144).
* In a speech addressing the Central Committee of the Histadrut on December 30, 1947:
"In the area allocated to the Jewish State there are not more than 520,000 Jews and about 350,000 non-Jews, mostly Arabs. Together with the Jews of Jerusalem, the total population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment, will be about one million, including almost 40% non-Jews. such a [population] composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish State. This [demographic] fact must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. With such a [population] composition, there cannot even be absolute certainty that control will remain in the hands of the Jewish majority .... There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60%." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 176 & Benny Morris p. 28)
* And on February 8th, 1948, Ben-Gurion also stated to the Mapai Council:
"From your entry into Jerusalem, through Lifta, Romema [East Jerusalem Palestinian neighborhood]. . . there are no [Palestinian] Arabs. One hundred percent Jews. Since Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, it has not been Jewish as it is now. In many [Palestinian] Arab neighborhoods in the west one sees not a single [Palestinian] Arab. I do not assume that this will change. . . . What had happened in Jerusalem. . . . is likely to happen in many parts of the country. . . in the six, eight, or ten months of the campaign there will certainly be great changes in the composition of the population in the country." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 180-181)
* In a speech addressing the Zionist Action Committee on April 6th, 1948:
"We will not be able to win the war if we do not, during the war, populate upper and lower, eastern and western Galilee, the Negev and Jerusalem area ..... I believe that war will also bring in its wake a great change in the distribution of Arab population." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 181)
* In speech to the Jewish Agency on June 12, 1948, Ben-Gurion stated:
"I am for compulsory transfer; I don't see anything immoral in it." For tactical reasons, he was against proposing it at the moment, but "we have to state the principle of compulsory transfer without insisting on its immediate implementation." (Simha Flapan, p. 103)
For the moment, assume that the above evidence is nothing but an Arab propaganda. We ask the reader to contemplate what Yitzhak Rabin, one of Israel's Prime Ministers, had written in his diary soon after the occupation of Lydda and al-Ramla on July 10th-11th, 1948:
"After attacking Lydda [later called Lod] and then Ramla, .... What would they do with the 50,000 civilians living in the two cities ..... Not even Ben-Gurion could offer a solution .... and during the discussion at operation headquarters, he [Ben-Gurion] remained silent, as was his habit in such situations. Clearly, we could not leave [Lydda's] hostile and armed populace in our rear, where it could endangered the supply route [to the troops who were] advancing eastward.
Ben-Gurion would repeat the question: What is to be done with the population?, waving his hand in a gesture which said: Drive them out! [garesh otem in Hebrew]. 'Driving out' is a term with a harsh ring, .... Psychologically, this was on of the most difficult actions we undertook". (Soldier Of Peace, p. 140-141 & Benny Morris, p. 207) .
Later, Rabin underlined the cruelty of the operation as mirrored in the reaction of his soldiers. He stated during an interview (which is still censored in Israeli publications to this day) with David Shipler from the New York Times on October 22, 1979:
"Great Suffering was inflicted upon the men taking part in the eviction action. [They] included youth-movement graduates who had been inculcated with values such as international brotherhood and humaneness. The eviction action went beyond the concepts they were used to. There were some fellows who refused to take part. . . Prolonged propaganda activities were required after the action . . . to explain why we were obliged to undertake such a harsh and cruel action." (Simha Flapan, p. 101)
Just before the 1948 war, the residents of the twin cities, Lydda and al-Ramla, almost constituted 20% of the total urban population in central Palestine, inclusive of Tel-Aviv. Currently, the former residents and their descendents number at least a half a million, who mostly live in deplorable refugee camps in and around Amman (Jordan) and Ramallah (the occupied West Bank). According to Rabin, the decision to ethnically cleanse the twin cities was an agonizing decision, however, his guilty conscious did not stop him from placing a similar order against three nearby villages ('Imwas, Yalu, and Bayt Nuba ) 19 years later. The exodus from Lydda and al- Ramla was portrayed firsthand by Ismail Shammout, the renowned Palestinians artist from Lydda itself.
In order to excuse themselves from any responsibility of war crimes, Zionists have concocted a myth that Palestinians were ordered by their leaders to abandon their homes. As it will be proven below, this version of events was conclusively proven wrong based on Israeli declassified documents. According to the Israeli historian Benny Morris:
* 'In general, during the first months of the war until April 1948 the Palestinian leadership struggled, if not very manfully, against the exodus: "The AHC [Arab Higher Committee] decided .... to adopt measures to weaken the exodus by imposing restrictions, penalties, threats, propaganda in the press [and] on the radio .... [The AHC] tried to obtain the help of neighboring countries in this context ..... [The AHC] especially tried to prevent the flight of army-age young males," according to IDF intelligence'. (Benny Morris, p. 60)
* 'Whatever the reasoning and attitude of the Arab states' leaders, I have found no contemporary evidence to show that either the leaders of the Arab states or the Mufti [Hajj Amin al-Husseini] ordered or directly encouraged the mass exodus during April [1948]. It may be worth noting that for decades the policy of the Palestinian Arab leaders had been to hold fast to the soil of Palestine and to resist the eviction and displacement of Arab communities'. (Benny Morris, p. 66)
* 'In Kafr Saba [early May 1948], the locals, under threat from Haganah attack, wanted to leave, but were ordered to stay by the ALA [Arab Liberation Army] garrison. According to Haganah sources, the ALA, with the population of Ramallah about to take flight, blocked all roads into the Triangle: "The Arab military leaders are trying to stem the flood of refugees and taking stern and ruthless measures against them." Arab radio broadcast, picked up by the Haganah, conveyed orders from the ALA to all Arabs who had left their homes to "return within three days. The commander of Ramallah assembled the mukhtars [official leaders] from the area" and demanded they strengthen morale in the their villages. The local ALA commanders turned back trucks which were coming to take families out of Ramallah. .... Haganah intelligence on May 6 reported that "Radio Jerusalem in its Arabic broadcast (14:00 hours, 5 May) and Damascus [Radio] (19:45 hours, 5 May) announced in the name of the Supreme Headquarters: 'Every Arab must defend his home and property .... Those who leave their places will be punished and their homes will be destroyed.'. The announcement was signed by [Fawzi al-]Qawukji.' (Benny Morris, p. 68-69)
Similarly, Simha Flapan (the Israeli writer and politician) stated according to declassified Israeli document and to the November 6th, 1948 edition of the Israeli newspaper Davar:
". . . after April 1948, the flight acquired massive dimensions. Abd al-Rahman Azzam Pasha, secretary general of the Arab League, and King Abdullah both issued public calls to the Arabs not to leave their homes. Fawzi al-Qawukji, commander of the Arab Liberation Army, was give instructions to stop the flight by force and to requisition transport for this purpose. The Arab government decided to allow entry only to women and children and to send back all men of military age (between eighteen and fifty). Mohammad Adib al-Umri, deputy director of Ramallah broadcasting station, appealed to the Arabs to stop the flight from Jenin, Tulkarm, and other towns in the Triangle that were bombed by the Israelis. On May 10, Radio Jerusalem broadcasted orders on its Arab program from Arab commanders and AHC to stop the mass flight from Jerusalem and the vicinity." (Simha Flapan, p. 86-87)
* 'The various National Committees issued bans on flight. The Ramle National Committee set up pickets at the exits to the town to prevent Arabs departing. The inhabitants of the villages east of Majdal (Beit Daras, the Sawafirs, ..etc) were warned not to allow in with their belongings. On 15 May [1948], Faiz Idris, AHC's "inspector for public safety," issued ordered to militiamen to help the invading Arab armies and to fight against " the Fifth column and the rumour-mongers, who are causing the flight of the Arab population' (Benny Morris, p. 69)
* 'On 10-11 May [1948], the AHC [Arab Higher Committee] called on officials, doctors, and engineers who had left the country to return on 14-15 May, repeating the call, warned the the officials who did not return would lose their " moral right to hold these administrative jobs in the future." Arab governments began to bar entry to the refugee -as happened, for example, on the Lebanese border in the middle of May'. (Benny Morris, p. 69)
* 'The fall of Safad and the flight of its inhabitants shocked the [Palestinian] Arab villagers of the Hula Valley, to the north. [Yegal] Allon launched a psychological warfare campaign ("If you don't flee immediately, you will all be slaughtered, your daughters will be raped," are the like), and almost all the villagers fled to Lebanon and Syria.' (Righteous Victims, p. 213)
* According to a Jewish Agency's Arab section report from January 3, 1948, at the beginning of the flight:
"The Arab exodus from Palestine continues, mainly to the countries of the West. Of late, the Arab Higher Executive has succeeded in imposing close scrutiny on those leaving for Arab countries in the Middle East." Prior to the declaration of the "Jewish state," the Arab League's political committee, meeting in Sofar, Lebanon, recommended that the Arab states " the doors to . . . women and children and old people if events in Palestine make it necessary." (Simha Flapan, p. 85)
As Moshe Sharett was ending his career in the mid-1950s, he came to the conclusion that Israel cannot be ruled without deceit as if it's essential for the Jewish state's survival. He wrote just before resigning:
"I have learned that the state of Israel cannot be ruled in our generation without deceit and adventurism. These are historical facts that cannot be altered. . . In the end, history will justify both the stratagems and deceit and the acts of adventurism. All I know is that I, Moshe Sharett, am not capable of them, and I am therefore unsuited to lead this country." (Simha Flapan, p. 52-53)
Finally, it must be emphasized that Israel tried Adolf Eichmann for atrocities committed as a Nazi leader, it included charges of forcible expulsion (ethnic cleansing), which were classified as war crimes and crimes against humanity. It's ironic how often Israelis and Zionists are selective in the interpretation of war crimes against humanity in a way that fits their political agenda.
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