Gershom Gorenberg–author of an excellent piece on East Jerusalem expansion at TAP–has a somewhat-literary theory of history as random. Everything is a mess and it is a fallacy to discern intention in events. No big actors are pulling strings. A lot of individuals, many of them good people, many of them maddened, come running on to the stage, and only later can we find a pattern. But no one in the event is really that responsible. Thus he termed the colonization enterprise an "accidental empire," in his book by that name, thereby cutting the Israeli government a break on its acceptance of the religious ideology that propelled the thirst for the Jordan River.
Now in this review of Benny Morris's book, 1948, in the New York Review of Books, Gorenberg suggests that the Nakba was also an accident. A "tragedy," but a haphazard one.
Gorenberg largely accepts Morris's view that there was no plan for ethnically-cleansing Palestine of Palestinians in 1948.
Responding to immediate crises, the Haganah launched local operations.
These actions added up to a shift toward taking the offensive and in
retrospect roughly fit Plan D [expulsion]. Nor was there a plan for ethnic
cleansing of the country. Villagers sometimes fled as soon as Haganah
units approached.
That's his sole reference to ethnic cleansing. Then the Israeli government saw what had happened, Gorenberg says, and came around to the idea.
In a subsequent meeting in September [1948] the cabinet rejected an immediate
return and left the refugee question to be resolved when formal peace
was achieved. In practical terms, this was a decision to make the
exodus permanent. It was the critical moment when confusion, panic, and
ad hoc choices gave way to a deliberate, fateful policy.
Confusion, panic and ad hoc–that's Gorenberg's read on history.
The problem with Benny Morris's method in 1948, and Gorenberg's take on it, is, in a word, Israeli-centrism. Morris has long sought to dignify a questionable historical process: throwing out Palestinian
memories of the Nakba because they are unreliable oral history while
relying on Israel archives because they were contemporary
documentation. In his book, (as I complained earlier) Morris has almost exclusively cited Israeli military documents
to arrive at the general conclusion that the Arab expulsion of the '48
war
was just an unfortunate concomitant of military actions. But imagine if his standard
were enforced in the case of the Holocaust Memorial. How many pages of
wrenching testimony that we accept as true would be disallowed? Elie Wiesel wrote Night 10 years after his father died in Auschwitz; does anyone question his version of events?
Gorenberg basically accepts the Morris method. While he is frequently critical of Morris, and notes that the Palestinian narrative of the Nakba is as different from the Israeli one as night and day, he doesn't tell us much about the Palestinian narrative. He does not mention three hugely-important events: the Deir Yassin massacre on April 10, 1948, which shocked and terrified Palestinians everywhere; and the emptying out of the key cities of Jaffa and Haifa through the spring of 1948. "One had to be there to describe the numbing shock and confusion that immobilized the Palestinian people who suddenly found themselves totally under Zionist control," Fay Afaf Kanafani has written about the emptying of Haifa by Zionist gangs, one of which she observed coming down her street. "How could anyone bring the war and its artillery into a civilian home?" Her book speaks of the fog of war, yes, but says that the Zionists laid siege to Haifa. On this site I've written about Palestinians literally being forced into the sea in Jaffa as the city was emptied of nearly 70,000 Arab inhabitants by Zionist militias over a week or two in late April. The noted anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod has documented the "barrel-bombs" that were rolled down into the city to terrify the population and hasten the expulsion (in Nakba, a book the New York Review of Books seems to have missed.)
Menachem Begin, a Holocaust survivor, led the Irgun when it conquered Jaffa. This was no accident. Jaffa had been promised to the Arabs under the '47 Partition Plan, but seizing it was necessary, Begin said, because Jaffa was likely "the chief instrument–in the attempt to subjugate the Jews." Begin wrote that Deir Yassin helped the Jews, by causing the Arabs to flee. More recently, Shlomo Ben-Ami has written that "a panic-stricken Arab
community was uprooted under the impact of massacres that would be
carved into the Arabs' monument of grief and hatred." Ilan Pappe has looked at the pattern of these events and reached the logical conclusion that there was a conscious decision by leaders of the Jewish community to cleanse Palestine.
But there is no inkling of this pattern in Gorenberg's review. And meanwhile, he approvingly cites Anita Shapira, a Zionist historian– who in a bitter dialogue with Palestinian grad student Saif Ammous
at Columbia University Hillel two years ago over the Nakba, threw up her hands and said it was a "tragedy." Very similar to Gorenberg's passive
view of the matter.
This understanding of history seems forcibly naive to me–and narrow. Gorenberg's review includes an excited discussion of Israeli historiography and the impact of the New Historians, as if we should continue to celebrate the (hugely-important) Israeli discovery of the 1948 expulsion of refugees nearly 30 years after the historians made that discovery, but 60 years after the Palestinians knew of it.
Gorenberg describes Morris's awakening:
"Yitzhak Rabin, at the time a member of the
Knesset and former prime minister, bluntly described [in his memoirs] his own actions in 'driving out' the Arabs of Lydda and Ramle, towns conquered by the IDF
in July 1948. A cabinet-level censorship committee blue-penciled the
offending paragraphs—which nonetheless were published in The New York Times. In the early 1980s, Benny Morris was given access to the archives of
the Palmah, the pre-independence underground army that became the core
of the IDF. There he found Rabin's order to expel Lydda's Arabs."
Well good for Benny Morris. But an American readership deserves to be informed that in 1978, years before Morris's epiphany, the Institute for Palestine Studies in Washington published the book, To Be an Arab in Israel, by Fouzi El-Asmar, an Israeli-American-Palestinian writer. El-Asmar's book is not listed in Morris's bibliography, nor does Morris cite it.
But El-Asmar was 10 and living in Lydda when 3/4 of the Palestinians were driven out of the area. Palestinians were "removed" from Lydda, he says, by columns of Jewish soldiers who (amid some fighting) shouted, "Go, go to King Abdallah!" The Israelis were directing the Palestinian population to walk to Jordan, or to go to a military camp, from which they would be taken to Jordan. El-Asmar's family stayed because his father was an employee of the railways; and the boy watched as men with trucks removed all the furniture from the Arab houses in the city.
Not long after the removal of all of the furniture from the houses in Lydda, Jewish families began to be housed there. They would choose a house they liked and move into it. The Arabs were not allowed to leave their own ghetto without a permit from the authorities, and the most infuriating thing for us was that our area and the other areas in Lydda which were inhabited by Arabs were under military command, while the rest of the city in which Jews lived, was not. We were not allowed out without special permits until the early fifties, while the Jews, of course, were free to walk anywhere except in our neighborhood. Every time I asked why this was being done, I would hear the answer, 'Because we are Arabs,' and I always thought to myself, What does it mean, 'We are Arabs?' This is our country, and the houses in which Jews live today were until a short while ago lived in by Arab owners who had built them with the sweat of their brows, and from whom all I hear now is messages to their relatives over the radio.
I don't expect Morris, a rightwinger, to be open to this record of suffering. But I would hope for a glimmer of it from Gorenberg, a sensitive writer. Of course both writers are Israelis, and understandably have some degree of investment in the Israeli narrative.
The issue for American readers is: As our society tries to bring its enlightened experience of minority rights to bear on Israel/Palestine, why is that elite venues like The New York Review of Books and Yale University Press maintain an investment in the Israeli narrative? (Yale has also published Morris's latest book, in which he states that Palestinians value life less than Israelis do).
The Nakba happened 61 years ago. As Rabbi Alissa Wise said the other night, it is bound up in Jewish history. It's time Americans heard the Palestinian side of the story.
1967 was another mass expulsion and there's still a refugee camp in Jordan for those from the West Bank. Also in Lebanon in the 80's and 2006 but Israel wasn't able to indefinitely keep Lebanese land. In the West Bank they're being confined into diminishing space (you can and surely have read about this in greater detail elsewhere). People are expelled from the West Bank and Jerusalem and barred from returning on an individual basis. Cleansing is practiced in the Negev by demolishing Bedouin homes and relocating them to urban townships. There are still Arabs in Israel and the territories because this is hard work and Israel can only get away with what its backers allow. It can't start a war with Egypt and Jordan but that would very likely happen if they try another mass expulsion across the mandate border. I also think it has something to do with the relative lack of Jewish immigrants over the decades. There's a few million here who vicariously identify with Israel but they're not going over there to help and the Zionist project didn't count on that. In lieu of all this, Israel is gerrymandering an ethnic majority not only by selectively fixing its border but also by relocating Arabs within the green line. I'll ask this, if ethnic cleansing isn't part of Israel's central mission, why the worry Jews will diminish in numbers?
Andrew, I don't know how many Palestinians were "expelled" in 1967 and how many fled. As far as Lebanon is concerned, Israel never had any claims on Lebanese territory and never established a single settlement there or annexed a single inch of Lebanese territory in the entire 18 years that it occupied Southern Lebanon. The idea that ethnic cleansing can be carried out on "and individual basis" is absolutely absurd. And I'll leave it up to you to explain how it is that the Bedouin of the Negev are being ethnically cleansed by being resettled in urban townships. So, your left with the argument that it's "hard work". LOL! You might want to take a look at an article by Counterpunch by Alison Weir about a month before the US Invasion of Iraq. Here's a link: http://www.counterpunch.org/weir02082003.html Despite the certainty of nearly 2,000 "academics" and Ms. Weir, somehow that ethnic cleansing never materialized. I wonder why?
I'll ask this, if ethnic cleansing isn't part of Israel's central mission, why the worry Jews will diminish in numbers? Well, the short answer is: we're not worried. A while back I did some calculations to see what the population breakdown might look like within green-line Israel in another 40 years based on the following figures: Current Jewish Population: ~5.4 million Current Arab Population: ~1.4 million Curent Jewish Population Growth Rate (compounded annually): 1.7% Current Arab Population Growth Rate (compounded annually): 2.5% Future Jewish Population in 2049: ~11 million Future Arab Population in 2049: ~ 3.7 million
(Continued) In other words, that puts the population breakdown at about 67-33 in 2049, which is close enough for me to the 70-30 that Oren suggests. And the kicker is that all indications are that the population growth rates are converging. (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1084014.html)” target=”_blank”>http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1084014.html) So I'm not the one who is worrying. I think that it is those who insist on framing the discussion in terms of "Israel-Palestine" and speak of the two-state solution being dead, and insist on the Right of Return who are worried. I guess that'd be you.
JES49 – Look at what you said, compare it to what I said, and then take a guess.
I'm interested in your conclusion.
Well Margaret, I assume that you feel that it's quite okay for the Jews to be scattered all over the world but perferable for the Palestinians not to be. Your position, however is based on the assumption that there was a national group who clearly identified themselves as "Palestinians" prior to 1948. That is simply not the case. Sure, there were some intellectuals (particularly Christian newspaper publishers) who did make this identification as early as the 1920s, but they were few and far between. But, for example, there is no surname "al-Filastini" as there is "al-Masri" or "al-Iraqi". In point of fact, the Palestinians did not traditionally identify as such. First, and foremost they identified as members of a clan (al-Husayni, al-Nashashibi, al-Khalidi). Then as residents of a village or town (al-Khalili, al-Nabulsi, al-Rantissi). Now, of course I don't argue that either the Jews or the Palestinians should be "sequestered", as you say, in one place. But I certainlly don't think that either people should be "integrated into the general …populace".
Your ideation is very different from mine. >^..^<
I prefer both Jews (ethnology=religion+associates) and Arabs
(ethnology=territory+associates) to be able to interact in a world in
which they have equal, and inalienable, rights -
rights not based on ethnology, which is the characteristic most
pertinent to our circumstances, but which does not circumscribe the
situation in which such rights might be contested.
disclaimer: sry, that's as far as I read.
Jews were a majority in that region of 55% to 45%, an advantage that – without expelling the Palestinian Arab population – would have been gone within a generation simply because the Palestinians maintained one of the highest birthrates on earth throughout the 20th century at 8 children per family. (Josef Weiss of the JNF knew at the time that this ratio would not be enough for a Zionist state and warned that the Arab population must be limited to 15%, which coincidentally it was after the displacement of Palestinians in 1948. Benjamin Netanyahu warned the Herzliya conference as recently as 2003 that the current rate of 20% Arabs within Israel proper was as large an Arab population as Israel could sustain, because if they made 35-40% you would no longer have a Jewish state but a bi-national one. So I don't think your suggestion that you can build a Zionist state on a transient 10-point demographic advantage in part of Palestine is one that has much support). In short, even after large-scale Zionist immigration, and after drawing the partition boundaries to make the Zionist immigrant population a majority in one part of Palestine, the result was an essentially bi-national state that could not maintain a Jewish majority beyond a single generation unless it expelled or disenfranchised the large non-Jewish minority (which of course was forbidden under the terms of the partition resolution). You cannot get around this. There is no making a Zionist state in an overwhelmingly non-Jewish place like Palestine without getting rid of the Arabs.
Yes, I am certain that your "ideation [sic] is different than mine. If I may, I believe that you mean "ethnicity", not "ethnology" which is the science or study of ethnic groups. Be that as it may, you define Jewish ethnicity as comprising religion plus associates (whatever that may mean) and Arab ethnicity as comprising territory plus associates. So, you believe that the Jews have no inherent right of territory while the Arabs do? Further, I suggest that you take a look at the Palestinian Draft Constitution (http://www.pcpsr.org/domestic/2003/nbrowne.pdf)” target=”_blank”>http://www.pcpsr.org/domestic/2003/nbrowne.pdf)” target=”_blank”>http://www.pcpsr.org/domestic/2003/nbrowne.pdf) particularly Article (5) which states that: Article (5) Arabic is the official language and Islam is the official religion in Palestine. Christianity and all other monotheistic religions are accorded sanctity and respect.
(Continued) And Article (7) which states that: Article (7) The principles of the Islamic shari`a are a main source for legislation. The followers of the monotheistic religions and shall have their personal status and religious affairs organized according to their shari‘as and religious denominations within the framework of [positive] law, while preserving the unity and independence of the Palestinian people.
And Michael Oren. Well, he doesn't insist on the right of return, but according to him the 2ss is dead. Because there's no way the settlers can be removed from the West Bank. So he rules out both two- and one- state solutions. That won't stop Israel from existing, though. Maybe you've got some new ideas, because the list is getting narrowed.
First of all, because some of us like to compare Israel favorably to Arab states, let's note how there are still Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan, but no one disputes the genocide against them by Saddam Hussein. I like how you make that argument about Lebanon as if Bashir Gemayel was supposed to be assassinated, Amin Gemayel was supposed to renege on his peace treaty, and Hezbollah, the LCP and the SSNP were supposed to fight against the occupation. Whatever Israel was trying to do in Lebanon, it obviously failed. That doesn't change the fact that the IDF and its LF and SLA allies committed cleansing in the 'security zone', or that masses of people fled from IAF bombardment. I can explain how moving Bedouin to urban townships is ethnic cleansing. That's easy. Their rural presence is undesirable and they're wanted out of the way so more Jews can settle the Negev. When someone demolishes your house and finds a new place for you so the surrounding area can be developed for someone with a different ethnicity, and you know this wouldn't be done if you had that ethnicity, do you have another name for it? I'll take racist expulsion, if you don't like ethnic cleansing. That works. And the bureaucratic difficulty and outright banishment Palestinians face on an individual basis show that Israel's policies, no matter how 'effective', are designed to chase people of a certain ethnicity out of the land. There's probably a reason so many academics were afraid of physical expulsion during the Iraq invasion. And there was another scare in January that Gazans living in tents would be expelled to Sinai. You can laugh smugly, but this isn't a joke to some people. (And I don't really wonder why on 2003, Israel didn't get a green light from the US.)
You cannot rewrite history by retrospectively assigning pre-WW2 European Jewry – a population that was overwhelmingly non-Zionist and viewed the United States, not Palestine, as the traditional goal of its emigration – to the ranks of Zionist immigrants to Palestine, just because you don’t otherwise have any hope of overcoming the pre-existing overwhelming Palestinian Arab majority there. And I’m not sure what point of mine you are arguing against by citing the relative population density of Palestine and Oklahoma. If I had argued that you cannot create a Zionist state in Palestine because it is too crowded for Zionists to physically fit in there, it would have been an answer (though not necessarily a relevant one as Oklahoma is not Palestine, and what is a normal population density and distribution for Palestine – where according to Ahad Ha’Am all the cultivable land had been fully developed by the Palestinian Arab population by 1891 – is not affected by how many people live or could live in a very different landscape like the Great Plains). But I didn’t say there’s physically no room, I said there’s already a preexisting non-Jewish majority population in Palestine that has to be gotten rid of if you are to have a Zionist state there, and that remains true regardless of how densely that population is concentrated.
"But I certainlly don't think that either people should be "integrated into the general …populace". Why not?
I was using your terms. You have divided people in to two groups; one you reference by a term the primary identification of which appears to be religion; the second term appears to define the members by locality.
Where does Michael Oren rule out the two-state solution? Where do I rule out the two-state solution?
Israel had no territorial claims against Lebanon, and most of the "ethnic cleansing" as you call it was temporary, with the local villagers returning when the violence stopped. As far as the Bedouin of the Negev are concerned, this is also not "ethnic cleansing". The Bedouin feel that the entire desert is their's to do with what they want. There's nothing wrong with this. It just doesn't coincide with the interests of a modern state (as many states have in the past, and are currently learning in their attempts to modernize) and to extend their sovereignty over the territory under their control. In short, the Bedouin cannot just set up a township on state land without appropriate permits or planning commission approval. The point is that, despite the hysteria of those "academics", Israel did not expell Palestinians, and I suspect that the reason why "Israel didn't get a green light from the US" is because Israel wasn't, and isn't, interested in mass expulsions, and didn't ask the US for one!
I guess you just rule out negotiating with Hamas. As for Oren: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm... "Ideally, the remedy for this dilemma lies in separate states for Jews and Palestinian Arabs. The basic conditions for such a solution, however, are unrealizable for the foreseeable future. The creation of Palestinian government, even within the parameters of the deal proposed by President Clinton in 2000, would require the removal of at least 100,000 Israelis from their West Bank homes."
In the event that the Palestinians are unable or unwilling to negotiate, Oren clearly advocates a unilateral withdrawal by Israel. I think that that is a fitting response to a threat of a "bi-national state" and still makes a two-state solution feasible. It's up to the Palestinians (or rather their leadership) whether they want to rely on Israel to define the borders or to negotiate these. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1082944.html
As for Hamas, I think they've made it plain that there's nothing to negotiate.
You use the term Jews and Arabs. That's how I understand those terms. Is there an inherent right to territory? If one accepts such a right, then one wouldn't one consider it as a right held by both Jews and Arabs?
I suggest that you look again. The primary identification of the Jews as a religion is your construct, not mine. And the converse – the primary identification of the Palestinian Arabs as not being religion – is amply demonstrated by their draft constitution which clearly states that the official religion of Palestine will be Islam and that it will be governed by shari'a law.
Because both are essentially national groups and have the right, should they choose, to self-determination.
Please, if you will, explain what you mean by self-determination. please note correction from previous mis-statement of the word you used as "self-determinism."
Right, those are your terms, and how I understood them. Your understanding of "Jews" is ? Your understanding of "Arabs" is ?
Groups: -Israel, a nation-State (which I understand to mean, a political entity) of which the members would be termed nationals, Israelis. -Jews, an ethnic group of which the members would be termed Jewish. I am attempting to construct understanding, and if I offend in some respect, would appreciate an explanation of the nature of any offense experienced (cross out: perceived).
1) Please, if you will, explain what you mean by self-determination.
(please note correction from previous mis-statement of the word you
used as \”self-determinism.\” )
2) Groups: Israel, a nation-State (which I understand to mean, a
political entity) of which the members would be termed nationals,
Israelis.
Jews, an ethnic group of which the members would be
termed Jewish.
I am attempting to construct understanding, and if I offend in some
respect, would appreciate an explanation of the nature of any offense
experienced.
Where do I claim to favor uncorroborated oral histories from either side?
Yes, rykart, I am aware of Wikipedia. I'm just not accustomed to using it as my sole source of information! If you had bothered to read the entire section (or better yet the entire entry), you would see that the novel Night went through many iterations from the Yiddish original until the first French edition when "Wiesel and his publisher pruned everything that was not entirely necessary, and [Ruth] Franklin writes that it was a work of art that emerged, rather than a faithful narrative." [emphasis added] So, one might ask, which iteration was Wiesel referring to in the quotation you cited? " Naomi Seidman "documented the transition from a historical account of events to …. an autobiographical novel, concluding that Night transforms the Holocaust into a 'religious theological' event." [emphasis added] As for the Hilberg quote, perhaps you could trouble youself to post a reference for Hillberg calling Night a "hoax"?
And by the way, rykart, your objections to Wiesel's personal accounts illustrate exactly my questioning the use of oral testimony – particularly when uncorroborated by other facts and when taken many years after the events – as the basis for objective historical analysis. Perhaps these oral narratives are the basis for literary or ethnological works, but, in my opinion, they do not meet the objective criteria of factual history.
I guess Rykart just committed suicide by Wikipedia. LOL.