Re: [Marxism] RESISTING THE NAKBA

[Barry Brooks <durable@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At the end, Joseph says, "The only way to end
the Nakba, Palestinians insist, is to
continue to resist it."

One way to resist it is to make it more visible.

Barry

http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0596/9605036.htm

Middle East History: It Happened in May

Arab Jaffa Seized Before Israel's Creation in
1948

By Donald Neff

It was 46 years ago, on May 13, 1948—the day
before Israel's creation—that the all-Arab
seaside city of Jaffa surrendered to Jewish
forces. It was the largest Arab city in
Palestine and, under the U.N. Partition Plan,
was to have been part of a Palestinian state.
But Menachem Begin's terrorist Irgun group
began bombarding civilian sectors of the city
on April 25, terrifying the inhabitants into
panicky flight.

At the time, the city's normal population of
around 75,000 was already down to 55,000. On
the day of surrender less than three weeks
later, only about 4,500 remained. The rest of
Jaffa's citizens had fled their homes in
terror, becoming part of the 726,000
Palestinian refugees created by the war.

Although Arab armies from neighboring
countries did not enter Palestine until May
15, Jewish forces had been active in a
campaign of ethnic cleansing since passage of
the partition plan the previous Nov. 29. The
first effort was aimed at clearing out
Palestinians living in cities designated as
part of the Jewish state.

This began in a major way on April 18, when
Tiberias was captured and its 5,500
Palestinian residents put in flight. On April
22, Haifa fell to the Jewish forces and
70,000 Palestinians fled. On May 10, the
12,000 Palestinians of Safed were routed and
the next day Beisan, with 6,000 Palestinians,
fell.

Preceding these conquests had been the
massacre at Deir Yassin on April 9, where 254
innocent Palestinian men, women and children
were killed by a combined force drawn from
Irgun and from Lehi, another Jewish terrorist
group known to the British as the "Stern
Gang" and headed in 1948 by a triumvirate
that included Yitzhak Shamir. Reports of the
savagery of the attack had spread throughout
the Palestinian community and caused
widespread dread at the advance of Jewish
forces. 2

The capture of Jaffa differed from the
earlier conquests in that under the U.N. plan
it was supposed to remain as a Palestinian
enclave between neighboring Tel Aviv and
areas to the south and east designated as
part of the Jewish state. Its capture
demonstrated that the future Israelis were
not going to observe the limits set on their
state by the United Nations.

Why did the residents of Jaffa flee?

According to Jewish intelligence officer
Slunuel. Toledano, "First because the Etzel
[Irgun] had been shelling Jaffa for three
weeks before the Haganah [regular army]
entered, making the Arabs very much afraid;
some already began to leave as a result of
that shelling by Etzel. [Second,] there were
rumors, based on the Etzel reputation, [that]
the minute the Jews entered the town, the
inhabitants would all be slaughtered."3

After the conquest, Irgun forces indulged in
widespread looting. Reported Jon Kimche,
former editor of the Jewish Observer and
Middle East Review, the official organ of the
Zionist Federation of Britain:

"For the first time in the still undeclared
war, a Jewish force commenced to loot in
wholesale fashion." 4 At first the young
Irgunists pillaged only dresses, blouses and
ornaments for their girl friends. But this
discrimination was soon abandoned. Everything
that was movable was carried from
Jaffa-furniture, carpets, pictures, crockery
and pottery, jewelry and cutlery.

The occupied parts of Jaffa were stripped,
and yet another traditional military
characteristic raised its ugly head.
Historian Michael Palumbo wrote of Jaffa:
"Not content with looting, the Irgun fighters
smashed or destroyed everything which they
could not carry off, including pianos, lamps
and window-panes." Ben Gurion afterwards
admitted that Jews of all classes poured into
Jaffa from Tel Aviv to participate in what he
called "a shameful and distressing spectacle."

When future Israeli Prime Minister David
Ben-Gurion learned that Jaffa had fallen, he
wrote in his diary: "Jaffa will be a Jewish
city. War is war." To accomplish this, Israel
set up a housing committee that was to
allocate Palestinian homes and apartments to
newly arrived Jewish families on certain
dates. But Israelis ignored the dates and
occupied the abandoned residences on a
first-come, first possess basis. Israeli
immigrant chief Giora Yoseftal reported:
"Thus the populating of Jaffa was achieved by
continuous invasions and counter invasions
[of unauthorized immigrants." Within a short
time some Jews had moved into abandoned
Palestinian homes in Jaffa. Although no
figures appear to be available for Jaffa,
Palestinian bank accounts in Haifa containing
1.5 billion Palestinian pounds were seized by
Israel.

There was also desecration of Christian
churches. Father Deleque, a Catholic priest,
reported:

"Jewish soldiers broke down the doors of my
church and robbed many precious and sacred
objects. Then they threw the statues of
Christ down into a nearby garden." He added
that Jewish leaders had reasssured him that
religious buildings would be respected, "but
their deeds do not correspond to their words."

Nearly a year after the fall of Jaffa, a
group of Palestinian notables from that city
who had become refugees in Beirut submitted
to U.S. Minister to Lebanon Lowell C.
Pinkerton an appeal to the United States to
redress their grievances . The appeal
included enclosures of agreements with the
Haganah and a report on the conditions in
Jaffa, the flight of Jaffa's refugees and how
they were forced to abandon their land and
property. It ended with the warning that
"unless they [the refugees] are effectively
resettled in their own homes and lands, the
peace sought for in this part of the world
will never reign, even though it might appear
on the surface that the trouble has subsided."

Today, nearly a half-century later, the
Palestinians remain refugees. But visitors
arriving at Ben-Gurion Airport in Israel can
hear about the old abandoned homes in a
booklet called The Opinionated Tourist Guide.
The guide is given to tourists, who can read
that "the most beautiful homes in the country
are the old Arab ones made of stone, built in
the early part of the century, that dot the
capital and some streets of Haifa and Jaffa
... They cost a fortune, however-$I million
is not uncommon and there aren't many of them
for sale.

Donald Neff is author of the Warriors trilogy
on U. S. -Middle East relations. His books
are available through the AET Book Club .

Recommended Reading:

Khalidi, Walid (ed.), From Haven to Conquest:
Readings in Zionism and the Palestine Problem
until 1948, Washington, DC, Institute for
Palestine Studies, second printing, 1987.

Morris, Benny, The Birth of the Palestine
Refugee Problem, New York, Cambridge
University Press, 1987.

Nakhleh, Issa, Encyclopedia of the Palestine
Problem (2 vols), New York, Intercontinental
Books, 1991.

Palumbo, Michael, The Palestinian
Catastrophe: The 1948 Expulsion of a People
from their Homeland, Boston, Faber and Faber,
1987.

Quigley, John, Palestine and Israel: A
Challenge to Justice, Durham, Duke University
Press, 1990.

Segev, Tom, 1949: 7he First Israelis, New
York, The Free Press, 1986.

Silver, Eric, Begin: 7he Haunted Prophet, New
York, Random House, 1984.

Notes:

1 Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian
Refugee Problem, pp. 96-101.

2 Khalidi, From Haven to Conquest, contains
de Reynier's moving first-hand account as
well as accounts of attacks on other
Palestinian centers, pp. 761-78. Many writers
have discussed the massacre, perhaps none
better than Silver, Begin, pp. 88-96. Also
see details in Nakhleh, Encyclopedia of the
Palestine Problem, pp. 271-72.

3 Quigley, Palestine and Israel, p. 61.

4 However, widespread looting had already
taken place in Haifa, according to Kimche's
own reports; see Palumbo, The Palestine
Catastrophe, p. 65.

5 Palumbo, The Palestinian Catastrophe, p. 91.

6 Segev, 1949, pp. 75-76.

7 Ibid., p. 73.

8 Palumbo, The Palestinian Catastrophe, p. 91

9 Lowell C. Pinkerton, Minister to Lebanon,
to the Secretary of State, April 11, 1949,
located in U.S. State Department Central
Files on Lebanon, 1945-49. Text in Journal of
Palestine Studies, "Historical Document,"
Spring 1989, pp. 96-109.

10 Russell Harris, "Letter from Tel Aviv,"
Middle East International, Jan. 7, 1994.





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