by Mitchell Bard
Benny Morris was one of the original post-Zionists,
who made his reputation by publishing Jewish man bites dog research
suggesting that the Jews were more responsible for the Palestinian refugee
problem than the Arabs. He has since partially recanted, swayed in large
measure by the Palestinian uprising and Yasser Arafat’s rejection of Barak’s offer of a Palestinian state at Camp
David in 2000. He now more clearly states in interviews and articles
that the Palestinian refugee problem was the result of the Arab decision
to go to war to destroy the nascent state of Israel.
Despite this change of heart, the revised edition of
his book on the origins of the refugee problem still places substantial
blame on Israel. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited is an impressively researched study, which benefited from the declassification
of a trove of documents since he wrote his original book. Still, as
thorough as Morris has been, he is still limited by the near total lack
of access to Arab sources and the continued classification of some Israeli
material.
The book goes into excruciating detail, documenting
the behavior of Jews and Arabs it seems in every village in Israel/Palestine.
The gist of Morris’s case is cogently summarized, however, in
the conclusion, so you can save time and money by simply reading this
chapter in the Library. The second sentence really says it all: “The
war [1940] and not design, Jewish or Arab gave birth to the Palestinian
refugee problem." He concludes that “there was no pre-war
Zionist plan to expel ‘the Arabs’ from Palestine….”
The lack of a policy to expel the Palestinians is evident by the fact
that a large minority – 150,000 Arabs – remained in Israel.
Morris also correctly relates that tens of thousands of wealthy Arabs
left voluntarily, most before the war began. Though Morris ignores much
of the evidence that Arab leaders called on the Palestinians to leave,
he does document how Palestinian leaders promoted the depopulation of
many villages. He also shows how the Arab–initiated evacuations
demoralized the remaining Arabs and stimulated their flight.
Once the Arabs invaded, the morale of the Palestinians
was further undermined by the ease with which the Jewish army captured
many key objectives, and by the failure of the Arab armies to deliver
on their promise to drive the Jews into the sea. Morris also documents
cases where the Jews did in fact expel the Palestinians, and a few instances
where he alleges atrocities were committed. While a few of the specific
examples he found are new, the overall thrust of the book supports the
conclusion of my article on the subject published nearly two decades
ago, that is, a large number of wealthy Palestinians left in anticipation
of the war, a relatively small number were expelled from a handful of
villages, some Arabs were encouraged to leave, and the vast majority
left to avoid being caught up in the middle of a war.
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