153-645: In July 1948, during the 1948 Palestine war , the Palestinian towns of Lydda and Ramle were captured by the Israeli Defense Forces and their residents (totalling 50,000-70,000 people) were violently expelled. The expulsions occurred as part of the broader 1948 Palestinian expulsions and the Nakba . Hundreds of Palestinians were killed in multiple mass killings, including the Lydda massacre and
306-817: A refugee camp in Ramallah and said he had never seen a more ghastly sight. Morris writes that the Arab governments did little for them, and most of the aid that did reach them came from the West through the Red Cross and Quakers. A new UN body was set up to get things moving, which in December 1949 became the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which many of
459-533: A Jewish majority in the land that would allow them to gain statehood. The Arab inhabitants of Ottoman Palestine who saw the Zionist Jews of the first aliyah settle next to them were not associated with a national movement at the end of the 19th century. Historically, Palestine had never been administered or recognized as a distinct province by any of its Muslim rulers. Starting in 1882, the Ottomans issued
612-619: A compromise with the Arabs, but none proved possible. The peasant-led 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine broke out in the context of increased Jewish migration to Palestine and the plight of the rural native fallāḥīn . It sparked following the murder of three Jewish drivers on April 15, 1936, whose funeral led rapidly spreading disturbances. The revolt began with a general strike among Palestinian Arabs on April 19, 1936, which escalated into intercommunal violence. The brutal suppression of
765-500: A day to Ben Shemen for kinus heshbon nefesh , a conference to encourage soul-searching. Cohen forced them to hand over their loot, which was thrown onto a bonfire and destroyed, but the situation continued when they returned to town. Some were later prosecuted. There were also allegations that Israeli soldiers had raped Palestinian women. Ben-Gurion referred to them in his diary entry for 15 July 1948: "The bitter question has arisen regarding acts of robbery and rape [ o'nes ("אונס")] in
918-537: A garrison of troops on the Suez Canal until 1945. Lebanon became an independent state in 1943, but French troops did not withdraw until 1946, the same year Syria won its independence from France. In 1945, at British prompting, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia , Syria, Transjordan, and Yemen formed the Arab League to coordinate policy among the Arab states. Iraq and Transjordan coordinated closely, signing
1071-708: A joint population of 50,000–70,000 Palestinian Arabs, 20,000 of them refugees from Jaffa and elsewhere. Several Palestinian Arab towns had already fallen to Jewish or Israeli advances since April, but Lydda and Ramle had held out. There are differing views as to how well-defended the towns were. In January 1948, John Bagot Glubb , the British commander of Transjordan's Arab Legion, had toured Palestinian Arab towns, including Lydda and Ramle, urging them to prepare to defend themselves. The Legion had distributed barbed wire and as many weapons as could be spared. Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi writes that just 125 Legionnaires from
1224-468: A moment, surveying the seething mob before, [then walked] down the steps to push his way through the line of guardsmen into the thick of the demonstrators. He went up to a prominent individual, who was shouting at the top of his voice, and dealt him a violent blow to the side of the head with the flat of his hand. The recipient of the blow stopped yelling ... the King could be heard roaring: so, you want to fight
1377-558: A month was needed. They were given 50,000 Palestine pounds credit with the Histadrut 's wholesalers, Hamashbir Hamerkazi . In January 1948 the number of trucks supplying Jewish Jerusalem had fallen to thirty per day. By March the daily average number of trucks reaching Jerusalem was six. By the end of March it was clear that food supplies for civilians in Jewish Jerusalem would run out. On 1 April The Times estimated that
1530-736: A more Jewish city. In addition to the Arabs officially registered, a fifth of the overall population are Bedouin , who arrived in Lod in the 1980s when they were moved off land in the Negev, according to Nathan Jeffay.They live in dwellings deemed illegal by Israeli authorities on agricultural land, unregistered and with no municipal services. The refugees are occasionally able to visit their former homes. Zochrot , an Israeli group that researches former Palestinian towns, visited Lod in 2003 and 2005, erecting signs in Hebrew and Arabic depicting its history, including
1683-679: A mutual defence treaty, while Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia feared that Transjordan would annex part or all of Palestine and use it as a stepping stone to attack or undermine Syria, Lebanon, and the Hijaz . On 29 November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution "recommending to the United Kingdom, as the mandatory Power for Palestine, and to all other Members of the United Nations
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#17327720744161836-429: A sign on the wall of the former Arab ghetto. The visits are met with a mixture of interest and hostility. Father Oudeh Rantisi, a former mayor of Ramallah who was expelled from Lydda in 1948, visited his family's former home for the first time in 1967: As the bus drew up in front of the house, I saw a young boy playing in the yard. I got off the bus and went over to him. "How long have you lived in this house?" I asked. "I
1989-606: A small number of Legionnaires remained in the Lydda police station. More Israeli troops arrived at dawn on 12 July. According to a contemporaneous IDF account: "Groups of old and young, women and children streamed down the streets in a great display of submissiveness, bearing white flags, and entered of their own free will the detention compounds we arranged in the mosque and church—Muslims and Christians separately." The buildings soon filled up, and women and children were released, leaving several thousand men inside, including 4,000 in one of
2142-547: A specific and direct order from the Minister of Defense. Regulations ordered the sealing off of Arab areas to prevent looting and acts of revenge and stated that captured men were to be treated as POWs with the Red Cross notified. Palestinian Arabs who wished to remain were allowed to do so and the confiscation of their property was prohibited. The town dignitaries were assembled and after discussion, decided to surrender. Lydda's inhabitants were instructed to leave their weapons on
2295-778: A stop to the escalating violence. The first phase of the war took place from the United Nations General Assembly vote for the Partition Plan for Palestine on 29 November 1947 until the termination of the British Mandate and Israeli proclamation of statehood on 14 May 1948. During this period the Jewish and Arab communities of the British Mandate clashed, while the British organised their withdrawal and intervened only occasionally. In
2448-591: A stream of prohibitions against Jewish settlement and land purchases in Palestine. However, due to the inefficiency of Ottoman bureaucracies, these restriction had little effect. Due to bribes, the Ottoman authorities often supported the Jewish settlers in disputes over land and settlement. Until the 1910s, Zionists encountered little violence, as the Arabs lacked political awareness and were disorganized. Between 1909 and 1914, this changed, as Arabs killed 12 Jewish settlement guards and Arab nationalism, and opposition to
2601-533: A town is entered and rings are forcibly removed from fingers and jewellery from necks—that is a very grave matter." Stuart Cohen writes that central control over the Jewish fighters was weak. Only Yigal Allon, commander of the IDF, made it standard practice to issue written orders to commanders, including that violations of the laws of war would be punished. Otherwise, trust was placed, and sometimes misplaced, in what Cohen calls intuitive troop decency. He adds that, despite
2754-577: A variety of distinct sectors around the coastal towns. They consolidated their presence in Galilee and Samaria . The Army of the Holy War , under Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni 's command, came from Egypt with several hundred men. Having recruited a few thousand volunteers, al-Husayni organised the blockade of the 100,000 Jewish residents of Jerusalem. To counter this, the Yishuv authorities tried to supply
2907-536: The 1947–1948 civil war phase of the 1947–1949 Palestine war . It saw Jewish and Arab militias in Mandatory Palestine , and later the militaries of Israel and Transjordan , fight for control over the city of Jerusalem . Under the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine , Jerusalem was to be a corpus separatum ( lit. ' separated body ' ) administered by an international body. Fighting nevertheless immediately broke out in
3060-460: The Al Youm newspaper on behalf of 460 Muslim and Christian train workers: "Since the occupation, we continued to work and our salaries have still not been paid to this day. Then our work was taken from us and now we are unemployed. The curfew is still valid ... [W]e are not allowed to go to Lod or Ramla, as we are prisoners. No one is allowed to look for a job but with the mediation of the members of
3213-576: The Balfour Declaration in November 1917, it was designated as a "national home for the Jewish people", with the stipulation that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine." Several factors influenced the decision to support Zionism. Zionist lobbying, led by Chaim Weizmann , played a significant role, along with religious and humanitarian motivations. The fact that
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#17327720744163366-471: The Balfour Declaration . As the numbers and strength of the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine) grew, tensions between the Jewish and Arab communities deepened. Significant bouts of violence happened during the 1920 Jerusalem Riots , as well as in 1921 and 1929 . In addition to the emerging Palestinian Arab nationalism, the violence also drew on religious inspirations, such as the accusation that
3519-532: The Haganah 's Etzioni Brigade of 1,200 with another 1,200 second line troops, commanded by David Shaltiel . In addition there was a Jewish Home Guard of 2,500, and 500 members of the dissident organisations, Irgun and Lehi . In a tactical change from defensive to offensive action, in early April the Haganah was ordered to launch Operation Nachshon , an offensive to clear the strategic hilltop villages along
3672-658: The Jerusalem area, including Bethlehem , with 100,000 Jews and an equal number of Palestinian Arabs, was to become a corpus separatum , to be administered by the UN. The residents in the UN-administered territory were given the right to choose to be citizens of either of the new states. The Jewish leadership accepted the partition plan as "the indispensable minimum", glad to gain international recognition but sorry that they did not receive more. The representatives of
3825-597: The Lydda Death March . The two Arab towns, lying outside the area designated for a Jewish state in the UN Partition Plan of 1947, and inside the area set aside for an Arab state in Palestine, were subsequently incorporated into the new State of Israel and repopulated with Jewish immigrants. The towns today have the Hebrew names of Lod and Ramla . The exodus, constituting the biggest expulsion of
3978-940: The Palmach , an elite fighting force of the pre-Israel Jewish community in Palestine. The operation was carried out between 9 July 1948, the end of the first truce in the Arab-Israeli war, and 18 July, the start of the second truce, a period known in Israeli historiography as the Ten Days. Morris writes that the IDF assembled its largest force ever: the Yiftach brigade ; the Eighth Armoured Brigade 's 82nd and 89th Battalions; three battalions of Kiryati and Alexandroni infantry men; an estimated 6,000 men with around 30 artillery pieces. In July 1948 Lydda and Ramle had
4131-515: The 100,000 would include 25,000 who had already returned illegally, so the actual total was only 75,000. The Americans felt it too low: they wanted to see 200,000–250,000 refugees taken back. The Arabs considered the Israeli offer was "less than token." When the '100,000 plan' was announced, the reaction of Israeli newspapers and political parties was uniformly negative. Soon after, the Israelis announced their offer had been withdrawn. On 14 July 1948
4284-517: The 1990s, increasing the ethnic tension in the city. In 2010 a three-meter-high wall was built to separate the Jewish and Arab neighbourhoods. The Arab community has complained that, when Arabs became a majority in Lod's Ramat Eshkol suburb, the local school was closed rather than turned into an Arab-sector school, and in September 2008 it was re-opened as a yeshiva , a Jewish religious school. The local council acknowledges that it wants Lod to become
4437-739: The Arab Legion the day before—he launched the attack in daylight, driving through the town from east to west machine-gunning anything that moved, according to Morris, then along the Lydda-Ramle road firing at militia posts until they reached the train station in Ramle. Kenneth Bilby , a correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune , was in the city at the time. He wrote: "[The Israeli jeep column] raced into Lydda with rifles, Stens, and sub-machine guns blazing. It coursed through
4590-475: The Arab Legion. Residents may have believed the Arab Legion had arrived, only to encounter Dayan's forces shooting at everything as they ran from their homes. Although no formal surrender was announced in Lydda, people gathered in the streets waving white flags. On the evening of 11 July, 300–400 Israeli soldiers entered the town. Not long afterwards, the Arab Legion forces on the Lydda–Ramle road withdrew, though
4743-650: The Arab militias in the city pushed Abdullah I of Jordan to order the Arab Legion to intervene. Jordanian forces deployed in East Jerusalem , fought the Israelis and took the Jewish Quarter of the Old City , following which the population was expelled and fighters taken as prisoners of war to Jordan. Israeli forces launched three assaults on Latrun to free the road to the city but without success; they then built an alternative road to Jerusalem before
Palestinian expulsion from Lydda and Ramle - Misplaced Pages Continue
4896-532: The Arab population, such as occurred at Lydda and Ramle and the Battle of Haifa , led to the expulsion and flight of over 700,000 Palestinians , with most of their urban areas being depopulated and destroyed . This violence and dispossession of the Palestinians is known today as the Nakba ( Arabic for "the disaster") and resulted in the beginning of the Palestinian refugee problem . The 1948 War came as
5049-700: The Arab state would also have an enclave in Jaffa , which had an Arab-majority population and provided the Arab state with a port on the Mediterranean. With about 32% of the population, the Jews were allocated 56% of the territory (most of it the Negev desert). It contained 499,000 Jews and 438,000 Arabs. The Palestinian Arabs were allocated 42% of the land, which had a population of 818,000 Palestinian Arabs and 10,000 Jews. In consideration of its religious significance,
5202-464: The Arab states. The result of his analysis was Plan Dalet , which was put in place at the start of April, and which marked the war's second phase, in which the Haganah took the offensive. The first operation, Nachshon , was directed at lifting the blockade on Jerusalem . In the last week of March, 136 supply trucks had tried to reach Jerusalem; only 41 had made it. The Arab attacks on communications and roads had intensified. The convoys' failure and
5355-408: The Arab world were privately pleased that they were required not to fight, given Israel's obvious military superiority. Morris writes that the situation of the 400,000 Palestinian Arabs who became refugees that summer—not only those from Lydda and Ramle—was dire, camping in public buildings, abandoned barracks, and under trees. Count Folke Bernadotte , the United Nations mediator in Palestine, visited
5508-635: The Arabs of Palestine supported the Ottoman fight against the Allied Powers also contributed. Additionally, the British believed that a British-backed state would help defend the Suez Canal . At that time, the Arab Hashemites did not seem opposed to Jewish rule over Palestine. After World War I, the League of Nations granted Britain the Mandate for Palestine , which required it to implement
5661-611: The Arabs would have done to them had they won the war." Kenan said he heard of only one woman who complained. A court-martial was arranged, he said, but in court, the accused ran the back of his hand across his throat, and the woman decided not to proceed. The allegations were given little consideration by the Israeli government. Agriculture Minister Aharon Zisling told the Cabinet on 21 July: "It has been said that there were cases of rape in Ramle. I could forgive acts of rape but I won't forgive other deeds, which appear to me much graver. When
5814-477: The British Army. At the end of March the decision was taken to resist arms searches. On 17 March a 16-vehicle convoy reached the city without incident. But the following week a two-mile long, 80-vehicle convoy came under attack, and five passengers were killed. Dov Yosef refers to a convoy being "wiped out", 27 March, but gives no details. Two days later a 60-vehicle convoy came under attack at Hulda and
5967-709: The British Empire in Egypt. The war briefly halted Jewish-Arab friction. The British invaded the land in 1915 and 1916 after two unsuccessful Ottoman attacks on Sinai. They were assisted by the Arab tribes in Hejaz, led by the Hashemites , and promised them sovereignty over the Arab areas of the Ottoman Empire. Palestine was excluded from the promise, initially intended to be a joint British-French domain. After
6120-455: The British ambassador in Amman, described one protest in the city on 18 July: A couple of thousand Palestinian men swept up the hill toward the main [palace] entrance ... screaming abuse and demanding that the lost towns should be reconquered at once ... The King appeared at the top of the main steps of the building; he was a short, dignified figure wearing white robes and headdress. He paused for
6273-454: The British put an end to the standoff; by then 78 Jews (mostly unarmed medical personnel) had been killed, as was one British soldier. According to Dov Yosef the turning point of Operation Nachshon was the death of Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni on 8 April. 30,000 people attended his funeral at the Haram al-Sharif and subsequently the morale of his forces collapsed. The end of the siege came with
Palestinian expulsion from Lydda and Ramle - Misplaced Pages Continue
6426-630: The Fifth Infantry Company were in Lydda—the Arab Legion numbered 6,000 in all—and that the rest of the town's defense consisted of civilian residents acting under the command of a retired Arab Legion sergeant. According to Morris, a number of Arab Legion soldiers, including 200–300 Bedouin volunteers, had arrived in Lydda and Ramle in April, and a company-sized force had set itself up in the old British police stations in Lydda and on
6579-642: The Haganah and Palmach, perpetrated the Deir Yassin massacre , killing at least 107 Arab villagers, including women and children. The event was widely publicized and had a deep effect on the Arab population's morale, greatly contributing to the Palestinian expulsion and flight . At the same time, the first large-scale operation of the Arab Liberation Army ended in a debacle, as they were roundly defeated at Mishmar HaEmek . Their Druze allies left them through defection. As part of Plan Dalet,
6732-417: The Haganah, Palmach and Irgun captured the urban centers of Tiberias , Haifa (See: Battle of Haifa ), Safed , Beisan , Jaffa , and Acre , violently expelling more than 250,000 Palestinian Arabs. The British had essentially withdrawn their troops. The situation pushed the neighbouring Arab states to intervene, but their preparation was not completed, and they could not assemble sufficient forces to turn
6885-492: The IDF that there was a "general and serious flight from Ramla." That afternoon, Dani HQ told one of its brigades to facilitate the flight from Ramle of women, children, and the elderly, but to detain men of military age. On the same day, the IDF took control of Lydda airport. The Israeli air force dropped leaflets over both towns on 11 July telling residents to surrender. Ramle's community leaders, along with three prominent Arab family representatives, agreed to surrender, after which
7038-421: The IDF threw grenades and fired anti-tank rockets into one of the mosque compounds. In an interview with Zochrot c.2013, former Palmach soldier Yerachmiel Kahanovich confessed to his role in the killings in Lydda's Dahamsh Mosque, testifying that he had fired a PIAT anti-tank missile with an enormous shock wave impact inside the mosque, killing many. According to Morris, dozens of unarmed detainees were killed in
7191-470: The IDF told Ben-Gurion that "not one Arab inhabitant" remained in Ramla or Lod, as they were now called. In fact, several hundred remained, including city workers who maintained essential city services like water service, and workers with expertise with the railroad train yards and the airport, the elderly, the ill and some Christians, and others who return to their homes over the following months. In October 1948
7344-502: The IDF were largely left to their own devices to decide how Palestinian Arab residents were to be treated, without the involvement of the Cabinet and other ministers. As a result, their policy was haphazard and circumstantial, depending in part on the location, but also on the religion and ethnicity of the town. The Palestinian Arabs of Western and Lower Galilee , mainly Christian and Druze, were allowed to stay in place, but Lydda and Ramle, mainly Muslim, were almost completely emptied. There
7497-505: The Israeli military governor of Ramla-Lod reported that 960 Palestinians were living in Ramla, and 1,030 in Lod. Military rule in the towns ended in April 1949. Nearly 700,000 Jews immigrated to Israel between May 1948 and December 1951 from Europe, Asia and Africa, doubling the state's Jewish population; in 1950 Israel passed the Law of Return , offering Jews automatic citizenship. The immigrants were assigned Palestinian homes—in part because of
7650-597: The Israelis launched several assaults on the Latrun salient but without success. During Operation Dani they launched two other attacks on Latrun, again without success and attacked several Arab villages to widen Jerusalem corridor that was 2 km wide in the area of Latrun. Part of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine , which the Jews of Mandatory Palestine accepted and the Arabs of Mandatory Palestine and neighboring states rejected,
7803-465: The Israelis mortared the city and imposed a curfew. The New York Times reported at the time that the capture of the city was seen as the high point of Israel's brief existence. Khalil Wazir , who later joined the PLO and became known as Abu Jihad, was evicted from the town with his family, who owned a grocer's store there, when he was 12 years old. He said he saw bodies scattered in the streets and between
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#17327720744167956-411: The Israelis took watches, jewellery, gold, and wallets from the refugees, and that he witnessed a neighbour of his shot and killed since he refused to be searched. As the residents left, the sacking of the cities began. The Yiftah brigade commander, Lt. Col. Schmuel "Mula" Cohen, wrote of Lydda that, "the cruelty of the war here reached its zenith." Bechor Sheetrit, the Minister for Minority Affairs, said
8109-411: The Jewish attack on the Arab village of Deir Yassin west of Jerusalem which caused many civilian casualties, Arab forces attacked a Jewish medical convoy on its way to Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus . The British had provided no escort (as they had in previous months) and both they and Palmach forces were slow to intervene during the attack and help the ambushed Jews. After seven hours of fighting,
8262-601: The Jewish population of Jerusalem required a minimum of 50 truckloads of supplies per week. On 3 April, The Scotsman reported that a spokesman at a meeting of Arab military leaders in Damascus had announced that Jerusalem would be "strangled" by a blockade. One estimate of the size of the opposing forces at the beginning of March 1948 gives the Arabs 5,300 men in Jerusalem and surrounding district, including 300 Iraqi irregulars and 60 Yugoslav Muslims. Jewish forces included
8415-442: The Jewish population resided. The Arabs blocked access to Jerusalem "at Latrun and Bab al-Wad ," a narrow valley surrounded by Arab villages on hills on both sides. The breaking of the siege of Jerusalem and the annexation of the captured areas to the Jewish state became primary goals for the Israelis in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War . Ambushes by Palestinian Arab irregulars became more frequent and more sophisticated. The intention of
8568-404: The Jewish population was ordered to hold their ground everywhere at all costs, the Arab population was disrupted by general conditions of insecurity. Up to 100,000 Arabs from the urban upper and middle classes in Haifa, Jaffa and Jerusalem, or Jewish-dominated areas, evacuated abroad or to Arab centres to the east. David Ben-Gurion ordered Yigal Yadin to plan for the announced intervention of
8721-409: The Jewish settlements in the highly isolated Negev and North of Galilee was more critical. This caused the US to withdraw its support for the Partition Plan, and the Arab League began to believe that the Palestinian Arabs, reinforced by the Arab Liberation Army, could end the partition. The British decided on 7 February 1948 to support Transjordan's annexation of the Arab part of Palestine. While
8874-428: The Jewish settlements of Galilee , and Operation Kilshon . This created an Israeli-controlled front around Jerusalem. The inconclusive meeting between Golda Meir and Abdullah I, followed by the Kfar Etzion massacre on 13 May by the Arab Legion, led to predictions that the battle for Jerusalem would be merciless. On 14 May 1948, the day before the expiration of the British Mandate, David Ben-Gurion declared
9027-419: The Jews intended to take over the Temple Mount . Despite Arab opposition to Jewish immigration, leading Palestinian families continued to sell land to Zionists throughout the period. At least one quarter of members of the Palestinian Arab Executive benefited financially from such purchases, including the mayor of Jerusalem and the al-Husayni family . The Zionist leaders intermittently attempted to reach
9180-427: The Jews who settled in the towns were from Asia or North Africa. The Palestinian workers allowed to remain in the cities were confined to ghettos. The military administrator split the region into three zones—Ramla, Lod, and Rakevet, a neighbourhood in Lod established by the British for rail workers—and declared the Arab areas within them "closed," with each closed zone run by a committee of three to five members. Many of
9333-547: The Jews, do you? Very well, there is a recruiting office for the army at the back of my house ... go there and enlist. The rest of you, get the hell down the hillside!" Most of the crowd got the hell down the hillside. Morris writes that, during a meeting in Amman on 12–13 July of the Political Committee of the Arab League , delegates—particularly from Syria and Iraq—accused Glubb of serving British, or even Jewish, interests, with his excuses about troop and ammunition shortages. Egyptian journalists said he had handed Lydda and Ramle to
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#17327720744169486-404: The Jews. Perie-Gordon, Britain's acting minister in Amman, told the Foreign Office there was a suspicion that Glubb, on behalf of the British government, had lost Lydda and Ramle deliberately to ensure that Transjordan accept a truce. King Abdullah indicated that he wanted Glubb to leave, without actually asking him to—particularly after Iraqi officers alleged that the entire Hashemite house was in
9639-429: The Legion was overstretched and could not hold the towns. As a result, Abdullah ordered the Legion to assume a defensive position only, and most of the Legionnaires in Lydda withdrew during the night of 11–12 July. The Israeli air force began bombing the towns on the night of 9–10 July, intending to induce civilian flight, and it seemed to work in Ramle: at 11:30 hours on 10 July, Operation Dani headquarters (Dani HQ) told
9792-421: The Local Committee ... we are like slaves. I am asking you to cancel the restrictions and to let us live freely in the state of Israel. As of 2013 around 69,000 people were living in Ramla. The population in Lod as of 2010 was officially around 45,000 Jews and 20,000 Arabs; its main industry is its airport, renamed Ben Gurion International Airport in 1973. Beth Israel immigrants from Ethiopia were housed there in
9945-411: The Lydda-Ramle road, with armoured cars and other weapons. He writes that there were 150 Legionnaires in the town in June, though the Israelis believed there were up to 1,500. An Arab Legion officer was appointed military governor of both towns, signaling the desire of Abdullah I of Jordan to stake a claim in the parts of Palestine allotted by the UN to a Palestinian Arab state, but Glubb advised him that
10098-411: The Old City of Jerusalem. The defenders of the Jewish Quarter surrendered to the Arab Legion on 28 May 1948, this leading to the forced evacuation of all Jewish inhabitants. Dov Yosef listed the problems faced in relieving Jewish Jerusalem as: In addition there was the British ban on the carrying of weapons. On 17 March six members of the Palmach accompanying a convoy were killed in a clash with
10251-414: The Old City. Aside from having a large Jewish population, Jerusalem held special importance to the Yishuv for "religious and nationalist" reasons . Following the outbreak of disturbances at the end of 1947, the road between Tel Aviv and Jewish Jerusalem became increasingly difficult for Jewish vehicles. Arab forces tried to cut off the road to Jerusalem from the coastal plain, where the majority of
10404-758: The PLO's guerrilla warfare and the Fatah youth movements that helped spark the First Intifada in 1987. He was assassinated by Israeli commandos in Tunis in 1988. 1948 Palestine war 1949 Armistice Agreements : [REDACTED] Yishuv (before 14 May 1948 ) [REDACTED] Israel (after 14 May 1948) Before 26 May 1948: After 26 May 1948: Foreign volunteers: [REDACTED] United Kingdom Arabs : c. 2,000 initially, rising to 70,000, of which: Military engagements Massacres and civilian attacks 1948 Arab–Israeli War Southern front Central and Jerusalem front Northern front International Massacres Biological warfare The 1948 Palestine war
10557-440: The Palestinian Arabs and the Arab League firmly opposed the UN action and rejected its authority in the matter, arguing that the partition plan was unfair to the Arabs because of the population balance at that time. The Arabs rejected the partition, not because it was supposedly unfair, but because their leaders rejected any form of partition. They held "that the rule of Palestine should revert to its inhabitants, in accordance with
10710-400: The Palmach). Ilan Pappé writes that Palestinian sources report 426 killed "in the mosque and in the streets nearby". Palestinian historian Aref al-Aref placed the death toll at 426, including 179 he said were later killed in one of the mosques. When the shooting was over, bodies lay in the streets and houses in Lydda, and on the Lydda–Ramle road. The Red Cross was due to visit the area, but
10863-407: The State of Israel declared its independence . Transjordan , Egypt , Syria and Iraq intervened by sending expeditionary forces that entered former Mandatory Palestine and engaged Israeli forces. Six weeks of fighting followed, after which none of the belligerents had won the upper hand. After four weeks of truce, during which Israeli forces reinforced whereas Arab ones suffered under the embargo,
11016-530: The Zionist enterprise, increased. In 1911, Arabs attempted to thwart the establishment of a Jewish settlement in the Jezreel Valley, and the dispute resulted in the death of one Arab man and a Jewish guard. The Arabs called the Jews the "new Crusaders", and anti-Zionist (and, occasionally, anti-Semitic ) rhetoric flourished. During the war, Palestine served as the frontline between the Ottoman Empire and
11169-457: The Zionist forces switched to the offensive in April 1948. In anticipation of an invasion by Arab armies, they enacted Plan Dalet , an operation aimed at securing territory for the establishment of a Jewish state. The second phase of the war began on 14 May 1948, with the termination of the British Mandate and the declaration of the establishment of the State of Israel . The following morning,
11322-577: The absence of legal authority made it necessary to intervene to protect Arab lives and property. The Palestinians' Arab Higher Committee rejected the Partition Resolution and any kind of Jewish state and refused to negotiate with "the Zionist Project." Battle for Jerusalem Central and Jerusalem front Northern front International Massacres Biological warfare The Battle for Jerusalem took place during
11475-654: The adoption and implementation, with regard to the future government of Palestine, of the Plan of Partition with Economic Union", UN General Assembly Resolution 181(II) . This was an attempt to resolve the Arab-Jewish conflict by partitioning Palestine into "Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem". Each state would comprise three major sections;
11628-434: The alleged war crimes, the majority of the IDF behaved with decency and civility. Yitzhak Rabin wrote in his memoirs that some refused to take part in the evictions. Tens of thousands of Palestinians from Lydda and Ramle poured into Ramallah. For the most part, they had no money, property, food, or water, and represented a health risk, not only to themselves. The Ramallah city council asked King Abdullah to remove them. Some of
11781-658: The ancient homeland. The first wave of Zionist immigration, dubbed the First Aliyah , lasted from 1882 to 1903. Some 30,000 Jews, mostly from the Russian Empire , reached Ottoman Palestine. They were driven both by the Zionist idea and by the wave of antisemitism in Europe, especially in the Russian Empire, which came in the form of brutal pogroms . They wanted to establish Jewish agricultural settlements and
11934-401: The army removed 1,800 truckloads of property from Lydda alone. Dov Shafrir was appointed Israel's Custodian of Absentee Property , supposedly charged to protect and redistribute Palestinian property, but his staff were inexperienced and unable to control the situation. The looting was so extensive that the 3rd Battalion had to be withdrawn from Lydda during the night of 13–14 July, and sent for
12087-531: The beginning of the ascent. After two weeks some supplies came through using mules and 200 men from the Home Guard ( Mishmar Ha'am ) to cover the three miles which were impassable to vehicles. These men, mostly conscripts in their fifties, each carried a 45-pound load and made the trip twice a night. This effort lasted for five nights. Three weeks later, 10 June, the steepest section was opened to vehicles, though they needed assistance from tractors to get up it. By
12240-670: The besieging forces was to isolate the 100,000 Jewish residents of the city from the rest of the Jewish inhabitants of Palestine and, in the case of the Jordanian forces, to capture East Jerusalem, including the Old City . In December 1947 the Jewish Agency set up the Jerusalem Emergency Committee , headed by Dov Yosef , which stockpiled food and fuel. In January the Committee estimated 4,500 tons
12393-518: The broadcasts were picked up in Jordan, they sparked victory celebrations. Radio Amman announced that the fact that the Jews were eating leaves, which was food for donkeys and cattle, was a sign that they were dying of starvation and would soon surrender. On 27 March an attack on a convoy returning from the Gush Etzion settlement block south of Jerusalem left 15 Jews dead. In April, shortly after
12546-509: The city between Jewish and Arab militias, with bombings and other attacks being carried out by both sides. Beginning in February 1948, Arab militias under Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni blockaded the corridor from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, preventing essential supplies from reaching the Jewish population. This blockade was broken in mid-April of that year by Jewish militias who carried out Operation Nachshon and Operation Maccabi . On 14 May and
12699-427: The city with convoys of up to 100 armoured vehicles, but the operation became more and more impractical as the number of casualties in the relief convoys surged. By March, al-Husayni's tactic had paid off. Almost all of Haganah 's armoured vehicles had been destroyed, the blockade was in full operation, and hundreds of Haganah members who had tried to bring supplies into the city were killed. The situation for those in
12852-468: The city without being attacked. The supplies included 230 tons of flour and 800 pounds of chocolate. Two days later 300 trucks arrived in the Jewish enclave with 1,000 tons of supplies, also without incident. The third convoy on 20 April had a harder time. Consisting of 300 trucks with 2,000 Haganah and Irgun troops, the convoy battled all day to get through. Twenty trucks were knocked out, ten Jews were killed and 30 wounded. Also, during Nachshon , there
13005-496: The city, led by Lt. Hamadallah al-Abdullah from the Jordanian 1st Brigade. The Arab Legion armoured cars and the occupying Israeli soldiers engaged in a firefight which created the impression that the Jordanians had staged a counterattack, leading the those in the city still armed to start firing at the Israelis too. Third Battalion commander Moshe Kelman ordered his troops to shoot at any clear target, including at anyone seen on
13158-414: The communities. British authority broke down as the civil war spread, taking care of little more than the evacuation of their own forces, although they maintained an air and sea blockade. After the first 4.5 months of fights, Jewish militias had conquered the main mixed cities of the country, expelling and causing the flight of 300,000-350,000 Palestinians . The British Mandate expired on 14 May 1948, and
13311-481: The conquered towns ..." Israeli writer Amos Kenan , who served as a platoon commander of the 82d Regiment of the Israeli Army brigade that conquered Lydda told The Nation on 6 February 1989: "At night, those of us who couldn't restrain ourselves would go into the prison compounds to fuck Arab women. I want very much to assume, and perhaps even can, that those who couldn't restrain themselves did what they thought
13464-456: The culmination of 30 years of friction between Jews and Arabs during the period of British rule of Palestine when, under the terms of the League of Nations mandate held by the British, conditions intended to lead to the creation of a Jewish National Home in the area were created. Zionism formed in Europe as the national movement of the Jewish people. It sought to reestablish Jewish statehood in
13617-525: The deportations that troops had been told to remove jewellery and money from residents so that they would arrive at the Arab Legion without resources, thereby increasing the burden of looking after them. Allon replied that he knew of no such order, but conceded it was a possibility. George Habash , one of the expelled who later founded the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine , said that
13770-470: The doorsteps to be collected by soldiers but did not do so. A curfew for that evening was announced over loudspeakers. A delegation of town dignitaries, including Lydda's mayor, left for the police station to prevail upon the Legionnaires there to also surrender. They refused and fired upon the party, killing the mayor and wounding several others. Despite this, the Israeli 3rd Battalion decided to accept
13923-576: The elderly died on the way. ... Many buried their dead in the leaves of corn". After three days of walking, the refugees were picked up by the Arab Legion and driven to Ramallah. Reports vary regarding how many died. Many were elderly people and young children who died from the heat and exhaustion. Morris has written that it was a "handful and perhaps dozens." Glubb wrote that "nobody will ever know how many children died." Nimr al Khatib estimated that 335 died. Morris calls this number "certainly an exaggeration", while Michael Palumbo said that Khatib's estimate
14076-517: The end of June the usual nightly convoy delivered 100 tons of supplies a night. Harry Levin in his diary entry, 7 June, says that 12 tons a night were getting through and he estimated that the city needed 17 tons daily. On 28 July he notes that during the first truce, 11 June to 8 July, 8,000 truckloads arrived. This remained the sole supply route for several months until the opening of the Valor Road ( Kvish Hagevurah ). In late May and early June
14229-727: The end of the war, the State of Israel had captured about 78% of former territory of the mandate, the Kingdom of Jordan had captured and later annexed the area that became the West Bank , and Egypt had captured the Gaza Strip . The war formally ended with the 1949 Armistice Agreements , which established the Green Line demarcating these territories. During the war, massacres and acts of terror were conducted by and against both sides . A campaign of massacres and violence against
14382-399: The end, bodies of men, women, and children, scattered along the way." Haj As'ad Hassouneh, described by Saleh Abd al-Jawad as "a survivor of the death march", shared his recollection in 1996: "The Jews came and they called among the people: "You must go." "Where shall we go?" "Go to Barfilia." ... the spot you were standing on determined what if any family or possession you could get; any to
14535-578: The establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel , to be known as the State of Israel . Both superpower leaders, U.S. President Harry S. Truman and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin , immediately recognised the new state, while the Arab League refused to accept the UN Partition Plan, proclaimed the right of self-determination for the Arabs across the whole of Palestine, and maintained that
14688-495: The exodus from exhaustion and dehydration, with estimates ranging from a handful to a figure of 500. After 30 years of intercommunal conflict between Jews and Arabs in Mandatory Palestine , on 29 November 1947, the United Nations voted to partition the territory into a Jewish and an Arab state, with Lydda and Ramle to form part of the latter. After the announcement of the UN Partition Plan civil war broke out between
14841-516: The expulsions, became Israel's deputy prime minister in 1967. He was a member of the war cabinet during the 1967 Arab Israeli Six-Day War , and the architect of the post-war Allon Plan , a proposal to end Israel's occupation of the West Bank . He died in 1980. Khalil al-Wazir , the grocer's son expelled from Ramle, became one of the founders of Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction within the PLO, and specifically of its armed wing, Al-Assifa . He organised
14994-486: The fighting resumed, which is when the attack on Lydda and Ramle took place. The Palestinian towns of Lydda and Ramle were strategically important because they sat at the intersection of Palestine's main north–south and east–west roads. Palestine's main railway junction and its airport (now Ben Gurion International Airport ) were in Lydda, and the main source of Jerusalem's water supply was 15 kilometers away. Jewish and Arab fighters had been attacking each other on roads near
15147-433: The fighting with the Arab states as sufficient, and put a low priority on a permanent peace treaty. On 3 August 1949, the Israeli delegation proposed the repatriation of 100,000 refugees, but not to their former homes, which had been destroyed or given to Jewish refugees from Europe; Israel would specify where the refugees would be relocated and the specific economic activities the refugees would be permitted to engage in. Also,
15300-402: The first being the 1947–1948 civil war , which began on 30 November 1947, a day after the United Nations voted to adopt the Partition Plan for Palestine , which planned for the division of the territory into Jewish and Arab sovereign states. During this period the British still maintained a declining rule over Palestine and occasionally intervened in the violence. Initially on the defensive,
15453-499: The first two months of the Civil War, around 1,000 people were killed and 2,000 injured, and by the end of March, the figure had risen to 2,000 dead and 4,000 wounded. These figures correspond to an average of more than 100 deaths and 200 casualties per week in a population of 2,000,000. From January onwards, operations became increasingly militarised. A number of Arab Liberation Army regiments infiltrated Palestine, each active in
15606-543: The following days, the Etzioni and Harel brigades, supported by Irgun troops, launched several operations that aimed to take over the Arab side of the city. In the meantime, the Arab Legion had deployed in the area of the former British Mandate that was allotted to the Arab state, not entering the corpus separatum but massively garrisoning Latrun to blockade West Jerusalem once again. Israeli victories against
15759-403: The houses, including the bodies of women and children. During the afternoon of 11 July, Israel's 89th (armoured) Battalion, led by Lt. Col. Moshe Dayan , moved into Lydda. Israeli historian Anita Shapira writes that the raid was carried out on Dayan's initiative without coordinating it with his commander. Using a column of jeeps led by a Marmon-Herrington Armoured Car with a cannon—taken from
15912-683: The inevitable housing shortage, but also as a matter of policy to make it harder for former residents to reclaim them—and could buy refugees' furniture from the Custodian for Absentees' Property. Jewish families were occasionally placed in houses belonging to Palestinians who still lived in Israel, the so-called " present absentees ," regarded as physically present but legally absent, with no legal standing to reclaim their property. By March 1950 there were 8,600 Jews and 1,300 Palestinian Arabs living in Ramla, and 8,400 Jews and 1,000 Palestinians in Lod. Most of
16065-410: The inhabitants... has begun." The Israeli cabinet reportedly knew nothing about the expulsion plan until Bechor Shitrit , Minister for Minority Affairs, appeared unannounced in Ramle on 12 July. He was shocked when he realized troops were organizing expulsions. He returned to Tel Aviv for a meeting with Foreign Minister Moshe Shertok , who met with Ben Gurion to agree on guidelines for the treatment of
16218-464: The last few miles of the road to Jerusalem. At the same time a series of massive armoured convoys, involving hundreds of vehicles, forced their way through. The fighting led to the evacuation of the Jewish villages of Atarot (17 May) and Neve Yaakov (18 May) near Jerusalem, and Kalya and Beit HaArava near the Dead Sea (both on 20 May), as well as the expulsion of the Jewish inhabitants of
16371-563: The loss of Jewish armoured vehicles had shaken the Yishuv leaders' confidence. 1,500 men from Haganah's Givati brigade and Palmach 's Harel brigade conducted sorties to free up the route to the city between 5 April and 20 April. The operation was successful, and two months' worth of foodstuffs were trucked into Jerusalem for distribution to the Jewish population. The operation's success was aided by al-Husayni's death in combat. During this time, paramilitary groups Irgun and Lehi , supported by
16524-518: The main streets, blasting at everything that moved ... the corpses of Arab men, women, and even children were strewn about the streets in the wake of this ruthlessly brilliant charge." The raid lasted 47 minutes, leaving 100–150 Palestinian Arabs dead, according to Dayan's 89th Battalion. The Israeli side lost 6 dead and 21 wounded. Kadish and Sela write that the high casualty rate was caused by confusion over who Dayan's troops were. The IDF were wearing keffiyeh s and were led by an armoured car seized from
16677-479: The mosque compounds. The Israeli government set up a committee to handle the Palestinian Arab refugees and their abandoned property. The committee issued an explicit order that forbade "to destroy, burn or demolish Arab towns and villages, to expel the inhabitants of Arab villages, neighbourhoods and towns, or to uproot the Arab population from their place of residence" without having previously received,
16830-446: The mosque. An eyewitness published a memoir in 1998 saying he had removed 95 bodies from one of the mosques. Palestinian historian Saleh Abdel Jawad estimated 175-250 killed in the mosque. Historian Ilan Pappé writes that 250 people were killed in the mosque. Historian Benny Morris writes that between 11:30 and 14:00 hours, "some 250" Palestinians were killed, citing the official Israeli military publication Sefer Ha-Palmach (Book of
16983-492: The neighboring villagers. Israel subsequently launched Operation Dani to secure the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road and neutralise any threat to Tel Aviv from the Arab Legion, which was stationed in Ramallah and Latrun, with a number of men in Lydda. On 7 July the IDF appointed Yigal Allon to head the operation, and Yitzhak Rabin , who became Israel's prime minister in 1974, as his operations officer; both had served in
17136-613: The new Israeli military governor of Ramle issued an order to have the visit delayed. The visit was rescheduled for 14 July; Dani HQ ordered Israeli troops to remove the bodies by then, but the order seems not to have been carried out. Dr. Klaus Dreyer of the IDF Medical Corps complained on 15 July that there were still corpses lying in and around Lydda, which constituted a health hazard and a "moral and aesthetic issue." He asked that trucks and Arab residents be organized to deal with them. Benny Morris writes that David Ben-Gurion and
17289-468: The opening of the "Burma Road" in June. In Yosef's words, "by the time the first truce (11 June 1948) came it had already broken the siege." This alternative route had been conceived in April after the failure of Nachshon to secure the entrance to the road to Jerusalem at Latrun. Work started on 18 May using bulldozers and several hundred quarrymen from Jerusalem. The major problem was a very steep section at
17442-515: The pay of the British—but London asked him to stay on. Britain's popularity with the Arabs reached an all-time low. The United Nations Security Council called for a ceasefire to begin no later than 18 July, with sanctions to be levelled against transgressors. The Arabs were outraged: "No justice, no logic, no equity, no understanding, but blind submission to everything that is Zionist," Al-Hayat responded, though Morris writes that cooler heads in
17595-652: The provisions of ... the Charter of the United Nations". According to Article 73b of the Charter, the UN should develop self-government of the peoples in a territory under its administration. In the immediate aftermath of the UN's approval of the partition plan, explosions of joy in the Jewish community were counterbalanced by discontent in the Arab community. Soon after, violence broke out and became more prevalent. Murders, reprisals, and counter-reprisals came fast upon each other, resulting in dozens killed on both sides. The sanguinary impasse persisted as no force intervened to put
17748-491: The refugee question. On 12 May 1949, the conference achieved its only success when the parties signed the Lausanne Protocol on the framework for a comprehensive peace, which included territories, refugees, and Jerusalem. Israel agreed in principle to allow the return of all of Palestinian refugees because the Israelis wanted United Nations membership, which required the settlement of the refugee problem. Once Israel
17901-534: The refugees and their descendants, now standing at four million, still depend on. Bernadotte's mediation efforts—which resulted in a proposal to split Palestine between Israel and Jordan, and to hand Lydda and Ramle to King Abdullah—ended on 17 September 1948, when he was assassinated by four Israeli gunmen from Lehi , an extremist Zionist faction. The United Nations convened the Lausanne Conference of 1949 from April to September 1949 in part to resolve
18054-537: The refugees reached Amman, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, and the Upper Galilee, and all over the area there were angry demonstrations against Abdullah and the Arab Legion for their failure to defend the cities. People spat at Glubb, the British commander of the Arab Legion, as he drove through the West Bank , and wives and parents of Arab Legion soldiers tried to break into King Abdullah's palace. Alec Kirkbride ,
18207-790: The residents would leave in exchange for the release of the prisoners; according to Guttman, he went to the mosque himself and told the men they were free to join their families. Town criers and soldiers walked or drove around the town instructing residents where to gather for departure. Lydda's residents began moving out on the morning of 13 July. They were made to walk, perhaps because of their earlier resistance, or simply because there were no vehicles left. They walked six to seven kilometers to Beit Nabala , then 10–12 more to Barfiliya , along dusty roads in temperatures of 30–35°C, carrying their children and portable possessions in carts pulled by animals or on their backs. Yitzhak Rabin wrote in his memoirs that "The population of Lod did not leave willingly. There
18360-480: The residents, though Morris writes that Ben Gurion apparently failed to tell Shitrit or Shertok that he himself was the source of the expulsion orders. Gelber disagrees with Morris's analysis, arguing that Ben-Gurion's agreement with Shitrit and Shertok is evidence that expulsion was not his intention, rather than evidence of his duplicity, as Morris implies. The men agreed the townspeople should be told that anyone who wanted to leave could do so, but that anyone who stayed
18513-617: The revolt by the British significantly weakened the Palestinian Arabs in advance of the 1948 war. Particularly after the White Paper of 1939 , the Zionist paramilitary organizations Irgun , Lehi , and Haganah carried out a campaign of acts of terror and sabotage against British rule. Among these attacks was the 1946 King David Hotel bombing carried out by the Irgun which killed 91 people. Following World War II,
18666-565: The roads were now cluttered, and the Legion was suddenly responsible for the welfare of an additional tens of thousands of people. There was widespread robbing of the refugees, with The Economist writing on 21 August 1948: "The Arab refugees were systematically stripped of all their belongings before they were sent on their trek to the frontier. Household belongings, stores, clothing, all had to be left behind." Aharon Cohen , director of Mapam's Arab Department, complained to Yigal Allon months after
18819-490: The roads with refugees—the Yiftah Brigade was ordered to strip them of "every watch, piece of jewelry, or money, or valuables"—to force the Arab Legion to assume an additional logistical burden with the arrival of masses of indigent refugees that would undermine its military capacities, and helped demoralise nearby Arab cities. Once the Israelis were in control of the towns, an expulsion order signed by Yitzhak Rabin
18972-439: The room. Rabin has offered two accounts of what happened next. In a 1977 interview with Michael Bar-Zohar , Rabin said Allon asked what was to be done with the residents; in response, Ben-Gurion had waved his hand and said, " garesh otam "—"expel them." In the manuscript of his memoirs in 1979, Rabin wrote that Ben-Gurion had not spoken, but had "waved his hand in a gesture which said, 'Drive them out!'" The expulsion order for Lydda
19125-565: The streets, in what became one of the bloodiest massacres of the war. Israeli soldiers threw grenades into houses and residents ran out of their homes in panic and were shot. Thousands of male Muslim detainees had been taken to two of the mosques the day before, while Christian detainees had been taken to the church or a nearby Greek Orthodox monastery, leaving the Muslims in fear of a massacre. Morris writes that some of them tried to break out, thinking they were about to be killed, and in response
19278-497: The surrounding Arab armies invaded Palestine, beginning the 1948 Arab–Israeli War . The Egyptians advanced in the south-east while the Jordanian Arab Legion and Iraqi forces captured the central highlands. Syria and Lebanon fought with the Israeli forces in the north. The newly formed Israel Defense Forces managed to halt the Arab forces and in the following months began pushing them back and capturing territory. By
19431-540: The surrounding Arab states were emerging from mandatory rule. Transjordan , under the Hashemite ruler Abdullah I , gained independence from Britain in 1946 and was called Jordan in 1949, but remained under heavy British influence. Egypt gained nominal independence in 1922, but Britain continued to exert a strong influence on it until the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 limited Britain's presence to
19584-525: The tide of the war. The majority of Palestinian Arab hopes lay with the Arab Legion of Transjordan's monarch, King Abdullah I . He did not intend to create a Palestinian Arab-run state, as he hoped to annex much of Mandatory Palestine. Playing both sides, he was in contact with the Jewish authorities and the Arab League. Preparing for Arab intervention from neighbouring states, Haganah successfully launched Operations Yiftah and Ben-'Ami to secure
19737-604: The town's essential workers were Palestinians. The military administrators did satisfy some of their needs, such as building a school, supplying medical aid, allocating them 50 dunams for growing vegetables, and renovating the interior of the Dahmash mosque, but it appears the refugees felt like prisoners; Palestinian train workers, for example, were subject to a curfew from evening until morning, with periodic searches to make sure they had no guns. One wrote an open letter in March 1949 to
19890-479: The town's surrender. Israeli historian Yoav Gelber writes that the Legionnaires still in the police station were panicking, and had been sending frantic messages to their HQ in Ramallah : "Have you no God in your hearts? Don't you feel any compassion? Hasten aid!" They were about to surrender, but were told by their HQ to wait to be rescued. On 12 July, at 11:30 hours, two or three Arab Legion armoured cars entered
20043-463: The towns since hostilities broke out in December 1947. Israeli geographer Arnon Golan writes that Palestinian Arabs had blocked Jewish transport to Jerusalem at Ramle, causing Jewish transportation to shift to a southern route. Israel had launched several ground or air attacks on Ramle and Latrun in May 1948, and Israel's prime minister, David Ben-Gurion , developed what Benny Morris calls an obsession with
20196-617: The towns, IDF radio traffic had already started calling them "refugees" after the expulsion orders were given. Operation Dani HQ told the IDF General Staff/Operations at noon on 13 July that "[the troops in Lydda] are busy expelling the inhabitants [ oskim begeirush hatoshavim ]," and told the HQs of Kiryati, 8th and Yiftah brigades at the same time that, "enemy resistance in Ramle and Lydda has ended. The eviction [ pinui ]" of
20349-681: The towns; he wrote in his diary that they had to be destroyed, and on 16 June referred to them during an Israeli cabinet meeting as the "two thorns". Lydda's local Arab authority, officially subordinated to the Arab Higher Committee , assumed local civic and military powers. The records of Lydda's military command discuss military training, constructing obstacles and trenches, requisitioning vehicles and assembling armoured cars armed with machine-guns, and attempts at arms procurement. In April 1948, Lydda had become an arms supply center, and provided military training and security coordination for
20502-451: The townspeople had undergone aerial bombardment, ground invasion, had seen grenades thrown into their homes and hundreds of residents killed, had been living under a curfew, had been abandoned by the Arab Legion, and the able-bodied men had been rounded up. Spiro Munayyer, an eyewitness, wrote that the important thing was to get out of the city. A deal was reached with an IDF intelligence officer, Shmarya Guttman , normally an archeologist, that
20655-482: The truce imposed by the United Nations on 11 June and successfully broke the blockade. During the period known as the First Truce, West Jerusalem was supplied with food, ammunition, weapons and troops. Fighting did not resume during the remaining months of the 1948 war. Jerusalem was split between Israel and Jordan after the war, with Israel controlling West Jerusalem and Jordan controlling East Jerusalem along with
20808-544: The war, took place at the end of a truce period, when fighting resumed, prompting Israel to try to improve its control over the Jerusalem road and its coastal route which were under pressure from the Jordanian Arab Legion, Egyptian and Palestinian forces. From the Israeli perspective, the conquest of the towns, designed, according to Benny Morris, "to induce civilian panic and flight", averted an Arab threat to Tel Aviv , thwarted an Arab Legion advance by clogging
20961-492: The west of you could not be retrieved. You had to immediately begin walking and it had to be to the east. ... The people were fatigued even before they began their journey or could attempt to reach any destination. No one knew where Barfilia was or its distance from Jordan. ... The people were also fasting due to Ramadan because they were people of serious belief. There was no water. People began to die of thirst. Some women died and their babies nursed from their dead bodies. Many of
21114-426: Was "a very conservative figure." Walid Khalidi writes that Palestinian historian Aref al-Aref estimated 350 deaths. Aref al-Aref estimated 500 died in the march from Lydda. The expulsions clogged the roads eastward. Morris writes that IDF thinking was simple and cogent. They had just taken two major objectives and were out of steam. The Arab Legion had been expected to counter-attack, but the expulsions thwarted it:
21267-495: Was 100 grams of wheat, 100 g beans, 40 g cheese, 100 g coffee or 100 g powdered milk, 160 g bread per day, 50 g margarine with one or two eggs for the sick. The mallow plant played an important role in Jerusalem history at this time. When convoys bearing foodstuffs could not reach the city, the residents of Jerusalem went out to the fields to pick mallow leaves, which are rich in iron and vitamins. The Jerusalem radio station, Kol Hamagen, broadcast instructions for cooking mallow. When
21420-420: Was 200 grams per person. The April Passover week ration per person was 2 lb potatoes, 2 eggs, 0.5 lb fish, 4 lb matzoth, 1.5 oz dried fruit, 0.5 lb meat and 0.5 lb matza flour. The meat cost one Palestine pound per pound. On 12 May, water rationing was introduced. The ration was two gallons/person/day, of which four pints was drinking water. In June the weekly ration per person
21573-410: Was a secret convoy that brought 1,500 Palmach soldiers into the city. After this Jewish Jerusalem was cut off from the outside world for seven weeks, with the exception of a dozen trucks which brought army supplies on 17 May. Starting in early 1948, the Arab forces had severed the supply line to Jewish Jerusalem. On 31 March, Dov Yosef introduced a draconian system of food rationing. The bread ration
21726-424: Was admitted to the UN, it retreated from the protocol it had signed, because it was completely satisfied with the status quo, and saw no need to make any concessions with regard to the refugees or on boundary questions. Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett had hoped for a comprehensive peace settlement at Lausanne, but he was no match for Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, who saw the armistice agreements that stopped
21879-598: Was an ambiguity in the instruction that women, children and the sick were not to be forced to go: the word " lalechet " can mean either "go" or "walk". Satisfied that the order had been passed on, Shertok believed he had managed to avert the expulsions, not realizing that, even as he was discussing them in Tel Aviv, they had already begun. Thousands of Ramle's residents began moving out of the town on foot, or in trucks and buses, between 10 and 12 July. The IDF used its own vehicles and confiscated Arab ones to move them. By 13 July
22032-463: Was born here," he replied. "Me too," I said ... Yitzhak Rabin , Allon's operations officer, who signed the Lydda expulsion order, became Chief of Staff of the IDF during the Six-Day War, and Israel's prime minister in 1974 and again in 1992. He was assassinated in 1995 by a right-wing Israeli radical opposed to making peace with the PLO. Yigal Allon , who led Operation Dani and may have ordered
22185-536: Was forced to turn back with 17 Jews and 5 Arabs killed. Five captured vehicles were driven to Ramle . A food convoy escorted by the Palmach reached the city on 6 April without casualties despite being ambushed at Dir Muhsein by a force of "150 Arabs ... joined by 80 Arabs from Abu Shushe ." It also survived a second road block at Kolonia , "whose militiamen had repeatedly attacked", taking six hours to reach its destination. To coincide with Nachshon , Dov Yosef
22338-489: Was fought in the territory of what had been, at the start of the war, British-ruled Mandatory Palestine . During the war, the British withdrew from Palestine, Zionist forces conquered territory and established the State of Israel , and over 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled . It was the first war of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the broader Arab–Israeli conflict . The war had two main phases,
22491-503: Was given £100,000 and Haganah authority to conscript as many men and trucks as he needed. He proceeded to assemble three large convoys at Bilu Camp with a stockpile of 10,000 tons of supplies. He obtained 150 trucks from the Solel Boneh - Shelev Transport Co-operative. A Haganah field force requisitioned a further 150 trucks with their drivers and conscripted 1,000 men as labourers. On 15 April 131 trucks with 550 tons of food reached
22644-408: Was issued at 13:30 hours on 12 July, signed by Rabin. In his memoirs Rabin wrote: "'Driving out' is a term with a harsh ring. Psychologically, this was one of the most difficult actions we undertook. The population of Lod did not leave willingly." Benny Morris writes that Israeli troops understood that what followed was an act of deportation, not a voluntary departure. While the residents were still in
22797-484: Was issued to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) stating, "1. The inhabitants of Lydda must be expelled quickly without attention to age....". Ramle's residents were bussed out, while the people of Lydda were forced to walk miles during a summer heat wave to the Arab front lines, where the Arab Legion, Transjordan 's British-led army, tried to provide shelter and supplies. A number of the refugees died during
22950-584: Was no official policy to expel the Palestinian population, he writes, but the idea of transfer was "in the air", and the leadership understood this. As the shooting in Lydda continued, a meeting was held on 12 July at Operation Dani headquarters between Ben-Gurion, Yigael Yadin and Zvi Ayalon, generals in the IDF, and Yisrael Galili , formerly of the Haganah , the pre-IDF army. Also present were Yigal Allon, commanding officer of Operation Dani, and Yitzhak Rabin. At one point Ben-Gurion, Allon, and Rabin left
23103-445: Was no way of avoiding the use of force and warning shots in order to make the inhabitants march the 10 to 15 miles to the point where they met up with the legion." Many of those expelled were stripped of their valuables en route by Israeli soldiers at checkpoints. Another IDF soldier described how possessions and people were slowly abandoned as the refugees grew tired or collapsed: "To begin with [jettisoning] utensils and furniture, and in
23256-473: Was responsible for himself and would not be given food. Women, children, the old, and the sick were not to be forced to leave, and the monasteries and churches must not be damaged, though no mention was made of the mosques. Ben-Gurion passed the order to the IDF General Staff, who passed it to Dani HQ at 23:30 hours on 12 July, ten hours after the expulsion orders were issued; Morris writes that there
23409-491: Was that Jerusalem would be a corpus separatum , under United Nations control and not part of either the proposed Arab or Jewish states. Israel argued that the partition plan regarding Jerusalem was "null and void" due to the UN's "active relinquishing of responsibility in a critical hour" when the UN did not act to protect the city. The Arabs, who had been against Jerusalem's internationalization all along, felt similarly. The appointment of Dov Yosef as "Military Governor of
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