Causes of The 1948 Palestinian Exodus - The "Master Plan" Explanation

The "Master Plan" Explanation

Based on the aforementioned alleged prevalent idea of transfer, and on actual expulsions that took place in the 1948 Arab–Israeli war, Walid Khalidi, a Palestinian historian, introduced a thesis in 1961 according to which the Palestinian exodus was planned in advance by the Zionist leadership.

Khalidi based his thesis on Plan Dalet, a plan devised by the Haganah high command in March 1948, which stipulated, among other things that if Palestinians in villages controlled by the Jewish troops resist, they should be expelled (Khalidi, 1961). Plan Dalet was aimed to establish Jewish sovereignty over the land allocated to the Jews by the United Nations (Resolution 181), and to prepare the ground toward the expected invasion of Palestine by Arab states after the imminent establishment of the state of Israel. In addition, it was introduced while Jewish–Palestinian fighting was already underway and while thousands of Palestinians had already fled. Nevertheless, Khalidi argued that the plan was a master-plan for the expulsion of the Palestinians from the territories controlled by the Jews. He argued that there was an omnipresent understanding during the war that as many Palestinian Arabs as possible had to be transferred out of the Jewish state, and that this understanding stood behind many of the expulsions that the commanders in the field carried out.

In the opinion of Glazer (1980, p. 113), there is evidence that Zionist leaders were already thinking about removal of the Palestinian population before the actual occurrence. On 7 February 1948, Ben-Gurion told the Central Committee of Mapai (the largest Zionist political party in Palestine) "it is most probable that in the 6, 8 or 10 coming months of the struggle many great changes will take place, very great in this country and not all of them to our disadvantage, and surely a great change in the composition of the population in the country." Glazer (1980, p. 113) states that the 1947 Partition Resolution awarded an area to the Jewish state whose population was 46 percent Arab and where much of this land was owned by Arabs. He considers that "it has been argued by the Zionists that they were prepared to make special accommodations for this large population; yet it is difficult to see how such accommodations could have coalesced with their plans for large-scale Jewish immigration; moreover, by 1 August 1948, the Israeli government had already stated that it was 'economically unfeasible' to allow the return of the Arabs, at the very time when Jewish refugees were already entering the country and being settled on abandoned Arab property."

According to Ilan Pappé the Palestinian exodus can be described as ethnic cleansing. In his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Pappé analyses the causes of the exodus. He describes the aims the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine) had, the way it prepared in the years before the war to be able to achieve these aims and the way in which a pragmatic ethnic cleansing policy was devised and implemented in 1947–1949.