Village Files - Purposes

Purposes

According to Pappé later the files were updated and much more details of the inhabitants were added. Towards the end of the Mandatory period more military information was added, like the number of guards and the number and quality of arms in a village, next to the already present information on how best to attack a village. The final update in 1947 focussed on creating lists of ‘wanted’ persons in each village. The main criteria for inclusion were participation in actions against the British and the Zionists, and affiliation with a Palestinian political party or leader. Typically 20 to 30 out of 1500 inhabitants were on the lists.

According to Pappé in the late 1940s these files contained 'precise details about the topographic location of each village, its access roads, quality of land, water springs, main sources of income, its sociopolitical composition, religious affiliations, names of its mukhtars, its relationship with other villages, the age of individual men (sixteen to fifty),' an index of hostility based on the level of the village’s participation in the revolt of 1936, and a list of everyone who had been involved in the revolt with particular attention for those who had allegedly killed Jews.

According to Gil Eyal the 'village files' gathered three types of information :

• They "answered the need of combat intelligence the number of men in the village, the number of weapons, the topography and so on";
• Other items had to do with the needs of hasbara, the research of traces of ancient Jews in the villages;
• "Another interest was buying land from the villagers and settling it".

Gil Eyal emphasizes that "the bulk of information in the files reflected the needs and point of view of the emerging Arabist expertise. (...) The Arabists could use this information to interpret the events in the village, but more importantly they could use it to act against the village and use this when needed". He points out it were used after 1948, e.g. during retaliation operations, but doesn't make any reference to a use during the 1948 Palestine War.