Figure 1.--The greatest tragedy of the Isreali-Arab conflict was the Palestinian refugees who were displaced. The Arabs complaun that it was vicious ethnic cleansing. To some extent they are correct. And we all se ethnic cleansing as an injustice. The problem is that the arabs only see ethnic cleansing as an injustice because they were the ones displaced. Aran and Palistinian leaders before the War threatened to drive the Jews into the sea--the same ethnic cleansing operation that after the War they see as a war crime when it is Arabs tht are displaced. And this thinking has not changed decades later. The Arabs still acuse the Israelis of ethnic clkeasing and at the same time say that their goal is to destroy Israel.

The Arabs and other Muslim countries voted against and rejected Resolution 181. This was understandable. They were a majority in Palestine and without partition, they would control any government after the British departed. Their rejection, however, essentially is the cause of today's Isreali-Palestinian conflict today and the Palestinian refugee problem. The Palestinians could have had a state of their own had they accepted the U.N. Partion Plan. But they rejected it. Many seem more focused on driving the Jews out than on creating theoir own state. Not did they prepare for war. Rather they lanched uncoordinate terror attacks and epened on the neighboring Arab states to deliver all of Palestine to them. There seems to hve been little ealization among the Palistinian leadership, that the Front Line states preparing to invade had no intention of creating a Palistinian state. Partition was unacceptable to either the Palestinians or the neighboring Arab states. The Arabs threatened to invade if the Jews moved to establish a Jewish state and threatened to drive the Jews into the sea. Arab leaders threatened blood would flow. There was not the slightest doubt among most Arab leaders that they had the capability of irdicating any Jewish state. Azzam Pasha, the General Secretary of the Arab League told an Egyptian newspaper, "Personally I hope the Jews do not force us into this war because it will be a war of elimination and it will be a dangerous massacre which history will record similarly to the Mongol massacre or the wars of the Crusades." [Akhbar el-Yom.] Pasha also told Alec Kirkbride: "We will sweep them [the Jews] into the sea". Syrian president, Shukri al-Quwatli, assured the Syrian people, "We shall eradicate Zionism". [Morris, p. 187.] Egyptian King, Farouk assured the American Ambassador in his country that in the long run the Arabs would decisively defeat the Jews and drive them out of Palestine. [Morris, p. 410.] The frontline Arab states did not invade after the partition vote. They made it clear, however, that they would invade if the Jews declared independence. Within Palestine there were two responses. We see a sharp ecaltion of attack on Jews. And we see the movement of Arab civilians from areas awarded tonJews in the U.N. Partition Plan. Attacks by irregular forces escalated. Armed irregulars, both Palestinian and other Arabs, immediately began to attack Jewish communities. The Arab Higher Committee declared a 3-day general strike in Palestinen the following day. This proved to be the beginning of the violence. [Norris, pp. 76-77.] Low level attacks comtinued as the British withdrawl from Palestine approached. These were mostly Arab attacks on Jews. The attacks largely occured in areas where were small Lewish populations in heavily Arab areas. Attacks also occurred from Arab villages astride roads connecting Jewish areas. The Mufti was intent on heading the envisioned Arab state". [Cohen, p. 236.]

Sources

Cohen, Hillel. Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948 (University of California Press: 2008).

Morris, Benny. 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (Yale University Press: 2008).

"Jewish units here hail action by the U.N." New York Times (November 30, 1947).

Akhbar el-Yom (October 11, 2011), p. 9.

Created: 5:28 PM 11/3/2017
Last updated: 5:28 PM 11/3/2017