The de-arabization of West Jerusalem 1947-50

Journal of Palestine Studies

Volumn 27, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 5-22

  Krystall, Nathan ^a  

^a Alternative Information Center   (Israel)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0008392190     PISSN: 0377919X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2538281     Document Type: Review

References (65)

1. Lynne Reid Banks, Torn Country: An Oral History of the Israeli War of Independence (New York: Frank Watts, 1982), p. 24. Banks's description of pre-1948 Jerusalem is as follows: "Then as now, Jerusalem was divided into the Old City to the east and the new, western sector, which also extended to the south, known as Jewish Jerusalem."
2. Although the term West Jerusalem did not come into use until after the armistice, it is used for the sake of simplicity throughout this article for those sections of the city that came under Israeli control in 1948.
3. Michael Dumper, The Politics of Jerusalem Since 1967 (New York: Columbia University Press and the Institute for Palestine Studies, 1997), p. 67.
4. The German Colony, originally settled by the German Templars sect in the nineteenth century, retained the name even after it became a predominantly Arab neighborhood.
5. The Greek Colony is so called because the nucleus of the quarter was built by Greeks. The name remained even after it became a largely Arab neighborhood.
6. Sami Hadawi, Palestine: Loss of a Heritage (San Antonio, TX: Naylor Company, 1963), p. 141.
7. Dumper, The Politics of Jerusalem since 1967, p. 63. The figure given for Jews in Jerusalem is 96,000-97,000, but 2,000 to 3,000 of these lived in what became East Jerusalem.
8. Hadawi, Palestine, p. 141. Land ownership of the remainder was as follows: "Others" (primarily the international Christian churches): 15.21 percent; state domain: 2.4 percent; roads and railways: 18.59 percent.
9. For figures on Arab and Zionist troop strength, see Appendices VIII, IX-A, and IX-B of Walid Khalidi, From Haven to Conquest (1971; reprint, Washington: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1987), pp. 858-87.
10. In analyzing the relationship between the actions of the three forces, Simha Flapan discerned that, following Irgun and Lehi raids and bombings, "a pattern became clear, for in each case the Arabs retaliated, then the Haganah - while always condemning the actions of the Irgun and Lehi - joined in with an inflaming 'counterretaliation.'" Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities (London: Croom Helm, 1987), p. 95.
11. Arnon Golan, Shinui hamapa hayishuvit b'azorim sh'nitush alyaday hauchlusia ha'aravit, b'shetach bo kama medinat yisrael, 1948-1950 (Change in the settlement map in the regions abandoned by the Arab population in the area in which the State of Israel was established, 1948-1950) (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University, 1993), p. 11.
12. Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, O Jerusalem! (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), p. 112.
13. Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, O Jerusalem! 1972, p. 112. Ibid.
14. Walid Khalidi, ed., All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 (Washington: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992), pp. 301-2.
15. See "Summary of Information about Hotel Semiramis . . . in Qatamon," Arab Division of the Jewish Agency Political Department, 8 January 1948, Central Zionist Archives (CZA), S25-4013; cited in Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 50.
16. Hala Sakakini, Jerusalem and I: A Personal Record (Jordan: Economic Press Co., 1990), p. 111.
17. Ghada Karmi, "The 1948 Exodus: A Family Story," in JPS 23, no. 2 (Winter 1994), p. 35.
18. David Ben-Gurion, War Diaries, 15 January 1948, p. 156,
19. as cited in Flapan, The Birth of Israel, p. 92.
20. Golan, Shinui hamapa hayishuvit, p. 23.
21. Shinui hamapa hayishuvit, Ibid., 15.
22. Shinui hamapa hayishuvit, Ibid., 17.
23. Morris, Birth, p. 52.
24. Ben-Gurion, The War Diary 1948-49, Vol. 1, ed. Elhanan Orren and Gershon Rivlin (Tel Aviv: Israel Defence Ministry Press, 1982),
25. entry dated 7 February 1948, cited in Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians (Washington: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992), p. 180.
26. Pablo De Azcarate, Mission in Palestine, 1948-1952 (Washington: Middle East Institute, 1966), p. 22.
27. In the early 1960s, Walid Khalidi first drew the link between Plan Dalet and the premeditated expulsion of thousands of Palestinians from the Jerusalem corridor and elsewhere in Palestine. See Walid Khalidi, "Plan Dalet Revisited," JPS 18, no 1. (Autumn 1988), pp. 3-70.
28. Morris, Birth, p. 112.
29. Collins and Lapierre, O Jerusalem! p. 239.
30. It is interesting to note that the IDF Archives withheld from the author twelve out of thirty-eight documents from File #35, 500/1948, "The Western Front," which contains key documents concerning the Dayr Yasin massacre.
31. See Banks, Torn Country, pp. 56-57;
32. Dan Kurzman, Genesis 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War (New York: Signet, 1970), pp. 141, 146.
33. See report filed on 15 April 1948 to the British Palestine Government by Assistant Inspector General Richard C. Catling of the Criminal Investigation Division (Dossier 179/110/17/GS), cited in Collins and Lapierre, O Jerusalem! p. 275.
34. Jacques de Reynier, A Jerusalem un drapeau flottait sur la ligne de feu, Editions de la Baconniere, Neuchatel, Switzerland, 1950,
35. quoted in Henry Cattan, The Palestine Question (London: Croom Helm, 1988), p. 44.
36. Morris, Birth, p. 38.
37. De Reynier, A Jerusalem, section on Dayr Yasin translated by Institute for Palestine Studies and reprinted in Walid Khalidi, From Haven to Conquest (1971; reprint, Washington: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1987), p. 765.
38. Michael Palumbo, The Palestinian Catastrophe: The 1948 Expulsion of a People from their Homeland (London: Faber and Faber, 1987), p. 97.
39. Sakakini, Jerusalem and I, p. 118.
40. Morris, Birth, p. 68.
41. David Kroyanker, walking tour of Talbiyya with author, 24 May 1997.
42. Morris, Birth, p. 51.
43. Birth, Ibid., 66.
44. Hagit Shlonsky, interview with author, Jerusalem, 1 May 1997.
45. John H. Melkon Rose, Armenians of Jerusalem: Memories of Life in Palestine (New York: Radcliffe Press, 1993), pp. 194-95.
46. Sharif Kanaana, in his book Still on Vacation! The Eviction of the Palestinians in 1948 (Jerusalem: The Jerusalem International Center for Palestinian Studies, 1992), places the fall of Arab West Jerusalem in the framework of what he terms the Zionists' "Maxi-Massacre Pattern" in their conquest of large Palestinian cities. According to this pattern, Zionist attacks produced flight and demoralization. A nearby massacre resulted in panic and further flight, which greatly facilitated the occupation of the city and its surrounding towns and villages.
47. Golan, Shinui hamapa hayishuvit, p. 27;
48. Rose, Armenians, p. 199.
49. Collins and Lapierre, O Jerusalem! p. 372.
50. Aviva Bar-Am, "Every House a History," Jerusalem Post, 14 December 1990. The Villa Harun al-Rashid was built in 1926 as two apartments for rent in ornate "Thousand and One Nights" style by Hana Bishara, one of two brothers who owned much property in Talbiyya. Golda Meir, as the Israeli foreign minister, lived there in the 1960s. When she learned that UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold was coming to visit, she directed her security men to remove a sign with the villa's name written in Arabic and English from above the side entrance door, supposedly to hide the fact that the house had belonged to an Arab.
51. David Ben-Gurion, Israel: Years of Challenge (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963), p. 40. By a vote of 5 to 4, the Jewish Agency leadership decided not to delineate Israel's borders in the declaration. Still, there was no doubt in BenGurion's mind that Jerusalem was part and parcel of Israel, as he told the provisional government on 24 May.
52. See David Ben-Gurion, When Israel Fought (Tel Aviv: n.p., 1975), p. 183 [in Hebrew],
53. cited in Matti Golani, "Zionism without Zion: The Jerusalem Question, 1947-49," Journal of Israeli History 16, no. 1 (1995), p. 47.
54. Avi Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), p. 242.
55. Collusion Across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine Ibid., 239.
56. See the memoirs of Major Abdallah al-Tal, the officer in command of the Arab Legion troops in Jerusalem. Al-Tal, Karithat Filistin: Mudhakkarat (Catastrophe of Palestine: Memoirs) (Acre: Dar al-Jalil, n.d.), Part 1, p. 106.
57. Britain was the primary supplier of the Arab Legion, while Israel was able to use the cease-fire to transport arms, including heavy artillery, and ammunition to Jerusalem via the "Burma Road."
58. Rose, Armenians, p. 200.
59. C. X. Mavrides, Jerusalem Diaries, trans. Yanni Tleel (Jerusalem: Nes Zion Newsletter, 1948), Memorandum 2.
60. Abdullah Budeiri, interview with author, Jerusalem, 7 June 1997.
61. Rose, Armenians, p. 205.
62. Matti Golani, "Zionism without Zion: The Jerusalem Question, 1947-1949," Journal of Israeli History 16, no. 1 (1995), p. 48.
63. Cattan, The Palestine Question, p. 253.
64. To this day, Israel has not canceled the state of emergency, which provides legal justification for detention without trial and military censorship of the press.
65. Proceeds from these transactions, minus legal and administrative expenses, are to be held in a special fund, presumably for the absentees, until the state of emergency is declared over.