When the Armistice agreements were signed in 1948 by Zionist authorities, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, the Zionists occupied 80 per cent of the territory of Palestine, which included all the sub-districts of Acre, Beisan, Nazareth, Safad, Tiberias, Haifa, Jaffa, Ramle, Beersheba, and parts of the sub-districts of Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarm, Hebron, Jerusalem and Gaza. The Zionists occupied the four cities and towns of mixed Arab and Jewish population, namely Tiberias, Safad, Haifa and Jerusalem. They also occupied 50 Arab towns and 476 Arab villages as well as 108 villages and localities inhabited by Bedouins in the aforementioned sub-districts.

The Zionist terrorist organizations, the Haganah, Irgun and the Stern, practically emptied the sub-districts they occupied of their inhabitants. They expelled by force, massacre, and threats over 800,000 Muslim and Christian Palestinians. Not more than 100,000 Palestinian Arabs remained in the occupied areas. The Zionists immediately set up a military government in the occupied areas whose task was to prevent Palestinians from returning to their homes and to further expel more Palestinians who remained in their towns and villages. The Zionists acted on the racist principle that there is no room for Arabs and Jews to live in the “Jewish State,” and therefore, the “Military Government” was doing everything in its power to further empty the areas of their Arab inhabitants. Yosef Weitz stated: “I marked on my map land areas on one village after another and I should like to swallow it all.” 

Zionist Organization Looted more than 200,000 Arab homes

After the great majority of the Palestinian Arab population had been expelled, the Zionist terrorist organization, together with other Jews, looted more than 200,000 Arab homes and apartments and looted all Arab shops, stores, factories and commercial buildings. After the Zionists declared martial law in the occupied areas, they formed a committee for the allocation of Arab homes and apartments for the settling of Jews. This committee was composed of representatives of the Jewish Agency, war victims’ organization, Ministry of Commerce and Industry of the provisional government, the military governor of each area and a custodian. It assigned new Jewish immigrants and Jews from other areas to live in Arab houses and apartments.

A committee of the Jewish Agency Settlement Department and the Jewish National Fund was established to survey the 528 Arab towns and villages in all the occupied sub-districts. Those villages that contained houses that could be used to settle Jews were immediately converted into Jewish settlements by bringing new Jewish immigrants or Jews from the Kibbutzim. The villages that had either few houses or houses of different styles than Jews would live in were completely demolished. The bulldozers of the Haganah and the Jewish National Fund were sent to these villages to completely demolish their houses. They were erased from the map of Palestine. New Jewish settlements were immediately established on their sites or nearby. The Zionists completely demolished the mosques and cemeteries in all Arab towns and villages converted into Jewish settlements. 

In one winter, 45 Arab villages were transformed into Jewish settlements

Levi Eshkol of the Settlement Department of the Jewish Agency and the notorious Yossef Weitz of the Jewish National Fund coordinated the program for Judaization of Arab villages in the latter half of 1948. Eshkol relates in his diaries, “I sent for the engineers, asked the engineer corps for assistance and began to turn the great wheel which enabled us that very winter to transform more than 45 abandoned villages into lively new Jewish settlements.”

Yossef Weitz states in his diaries that he had formed a “transform committee” and was traveling about the areas seized by the Haganah working out the implementation of his view on the abandoned villages…destruction, improvement and settlement.

On June 27, 1948, Aharon Zisling, Minister of Agriculture, who throughout 1948 criticized Ben-Gurion’s policy towards the Palestinian Arabs, asked Ben-Gurion “about the rumored plans to destroy 40 abandoned Arab villages and about the burning of the standing crops of Arabs in various parts of the country. Ben-Gurion apparently did not reply.”

The Haganah forces started moving the Arab population from their homes in the cities to different homes abandoned by the refugees in different sections of the towns. Their objective was to segregate the Arab population in the worst sections of each city. An example of these operations is the one conducted in the city of Haifa.

Tom Segev in his book, 1949 The First Israelis, described what happened when Haganah forces moved Arab inhabitants of Haifa from one area to another. He describes the meeting between the Commander of occupied Haifa with representatives of the Arab community. The commander was Rehavim Amir. He met Tewfik Toubi and Bulus Farah and informed them of the order to remove the Arabs from the Carmel Ridge and the German colony area and other more well-to-do areas to the area of Wadi Nisnas, where abandoned houses had been prepared for them. The Military Order stated that the operation was to be carried out by July 5, within four days. Mr. Toubi and Mr. Farah protested vehemently against such a measure, but the Jewish Commander told them, “There is no room for argument,” and insisted that the 90 Arab families in Stella Maris, the 180 Arab families in the German colony, and the 47 families in Wadi Nisnas, which were homes of Arabs, had abandoned the city.

Eyewitness Describes Destruction of Arab villages

Tom Segev, a former writer for the Ha’aretz and co-editor of the Israeli Newsweekly Koteret Rashit, describes the destruction of Arab villages and their conversion into Jewish settlements:

In the latter half of 1948, the settlement department of the Jewish Agency prepared a list of several dozen Arab villages which it proposed to repopulate with new immigrants. Most of the villages had been abandoned, but a few were not quite empty. Some were meant to be demolished and their lands to be used for new settlements. Some of the Cabinet ministers criticized the army for demolishing some of the villages it occupied. The subject was brought up time after time by Ministers Shitrit, Bentov and Cizling. “As I travel about I hear rumors about the destruction of property and I should like to know who gave the order to do this,” said Cizling at one meeting. “I was in Beit Shean and was told by people I trust that the army commander received an order to destroy the place…These are facts about villages which have been destroyed. In the Hefer Valley I saw Arab villages which had been abandoned by their inhabitants and were not destroyed during the campaign. Now they are in ruins and whoever did it should be called upon to explain…” Ben-Gurion replied: “When you say Beit Shean, that is a particular place. but when you mention generally ‘ruined villages’-- I can’t send people to look for ruined villages.” Cizling asked: “Who destroyed the village of Cherkass in the Hefer Valley? At an earlier meeting I mentioned Moussa Goldenberg who reported an order to destroy 40 villages and named you as the source of that order. I stated then that I did not believe it was really done in your name. I am not speaking now about the political aspect, but about things which seem to be happening by themselves, without control. Even if I agreed with a certain act-- I wouldn’t accept it being done by itself.”

Not everything happened “by itself:" in September Ben-Gurion informed the Ministerial Committee for Abandoned Property that the commander of the central front, Tsvi Ayalon, considered it necessary “to demolish partially” 14 Arab villages, for reasons of security. “As it is extremely difficult to convene the committees,” Ben-Gurion wrote his Ministers, “would you please let me have your opinion (on the destruction of Arab villages) in writing. I shall await your answer within three days…Lack of response will be viewed as consent.” The ministers demanded further information. In September 1949 the Cabinet debated the destruction of the old city of Tiberias. Yigael Yadin was quoted as recommending that the entire city, except for the holy places, be destroyed, in order to prevent the Arab residents from returning.

The authorities also included in their plans lands owned by Jews. They were inclined to emphasize that most of the Arab lands they proposed to expropriate were not cultivated, and that even after the expropriations the Arab villages would still have enough lands to sustain them. The army recommended certain locations and often demanded that they be settled. The assumption was that the new settlements would serve to fortify the country’s borders and prevent the return of the villagers who had fled and been driven out in the course of the war and its aftermath.

July 3, 1999

Iqrit (Acre subdistrict)

Iqrit is an Arab village in Western Galilee next to the Lebanese border with an area of 15, 650 dunums (1 dunum = 1,000 meters square). It was occupied by the Hagana on October 31, 1948. Six days later, the villagers were ordered, for “security reasons” and on the pretext of safeguarding their lives, to leave their homes “for two weeks” until military operations in the area were concluded. They refused to cross the border to Lebanon, and hence were advised to take only what they needed for this short period of “two weeks.” The Haganah deceived them by providing locks for the houses and handing the villagers the keys. Within three days the villagers were evacuated to Er Rama in central Galilee on the main Acre/Safad road.

Military operations ceased and an armistice agreement was concluded between Israel and Lebanon on March 23, 1949, but still the villagers of Iqrit were not allowed to return to the village, despite what had been promised them. All appeals to Haganah leaders went unheeded or were rejected. After more than two years of unabated applications, correspondence, delegations, meetings and negotiations without avail, the villagers realized that the Israelis had no intention of allowing them to return to their homes and lands. Thus they petitioned the High Court of Justice in High court Case No. 64/51.

On July 31, 1951, the High Court ruled that “there is no legal obstacle to petitioners returning to their village.”

The villagers, believing that the authorities would honor the High Court’s decision, applied to the Military Governor to implement it. He referred them to the Minister of Defense, who referred them back to the Governor. This seesaw continued for about a month, while the villagers, living in Er Rama and elsewhere impatiently awaited their return. At the end of the month the government, incredibly, gave the people formal orders to leave their village, which they had left about three years before. These orders were purported to be in accordance with the provisions of the Emergency Regulations (Security Zones), 1949.

In spite of the absurdity of these orders, the villagers appealed at once to the military appeals committee, which, after a show-hearing lasting until after midnight, ratified the so-called expulsion orders. The villagers thereupon petitioned the High Court of Justice once again. An order nisi was issued, and the case was fixed for hearing on February 6, 1952.

Although the matter was under consideration before the highest court in the country, the Israeli army, following an order from the Military Governor or the Minister of Defense, blew up all the houses of this Maronite Christian Arab village on Christmas Day, 1952. The High Court was thus presented with a fait accompli.

On August 25, 1953 (Official Gazette No. 309 of September 3, 1953, p. 1446), the Minister of Finance issued a certificate under which the whole of Iqrit, with its area of 15, 650 dunums, was requisitioned pursuant to Section 2 of the Land Acquisition (Validation of Acts and Compensation) Law, 1953. 

Kafr Bir’im (Safad subdistrict)

The case of Kafr Bir’im, another Maronite Christian Arab village, is similar to that of Iqrit. The village was occupied on the same day, October 31, 1948. The inhabitants were ordered to evacuate their village and go to the neighboring village of Jish. Their evacuation was imposed in the same way as that of the people of Iqrit, under the same circumstances, under the same pretexts and with the same promises that they would be allowed to return.

The villagers of Kafr Bir’im petitioned the High Court of Justice in 1953. The court issued an order nisi to the authorities concerned to show cause, if any, why the villagers were prevented from returning to their homes.

Once more the reply was contrary to all principles of justice and equity, and a direct insult to the authority of the judiciary. In a display of force and impudence, the infantry and air force attacked the vacant village on September 16, 1953, bombing and shelling the houses until they were completely demolished.

Kafr Bir’im, with an area of 11,700 dunums, was also expropriated under the Land Acquisition (Validationof Acts and Compensation) Law, 1953. The certificate of the Minister of Finance was published in the Official Gazette No. 307 of August 27, 1953, p. 1419.

July 3, 1999

Expulsion of the Inhabitants of other Villages and Towns

Dr. Sabri Jiryis, in his book The Arabs in Israel, describes how Israel expelled the inhabitants of several Arab villages from their homes and destroyed the villages:

One of the first incidents of the expulsion of Arabs from their villages was the evacuation of Iqrit in western Galilee and the transportation of its inhabitants to the village of Er Rama, on November 5, 1948. Three months after that, on February 4, 1949, the inhabitants of Kafr Anan were evicted from their homes; half were sent to the Triangle where they were forced to cross the armistice lines into the West Bank. Three years later, when the villagers submitted a request to the Supreme Court to be allowed to return to Kafr Anan, all its houses were destroyed by the Israeli army.

On February 28, seven hundred refugees were expelled from Kafr Yasif, to which they had fled from nearby villages during the fighting in Galilee. Most were loaded onto trucks, driven to the Jordanian border and forced to cross.

The forced removals continued. On June 5, 1949, the army and police surrounded three Arab villages in Galilee-- Khisas, Qeitiya, and Yanuh-- and expelled across the frontier. Seeing no alternative, they left their homes and moved to Sheikh Danun, an abandoned village. On July 7, after a search in the village of Abu Ghosh near Jerusalem, some one hundred residents were rounded up and taken to an “unknown destination.”

On August 17, the inhabitants of Majdal in the south (now called Ashkelon) received an expulsion order and were transported to the border of the Gaza Strip over a three-week period. At the beginning of February 1951, the inhabitants of thirteen small Arab villages in Wadi ‘Ara in the Triangle were sent over the border. And on November 17, 1951, a military detachment surrounded the village of Khirbat Buweishat (near Umm el Fahm in the Triangle), expelled the inhabitants, and dynamited their homes.

In addition to these collective expulsions, the Israeli government carried out “selective” expulsions in most of the Arab villages in Galilee between 1948 and 1951. Several dozen men would be chosen and forced to leave-- notably heads of families, the eldest sons of large families, and the breadwinners-- no doubt in the hope that they would soon be followed by their dependents.

Wholesale expulsions continued well into the early years of the Israeli State. In September 1953, the villagers of Umm el Faraj (near Nahariya) were driven out and their village destroyed. In October 1953, seven families were expelled from Er Rihaniya in Galilee, despite a Supreme Court ruling that the expulsion was illegal. On October 30, 1956, the Baqqara tribe was forced to cross from the northern part of Palestine into Syria.

As late as 1959-- eleven years after the establishment of the State-- Bedouin tribes were expelled to Jordan and Egypt; the action was reversed only after United Nations intervention.

Many other villages were either partly or completely demolished and many of their inhabitants now live as refugees in various parts of Israel. But the incidents described are a fair sample of the “redemption of the land” operations undertaken by the Israeli authorities during the first years after the creation of the state.

Tom Segev testifies to the settlement of Jews in a total of 350 Arab villages:

The press expressed no qualms in reporting the resettlement of the abandoned villages, a total of 350. The reports reflect a solid belief in the right and justification of the resettlement.

Davar: “At the sound of the Israeli soldiers marching, the Arabs were seized with a great terror and left their homes, with their heavily loaded camels and donkeys, en route for the border… And now in Jasmin-- renamed Givat Amal-- live new residents, recently arrived via Cyprus, survivors of the camps of Europe…They sit around a long table, with one remnant of he abandoned furniture, and tell their tales…”

Ha’aretz: “…Patches of brilliant green are now surrounding the houses in the abandoned villages, thanks to the activities of the Ministry of Agriculture that helps the new immigrants develop their home farms…”

Davar Hashavua: “…You will not recognize ‘Aqir! More than a thousand immigrants have settled in the abandoned village…” Similar descriptions were published about Deir Yassin. The immigrant camp was later turned over to the Ministry of Health, which converted it to a sanatorium for the mentally ill. Parts of the village became one of the neighborhoods of the new city of Jerusalem, other parts remained deserted.

July 3, 1999

The Zionist leadership envisioned the erasing of Arab villages and the settling of Jews on their sites as the way of expanding the borders of the Jewish State. As succinctly stated by Golda Meir (former Israeli Prime Minister): “The boundary is wherever Jews are living, not a line on the map.”

Levi Eshkol, Head of the Settlement Department of the Jewish Agency, described the sites of such Jewish settlements when he “went on a tour of the Arab villages which had recently been abandoned and captured. As he put it, he saw ‘the traces of what had been and was no longer’-- the houses broken into, plundered and burned. ‘The sight sank through my eyes and nostrils into my head, brain, blood and heart…’”

Zionist leaders have admitted that the settling of Jews on Palestinian lands was not the colonizing of unpopulated lands, but the colonizing of depopulated lands rightfully belonging to their expelled Palestinian Arab inhabitants. General Moshe Dayan stated in 1969:

General (Reserve) Rehav’am Zeevi said that “more than 400 Arab localities which were still in existence in the late ‘40s had been replaced by Jewish settlements.”

The late Martin Buber, the great Jewish philosopher, professor of Sociology and Philosophy at the Hebrew University, wrote in 1961 an article in the Hebrew magazine Ner, stating:

An official publication of the Jewish National Fund stated: “The Jewish National Fund and private Jewish owners possess under two million dunums (1 dunum = 1,000 meters square). Almost all the rest belongs by law to Arab owners, many of whom have left the country.

‘Whatever the ultimate fate of the Arabs concerned, it is manifest that their legal right to their land and property in Israel will not be waived. Conquest by force of arms cannot, in law or ethics, abrogate the rights of the legal owner to his present property.”

July 3, 1999