Commemorating 60 Years Since The Nakba

1948-2008
Commemorating 60 Years Since The Nakba

z From the Files of 1948 ...
On February 18th, 1947, British Foreign

Secretary Ernest Bevin (left) announced the
submission of the Palestine problem to the
UN, announcing in the House of Commons
that we have decided that we are unable to
accept schemes put forward either by the
Arabs or the Jews, or to impose ourselves
a solution of our own. We have, therefore,
reached the conclusion that the only course
now open to us is to submit the problem to
the judgment of the United Nations.
On January 5, 1948, the Haganah

blew up the Palestinian-owned
Semiramis Hotel in Jerusalem,
killing 20 civilians, including the
Spanish Consul Viscount de
Taipa, and injuring many more.
The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) was formed

of eleven UN members to determine the fate of Palestine. On November
29, 1947, the Committee presented two different recommendations to the
General Assembly, one by a majority of eight and the other by the remaining
three members. The majority report advocated the partition of Palestine
into two states with an economic union, with the designated Jewish area
comprising most of the coastal area, the Western Galilee and the Negev; the
rest would form the Palestinian State. The minority report proposed a single
federal state in Palestine founded upon democratic principles.
- Ilan Pappe, A History of Modern Palestine, Cambridge University Press, 2007
British Foreign Secretary Ernest

Bevin received the Prime Minister
of Trans-Jordan, Tawfiq Abul Huda
(left) and Gen. John Glubb (Glubb
Pasha) on February 7, 1948 in the
Foreign Office. Abul Huda observed
that while the Jews had prepared
a government, a police force, and
an army to assume power upon
termination of the mandate, the
Palestinians had made no preparation
to govern themselves, nor did they
have the means of creating an army.
If the situation was left as it was, Abul Huda forecast that one of two
things would happen: either the Jews would ignore the UN Partition
Plan and seize the whole of Palestine up to the River Jordan, or the
Mufti would return and try to make himself ruler of Arab Palestine.
The Trans-Jordan government accordingly proposed to send the Arab
Legion across the Jordan when the mandate ended and to occupy that
part of Palestine awarded to the Arabs which was contiguous with the
frontier of Trans-Jordan. It seems the obvious thing to do responded
Ernest Bevin, expressing his agreement with the plan put forward.
- Avi Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan, 1988

Jaffa! my eyes shed blood after the tears

have dried.
Will I ever see you again?
My memory of you is fresh day and night,
living within my innermost soul.
...
What ails my heart? Wherever I go it
sadly cries:
Alas my homeland!
Whatever opulence in life one gains,
derision for that life is ones only response.
Mahmud Al-Hut
On February 22nd,
Palestinian irregulars
blew up buildings on
Ben Yehuda Street in
Jerusalem, killing 57 Jewish
civilians and injuring 100.
z From the Files of 1948
The Zionists understood how to conform

to the raison dtat, that ancient doctrine long
ago discovered by Machiavelli but still held
in esteem and at work with the chanceries
of the great powers. And nowhere can we
witness the incalculable force of the raison
dtat as we do in Stalins Palestine policy,
which contradicted the whole Marxist and
Bolshevik view of Zionism. Like Truman,
Stalin (left) acted as a mid-wife in the act of
creation of Israel. He not only supported the
partition plan at the United Nations, but went even further than the
United States and supported the strong already existing Jewish forces
with arms and men. The largest single consignments to Palestine of
specially trained illegal Jewish immigrants were released from Soviet
controlled Black Sea ports during 1947-48. But the most important
Soviet contribution to the establishment of the Jewish State came in
the form of a massive supply of heavy arms, tanks, and planes through
Czechoslovakia
- Ibrahim Ibrahim, The making of the Jewish State, Journal of
Palestine Studies, 1971-72
We Will Return
Abdelkarim Al-Karmi (Abu Salma)
Beloved Palestine, how do I sleep

While the spectrum of torture is in my eyes?
I purify the world with your name
And if your love did not tire me out,
I wouldve kept my feelings a secret.
The caravans of days pass and talk about
The conspiracy of enemies and friends.
Beloved Palestine! How do I live
Away from your plains and mounds?
The feet of mountains that are dyed with blood
Are calling me,
And on the horizon appears the dye.
The weeping shores are calling me
And my weeping echoes in the ears of time.
The escaping streams are calling me,
They are becoming foreign in their land.
Your orphan cities are calling me
And your villages and domes...
The name of the

plan was the old
one of partition.
But whereas in 1937
partition had been
recommended
by the royal
commission of an
imperial power
it was now the
ostensibly disinterested verdict of an impartial international body.
This endowed the concept with the attributes of objectivity and even-
handedness in short, of a compromise solution. But a compromise
by definition is an arrangement acceptable, however grudgingly, to the
protagonists. The partition of Palestine proposed by UNSCOP was no
such thing. It was Zionist in inspiration, Zionist in principle, Zionist in
substance, and Zionist in most details. The very idea of partition was
abhorrent to the Arabs of Palestine and it was against it that they had
fought their bitter, desperate and costly fight in the years 1937-39.
Also, compromise implies mutual concession. What were the Zionists
conceding? You can only really concede what you possess. What
possessions in Palestine were the Zionists conceding? None at all It
surely goes against the grain of human nature to expect the party that
would suffer this reversal to enter into the transaction just because some
third party, itself affiliated to a political aggrandizer, chose to befog the
issue by calling this transaction a compromise.
- Walid Khalidi quoted in Avi Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan, 1988
On December 18th, 1947, Arab

League Secretary-General Abdel
Rahman Azzem Pasha rejected
the UNSCOP proposals,
saying The Arab world is not
in a compromising mood. The
proposed plan may be logical,
but the fate of nations is not
decided by rational reasoning.
Nations never give up. You will achieve nothing with talk of compromise
and peace. You may perhaps achieve something by force of arms [The
UN] speaks of the Middle East. For us there is no such concept; for us there
is only the concept of the Arab world
In February 1948 Musa Alami (left) visited

Arab capitals in order to discover how much
help the brethren were really likely to give.
He visited in succession Damascus, Baghdad,
Cairo and Amman, and saw all the leaders,
with whom he was well acquainted. His first
stop, in Damascus, gave him a foretaste of
what he was to find everywhere. I am happy
to tell you, the Syrian President assured him,
that our Army and its equipment are of the
highest order and well able to deal with a few
Jews; and I can tell you in confidence that we even have an atomic bomb;
and seeing Musas expression of incredulity he went on Yes, it was made
locally; we fortunately found a very clever fellow, a tinsmith Elsewhere
Musa found equal complacency, and ignorance which was little less crass.
- G. F. Furlonge, Palestine is My Country, 1969
Walid Khalidi (left) condemns the

Zionists and their Western sponsors for
the indifference shown to the horrifying
fate of German and Polish Jews, an
accusing finger should be pointed as much
in the direction of Western immigration
legislation, as in that of official Zionist
leadership. His condemnation is surely
justifiable on humane and moral grounds.
In point of fact, however, the Zionists
were consistent and true to themselves.
Palestine and Palestine only was the
Promised Land. Any immigration of the
Jewish communities to the West would negate the very raison dtre of
the Zionist ideology. In addition to that, the Zionists could not afford the
renunciation of their tacit agreement with their masters; they could not
alienate their sponsors. This is so, because they... were as they still are, the
protgs of their Anglo-American sponsors and the emanations of their
power, resources and will. This has been clear to the Zionists from the days
of Herzl

The exodus from Haifa
began in December 1947
when fighting led to a
general breakdown of
the citys leadership and
services, and by January
fully one-third of Haifas
70,000 Arabs, largely
the middle and upper
classes, had left. Fighting
continued sporadically
into April, and when early
on April 21 British troops began a premature withdrawal, the Jewish army,
the Haganah, attacked in force. The citys remaining Arab civilian population
began to flee in fear. They were demoralized, essentially defenseless, and
panicked by the killing less than two weeks earlier of 250 civilians at the
village of Deir Yassin, near Jerusalem, by a force made up of the Irgun and
the Stern Gang, two Jewish terrorist groups. Some 15,000 Palestinians are
believed to have left Haifa on April 22.
On the evening of April 22, what remained of the citys Arab leadership
formally surrendered and urged Arab evacuation in order not to be seen
to be acquiescing in Jewish rule. But Haifans were already in headlong
flight. The exodus continued for a week, as terrified residents clogged
ports and roads, leaving belongings behind, homes empty, agricultural land
untended. By early May, only 3,000-4,000 of Haifas original 70,000 Arabs
remained.
The city of Jaffa fell to Jewish

forces within days of Haifas
surrender. Unlike Haifa,
Jaffa, with a population of
approximately 70,000, was an all-
Arab city and also unlike Haifa,
had been designated in the UN
Partition Plan as part of the Arab
state, a small Arab enclave to be
surrounded by the Jewish state
and immediately adjacent to the
largest Jewish city, Tel Aviv. Fighting and major disruptions of urban services
began early here too, but but by the time Haifa fell and the Irgun opened
a major offensive against Jaffa on April 25, the vast majority of the citys
inhabitants some 50,000-60,000 were still there. Several factors soon
combined, however, to induce a mass exodus of civilians similar to Haifas:
three days of heavy mortar bombardment by Irgun, the knowledge by Jaffas
inhabitants of the massacre two weeks earlier at the village of Deir Yassin,
the precipitate flight of Jaffas leaders, and soon thereafter the scattering of
the citys military defenders. Some of the fleeing civilians walked inland; most
took flight in boats, which delivered them to Gaza or Beirut or Egypt or, in
overcrowded conditions and rough seas, capsized and delivered them to an
early death.
- Kathleen Christison, The Wound of Dispossession, 2001
A Palestinian Psalm
Samih Al-Qassim
From this wounded land,

Purgatory of sorrows,
The orphaned birds call you,
O World!
From Gaza, Jenin, Old Jerusalem,
Alleluia.
Under the sun, in the wind in exile,
Hearts and eyes once sang:
Lord of Glory. Weve been tired
too long
Send us back!
Alleluia, Alleluia.
Look what they have done in only 27 years.

They began with an insignificant community
of 60,000 in 1920 and now are 700,000 in
Palestine, and have mobilized their money and
influence to obtain a state from the UNO.
Give them another 25 years and they will be
all over the Middle East, in our country and
Syria and the Lebanon, in Iraq and Egypt. There
are 150,000 of them in Iraq and they hold the
commerce of the country in their hands. It is the same in Egypt
Transjordanian PM Samir al-Rifai, telling British correspondents that the Arab
No outsider played a more

lamentable or duplicitous role in the
Palestinian situation than President
Truman. For while the US State
Department was making every effort
to avert war in Palestine by means
of a cease-fire and a temporary
postponement of Jewish statehood, the
president informed Chaim Weizmann
in the greatest secrecy that he would
President Truman (L) with Chaim Weizmman
recognize a Jewish State if they went
at the White House on May 25 1948
ahead and declared it. Truman kept the
State Department and the British totally in the dark For the Zionists, the
implications of this message were unmistakeable (Avi Shlaim, Collusion
Across the Jordan, 1988)
On March 19th, 1948, the United States withdrew its endorsement for the
partition plan on the grounds that it could only be implemented by force,
and proposed instead that Palestine be put under the trusteeship of the
UN for five years before a review aimed at a permanent settlement. Strong
lobbying by the Jewish community in the US averted this change of policy,
but it indicated the feebleness of the UNs commitment to the creation of a
Jewish state in Palestine. (Ilan Pappe, A History of Modern Palestine, 2004)
Abdel Qader Husseini (left) was the capable and

charismatic commander of Jihad al-Muqaddas,
the major irregular Palestinian force resisting the
Zionists in the 1948 War. A member of Jerusalems
influential Husseini family, he was a key figure in
the 1936 Arab Revolt and was exiled by the British
in 1938, returning to Palestine in secret ten years
later to lead the Palestinian fighters.
In a severe blow to the Palestinian leadership, he

was killed on April 8th, 1948 during the battle of
Qastel near Jerusalem, and was buried at the Al-Aqsa Mosque the next day.
Abdul Qaders son, Faisal Husseini, inherited his fathers dedication to the
Palestinian cause and was an eminent politician until his death in 2001.
Fawzi al-Qawuqji saw

himself as the representative
of the Arab League with
no obligations to the Arab
Higher Council. On the
contrary, he and his military
colleagues were critical of
the largely irregular local
Palestinian units the muftis
Army of Sacred Struggle
The Palestinian fighters
refused to accept the ruling
of the Arab League and recognize Qawuqji as their commander in chief.
They preferred their own popular Abdel Qader Husseini. The rivalry
between the mufti and the Arab League intensified when the league
refused to provide loans and funds for the AHC and seized control of
the recruitment and training of ALA volunteers. This situation increased
friction between Qawuqjis ALA and the AHCs Forces of Sacred
Struggle. The rivalry climaxed in Qawuqjis rejection of an appeal from
Abdel Qader Husseini to come to his aid in the decisive battle with the
Haganah near Jerusalem in 1948.
- Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel, 1988
It would seem that Abdallah

and the British Foreign Office
were thinking along similar
lines when, regarding the
Kings alternatives, it came to
weighing desirability versus
attainability. Abdallahs order
of priorities was as follows:
a) Control of Palestine,
At a meeting of Arab leaders held in Cairo under the with a certain autonomy
patronage of King Farouk, King Abdallah is declared given to the Jews.
the High Commander of Arab Forces in Palestine
b) Partition of Palestine into

an Arab and a Jewish state with considerable terrirorial modifications in
favour of the Arabs.
c) Partition of Palestine and annexation of its Arab part according to the
UN division lines.
The British ruled out the first alternative as non-viable but quite a few
officials preferred the second one From their point of view, amendment
of the partition lines in favour of the Arabs could serve a double purpose.
They shared Abdallahs view that hopefully it would prevent the Arab
states from accusing him of treason and collaboration with the UN and
the Jews. Yet they also hoped that Abdallah would succeed in taking over
certain territories important to Britains imperial interests.
Hajj Amin Al-Husseini, the

Grand Mufti of Palestine and
President in absentia of the
Arab Higher Committee, was
strongly opposed not only
to the 1947 Partition Plan,
but to external Arab military
involvement in the War of
1948: The previously agreed
Arab plan determined that
Arab League troops entering Palestine the Palestinians can be relied
on in the fight for Palestine and that the Arab states would supply them
with arms and money but that the regular Arab armies would not enter
Palestine. And I was seized with great fear and even expressed the
apprehension and suspicion that behind [the decision to enter Palestine]
lies a foreign intrigue and for this reason I opposed it very firmly. The
majority of the Arab states did not express their agreement to the
despatch of their forces into Palestine but persistent foreign pressure on
some of the Arabs in responsible positions at that time was so great that
it overcame all resistance.
- Hajj Amin quoted in Avi Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan, 1988
By the time the British left in the

beginning of May, one-third of the
Palestinian population had already been
evicted. The British were officially
responsible for law and order during
the early phases of the removal of the
indigenous population, a depopulation
that was assisted by a first wave of
around 70,000 Palestinians belonging
to the social and economic elite of
the country, who had fled Palestine
by January 1948. This departure of the
urban elite explains in part why the
expulsion policy was so effective in
that first phase of the war in and around the mixed Arab-Jewish towns
as well as in western Jerusalem. The end of the Mandate also signalled
the end of the first phase in the 1948 War, which was akin to a civil war
situation, and lasted for six months from December 1947 to May 1948.
In the second phase, established participants, such as the British Army,
disappeared, and new ones, such as Arab regular armies, appeared for
the first time.
The catastrophe which

recently befell the Jewish
people - the massacre of
millions of Jews in Europe - was
another clear demonstration
of the urgency of solving the
problem of its homelessness
by re-establishing in Eretz-
Israel the Jewish State, which
would open the gates of the
homeland wide to every Jew and confer upon the Jewish people the status
of a fully privileged member of the community of nations
WE DECLARE that, with effect from the moment of the termination

of the Mandate being tonight, the eve of Sabbath, the 6th Iyar,
5708, until the establishment of the elected, regular authorities
of the State in accordance with the Constitution which shall be
adopted by the Elected Constituent Assembly not later than
Yigal Allon asked Ben-

Gurion what was to be done
with the civilian population.
Ben-Gurion waved his
hand in a gesture of Drive
them out. Driving out
is a term with a harsh ring.
Psychologically, this was
one of the most difficult
actions we undertook. The
population of Lydda did not
leave willingly. There was no
way of avoiding the use of force and warning shots in order to make the
inhabitants march the ten or fifteen miles to the point where they met up
with the Arab Legion.
-Yitzhak Rabin.
Deir Yassin was a small Palestinian

village near Jerusalem which had
made and scrupulously abided
by a non-aggression agreement
with the Haganah. On April 9th,
1948, the Irgun and the Stern
Gang launched an attack on the
village and massacred over 245
Palestinians. More than any other single event, it was responsible for breaking
the spirit of the civilian population and setting in motion the mass exodus of
Arabs from Palestine. (Avi Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan, 1988.)
Hassan Salameh (left) had been a leader

of the 1936 Palestinian Revolt and was
the second in command of the Palestinian
Jihad al-Muqaddas guerrilla force during
the 1948 war. He was killed in the battle
of Ras al-Ain on June 2, 1948, two months
after the death of his superior Abdel
Qader al-Husseini a double blow to
the Palestinian leadership which severely
damaged Palestinian morale.
During the British Mandate,

part of Jerusalems prestigious
King David Hotel was used as
a military headquarters by the
British authorities. On July
22, 1946, a bomb planted by
the Irgun under the orders of
future Israeli Prime Minister
Menachem Begin destroyed
the southern wing used by the
British and killed over 90 people. A warning was issued to the British
prior to the explosion, but it went unheeded.
From Diary of a Palestinian Wound,

Mahmoud Darwish
My homeland is not a travelling bag,

nor am I a passing traveller.
It is I who am the lover and the land
is my beloved.
During the last 25 years, Palestine has

been denied the right to self-government,
in violation of the covenant of the League
of Nations. An autocratic administration
was set up with the primary aim of assisting
the Jews in their invasion of Palestine. The
Balfour Declaration on which this policy
was based was a vague and one-sided
encouragement made by Great Britain to
alien Jews in the absence and complete
ignorance of the Arab owners of the
country The creation of an alien Jewish
state in Palestine would mean a running sore that would undoubtedly become
a permanent source of trouble in the Middle East.
Jamal Al-Husseini (left) of the Arab Higher Committee addressing the London
Roundtable Conference, January 29, 1947
[The Arab nations] formulated

their attitudes and policies towards
the Palestinians and the Zionists not
only on the basis of ideology and the
substance of the conflict but also
from the pont of view of its potential
impact on the clash between the
Hashemites and their adversaries.
In other words, the Palestinian
problem was merely one of the
battlefields on which contradictory
trends in the Arab world were fought
out. Indeed, for all their bloodcurdling
propaganda, neither of the Arab sides intended to engage in a life-
and-death struggle with the Jews of Palestine, as amply demonstrated
by their unwillingness to support the muftis belligerent strategies.
The issue was not the creation and existence of the Jewish state
both Arab camps were ready to come to terms with with this new
reality on certain conditions, though they opposed its territorial
dimensions and designs. Rather, the issue was again political control.
Indeed, King Abdallah (left) regarded the mufti, not the Jews, as his
most dangerous enemy. Speaking about his only real contender
for power in the region, Abdallah declared that the mufti must be
removed from the picture soon, and at any price. The feeling was
reciprocated by the mufti.
- Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel, 1988
The battle for Jerusalem

and its environs was the
hardest fought of the
war, and the months-long
battle was devastating to
the Palestinians. By July
when a cease-fire was
imposed, no Palestinian
village immediately west
of Jerusalem remained in
existence; the villages, including Deir Yassin, had been leveled and
their inhabitants dispersed. In addition, no Palestinians remained
in either the once predominantly Arab sections of Jerusalem or
the former mixed neighborhoods in the center of the city. Israeli
leaders quickly settled Jewish immigrants in these areas, obviating
any possibility that the Palestinian natives could ever return. By the
time Israel was a year old, in the summer of 1949, all formerly Arab
neighborhoods of West Jerusalem, as well as the sites of depopulated
Arab villages, had been repopulated by Jews.
The twin towns of Lydda and

Ramla, with a population between
them of probably 50,000-70,000,
swollen by refugees from Jaffa
and other nearby towns, lay two
miles apart on the main route
between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Although within the territory
designated by the partition plan
for the Arab state, the towns
were regarded by Israeli leaders as an obstacle to control of the Tel Aviv-
Jerusalem corridor and as a potential staging base for Transjordans Arab
Legion and a threat to Tel Aviv. Israeli forces launched a dual attack on the
towns on July 9.
Lt-Gen. John Glubb, the commander of the Arab Legion, whom numerous
resources were later to hold responsible for the loss of the towns, claimed
that the Transjordanian government decided on 15 May 1948 to relinquish
them Furthermore, on the first day of the invasion the government
appointed military governors to Hebron, Jerusalem, Ramallah and Nablus.
Upon Glubbs enquiry why no such appointments were made for Ramle and
Lydda that were also squarely within the territory of the UN-designated
Arab state, the [Transjordanian] Prime Minister answered: We decided that
we cannot hold Lydda and Ramle. If we appoint military governors and then
the Jews take them, it will look worse.
- Joseph Nevo, King Abdallah and Palestine, 1998
Egypts decision to intervene in the Palestine

War was influenced by political and tactical
considerations. King Faruq (left) decided to
enter the 1948 War against the advice of
his prime minister, the army, and the major
political parties. Despite the skepticism of the
members of parliament and their questioning
of the wisdom of intervention, they, like the
king, were influenced by public sentiment and
the logic of inter-Arab politics and supported
Faruqs decision to enter the war.
Public opinion played a decisive role in influencing Egypts foreign policy.
This was a classic case of how an ambivalent leadership was forced to
take action because of internal dynamics.
-E.L. Rogan and A. Shlaim, The War for Palestine., 2001
In June 1948 UN mediator in Palestine

Count Bernadotte (left) sent a letter to
the Israeli FM stating his belief that it
was impossible to isolate Jerusalem from
its Arab environment in any partition
scheme and that the city had never been
a part of the Jewish State. In September,
he submitted his first progress report to
the UN recommending that Jerusalem be
put under UN control with a maximum
of local autonomy for the Arab and Jewish
communities, and that the UN should affirm
the right of the Arab refugees to return to
their homes at the earliest possible date. It was rejected by both the Arab
League and Israel.
The day after Bernadotte issued his report [to the UN], four Stern Gang
terrorists ambushed his car in Jerusalem and murdered him. It was a
senseless and totally superfluous act of political violence. The intention
behind it was to change the course of history by signaling to the outside
world that the Israeli people would not allow any foreigners to dictate their
borders and to compel the Israeli government to display greater resolution
in asserting Israels rights. The outside world, however, was shocked by this
brutal manifestation of Zionist fanaticism, and the failure of the provisional
government to apprehend the suspects dealt a blow to its authority
and credibility abroad. Yitzhak Shamir, one of the chief architects of the
assassination, remained at large [and eventually went on to become
Prime Minister of Israel].
From Diary of a Palestinian

Wound, Mahmoud Darwish
Sister, there are tears in my throat

and there is fire in my eyes:
I am free.
No more shall I protest at the Sultans
Gate.
All who have died, all who shall die at
the Gate of Day
have embraced me, have made of me
a weapon.
The Irgun and Lehi or Stern Gang

were two elements of the Jewish
forces which would eventually
be merged with the new Israel
Defense Forces after the 1948
war. Both were designated terrorist
organizations prior to the war due
to their responsibility for numerous
acts of violence against non-military
targets. Two well-known terrorist
attacks were the bombing of the King David Hotel and the assassination of
UN mediator Count Bernadotte, but the majority of their operations were
against Palestinians. The two groups joined forces in the murder of 245 civilian
residents of the village of Deir Yassin, an event which had a profound effect
on the Palestinian people.
Their respective commanders, Menachem Begin of the Irgun and Yitzhak
Shamir of the Lehi, both went on to become Prime Ministers of Israel.
Arab leaders at Dera,

Syria: Abdul Ilah of Iraq,
President Shukri Kuwatli
of Syria, President Bechara
Al-Khoury of Lebanon and
King Abdullah of Jordan.
Palestinian Exodus
In August, the Israeli coin,

the lira, replaced the existing
currency. In the same month,
the Israeli government began
to lay claim to the spoils left
behind by the British. They
took over many bank accounts,
both public and private. Some
of the governmental accounts
were of course kept in London, and it was the British government that
completed the total dispossession of the Palestinians from any share in
the ex-Mandates wealth by handing over those remaining accounts to the
Jewish state in the early 1950s. The Palestinians, to this day, have failed to
gain access to any of the money accumulated during thirty years of British
taxation in Palestine.
- Ilan Pappe, A History of Modern Palestine, 2003
Ahmad Hilmi Abdul Baqi (1878-1963, left) was the

first Prime Minster of the All-Palestine Government,
which was set up during the First Palestinian
National Council in September 1948 in Gaza and
which declared an independent Palestinian State
in all of Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital. He
was appointed representative of the All-Palestine
Government to the Arab League and subsequently
moved to Cairo, where he established the Al-Ummah
Arab Bank, before accepting his appointment as District Military Governor
under Hashemite rule in the West Bank by King Abdullah of Jordan.

As the 1948 general election [in South Africa] approached there had been
growing signs indicating a switch in traditionally anti-Semitic South African
Nationalist thought towards South African Jewry. Not only did the Afrikaans
press support Zionist opposition to British policies in Palestine, which since
1939 had moved away from endorsing Jewish statehood against the wishes
of the Arab majority, but it compared the determination of the Afrikaners
to break the Unions British ties with the Zionist undertaking. In various
localities Nationalist politicians began to seek openly the favour of influential
Jews, and a dialogue was opened in Cape Town between several prominent
Jews and leading Nationalists. It was the creation of the state of Israel on
May 14, 1948, only a few days before the May 26 election, which especially
influenced Nationalist attitudes.
- Smuts and Weizmann in Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. III, No.1, 1973
In his Memoirs of the First Palestine War, Gamal

Abdel Nasser (left) reflects on Egypts entry into
the conflict in 1948: This could not be a serious
war. There was no concentration of forces, no
accumulation of ammunition or equipment. There
was no reconnaissance, no intelligence, no plans.
Yet we were actually on the battlefield...
The only conclusion that could be drawn was that
this was a political war, or rather a state of war
and no-war. There was to be advance without
victory and retreat without defeat.
The second feature that struck me was the fantastic myth woven round the
military strength of the enemy. Our forces had clearly been taken by surprise
by the resistance put up by the Dangour settlement about which they had
had no information whatsoever. I listened to an officer relate how electrically
operated towers rose above the surface of the ground to fire at our men in
all directions, after which the towers disappeared (still electrically) into the
ground again.
Nasser credits his experience with the unprepared and fragmented Arab
forces in the 1948 war as the origin of his drive for Pan-Arabism.
- Translated and annoted by Walid Khalidi, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. II,
No. 2, 1973.
My feet are torn,

and homelessness has worn me out.
Park seats have left their marks
on my ribs.
Policemen followed me
with their suspicious looks.
I dragged myself from place to place,
destitute except for
day-long memories of a home
that yesterday, only yesterday,
was mine,
and except for evening dreams
of my dwelling there again.
Tawfiq Sayigh (1932-71),

Proclamation of Independence I
Palestine Arab Higher Committee, October
1, 1948
Acting on the basis of the natural and

historic right of the Arab people of
Palestine to freedom and independence
a right for which they have shed the
noblest blood and for which they have
fought against the imperialistic forces
which, together with Zionism, have
engaged our people to prevent them from
enjoying that right we, members of the
Palestinian National Council, meeting in the city of Gaza, proclaim on this
day, the 28th of the Dhi al-Qida, 1367 (A.H.), corresponding to October
1, 1948, the full independence of the whole of Palestine as bounded by
Syria and Lebanon to the north, by Syria and Transjordan to the east, by
the Mediterranean to the west, and by Egypt to the south, as well as the
establishment of a free and democratic sovereign State.
In this State, citizens will enjoy their liberties and their rights, and this
State will advance in a fraternal spirit side by side with its sister Arab
States in order to build up Arab glory and to serve human civilization. In
doing so, they will be inspired by the spirit of the nation and its glorious
history, and will resolve to maintain and defend its independence.
May God bear witness to what we say.
The Story
Kamal Nasir (1961)
I will tell you a story,

A story that lived in the dreams of people,
A story that comes out of the world of tents,
Was made by hunger, and decorated by the dark nights.
In my country, and my country is a handfull of refugees,
Every twenty of them have a pound of flour
And promises of a relief gifts and parcels...
It is the story of the suffering group
Who stood for ten years in hunger
In tears and agony,
In hardship and yearning.
It is a story of a people who were misled,
Who were thrown into the mazes of years
But they defied and stood
Disrobed and united
And went to light, from the tents,
The revolution of return in the world of darkness.
It is ironical to think that the Jews for 2,000 years

have claimed that armed might conveys no right
Everywhere [they] denounced their persecutors
and looked forward to an age when justice will
replace armed power. But now, placed for the
first time in a position to persecute others, they
suddenly announce that military conquest is the
true basis for settlement between nations.
- Commander of Transjordans Armed Forces,
Lt.-Gen. John Glubb (left)
The Syrian army played a very
limited role in the Palestine war.
The small number of troops that
[President Quwwatli] deployed
speaks for his limited goals. Glubb
Pasha estimated the number of Syrian
troops in Palestine did not exceed
3,000. Quwwatli pursued a cautious
policy in Palestine.
Despite Syrias initial losses, its
forces were able to occupy a thin
strip of Palestinian land within the first two months of the war. When the
1923 border of Palestine was drawn by the British, it was demarcated not
with Palestines defense but its water in mind. The boundary was drawn so
that all of Lake Tiberias, including a 10-meter wide strip of beach along its
northwestern shore, would stay inside Palestine.From Lake Tiberias north
to Lake Hula the boundary was drawn between 50 and 400 meters east of
the Jordan River, keeping that stream entirely within Palestine. Palestine
also received a thin salient of land stretching east between the Syrian and
Jordanian border along the Yarmouk River, the Jordans largest tributary. All
this territory was indefensible and easily taken by Syrian troops Other
than its two small operations to grab villages across the Jordan River, the
Syrian Army remained largely inactive during the 1948 war.
E.L. Rogan and A. Shlaim, War for Palestine, 2003
King Abdullah on a visit to Jerusalem in 1948.
O lost paradise! for us you were never

too small,
but now vast countries have become too
small for us,
Woe unto your people who were torn
asunder,
wandering under every star!
Mahmud Al-Hut
When an [Arab] peasant said

to an official of the Israel Lands
Administration: How can you
deny my ownership? This land is
my property, I inherited it from
my fathers and grandfathers,
and I have a title-deed to it,
the official answered We have
a more important title-deed.
We have a title-deed from Dan
[in the North of Israel] to Eilat
[In the South].
When a peasant said to another official: What is this you are offering me?
Only 200 pounds per dunum? The official replied: It is not your land, it is
ours. We are paying you your wages as a watchman. You are only watchmen.
You have looked after our land for 2,000 years and we are paying you your
wages! But the land is ours!
- Abu Isam (Hanna Naqqarah) in Al-Ittihad
On November 8th, 1948, Chaim Weizmann, destined to play a milder Lenin

to Herzls Marx [and] to be the greatest architect of the Jewish State,1
appeared before UNSCOP to advocate partition as the only solution which
combined finality, equality and justice. In a series of private conversations
and luncheons with UNSCOP members at his home, Weizmann sparkled
with masterful dexterity he interwove the story of his own early years
with the broad narrative of the Jewish peoples past and destiny [and]
completely captivated those present. 2
1 Bowle, John, Viscount Samuel, A Biography, 1957
2 Weisgal, M.W. and Carmichael, J. Chaim Weizmann, 1962
17 Psalms, Mahmoud Darwish
Why dont you wash your hands of me

so that I may stop dying again and again?
...
Tell me just the once
so I may be capable of dying and departure
...
Die, so that I may mourn you,
or be my wife
so that I may know
what betrayal looks like
just the once.
Resolutions of the Congress of Jericho

1. The congress expresses its non-confidence in the Arab Higher
Council and calls to elect a new Committee.
2. The Gaza government does not represent the Arabs of Palestine.
3. Palestine and Transjordan will be united to create the Arab
Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, with Abdallah as its King.
4. Palestinian representatives will be co-opted into the Transjordanian
parliament.
5. The congress empowers Abdallah to solve the Palestine problem
in any way he considers proper. The congress also asks the King to
promptly execute these resolutions.
Mayor of Hebron and head of the General Palestinian Congress Sheikh Ali Jabari
formally invites Abdullah of Jordan to accept the throne of Palestine
The determined steps by Ben Gurion to

assert the central authority of the Israeli
Army are very striking. Ben Gurion set about
the systematic liquidation of the military
organizations which were a relic from the
years of Jewish struggle for independence in
Palestine. He forced the two organizations,
Lechi (Stern) and Etzel (Irgun) to abandon
their independent identities, requiring their
members to enlist individually in the regular
army. He did not even hesitate to dissolve
the Palmach command, the original striking
force of the Haganah, because he saw no
need for the existence of military command
of outside the general command of the regular Israeli armed forces.
Ben Gurion (left) portrays with remarkable clarity the sense of uncertainty
and lack of bearing which pervaded the Arab world at the time. He admits
that we were victorious because the Arabs were weak and were subjected to
unusual
circumstances; one of the major considerations behind his decision
to attack the Egyptians in the Negev in the late stages of the 1948 war was, he
says, his certainty that the other Arab states would not enter the battle.
- Alan Taylor, Heresy Disguised in Sacred Vestments, Journal of Palestine
Studies 1971-72)
In January 1949... the UN established a single

body to deal with the Palestinian refugee
problem, the United Nation Relief and Works
Agency (UNRWA). This was the brainchild
of American entrepreneurs who were not
interested directly in the political dimension
of the refugee problem, but believed they
could link the refugees settlement in Arabic
countries with a kind of Marshall Plan for the
Middle East. As in Europe, the idea was to
promote better standards of living as the
best means for containing Soviet expansion.
- Ilan Pappe, A History of Modern Palestine, 2004
Dear homeland...
They shut me in a dark cell,
My heart glowed with sunny torches.
They wrote my number on the walls,
The walls transformed to green pastures,
They drew the face of my executioner,
The face was soon dispersed
With luminous braids.
I carved your map with my teeth upon the walls
And wrote the song of fleeting night.
I hurled defeat to obscurity
And plunged my hands
In rays of light.
Mahmoud Darwish

Commemorating 60 Years Since The Nakba

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1948-2008

Commemorating 60 Years Since The Nakba

On February 18th, 1947, British Foreign

z From the Files of 1948 ...

On January 5, 1948, the Haganah

z From the Files of 1948 ...

The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) was formed

z From the Files of 1948 ...

British Foreign Secretary Ernest

- Avi Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan, 1988

Jaffa! my eyes shed blood after the tears

z From the Files of 1948 ...

z From the Files of 1948

The Zionists understood how to conform

z From the Files of 1948 ...

Beloved Palestine, how do I sleep

The name of the

z From the Files of 1948 ...

On December 18th, 1947, Arab

z From the Files of 1948 ...

In February 1948 Musa Alami (left) visited

Walid Khalidi (left) condemns the

z From the Files of 1948 ...

z From the Files of 1948 ...

The city of Jaffa fell to Jewish

From this wounded land,

z From the Files of 1948 ...

Look what they have done in only 27 years.

z From the Files of 1948 ...

No outsider played a more

z From the Files of 1948 ...

Abdel Qader Husseini (left) was the capable and

In a severe blow to the Palestinian leadership, he

Fawzi al-Qawuqji saw

z From the Files of 1948 ...

It would seem that Abdallah

b) Partition of Palestine into

z From the Files of 1948 ...

Hajj Amin Al-Husseini, the

By the time the British left in the

z From the Files of 1948 ...

The catastrophe which

WE DECLARE that, with effect from the moment of the termination

z From the Files of 1948 ...

Yigal Allon asked Ben-

z From the Files of 1948 ...

Deir Yassin was a small Palestinian

Hassan Salameh (left) had been a leader

z From the Files of 1948 ...

During the British Mandate,

z From the Files of 1948 ...

From Diary of a Palestinian Wound,

My homeland is not a travelling bag,

z From the Files of 1948 ...

During the last 25 years, Palestine has

[The Arab nations] formulated

z From the Files of 1948 ...

The battle for Jerusalem

z From the Files of 1948 ...

The twin towns of Lydda and

Egypts decision to intervene in the Palestine

z From the Files of 1948 ...

In June 1948 UN mediator in Palestine