Israel's Racism: 1948 Palestinians as a Paradigm

Abbas Ismail

Back to Studies page

• The Expulsion of Arabs

•  The Desecration of Sanctums

"I support coercive deportation and do not see anything immoral in it…"

David Ben Gurion, in an address to the Jewish Agency's executive committee, June 1938 ⁽¹⁾ grace

                   The Expulsion of Arabs

By means of more than thirty documented massacres, the destruction of 530 Palestinian villages and direct orders from commanders and soldiers to unarmed citizens, the deportation of more than 800000 Palestinians from lands had been achieved in 1948, causing the problem the Palestinian refugees who still keep the keys to their old houses and hold on to their right of return.

The idea of "transfer" ( displacing or deporting the Palestinian population) – a tactfully expression of forceful deportation of Arabs, has been widespread in "Israel" and is still gaining currency and wide support among Israelis up to this date. This concept is strongly established in Zionism deeply rooted in the Zionist perception of "Eretz Yisrael" as an exclusively Jewish Heritable right as claimed by most Jewish Israelis. This, of course, leads to the conclusion that Arabs are aliens and, therefore, must leave. Hence, the idea of deporting the Arabs accompanies all the stages of the Zionist project, before and after the establishment of the state, as a deeply rooted theme in the Jewish scriptures:

"… For the cities of those nations, which the lord, thine God, gives to thou as patrimony, do not spare a soul, but deprive them all..."⁽²⁾

 ".. if the lord, thane God, let thou enter the land that thou end up in to inherit and uprooted many nations before thine face… and the lord submitted them between thine hands, and thou struck them… thou shall annihilate them and never pledge them nor have pity on them…"⁽³⁾.

 In many early Zionist writings, calls had been made to expel the Arab citizens from Palestine. These calls had been made by prominent Zionist leaders. One of them, Israel Zangwill, Propagated lord Shaftesbury's motto:" A land without people for a people without land…"⁽⁴⁾. 

In contemplating the shift from the state of "Jewish society" to "statehood", Herzl wrote in his diary (12/6/1895):

"… We must be lenient in taking possession of the lands earmarked for us… we shall try to encourage poor people to cross the borders, by finding work for them in the countries they pass through, while completely refusing to employ them in ours… the two processes of taking possession and expatriation of the poor must be accomplished with extreme caution and carefulness…"⁽⁵⁾  

 Ample evidence suggest that the idea of deporting the Palestinians , as a Zionist solution to the problem of an inhabited country, was more than just an idea that ran across the minds of the founding members of the Zionist political elite. This "elite" had expressed their plans for future work and practical programs on settlement in the framework of the Zionist movement's internal assemblies, which included, along with Herzl and Zangwill, Leon Motzkin, Nahman Syrkin, Nahum Sokolow, Arthur Ruppin, Berl Katzenelson, Menachim Ussishkin, Victor Jacobson, Chaim Weizman, Aharon Ahronson, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Abraham Granovsky, David Ben- Gurion, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and others. The Zionist elite had been planning to uproot the Palestinians, deport them in a systematic way and resettle them in the neighboring countries, in order to pave the way for the execution of the Zionist project. The abovementioned leaders were part of wide spectrum of different Zionist political organizations. ⁽⁶⁾

Benny Morris sees that the Zionist leadership had been supportive, in the late 1930's and early 1940's to the idea of transfer and almost consentaneously insistent on realizing this idea, willingly or forcefully, as a solution to the Arab problem. Maintaining that there are mountains of evidence to prove this ⁽⁷⁾.

During the British mandate, Zionist leaders adopted a certain policy that made use of their relation with the British. They had talks with the British officials in order to reach a solution to the "problem of Arab Residents" by transferring them to Arab countries. Evidence of such private communications can be found in Winston Churchill's review of Palestinian affairs in October, 1919.

He wrote :"(and) there are the Jews whom we promised to bring to Palestine and who consider the evacuation of the local population- in consistence with their demands- unquestionable…"⁽⁸⁾ .

In 1930, Haim Weizman, then head of the World Zionist Organization, made a wider step in the Zionist effort to find a "fundamental solution" to the "land" and "Arab population" problems. He introduced a plan to deport the Arabs, which was presented to the British ministry of colonies. The ministry suggested granting him a million Palestinian pounds loan, collected from Jewish capitalists, in order to settle groups of Palestinians farmers in Tran Jordan⁽⁹⁾.

On October 5, 1937, Ben-Gurion wrote to his son saying: "…we must expel the Arabs and take hold of their places… by means of force if necessary…"⁽¹⁰⁾. the deportation of Arabs had been one of the most important items on the agendas of "Ehud Bu'ali-Zion" world convention the highest body in the world labor Zionist movement and the twentieth Zionist convention, held simultaneously in Zurich ( August, 1937) where most prominent delegates expressed support of the deportation idea⁽¹¹⁾.

Between 1937 and 1948, many deportation plans had been drawn and introduced, including: Soskin's forced deportation plan (1937); weitz' deportation plan (January 1937); Bonnet's deportation plan (July 1938); Ruppin's plan (January 1938); the Island plan (1938-1942); Edward Norman's plan of forced deportation to Iraq (1934-1948); Ben Horin plan (1933-1938) and Joseph Schachtman's plan of coercive expatriation (1948). During the same period, three "deportation committees" were created to discuss and devise practical ways to circulate the deportation plans. ⁽¹²⁾

 These plans and project indicate that the Palestinian "refugee problem" was born out of previous scheming. The demographic – religious- ethnic change in Arab Palestine. Coupled with the displacement of the greatest possible number of its native inhabitants out from the promised Jewish state, had developed from a mere Zionist dream, through schemes and suggestions, since 1937, into effective operational plans as such as the "Plan D" ( or Dalt) , then into an actual policy in 1948.

After the initial period that witnessed extensive efforts to establish the state and displace the Arab population, came the implementation stage- during the 1948 war- remarkably marked with military operations carried out by Zionists; the most important of which was the "plan D" or Dalt the included about 13 operation precisely organized in terms of time and place. Israeli sources define the "Plan D" as the first strategic plan set by the "Hagana" in order to occupy and control lands on a national scope. The plan aimed at "purging" different areas, towns and even neighborhoods, and expelling Arabs from Safad, Tiberius, Haifa, Tel Aviv, Yaffo, Jerusalem and other locations ⁽¹³⁾. According to a document prepared by the intelligence branch in the Israeli defense ministry about the Arab immigration from Palestine between 1/12/1945 and 1/6/1948, discovered by Benny Morris and published by the Middle East Shades magazine, the military operations carried out by the Zionist gangs were the direct cause behind the flight of 75% of the Arab citizens who left Palestine. ⁽¹⁴⁾

Following the declaration of the establishment of "Israel", in 1948, the Zionist concept of deportation was not comprehensively implemented. The expulsion policy pursued by the Israeli army failed to rid the new Jewish state of an Arab minority that stayed in its place. Nevertheless, with the displacement of more than 750000 Palestinian Arabs from the quick- expanding state and the transformation of Arabs from a large majority to a small minority, the pragmatic labor party leadership believed it had solved, to a large extent, the problems of land settlement and other demographic problems. This leadership had to accept – unwillingly- the presence of a politically subjugated and economically dependent small Arab minority of 160000 Palestinians, out of the 900000 Palestinians who once resided in areas that became the state of Israel in the aftermath of the 1948 war.

In order to gain international recognition of the newly declared state, the provisional Israeli state council (which had been formed before the establishment of the Knesset) included in the "declaration of the Independence" a pledge that the Jewish state…"shall hold on to a complete social and political equality between all its citizens without discrimination with regard to religion, race or ethnicity…"

However, what happened in reality was completely the contrary. Following its establishment, "Israel" treated the Palestinians who remained inside its borders as if they were almost aliens. The Israeli authorities tried all possible means in order to drive the Arabs out of their lands, at times through setting voluntary and forced deportation plans and, at other times, by using force to expel the Arab citizens, always supported by the military rule imposed on the Arab population. A set of military, strategic, demographic, settlement and ideological Zionist considerations governed the deportation activities after 1948, in addition to a number of expulsion processes that took place in early 1950's, which make it increasingly necessary to find an explanation to the continuity of mass expulsion, even after the establishment of the state and the displacement of the majority. Part of the answer to this question lies in the wide- spread feeling among the Zionist leaders that "too many Arabs" remained in "Israel", a feeling essentially obtained from the basic premises and fundamentals of Zionism, especially the principle of a demographically homologous Jewish state that…" controls more land with less Arab residents…".

 Such a feeling can be sensed in the numerous declarations sampled below:

 -          Igal Yadin, the Israeli Army chief of staff between 1949 and 1952, whispered in prime minister Ben-Gurion's ear, once, that "… the Arab minority are a threat to the state, in peace as in war…"⁽¹⁵⁾.

-          During a panel discussion, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, who served as president of Israel between 1952 and 1963, maintained that …" the number of Arabs in the country is much more than needed…"

-          Knesset member shlomo lavi said once:" this huge number of Arabs worries me… A situation could emerge in the state of Israel where we would become the minority… today, the number of Arabs in the country has reached 170000 inhabitants, and about 22000 of them are children in the age of obligatory education…"

-          Knesset member Yehiel Duvdevani once commented:"… if there is a way to solve the problem by deporting the remaining 170000 Arabs, we shall do it…"⁽¹⁶⁾.

-          Samuel Dayan, Moshe Dayan's father, who served as a Knesset member and a labor leader, said during a party symposium, held in 1951, that Israel can never allow the Arab fifth column in the state to gain strength.

-          Golda Mair, once prime minister in Ben Gurion's labor led government, declared, in the same meeting, that she "felt sick" after hearing an Arab vowing loyalty to the state of "Israel" three times a day. ⁽¹⁷⁾

-          Moshe Sharett (shertok), who served as foreign minister and, later on, as prime minister, said:"... we would be better off without Arabs in the state…"⁽¹⁸⁾.

-          Ben Gurion, himself, asserted that  ..."those Arabs (residing in Israel) must not live here, the same way that American Jews must not live in America… I think we should do every thing we can so that every Arab would be able to reside in an Arab state, because Arabs have their own countries… if a war breaks out, all the Arabs residing in Israel will flee, either for fear of being slaughtered by us or because they would think of helping their Arabs states slaughter us…"⁽¹⁹⁾.

-          In 1950, Moshe Dayan, then leader of the southern command, expressed his extreme views towards the 1948 Palestinians, known as the "Arabs of Israel", whom he had previously described as a "fifth column":"… I hope we would have another chance in the future, to displace these Arabs from the land of Israel… if such a chance became existent, we must do nothing to shut out this alternative…"⁽²⁰⁾.

Anyone who reads these declarations, made by prominent military and political Zionist leaders, would not need making much effort to discover the attitude that governed their behavior towards the Arab population. These declarations were not just idle talk; they were echoed through the actual expulsion of Arab residents every time there had been a chance to do so, either by exploiting the atmosphere created under the military rule, or as a result of certain prevalent security facts. During the first few years of the state's life, the Israeli army drove out more than ten thousand inhabitant (of the 1948 Palestinian population) in addition to thousands of Palestinian refugees who managed to infiltrate back to their villages and cities.

During the summer of 1950, 2700 Palestinians of the remaining population of the Arab city of Majdal (in the south) received deportation orders. Within a few weeks, those Palestinians were conveyed to areas at the borders of Gaza strip ⁽²¹⁾.

In November 1949, some 500 Arab Bedouin families (counting more than a thousand persons) were forced to cross the borders from Beer Sheba to the west bank, despite Jordanian objections to the expulsion. Later on, another expulsion process took place, whereas some 700 persons of the Azazma or Jahalin tribe were deported to Jordan in May, 1950 and on August, 1950, the Israeli army arrested hundreds of the Azazma tribe members in the Negev and drove them across the Egyptian borderline. Quoting an Israeli foreign ministry report, Morris noted that, between 1949 and 1953, "Israel" expelled around 17000 Bedouins from the Negev area after charging theme with alleged infiltration.

As a result of expulsion and fleeing, the number of Arab residents in the Negev area decreased from 65000 to 13000 in 1951⁽²²⁾ and in 1953, U.N. reports indicated that 7000 Arab Bedouins ( nearly half of them were Azazmas) had been forcefully displaced from the Negev area.⁽²³⁾

Other expulsion operations occurred in the triangle area following its annexation by "Israel" in May, 1949, shortly after the signing of the Israel-Jordan Rhodes agreement on 3/4/1949. For example, in late May that year, the military gave orders to expel 4000 "internal refugees" from the small Triangle area across the borders of the West Bank .⁽²⁴⁾

In the same year (1949), "Israel" expelled about one thousand persons from the Baqa El-Gharbiya village, in the triangle across the borders, to the West Bank, and in early February 1951, the residents of thirteen small Arab villages in A'ara valley were forced to move outside the borderline ⁽²⁵⁾. Later on 17/11/1951, the population of Khirbat Bwayshan village, also in the small Triangle, was displaced after destroying their homes by the Israeli army.

In mid April, 1949, the U.S consul in Jerusalem mentioned in his report that "several hundreds" of the Arabs of Galileo, "all of whom were Israeli citizens", had been driven out across the borders by the Israeli army. ⁽²⁶⁾

 On 30/10/1956, only one day after the slaughter in Kafr Qassem, General Yitzhak Rabin, then leader of the northern command and, later prime ministers of several times, capitalized on the attack against Egypt in the south ( the tripartite aggression) to carry on a mass expulsion operation against the "Israeli Arabs" across the northern borders with Syria, whereas between 2000 and 5000 people from the Krad- El- Ghanama and Krad-El-Baqqara villages ( south of hula lake) were expelled from their native villages at the hands of the Israeli soldiers in 1951, during the period that witnessed the implementation of water projects. On this occurrence, Rabin wrote in his diary:"… I have solved a problem in the north by exploiting the war against the Egyptians in coordination with the united nations… we have transferred to Syria about 2000 Arabs, as they had been a security burden to us…" in reference to the same occurrence, Rabin said in 1956, that the Israeli army had expelled between 3000 and 5000 Arab villagers from the Galileo to Syria and, when asked about the reaction of those:"… I did make a democratic decision on this matter…"⁽²⁷⁾.

If the idea of deporting the 1948 Palestinians had accompanied – by word and deed- all the stages of the Zionist project and there had previously been someone who tried to mitigate and cover up this concept, the developments witnessed by this idea have actually turned it first into a political party and, then , to a Zionist heritage that must be taught in schools, not only to Jews, but also to Arab students, in light of the decision made by Limor Livant, a former minister of education, to teach Rahba'am Zeivi's heritage in Israel's schools. It is noteworthy, here, that Zeivi was the founder of Molidet party (1988) who adopted the transfer ideology and the one who declared in this regard that:"… transfer is all what Zionism is about…" and "… if transfer was immoral, Zionism is immoral too…" also among Zeivi's statements : "… Palestinian workers are like lice; one must get rid of them… they spread like cancer…"⁽²⁸⁾.

The danger of Zeivi's statements lay in the fact that he used to say loudly what the likud leaders had in mind:"… on the land of Israel, there is room for only one people: the people of Israel…"⁽²⁹⁾.

 It is worth noting that Zeivi was killed by the Palestinian resistance in Jerusalem, on 17/11/2001. However, his ideas and calls still beat inside the Israeli milieu and have spread to encompass Israeli politicians and academics from all political currents and intellectual affiliations ⁽³⁰⁾.

The successive Israeli governments had not been satisfied with the mass expulsion policy practiced against the rest of the Arab population in "Israel". They even paralleled the expulsion operations with many schemes and projects to displace the Arabs to other places in the world, using –as a self justification- historical precedence, such as the deportation operations against Greeks, Turks, Indians, Pakistanis, Germans and other Europeans, in the twentieth century and considering the extirpation and deportation of Palestinians (especially to Arab countries) a mere resettlement process.

On this background and as a supplement to their policies that aimed at deporting the Arab population, the Israeli authorities sought- through various institutions- to guarantee the circumstances suitable enough to achieve their goals. Consequently, these authorities embarked on sketching a number of plans and projects to displace the Arab residents, some of which used incentives as well as constraints, but to no avail, as was the case with " operation Yohanan" and the "Libyan operation", while after other schemes depended on violent and bloody procedures, using force and perpetrating massacres to this end, as happened in "operation Chfarfirt".

Of the most prominent plans worked up in the recent few years, according to which Arab residents would be deported from "Israel", was the Negev plan of 2015. this plan had been presented as " the national strategic plan to develop the Negev", with the central aim of increasing the number of Jewish residents in the areas to 900000 within a period of ten years, using a budget of 3.9 billion dollars to implement the plan. This plan sees in the presence of "unrecognized" Arabs towns a problem that would hinder its implementation ⁽³¹⁾, which actually means the evacuation and demolition of all these unrecognized towns- something that is being carried out in the Negev currently.

On 28/4/2007, Yediot Ahronot disclosed a new plan sketched by O'tni'el Schneller (a member of Kadima). This plan, which is still under discussion, includes drawing a new route for the green line, in order to affect a drastic demographic change. According to the newspaper, there is a great deal of resemblance between Schneller's plan and the plan drawn by Avigdor Liberman, who demanded the separation of the triangle from Israel and the annexation of this area by the Palestinian authority. Schneller, himself, confirms this matter, maintaining that the difference between the two is that this plan would be carried out over a thirty year time span, while liberman calls for an immediate execution of the one drawn by him.

According to Schneller, the Arab population targeted by his plan would not be allowed to move to other places inside the country, nor do business or practice any kind of economic activity in Israel, save for working in the Israeli cities on condition that they obtain special permits.

Schneller says his plan could be implemented over a period of 20 to 30 years, during which the (Arab) residents in the triangle would become citizens of a "special status", citizens of "Israel" and part of the Palestinian state, at the same time, in case a certain settlement with the Palestinians has been reached, including the establishment of a Palestinian state and the annexation by Israel of major settlement blocks. ⁽³²⁾

·         The Desecration of Sanctums

"… The blasting was carried out by the coastal forces, under orders issued by me personally…"

This is how the leader of the southern command in the Israeli Army, Moshe Dayan, replied when asked about the blowing up of Iman Hussein's Sanctuary in the city of Majdal in July, 1950.

According to researches conducted by the professor Eyal Ben Venisti, out of the 160 mosques in the Palestinian villages controlled by Israel, inside the armistice line, less than 40 are still there today⁽³³⁾.

Religious liberties are among the most important components of civil rights. In addition, they comprise the bases for cultural rights and an essential form of their implementation, as these rights and liberties are related to heritage, culture and the individual and collective identity of the citizens in any given state.

Nevertheless, related reports published by a number of human rights and Islamic institutions inside "Israel" show that the successive Israeli governments did not do anything to fulfill their commitments with regard to their alleged protection of minorities' religious and cultural rights in "Israel", but rather, actually, went in the opposite direction, as these reports confirm the fact that violating religious and cultural rights has been carried on systematically by depriving Christian and Muslim Arab citizens of their right to enter many holy places, including mosques and churches , because these holy places had been closed down on various pretexts. In addition, the successive Israeli governments always sought to make way for outrageous violations and desecrations of sanctums (the use of some churches and mosques in many deserted villages as cow or sheep barns, or even as stores, shops or bars) and never took any step to prevent the Jewish gangs from taking over some of these mosques and turning them into worship places that only Jews are allowed to enter ⁽³⁴⁾.

Immediately after the establishment of the "state of Israel", all Islamic endowment properties (WAQF) were confiscated and turned over to the state, to become state properties. Christian religious properties remained under the authority of the relative sects, whereas monasteries carried on their usual services, as was the case before 1948, due to religious sensitivity and the influence of the Christian west and the Vatican. In spite of that, most lands that belonged to the Christian church, including plots in many destroyed villages, were confiscated by the state, same as the lands of Arabs who became refugees as a result of the 1948 war ⁽³⁵⁾.

It is worth mentioning that, in order to have control over the resources of the Islamic endowment system and the Waqf lands, that comprised 6.2% of the total area of Israel ⁽³⁶⁾, the Israeli government enacted many laws, the most effective of which has been the "absentee property law". An estimated 80% of the Waqf land's total area (about 244430 dunoms) has already been confiscated by means of such laws ⁽³⁷⁾.

The injustice that the Muslim Palestinians suffered from in Israel was not limited to plundering the Waqf lands, but rather went beyond that to the desecration of holy places and worship houses, to an extent that made Sheikh Raed Salah accuse the state of practicing religious persecution against Muslims through the destruction of over one thousand mosques during and after 1948, the confiscation of Islamic Waqf properties and the continuous desecration of more than 70 mosques by the Israeli official institution, as well as the regular use of these mosques as restaurants, bars or museums and the usual destruction of Muslims' grave yards ( digging up the bones of their dead) to build streets, hotels and residential areas in their places, while keeping Muslims from observing prayers in too many mosques, like the ones in Al-Ghabsiya, Hitten, Qysariya and others. At the same time, the Israeli authorities banned Muslims from calling to prayers in dozens of mosques and prevented them from burying their dead in many Muslim graveyards, while some official circles described almsgiving as "supporting terrorism".⁽³⁸⁾

In the same vein, Judge Ahmad Natour, chief justice of the Islamic religious court of appeal, sent a message to the Prime Minister ⁽³⁹⁾ objecting to the miserable state of the holy places in the country, especially in "mixed" cities and in certain locations where no Muslims live at present. In his letter, Natour criticized the "absentee property law" for its injustice in dealing with Waqf properties, as it contradicts the Islamic laws and allows exploiting waqf properties for purposes inconsistent with the aims of endowment, indicating that waqf properties are not commodities subject to trading and warning of the dangerous decisions made by board of trustees that the authorities interfere in the nomination of their members, as most of such officials are collaborators or self- seeking employees who even dared to sell the mosques. Natour also indicated many other objectionable practices, such as:

-          the exploitation of some holy places- like mosques- by governmental and municipal bodies, in a way that egregiously desecrates such places;

-          The "guardian's" desistance from self- keeping the Islamic sanctums entrusted to him, even though he is instructed to do so in accordance with law.

-          The authority's disapproval of the Muslim's reparation of their holy places.

As chief justice, Natour related to the destructive and profanatory practices suffered by mosques and graveyards, as well as to the control of some of these places with the aim of turning them into Jewish worship houses or hideaways for corrupt and perverted people. He suggested, on the basis of the abovementioned facts, the enforcement of laws that honor the sanctity and safety of these holy places, on the one hand, and called for punitive measures against any one who abuses them, as well as the invalidation of the board of trustees, the amendment of the absentee property law, and the termination of all constructions in the graveyards, on the other hand.

 The destruction of the holy Christian and Islamic places by "Israel" during the 1948 war became extremely exacerbated in the following years as a result of continuous breaches of the international law:

• destroying mosques every time the worshipers tried to repair them in villages such as sarafand, Um-El Faraj and Wadi –El- Hawareth;

• Demolishing mosques built by Arab citizens who had no other place to pray in, as happened in Tel-El-Milh;

• Continuous terrorizing by Jewish policemen, officials and local residents of Arab observants, as was the case in Ghabseya, Hitten and Sahmata;

• Closing down the holy places or declaring them closed areas to prevent Arab citizens from entering them, as occurred in Bassa, Manshiya and the great mosque in Beer Sheba;

• Authorizing the declaration of many holy place as ordinary places, of no sacred status, so that the new Jewish owners could obliterate the sanctified features of these places and turn them into bars, restaurants or residential apartments, as happened in Ein-Howd, Ashkelon and Qaysariya;

• Officially sanctioning these deeds perpetrated by Jewish worshipers who claim that the holy places are originally Jewish, including the sanctuaries of prophets Reuben, Lefta and Eliazor and Wadi-Hunain; and lastly;

• Obliterating the features of Islamic and Christian graveyards and turning these places over to the Israeli planning authorities, which- in turn- set out to build roads, residential compounds and industrial areas, as was the case in Al-Bassa, Deir Yassin and sarafand-El- A'mar.

These encroachments upon Islamic and Christian worship places were increasingly exacerbating through other discriminatory overt methods, such as:

• the absence of any legal recognition of Islamic and Christian worship places;

• obscuring budgetary allocations earmarked for Islamic and Christian worship places;

• the refusal of any development of tourism in the Arab areas;

• the denial of any protection to holy places;

• the execution of excavation projects inside and beneath the holy places in the Arab areas; and

• The pursuance of religious leaders who express political views unfavorable to Israeli policies.

 The aim of these strategies is clear: the obliteration of the Palestinian people's Islamic and Christian heritage ⁽⁴⁰⁾.

Notes:

1-     "Chapters of the ethnic cleansing in Palestine", Al-Hayat London based daily newspaper, 19/4/2007.

2-     The holy book, the old testament, Deuteronomy 20:16-17.

3-     Op.cit,1:2-7

4-     Bayan Al Hoot, " Palestine: the cause, the people and the civilization- the political history from the Canaanite age to the twentieth century-1917" 1^st edition (Beirut: Dar El-Istiqlal for studies and publishing, 1991), p.295.

5-     Anis Sayigh, Herzl Diary, translated by Hilda Sha'aban (Beirut: Research Center- P.L.O, 1968), p.76.

6-     Nour El-Deen Masalha, the expulsion of Palestinians: the transfer concept in the Zionist thought and planning 1882-1948 (Beirut: Institute of Palestine studies, 1992), p.14.

7-     Benny Morris, " a Refabrication of 1948 ", Journal of Palestine studies, spring 1998, no.34, p.158.

8-     As mentioned in: Nour El –Deen Maslha, " the Zionist conception of deportation: a historical view", journal of Palestine studies, no.7 summer 1997, p.26.

9-     Op.cit, p.29.

10-Op.cit, p.30.

11-Op.cit, p.31.

12-For more details, see: Maslha: the expulsion Palestinians …, pp.29, 139.

13-Palestinian war 1947-1948, the official Israeli Account, translated by Ahmad Khalifa (Beirut: Institute of Palestine studies, 1986), the introduction.

14-As noted in: shareef Kana'ana, " the Palestinian Diaspora: Immigration or Displacement?" (Jerusalem: international Quds Center for Palestinian studies), pp.28-92.

15-Tom Segev, the early Israelis- 1949, translated by Khaled Ayed and others (Beirut: institute of Palestine studies, 1986) p.54.

16-Op.Cit, pp.47-57.

17-Amos Elon, " the Jews ' Jews ", the New York review of Books, 10/6/ 1993, p.16.

18-Uzi Ben- Zeiman and a'tallah Mansour, "subordinate citizens", (Jerusalem: 1992) pp.56-57 (Hebrew).

19-Op.cit.p.57.

20-Benny Morris, Israel's Border Wars: 1949-1956 (Oxford Clarendon Press, 1993), p.163.

21-Nour El-Deen Maslha, "More land and fewer Arabs: the Israeli Transfer policy on Implementation of Palestine studies), p.29.

22-Morris, op.cit. Pp.154-157.

23-Maslha, More Land….p.29.

24-Op.Cit, p.30.

25-Tom Segev, op.cit, p.33.

26-Eli Tabour, Yediot Ahronot, 2/11/1982.

27-Muhammad Ali Taha, in light of the decision of teaching the transfer heritage to school boys, "the Israeli scene" website, 28/12/2005.

28-Akiva Eldar, Haaretz, 23/1/2001.

29-For more information, see: Tareq Ibrahim, the murder is one and the responsible people are many, pp.21-23.

30-The Negev plan of 2015, see: http://www.negev.gov.il/Negev.

31-Yediot Ahronot, 28/4/2007.

32-Meron Raborat, " the process of blowing up the mosques", Al-Safir, Beirut, 9/7/2007.

33-Ha'aretz, 6/7/2007.

34-The Arab institute for human rights, the desecration of holy places, Nazareth, 2005, p.9, Memorandum of Al-Aqsa society on Muslim's endowments and sanctuaries in Israel, Um-El-Fahm, April/1994.

35-Op.cit, p.13.

36-Ra'ed Salah," the voice of truth and liberty", 17/8/1991.

37-Michael Dumber, op.cit.p.72.

38-See note ( 36).

39-See note (34), p.8-15.

40-See note (34), p.36.