Reversing Ethnic Cleansing in Palestine
While the phrase ethnic cleansing has become common to our lexicon
in the past decade - conjuring up images of innocent women,
children and men fleeing their homes and lands - the cleansing of
populations along ethnic, religious or racial lines existed long
before the western media "discovered" it in the Balkans and Central
Africa in the 1990s. The saturated media coverage of these two
arenas of conflict, moreover, has left a seemingly indelible
impression that ethnic cleansing is primarily the result of some
intrinsic or historic ethnic hatred, usually characterized by
violent or genocidal actions of one ethnic group against
another.
In fact, while the phrase, ethnic cleansing, may be a relatively recent addition to our common vocabulary, the practice is not so uncommon, though the terminology may be different. In the Americas, for example, colonization nearly wiped out the entire indigenous population. In South Africa, apartheid led to the removal of black South Africans from their lands, forcing many into the reserves known as bantustans. What is common to these, and other examples of ethnic cleansing, is the forced relocation of ethnic, religious or racial groups in order to strengthen strategic, political interests through greater demographic homogeneity or "purity". Intrinsic or historic hatred is rarely the primary motive, though ethnic cleansing is often accompanied or "justified" by a belief in ethnic, racial, or religious supremacy, and/or the notion of supremacy of rights.
Although much attention has been focused on the violent aspects of ethnic cleansing in the past decade, the slaughter of innocent civilians and the destruction of their homes and villages is not the only means to achieve demographic homogeneity - though clearly the most visible. Forced relocation of ethnic, religious or racial groups often results from structural violence based on economic exploitation and discrimination, a kind of "low-intensity"1 ethnic cleansing. In the 19th and 20th century western colonialism destroyed the indigenous social and economic fabric in many regions of the world in order to reshape it to serve western economic and political interests. Narrowly defined rights of citizenship and land ownership, which served the interests of those groups willing to serve as the guardians of the colonial order, led to the forced relocation of many peoples throughout Central America, Asia and the Middle East.
Ethnic Cleansing (transfer) in Palestine
In Palestine, the code word for ethnic cleansing has been "transfer." The fundamental doctrine of Zionism was not one of ethnic or religious pluralism, but rather a doctrine of exclusivity based on the concepts of "Hebrew Land" and "Hebrew Labor." Given the fact that Palestine was not a "land without people," the only means to establish a geographically viable and demographically homogenous Jewish state was to transfer the Palestinian Arab majority out of Palestine. Zionist leaders were successful in selling the idea of transfer to the international community, in part due to their diplomatic skills, but also due to the marriage of Zionist and great power interests in the Middle East.
This idea of an exclusive Jewish state on all or part of
Palestine became the standard framework adopted by the
international community, which in effect endorsed the idea of
transfer. The idea became codified in documents such as the 1917
Balfour Declaration, the British Mandate for Palestine, the
findings of the 1937 British Peel Commission, a 1944 resolution
adopted by the British Labor party calling for Palestinian Arab
transfer, the 1947 UN Partition Plan, UN Resolution 242 and them
Oslo Accords. With each new plan or agreement, the area allotted to
Palestinians became increasingly smaller.
Most transfer plans put forward by the Zionist movement included
financial commitments by the Zionist movement for the purchase and
initial development of lands in other parts of the Arab world,
conditioned upon a British commitment to implement the compulsory
transfer of Palestinian Arabs to these areas.2 By the late 1930s, however, many leading Zionists
had come to the conclusion that political constraints, regional and
international, militated against forced transfer even though the
Peel Commission had called, euphemistically, for the "exchange" of
some 225,000 Palestinians. New strategies were needed.
Land purchase, citizenship and tax reform became the new watch
words for transfer.3 In order to
facilitate the strategic acquisition of land and transfer of
Palestinian landowners and tenants, a Population Transfer
Committee, appointed in late 1937, requested permission from
Mandate authorities to copy all the material existing in its land
registration and tax offices relating to the situation of Arab
agriculture and land ownership in Palestine. Permission was
granted. The amount of land acquired, however, remained small. By
1948, Jews owned approximately 8% of the lands in Palestine, the
majority of which had been acquired from non-Palestinian absentee
landlords.44 Joseph Weitz, head of the Transfer
Committee, noted with growing frustration that, "They [the Arabs]
are too many and too much rooted [in the country]… the only way is
to cut and eradicate them from the roots." "From now on we must
work out a secret plan based on the removal of the Arabs from here"
and "to inculcate it into American political circles…today we have
no other alternative…we will not live here with the
Arabs."5
"...we still dream of a world in which ethnic cleansing is not
permitted to stand. We have watched, rapt with wonder, as the
United States has moved against the ethnic cleansing by the Serbs
rather than providing Slobodan Milosevic's government with 84
billion dollars - as it has given Israel over the last 50 years -
to finish off the job. Instead of leaving the Kosovars to molder
for generations in refugee camps, the United States and Europe seem
to recognize the urgency of returning these desperate people to
their rightful homes. In a world seemingly gone mad with ethnic and
religious bloodlust, the same perverse spending we endure is
thankfully not-reoccuring. We, too, hope that one day all our
Palestinian refugees may return to their homes and to the land they
have tilled for generations."
Raji Sourani, Director of the Palestinian Centre for Human
Rights
International Herald Tribune 9/5/99
Clearing Palestinians Out EN MASSE - 1948
No secret plan, however, was necessary. The 1948 war made the clearing out of Palestinians en masse a possibility for the first time since the Zionist movement had begun to speak about transfer. Transfer or ethnic cleansing, moreover, took on clearly violent character. Close to 90% of those Palestinians who became refugees, fled due to Zionist military action.6 Villages and homes were looted and destroyed, civilian populations were massacred, while others were forced to march towards the borders of Palestine at gunpoint. Thousands of Palestinians were expelled from their land along the 'frontier' of the new Jewish state between November 1948 and 1951 as the new Israeli government attempted to create a 5-15 km deep zone that was, according to Prime Minister Ben-Gurion, clean (naki) and empty (reik) of Palestinians.7
"Low Intensity" Ethnic Cleansing
For those Palestinians that remained in the area of Palestine that became Israel, and for those who came under Israeli occupation in 1967, transfer or ethnic cleansing assumed a new character. In actuality, these new policies reflected ideas put forward by the Zionist movement under the British Mandate, ideas which former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin believed would "attract natural and voluntary migration" of Palestinians.8 Land confiscation, settlement construction, refusal of citizenship, revocation of residency status, planning and development restrictions, tax and public investment discrimination, and house demolitions, have all aimed to either drive Palestinians into small, demographically homogenous zones, or out of historic Palestine.
The success of this policy is all too evident on the ground.
Approximately two-thirds of the entire Palestinian population are
refugees. Inside Israel (20,323 sq. km), Palestinians who comprise
over one fifth of the population, are forbidden from owning more
than 92% of the land. In Gaza (360 sq. km), where more than a
million Palestinians live, three quarters of whom are refugees,
several thousand Israeli settlers control 40% of the land area. In
the West Bank (5,637 sq. km), 1.5 million Palestinians, of whom
more than a third are refugees, have access to less than a third of
the land area. Meanwhile approximately 154,000 rural Israel Jews
control three quarters of the land area of Israel (17,178 sq. km)
which is the land of the refugees.9
Reversing Ethnic Cleansing in Palestine
While the international community has recognized the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, along with compensation for damages, losses and revenues for their properties, and compensation for those choosing not to return (Resolution 194), Palestinian refugees remain in exile. In light of the recent return of Albanian refugees to Kosova, the hypocrisy of the international community is all too evident. The Palestinian people, and refugees in particular, however, are not in need of another Kosova-style intervention by NATO motivated in large part by narrow strategic, military interests and based on the ability of powerful western states lead by the US, to bypass international law and UN resolutions.
The Palestinian people, and especially the refugees, rather, are looking for a renewed and firm international commitment to principles of international law and the requirements of UN resolutions, including recognition and implementation of the right of return. Only such a commitment can pave the way to a just and stable solution of the conflict in the Middle East, one that recognizes the multi-ethnic and religious pluralism of the region and affords equal rights to all its inhabitants, rather than one defined by narrow ethnic/religious divisions. Only such a commitment can mediate against the eruption of a crisis, which then might resemble the crisis in the Balkans.
Footnotes:
1 The term is derived from the concept of low intensity conflict. It refers here to policies of ethnic cleansing other than those used during war. These include political, economic, administrative and informational policies which aim to reduce or clear out populations according to their ethnic, religious or national identity. While localized in nature, this kind of cleansing also has regional and international implications.
2 These plans include the Weizmann Transfer Scheme, the Soskin Plan, the Weitz Plan, the Bonne Scheme, the al-Jazirah Scheme, the Norman Plan, and the Ben-Horin Plan. For more on these plans see Masalha's study on transfer which is based on documents from Zionist archives. Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians, The Concept of "Transfer" in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948, Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992.
3 As noted by Ben-Gurion, these concepts were more tactful in public discourse than compulsory transfer. Ibid., p. 117.
4 Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, The Construction of Modern National Consciousness, New York: Columbia University Press, 1997, p. 114. Also see Sami Hadawi, Palestinian Rights and Losses in 1948, London: Saqi Books, 1988.
5 Masalha, pp. 134-35.
6 Salman Abu Sitta, "The Phased Return of Palestinian Refugees," Paper presented at al-Multaqa Conference, Birzeit University, June 1999. Israeli historian Benny Morris, gives a figure of 85% based on a smaller number of Palestinian villages which were destroyed. Masalha notes that while expulsion and "scorched earth" tactics are often elements of warfare, the "systematic nature of the 'clearing out' operations and the shear magnitude of the exodus" of Palestinians make it difficult not to see a "policy at work." Masalha, p. 180.
7 These terms were used by Ben Gurion in a cabinet meeting on September 26, 1948, Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, p. 218.
8 Francis Ofner, "Sketching Rabin Plan for Peace," The Christian Science Monitor ( 3 June 1974), dispatch from Tel Aviv, cited in Nur Masalha, A Land without a People, London: Faber Paperback Books, p. 177.
9Salman Abu Sitta, The Palestinian Nakba
1948, The Register of Depopulated Localities in Palestine, London:
The Palestinian Return Centre, 1998.