The Palestine Arab refugee problem and its origins

Bibliographic Data

ID10279898
AuthorsShabtai Teveth (corresponding author)
Year1990
Volume26
Issue2
Pages214-249
Publication date1990-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueMiddle Eastern Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0026-3206 • E-ISSN: 1743-7881
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00263209008700816
OpenAlexW1998533323
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited5

In The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Pp. xx + 380. £30 or $39.50), Benny Morris's overall conclusion that both Arabs and Jews are to blame, at different times and in varying circumstances, for the departure of 'between 600,000 and 760,000' Arabs from Palestine in 1947-1949 cannot be too widely off the mark. Surely, the fair-minded can accept no other conclusion. And this might have been by far the most serious, comprehensive study of a problem whose far-reaching repercussions are all too well known. Yet Morris fails to ahswer the uppermost question in his reader's mind: the Arab flight from Palestine remains buried in mystery, just as it was over forty years ago, when Ben-Gurion noted in his diary after his first visit to Jewish-occupied Jaffa (18 May 1948), 'I couldn't understand: Why did the inhabitants of Jaffa leave?' (p. 101). Morris's answer, which repeatedly ascribes the Arab flight to 'complex' and 'varied' causes, is all too erudite and vague to represent the reality of this momentous event. 'Complex' and 'varied' causes are very useful in dealing with long-term change and development, but they can rarely account for a sudden, major migration. When people flee from their homes, they do so mostly because of a clear cause: fire, flood, earthquake, or their combination. The same can be said of the great migrations of the past: they were created by famine, war and persecution. It is clear that the first 75,000 Arabs who left their homes in Palestine 'by February March' 1948 (p. 30) before the Jewish victories of April deserve centrality and weight in the genesis of Palestinian refugeedom; for they set the flight in train, cast its pattern and initiated what Morris calls Israel's 'ideas about how to consolidate and give permanence to the Palestinian exile' (p. 160). Had these 75,000 not taken to flight, Palestinian and Middle Eastern history would have taken an entirely different course. But if those 75,000 even partly hold the key to this mystery, Morris has disqualified himself from dealing with this chapter, as indeed he has done in every other chapter which makes up the Arab of this tragic story. In his Introduction he laments the 'continued unavailability' of Arab state papers from 1947 to 1949 and the non-existence of Palestinian 'state papers to speak of', recognizing that this lacuna 'leaves the historian burdened by a major problem'. However, it is hard to imagine what good such papers would be to Morris, whose Arabic, at best, is insufficient for the task. This inadequacy not withstanding, he nevertheless promises the reader that he has done his best 'to reduce the area of darkness ... by integrating the Arab side through culling heavily from Jewish and Israeli intelligence reports and from British and American diplomatic dispatches . . . which go a long way towards filling out the picture of what was happening . . . during 1948'. This would still leave Morris with very little to go on regarding policy-making in the Arab capitals; however

Ancient history · Archaeology · Blame · Famine · Judaism · Palestine · Palestinian refugees · Persecution · Political science · Politics · Refugee · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts · Middle East Politics and Society · Philosophy · Psychology · Religious studies · Social Psychology

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