[Dryerase] The Alarm!--Palestinian refugees

[The Alarm!Newswire]

The Palestinian refugees of today are reminders of the effects of 1948

By Chris Kortright
The Alarm! Newspaper Contributor

The Palestinian/Israeli conflict continues to shape the political 
events of the Middle East. The Palestinians are supported not only by 
millions of Arabs but also by an increasing number of Europeans and 
Americans who are starting to show solidarity. Central to the conflict 
is the issue of lands taken from Palestinians and the removal of 
Palestinians by the Israeli State. To have a better understanding of 
this conflict we must look back at what has occurred since 1947; we 
must reexamine the issues of removal and settlement.

Refugees
Today, 88% of the Palestinian refugees live in Palestine and 
surrounding areas: 46% in what was known as the British Mandate 
Palestine, 42% in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. (which are all within 100 
miles of Israel). Only twelve percent reside further away, equally 
divided between Arab countries. The total population, according to 1998 
figures, is 4.9 million, of which only 3.6 million are registered with 
the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the official body set up to 
care for refugees.

Getting rid of the native inhabitants of Palestine has long been a 
priority of Zionism. It was clearly spelled out by Yosef Weitz, the 
head of the Transfer Committee and the chief of land-confiscation 
operations. As early as 1940, he proposed: “The only solution is to 
transfer the Arabs from here to neighboring countries. Not a single 
village or a single tribe must be left.”

Settlement and Removal
The systematic elimination of Palestinian lands in 1948 took the 
following forms:

1) Military Plans
As early as January 1948, four months before the official war, the 
Zionists prepared plans for the settlement of 1.5 million new 
immigrants over and above the existing 600,000, two-thirds of whom were 
themselves recent immigrants under the British Mandate. During the 
Jewish military operations that followed the UN partition resolution of 
November 1947 and before the end of the British Mandate, more than half 
the Palestinian population was expelled. The settlement agencies headed 
by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) directed the military attacks to 
acquire land, such as the villages of Indur, Qumiya, Ma’lul, Mujaidil 
and Buteimat in Galilee, which were destroyed primarily to grab the 
land.

2) Destruction of Villages
Village destruction took place in the immediate aftermath of military 
assaults, especially in cities such as Haifa, Jaffa, Lydda and 
Jerusalem. According to the June 1996 issue of Annals of the 
Association of American Geographers, there was a massive campaign of 
destruction, which lasted over 15 years in which 53% of the 418 
villages surveyed were totally destroyed, 32% were substantially 
destroyed and twelve percent partially destroyed (three percent were 
inaccessible to survey). The clear aim of this destruction was to 
prevent the return of the refugees.

3) Political Action
Soon after the State of Israel was declared (May 14, 1948), and 
following the protest of the UN mediator—Count Folke Bernadotte—who 
witnessed, by June 1948, the expulsion of about 500,000 refugees the 
Provisional Government of Israel said it could not allow any refugees 
to return before a peace treaty was signed, on the pretext that these 
refugees would be a “security threat.”

4) Legal Confiscation
Before, during and after the 1948 war, Israel resorted to many legal 
devices to organize and justify the confiscation of 18,700 square 
kilometers (92% of Israel) of Palestinian land, in addition to the 
property found in 530 depopulated towns and villages. The property was 
held by the Custodian of the Absentee Property and transferred later to 
the Development Authority. All such land, as well as JNF holdings, is 
now administered by the Israel Land Administration (ILW). In simple 
terms, the “Absentee” is a Palestinian refugee unable to return. The 
term also applies to Palestinian citizens of Israel, who are “Absent,” 
hence dubbed “Present Absentees.” Much of their land has also been 
confiscated.

Internally Displaced
More than one fourth of the 156,000 Palestinians remaining within the 
Jewish state in Palestine after the 1948 war were either pushed out of 
villages and towns besieged by Zionist forces or fled as a result of 
the warfare carried out against strategically selected villages such as 
Dayr Yasin, Duwayima and Tantura. The State of Israel destroyed those 
and more than 400 other villages depopulated during 1948–1949. The 
internally displaced are a living testimony to the fact that Israel’s 
transfer and forced removal of Palestinians during war times was not 
the evacuation of civilians away from the hazards of armed conflict, 
but rather transfers with the purpose of confiscating Palestinian 
properties and preventing their restitution.

As with the properties of all Palestinian refugees, the lands, homes 
and other structures of the internally displaced became the spoils of 
Israel’s independence war. To ensure legality to this process, the new 
Israeli Knesset enacted the Basic Law: Law of Absentee Property (1950), 
which retroactively and prospectively allowed the State of Israel to 
confiscate properties from anyone identified as an “absentee.”

By Law of Absentee Property criterion, those who were away from their 
property in the general area of any form of war action—whether engaged 
in the fighting or not—during the period of the 1948 war would have 
their properties confiscated, which the JNF then would administer for 
the benefit of Jewish immigrants. It also provided for the legal 
dispossession of those who never left the borders of the newly created 
state or those who were reabsorbed into Israel as a result of the 
armistice agreement and not counted as “international refugees.” These 
Palestinians are known as “present absentees.”

Perhaps the most famous case of the internally displaced involves the 
inhabitants of three villages near the Lebanese border—Iqrit, Mansura 
and Kafr Bir’im. In October 1948, the inhabitants were “temporarily” 
evicted by the Israeli Defense Forces. They were trucked to new 
locations and never allowed to return. The State of Israel expropriated 
their homes and the lands under the Absentee Property Law.

Unrecognized Villages
While the internally displaced phenomenon dates to 1948, the 
unrecognized villages are a post-statehood phenomenon. The internally 
displaced were dispossessed during the events of 1948, while the 
unrecognized villages are under continuous processes of dispossession 
and internal displacement. The unrecognized villages are further 
distinguished by peacetime context in which the efforts of evict them 
are carried out.

The status of “unrecognized” villages was born with the Building and 
Construction Law of 1965. Under this law, Jewish planning councils 
issued the first “district outline plans” and identified existing and 
projected built-up areas. These included 123 existing Arab villages but 
ignored the rural Arab villages. This omission was repeated under 
subsequent planning cycles, and the villages never became known as 
recognized.

The lands on which these villages were built were classified in the law 
as “agricultural,” a planing category where no residences or other 
structures are permitted. This makes any dwelling already there 
automatically illegal. Article 157A of the 1965 Building and 
Construction Law prohibits a municipality from connecting water, 
electricity or telephone networks to unlicensed buildings. This 
prohibition gave statutory grounds to deny services to Arabs living in 
unrecognized villages. The 1965 Building and Construction Law gave 
Zionist planners a tactical response to the undesirable presence of the 
Arab population. The establishment of a lawful planning criteria that 
necessitated Palestinian removal from their land meant that the removal 
was administrative this time—not militarily carried out.

The Palestinian/Israeli conflict, like most colonial conflicts, is over 
land and autonomy not religious dogma. The issue of the landless is a 
global issue. The dispossession of peoples from their lands by 
governments and capitalism is the cornerstone of many world conflicts. 
The return of Palestinian lands and Palestinian autonomy is a first 
step to resolving the conflict in Palistine—but we must keep in mind 
the same is true in Zimbabwe, South Africa, the United States, Brazil, 
Mexico, Northern Ireland, etc. Land and autonomy from capital and 
government are necessary if a people are to live free.

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noted otherwise, this material may be copied and distributed freely in 
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