This is what I prepared for the exercise...
Overarching Questions
● How can we judge the validity of historical accounts?
A. Can scientific conclusions be reached through analysis of declassified Israeli documents and little to no analysis of classified Arab documents?
B. Are eye-witness accounts trustworthy?
C. Is analysis based on primary or secondary source material?
D. Is there a boundary between historical writing and journalistic writing as claimed by Shapira?
● As social scientists, how should we critically evaluate each researcher’s contribution?
A. We should try to determine their political bias as well as whether they have analyzed and/or presented edited versions of historical documents. (Khalidi claims that the Kimche brothers only published excerpts of Plan D.) We should also attempt to replicate their conclusions through rigorous analysis. (A scientific conclusion is not valid unless it can be replicated.)
Palestinian Refugees
● What do historians claim to be the cause of the Palestinian refugee problem?
A. Arab evacuation orders
B. Systematic ethnic cleansing via Plan Daled
C. Israeli initiated whisper campaign
D. The Dar Yassin massacre (April 1948)
E. Israeli evacuation broadcasts
F. Collusion between Israel and Trans-Jordan
● Where do the historians disagree/ agree?
Areas of disagreement:
A. The occurrence and/or significance of Arab evacuation orders
a. Jon and David Kimche: the Arabs issued evacuation orders to ethnic Arabs so that they could “push the Jews into the sea.”
b. Walid Khalidi: Arab evacuation orders are a ‘red herring’ (Khalidi, 1988:5).
c. Morris: There is no evidence of evacuation orders.
d. According to Khalidi, Morris does not recognize the connection between the “expulsion” of the Arab population and Plan Daled (Khalidi, 1988:5).
e. According to Khalidi, Morris contends that fleeing Palestinians “brought permanent exile upon themselves” (Khalidi, 1988:6).
f. According to Khalidi, Morris argues that the expulsion of the Arab population and the destruction of “abandoned” villages was not planned by the Israeli government but extemporaneous. (Khalidi, 1988:6).
g. Khalidi claims that there is no evidence of Arab evacuation orders in the back files of the British (BBC) and American monitoring stations in the Near East (Khalidi, 1988:6).
h. Upon scrutinizing the BBC monitoring station back files, Khalidi found that “not only was there no hint of any Arab evacuation order, but the Arab radio stations had urged the Palestinians to hold on and be steadfast whereas it was the Jewish radio stations of the Haganah and the Irgun and Stern Gang which had been engaged in incessant and strident psychological warfare against the Arab civilian population” (Khalidi, 1988:6).
i. Childers reached the same conclusion (above) about the lack of Arab evacuation orders (Khalidi, 1988:6).
j. Arab war aims (Shlaim 1995:299).
B. The defensive/ offensive nature of Plan Daled
C. Planned ethnic cleansing
Areas of agreement:
A. Palestinians did flee en mass during the War of 1948.
B. Plan Daled exists.
C. All of the Arab states, except Jordan, rejected the U.N. Partition Plan (Shlaim 1995:299).
D. Seven Arab armies invaded Palestine on May 15, 1948 (Shlaim 1995:299).
Plan Daled
● What do we know about Plan Daled?
A. It was written by the Jewish underground army, the Hagannah, the predecessor of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in 1947.
B. The plan was revised in December 1947 and March 1948.
C. It was drafted as a “defensive” plan to ward off Arab invasion into “the borders of the Hebrew state” (Assignment of Duties, (f) ).
D. It contained language that authorized the “destruction of (Arab) villages…especially those population centers which are difficult to control continuously.”
E. It prescribed actions “in the event of resistance” including the “destruction of villages” and the expulsion of the Arab population “outside the borders of the state” (Assignment of Duties, (b) 4).
F. Plan Daled also stated that “enemy cities” must be besieged through attack of transportation arteries and the disruption of “vital services, such as electricity, water, and fuel…” (Assignment of Duties, (e) 1 and 3).
● How is Plan Daled related to the Palestinianization of the conflict?
A. Plan Daled has been interpreted as a plan of ethnic cleansing.
B. Plan Daled has also been interpreted as targeting civilians.
● How is Plan Daled related to Israeli and/or Palestinian societies?
Israeli society
A. Khalidi claims “that the Zionist emphasis on Arab evacuation orders is in fact a skillful propaganda tactic with manifold purposes: it shifts the moral responsibility for the refugees on the Arabs themselves, puts them on the defensive, and shoulders them with the burden of refutation. Above all it directs the attention from the primary of the derivative: from the actual course of events in 1948 in Palestine to the realm of patience-consuming allegation and counter-allegation” (Khalidi, 1988:9).
B. Also according to Khalidi, “the ideological premises of Plan D are to be found in the very concept of Zionism” (Khalidi, 1988:9). That is, Zionists were in search of a land that they could call their own. If the Zionists had to dispel the indigenous population of the land they sought, it was a lesser even that perpetuation of the Jewish problem (Khalidi, 1988:9). Herzl, one of the founding fathers of Zionism, supported the expulsion of the indigenous population of land claimed for the Jews.
C. Land was needed to accommodate large scale Jewish immigration to the newly established stated of Israel (Khalidi, 1988:12-13).
Palestinian society
A. Plan D reinforces the premise that the Zionists intended to create a Jewish majority in Palestine via the transfer of ethnic Arab inhabitants.
B. Plan D is evidence of the Zionists’ master plan.
● How is Plan Daled related to negotiations and conflict resolution attempts?
A. The Palestinian “right of return” is one of the biggest obstacles to the creation of a lasting peace.
B. The Palestinians claim an unconditional “right of return” while Israelis are unwilling to allow for the return of the Palestinian population because Arabs would then constitute the ethnic majority in Israel.
● How is Plan Daled related to the first and/or second intifadas?
Plan C
“K (3). The operations mentioned in 1 above will be carried out by damaging the service stations along that route, or by sabotaging its vehicles, or by stopping one or more vehicles on the road, evacuating the passengers, and destroying them.”
“Q. Propaganda will have a large effect on the extent to which incidents are publicized and on the deterrent value this will have on the Arab masses. Therefore, an extensive propaganda network must be organized by the following means:
1. Radio.
2. Leaflets.
3. Whispering campaigns diffused by Arabs or Arabists.
Each of our countermeasures should be widely publicized and reverberate in every Arab village.”
No comments:
Post a Comment