When the establishment of Israel is discussed, the Zionist narrative usually revolves around two main points: That the war of 1948 was a natural and inevitable consequence of Arab rejection of the state of Israel, and that it was a war of self-defense and survival for the fledgling entity.
However, these talking points leave out much crucial context and history, which when fully explored paint quite a different picture.
This modus operandi is not new when it comes to Israeli diplomatic efforts, as even the most aggressively expansionist endeavors are painted as purely defensive. A prominent example of this is the war of 1967, where Israel launched a surprise attack against Egypt a few days before de-escalation talks were scheduled to begin, yet still insists it wasn’t the aggressor [You can read more about this here].
As per usual, these talking points are selective with the information they share and are careful to cultivate a certain framing. For example, when they speak about the war of 1948 being a purely defensive war, they fail to mention that even before the war the Zionist militias had already ethnically cleansed over 300,000 Palestinians from their communities, and taken over the majority of territories assigned to the Jewish state per the 1947 partition plan.
For instance, Deir Yassin was a small, pastoral village west of Jerusalem. The village was determined to remain neutral, and as such refused to have Arab soldiers stationed there. Not only were they neutral, they also had a non-aggression pact signed with the Haganah. This, however, did not save it from its fate, as it was in the territory of the Jewish state lined out in Plan D.
This meant that not only was it to be destroyed and have its population ethnically cleansed, an example needed to be made of it as to inspire terror in the surrounding villages. As a result, this massacre was particularly monstrous.
On April 9th 1948, Zionist forces attacked the village of Deir Yassin under the cover of darkness. The Zionist forces shot indiscriminately and killed dozens of Palestinian civilians in their own homes. The number of those murdered ranges from roughly 100 to over 150, depending on estimation.
Perhaps one of the most graphic witness testimonials comes from Othman Akel:
[Warning: Explicit descriptions of torture and violence. Click to skip]
“I saw the Zionist terrorist soldiers ordering the bakery man of the village to throw his son in the oven and burn him alive. The son is holding the clothes of his father tightly and crying from fear and pleading to his father not to do it. the father refuses and then the soldiers hit him in his gut so hard it caused him to fall on the floor. Other soldiers held his son, Abdel Rauf, and threw him in the oven and told his father to toast him well-done meat. Other soldiers took the baker himself , Hussain al-Shareef, and threw him, too, in the oven, telling him, “follow your son, he needs you there”.
Other stories include tying a villager to a tree before burning him, rape and disembowelment. Dead villagers were thrown into pits by the dozen. Many were decapitated or mutilated. Houses were looted and destroyed. A number of prisoners were taken, put in cuffs, and paraded around West Jerusalem as war trophies, before being executed and dumped in the village quarry.
[End of explicit descriptions of torture and violence]
The village posed no threat and was not part of any military action. It is also noteworthy that because the village had a non-aggression pact with the Haganah, it was the Stern and Lehi that carried out this massacre. The Yishuv offered a few words of condemnation, but later the name of Deir Yassin would be seen listed next to successful operations. In the future, there would not even be the charade of caring about non-aggression pacts or the neutrality of villages that were designated for ethnic cleansing.
There was absolutely nothing defensive about these actions. They were designed to change demographic realities that the Zionists found inconvenient, as even the proposed Jewish state would not have had a Jewish majority without additional settlers.
Even internally, the Yishuv acknowledged that it had the power to impose a new status quo regardless of what the Palestinians thought, Cabinet Minister Ezra Danin believed that:
“..the majority of the Palestinian masses accept the partition as a fait accompli and do not believe it possible to overcome or reject it.”
This talking point also neglects to mention the enormous efforts behind the scenes aimed at avoiding war, not to mention ending it early when it did eventually break out. These efforts were heavily sponsored by the United States, who asked in March 1948 that all military activities be ceased, and asked the Yishuv to postpone any declaration of statehood and to give time for negotiations. Outside of Abdallah, the Arabs accepted this initiative by the United States. However, it was rejected by Ben Gurion, who knew that any peaceful implementation of the partition plan meant that the refugees he had expelled earlier would have a chance to return, not to mention that war would offer him a chance to conquer the lands outside the partition plan that he coveted.
This was the Zionist aim from the outset, as even in the earliest discussions of partition, Zionists emphasized that any acceptance of partition was merely tactical and temporary. Ben Gurion argued that:
“[I am] satisfied with part of the country, but on the basis of the assumption that after we build up a strong force following the establishment of the state–we will abolish the partition of the country and we will expand to the whole Land of Israel.”
This was not a one-time occurrence, and neither was it only espoused by Ben Gurion. Internal debates and letters illustrate this time and time again. Even in letters to his family, Ben Gurion wrote that “A Jewish state is not the end but the beginning” detailing that settling the rest of Palestine depended on creating an “elite army”. As a matter of fact, he was quite explicit:
“I don’t regard a state in part of Palestine as the final aim of Zionism, but as a mean toward that aim.”
Chaim Weizmann expected that:
“partition might be only a temporary arrangement for the next twenty to twenty-five years”.
When the Arab states finally reluctantly intervened, they arrived for the most part in the areas designated for the Arab Palestinian state per the 1947 partition plan. They were not interested in war and despite their propaganda and rhetoric, sought different secret opportunities to end the war with Israel, which were rejected by the latter with the goal of maximizing its land-grabs. [You can read more about this here].
For example, there were negotiations between Israel and Egypt in October 1948, where based on previous correspondences, Egypt was prepared to offer many concessions in exchange for peace, even offering to resettle the Palestinian refugees in the UN decreed “Arab” areas of Palestine. Four days after Israeli politician Eliyahu Sasson went to meet with Heikal, chairman of the Egyptian senate, Ben Gurion launched a new military operation. Naturally, this put an end to any negotiation and with it, any attempt at avoiding bloodshed.
From their side, the Syrians also attempted to end the war at the beginning of 1949, where prime minister al-Azm informed the US ambassador of their desire to stop the fighting. The only conditions they put forward was that Palestinians be afforded the right to self-determination, and the recognition of traditional and historic Syrian fishing rights in certain areas of lake Tiberius. In the same month, a Syrian mediator attempted to meet with Eliyahu Sasson’s assistant in Paris to directly discuss a peace treaty. He was instantly turned down because the Israelis believed that any negotiation with Syria meant discussing the division of water sources, which Israel wanted to control in their entirety.
Following a coup in Damascus, Husni al-Zaim seized power and offered Israel even more concessions. As a matter of fact, he suggested meeting Ben Gurion face to face to negotiate a full-fledged peace. Not only that, he offered absorbing and resettling 300,000 Palestinian refugees in Syria. The US was enthusiastic about this development, the Israelis however, were indifferent and refused the offer. Ben Gurion wanted to force an agreement through military might only. Israeli historian Avi Shlaim wrote that:
“During his brief tenure of power [Zaim] gave Israel every opportunity to bury the hatchet and lay the foundations for peaceful coexistence in the long term. If his overtures were spurned, if his constructive proposals were not put to the test, and if a historic opportunity was frittered away . . . the fault must be sought not with Zaim but on the Israeli side.”
This followed a long series of Zionist rejections to overtures by the native Palestinians. In 1928, for example, the Palestinian leadership voted to allow Zionist settlers equal representation in the future bodies of the state, despite them being a minority who had barely just arrived. The Zionist leadership rejected this, of course. Even after this, in 1947 the Palestinians suggested the formation of a unitary state for all those living between the river and the sea to replace the mandate to no avail. There were many attempts at co-existence, but this simply would not have benefited the Zionist leadership who never intended to come to Palestine to live as equals.
So, in a sense, the 1948 war was only inevitable because Zionist expansionism and aims made it such. From their first arrival in Palestine, the settlers were intent on conquering the entirety of Palestine and erecting an exclusivist ethnocratic regime, and never had the intention of living peacefully with anyone else. As Chairman of the Jewish National Fund, Menachem Usishkin, so bluntly put it:
“..the Arabs do not want us because we want to be the rulers. I will fight for this. I will make sure that we will be the landlords of this land . . . . because this country belongs to us not to them..”
The narrative of Israel emerging from an inevitable war of self-defense has little basis in reality, and is rather a reflection of ideological bias. It serves to justify what was done to the Palestinians and disguise the victimizers as the victims. It is therefore unsurprising that many other myths revolve around this talking point, such as the myth of Israel being a small and outnumbered David facing a mighty Arab Goliath [You can read more about this here]. As with most Israeli talking points, when properly inspected and situated in their historical context, a different image emerges. It falls on us to make this sure that this image is accurately conveyed.
- Said, Edward W. The war for Palestine: rewriting the history of 1948. Vol. 15. Cambridge University Press, 2001.
- Institut des études palestiniennes (Beyrouth). From haven to conquest: Readings in Zionism and the Palestine problem until 1948. Ed. Walid Khalidi. No. 2. Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1971.
- Shlaim, Avi. Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist movement, and the partition of Palestine. Clarendon Press, 1988.
- Shlaim, Avi. “The debate about 1948.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 27.3, 1995: 287-304.
- Pappe, Ilan. Britain and the Arab-Israeli conflict, 1948-51. Springer, 1988.
- Flapan, Simha. The birth of Israel: Myths and realities. London: Croom Helm, 1987.
- Hughes, Matthew. “The Conduct of Operations: Glubb Pasha, the Arab Legion, and the First Arab–Israeli War, 1948–49.” War in History 26.4, 2019: 539-562.