The internal refugees in the state of Israel are 1948 Palestinian
refugees who were uprooted from their villages in the course of the
war, but remained within the borders of Israel and became its
citizens. They have continuously demanded to be allowed to return
to their villages, only to be met by the refusal of successive
Israeli governments. For the most part, their lands have been given
over to Jewish settlements. While constituting a part of the
general refugee problem, this moral, political and practical issue
is one of the most concrete expressions of the structural conflict
between the state of Israel and its Arab citizens.
The Roots of the Problem and the Denial of Return
The roots of this phenomenon are to be found in the way in which
Arab residents were uprooted from areas conquered by Jewish forces
in the 1948 war. During the fighting, these people generally fled
in fear to neighboring villages, which had not yet been conquered,
or to large towns where they hoped to find refuge. Some fled more
than once. The town of Nazareth, which received special status from
the IDF because of its Christian holy places, served as a place of
refuge for thousands of people from neighboring and distant
villages, who remained there after their villages were occupied by
the IDF1.
The reaction of the IDF was to drive the refugees who remained
within the area of the State of Israel across the border to prevent
them returning to their villages. Thousands of refugees were thus
expelled from the region of Ramah and Beqi'in in Galilee and from
the town of Majdal (Ashkelon) in the south. Similarly in the Arab
triangle, in villages transferred to Israel under the Rhodes
agreement, various forms of pressure were exerted to prevent
refugees remaining in the State of Israel2.
Yet in spite of these forced expulsions, according to official
estimates some 25,000 internal refugees remained, mainly in
Galilee, constituting about one sixth of the total Arab
population3. Three reasons were given to justify Israel's refusal
to allow any return to the villages.
The first was the desire to expand the possibilities of Jewish
settlement by creating territorial continuity. In this context,
uprooting Arab residents was seen as a golden opportunity,
following years of restricted Jewish land acquisition. The
expectation of mass immigration of Jews from all over the world
strengthened the need for land. Existing settlements were also
demanding more agricultural land4. Thus in the course of the war5,
new immigrants and local Jewish groups were settled in abandoned
Arab villages. During that period, Kibbutz Megiddo was established
on the lands of Lajun, some of whose residents moved to Umm el
Fahm. Kibbutz Yasur in western Galilee was established on the lands
of al-Birwa whose residents moved to Majd el Kurum, Makr and
Jedeida, while Kibbutz Beit Ha'emek was built on the lands of
Kuwaykat in western Galilee, some of whose former residents found
refuge in Abu Sinan6. The settlement of new Jewish immigrants in
abandoned Arab villages continued throughout the whole of the
1950s.
The second reason was security. In those days the dominant belief
among the Israeli leadership was that the Arab citizens of Israel
were believed to be waiting for a second round of warfare and
preparing to help it. This assumption resulted in the evacuation of
Arab villages from border areas (Iqrit and Bir'im were the
best-known examples). Thus the Bedouin of the Zabizat tribe in
lower Galilee were evacuated following a claim that they were
transferring intelligence information from Jordan to Lebanon while
residents of destroyed villages in the triangle were transferred to
larger villages7. According to the same rationale it was decided
not to permit the resettlement of abandoned villages.
The third reason can be seen as vengefulness or, alternatively, as
the desire to avoid giving a prize to the party which is seen as
the aggressor. At the end of the 1948 war, which was perceived by
the Jews as a war forced on the peaceful Jewish community, there
were those who believed in a strong-arm policy toward the Arab
residents, and particularly toward villagers who participated
actively in the fighting. Allowing the internal refugees to return
to their villages would be seen as weakness and cause them to
disparage the state of Israel.
The Zionist leadership saw nothing morally impermissible in their
refusal to allow the internal refugees to return; permitting them
to remain in nearby villages was presented as a humanitarian
gesture. All this came in the context of the end of a war in which
some 6,000 Jews, one percent of the Jewish population, had been
killed. The refugees were to remain in the villages where they had
found refuge, with the state and UNWRA providing basic food and
housing, while their own lands were settled by Jews.
The Appropriation of Land: Legal Mechanisms
In 1948, the state authorities began to undertake legislative
measures designed to establish in law, the appropriation of lands
owned by Arab refugees, including internal refugees. Toward the end
of 1949 the formulation of a comprehensive law was drafted for
presentation to the Knesset - the Law of Absentee Property. The
newly established Authority for the Rehabilitation of the Refugees
worked to include the internal refugees in the law, so they could
also be considered absentees and have their lands transferred to
the state.
Thus in 1950, the Knesset accepted the Law of Absentee Property,
replacing emergency regulations on the subject. The definition of
an absentee included "every Israeli citizen who left his regular
abode in Israel (a) to a place outside Israel before 1948 or (b)
for a place in Israel which was at that time occupied by forces
which sought to prevent the establishment of the State of Israel or
fought against it after its establishment"8. Thus the internal
refugees who fled to villages in upper Galilee or to Nazareth
before these were conquered are defined as absentees though they
were in the state and were legal citizens. This anomalous situation
granted them (along with additional population groups) the title of
'present absentees' since in spite of their physical presence in
the country they are legally considered as absentees and their
property is taken from them and transferred to the Custodian of
Absentee Property9. The legislation denied the internal refugees
any possibility of winning legal assistance and made the transfer
of their assets to the state completely legal. Appeals to the
Supreme Court, based on claims that leaving their residence was
temporary, now became irrelevant.
The authorities also encouraged the absorption of the refugees into
the villages where they had sought refuge. They were given priority
in leasing abandoned lands in places where they were concentrated
like Makr, Jedeida and Sha'ab in western Galilee, and Wadi Hamam
and Aqraba in eastern Galilee. In these villages, houses were built
for the refugees but only on condition that they sign a document
renouncing their assets in their villages of origin10.
The Land Acquisition Law (LAL) which also confirmed compensation,
gave absolute and retroactive confirmation to the transfer of the
internal refugees' lands to state ownership. The law determined a
compensation mechanism for the internal refugees, in money or
alternative lands. From a legal point of view this was a sort of
watershed; from that time, on it was legal for all Arab lands to be
in the hands of the state, without any right of appeal. It was left
to persuade the refugees to accept the compensation money, to make
them sign a document renouncing any claim to their lands, and to
help them resettle in one of the populated villages.
Landless: Stages in State-Refugee Relations
The introduction of the LAL marked the start of a new phase for the
internal refugees. With the decision at the end of 1952 to transfer
the authority of UNWRA to the government of Israel for the refugees
within the state, most of them were now living in temporary
buildings in the outskirts of villages in Galilee and the Arab
triangle.
The forced transfer of Arab citizens now ceased, as did the
takeover of their land without any legal basis. In spite of the
reparation mechanism in the framework of the LAL, most of the
refugees upheld their demand to return to their villages, with only
a few agreeing to renounce the homes and lands in the villages they
had abandoned. From time to time groups of refugees entered into
negotiations with the Authority for Rehabilitating the Refugees,
only to retreat at the last moment11. For the refugees, this was a
sort of waiting period in which the prospect of returning to their
villages was still perceived as realistic. Only a few of them
started to build permanent homes. Toward the end of this period, a
number of internal refugee families also decided to emigrate
voluntarily, so they could live together rather than remain spread
out in the "villages of refuge".
The third period, from 1958 to 1967, marked the settlement of the
internal refugees in the villages where they were located. Their
tendency to accept permanent settlement at that particular time has
a threefold explanation: the refugees' recognition that the problem
would not be solved by a second round of war with Israel, following
Egypt's defeat in 1956; the improvement and updating of the state's
reparation mechanism, involving higher sums of compensation and
speeding up public building in the villages where they were living;
and the intensive use the state had made of their land. The new
phase which started after 1967, saw the subject almost entirely
disappear from the public agenda. This was mainly because the
personal problems of most of the refugees appeared to be solved,
both for those who accepted reparations and for those who managed
without state aid. Public attention was now directed to the
territories conquered in 1967, a development reflected in Knesset
debates. Until 1967 there was hardly a session of the Knesset
without a debate on the demand to return and to repeal the
discriminatory legislation. After 1967 the subject was hardly
mentioned12.
In recent years, the subject has reappeared on the agenda of the
Arab population of Israel. The Arab parties and Hadash demanded a
solution to the problem in their election platforms of 1996 and
1999. Refugees from tens of villages established local committees,
working under a national committee, to strengthen the identity of
refugees from the villages and to raise the demand for return.
Characteristic of this renewed concern was the decision to hold a
national ceremony marking fifty years of the Nakba in the abandoned
village of Ghabsiyya in western Galilee.
The State and the Uprooting of Refugee Identity
The activities of refugee committees are relatively new. Over and
above legislation aimed at appropriating the lands of the internal
refugees, the state also worked to destroy their identity, through
varied bureaucratic and legal means, and through the use of
force.
In order fully to comprehend this point it is necessary to
understand the two components of "refugee identity". The positive
one is being the son of a certain settlement which no longer
exists. This aspect of identity can be called "I am from there".
The other aspect of refugee identity is the negative side, the
self-concept, and other people's concept of the person as a
refugee, a foreigner who does not belong to the place: "I am not
from here".
Israel's main struggle was naturally directed against the positive
identity, which preserved the connection to the original village.
This included physical activity aimed directly at the refugees and
their lands, and indirect activity intended to influence both their
consciousness and the general public discourse. The direct activity
prevented the refugees from approaching their abandoned villages,
as well as providing reparations or alternative housing. The names
of the abandoned villages were deleted from maps; the internal
refugees were removed from the UNWRA figures; and the subject of
the abandoned villages and the refugee problem was excluded from
the school curriculum, including that used for Arab pupils.
The authorities first activity had been the total evacuation of the
abandoned villages (in most of them there remained between five and
ten percent of the original residents)13. Subsequently, IDF units
patrolled the abandoned villages to prevent any return14. In 1951
the sites of the abandoned villages had been declared closed
security areas, permitting legal measures to be taken against
anyone entering them15, an intermediary step toward turning them
into Jewish villages.
Even after the transfer of the lands to Jewish settlement, the
Israeli authorities laid down that "under no circumstances must
land be leased to Arabs formerly from that village, or originally
from there". Jews or Arabs receiving land in the abandoned villages
had to commit themselves not to employ refugees whose origins were
in that village16.
As a result of these measures, the generation born after the war
would be unable to develop a direct emotional connection to their
ancestral village. The destruction of the villages at a later stage
was to symbolize forever the impossibility of implementing the
refugees' yearning to return to their villages.
But the authorities felt that even this was not enough if the
"community of memory" remained intact. Here, the reparation
mechanism got to work. Many refugees still refused to sign away
their land assets, which was a condition for receiving reparations.
They perceived such an agreement as cutting themselves off from the
ideal of return, on a personal, community and national level, a
principle which united the refugees and preserved their identity.
Breaking it would lead to the destruction of the community.
The Israeli establishment worked to create splits in the refugee
consensus. This explains the decision taken in September 1954 by
the authorities to try and find individual refugees who would agree
to accept reparations. They thought this would break the opposition
of the refugee community to the proposed arrangement17, and they
were right18. The stream of those requesting reparations grew
steadily, and along with it, the disintegration of the refugee
identity.
In the mid-1980s, it looked as if the goal of uprooting the refugee
identity had succeeded. Concluding research published in 1986,
Majid al Haj wrote: "There is nothing distinguishing the refugees
from other Arabs in the general community. Unlike refugees in other
places, who established voluntary societies and other social
frameworks, the internal Arab refugees have no organizational
frameworks of any sort"19.
Similarly, Alexander Bligh could present the settlement of the
refugees in the state of Israel as a successful example of such a
project20. Al-Haj added, however, that half of his interviewees
reported a "feeling of being a refugee" although this had no
concrete expression, at least concerning the position taken by
these refugees toward Israeli society or the establishment21.
The Refugee Identity: Renewed Awakening and Opposition
This situation changed completely in the early 1990s. The refugee
identity was reawakened and became a focus of identification for
many. The speedy revival of the "refugee identity" shows that even
without social, institutional and organizational frameworks, this
identity was preserved not only by refugees themselves, but also
among their descendants. It can be assumed that this identity was
preserved in the first years through the struggle to return the
refugees to their villages, and later because of the sense of
alienation which the refugees felt in their new homes.
In this situation it is no wonder that the negative refugee
identity was preserved into the second generation. But the refugee
committees established in the 1990s are not satisfied only with the
negative refugee identity. Most of their activity is directed
toward the renewed construction of the positive identity. Committee
activists, along with some members of the second and third refugee
generation, are working to renew physical contact with the
abandoned villages through work camps and repair work.
The committees of the internal refugees are planning a census of
Israel's internal refugees. In addition to strengthening identity,
this will constitute the factual basis for planned legal and public
struggles. Another move aimed at reconstituting lost communities is
the rehabilitation of those who accepted reparations in the
past.
All in all, the attempts of the Israeli establishment to neutralize
refugee identity appear not to have succeeded, just as the supreme
goal for which it strove did not succeed - the creation of an
Arab-Israeli identity cut off from maternal Palestinian identity.
Perhaps from this one can see the limitations of external factors
in the process of the crystallization of identities.
1 Report of the activities of the military government in Nazareth
and region 17.7.1948 to 17.10.1948 Israel State Archives, (ISA)
Foreign Office file. 2564/11.
2 For further material on this subject, see the author's 'Present
absentees: Palestinian refugees in Israel since 1948' (Jerusalem,
the Center for Research on Arab society in Israel, 2000) 37-41, in
Hebrew.
3 This figure is only for urban and rural refugees and does not
include Bedouin in the Negev, forced to leave their places of
residence for areas determined by the IDF. The sources are a
document of the Ministry of Labor of 29.6.1952, ISA Ministry of
Labor file 6178/2924, and also a Jewish National Fund census for
1949-1950 dated 15.2.1950 from the Central Zionist Archives, JNF
file 5/18875.
4 Thus the Committee of western Galilee settlements demanded that
'all abandoned land north of the Acre-Safed road will be available
for dividing up between western Galilee Jewish settlements. It
claimed that plans for resettling refugees on these lands would
damage the development possibilities of their settlements. See
their letter to the Ministry of Agriculture, the JNF and the Jewish
Agency in IA file 581/2180 and the reply of the Ministry of
Agriculture, which did not wholly accept their position.
5 Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem,
Tel-Aviv, Am Oved, 1991; 28-30 (Hebrew).
6 See Hillel Cohen 'On one expulsion which was prevented' in Mitsad
Sheni, May 1999; 28-30, dealing with an initiative in January 1949
to expel the refugees of Kuwaykat after they removed the Israeli
flag from the gate of kibbutz Beit Ha'emek.
7 'The third sitting of the Transfer Committee, March 1949'. IA
Ministry of Minorities 1322/22. The evacuation of small villages
from the the Triangle continued for two years after the war, see
the meeting of the the Committee for Refugee Affairs 11.1.1950, IDF
Archives 721/2-843 and also the Communist newspaper Al Ittihad
10.2.1951.
8 The proposed law is found in the Knesset report 27.2. 150 to l.
3.1950; 921.
9 This term was first published in an article by Aharon Liskovsky
'Present absentees in Israel' in The Hamizrah He-Hadash no. 10,
1960; 187-190.
10 Report of the Authority for settling Arab refugees 1.8.50,
Central Zionist Archives (CZA) file KKL5/18875.
11 Letter by A. Chanochi to the members of the Authority 24.4.1950,
see above.
12 This does not mean that the subject was not dealt with at
various other levels.
13 The figure concerning the percentage of Arabs remaining in
western Galilee after the war was sent from the coordinator of
western Galilee in the Ministry of Agriculture Aharon Dror to the
Executive of the Ministry in September 1949, ISA Ministry of
Agriculture file 2174/546.
14 See 'The transfer of an Arab population' undated and with no
author ISA 279/59. The use of the Minorities' Brigade stems not
only from the need for Arabic speakers but also from the policy of
deepening the ethnic rifts within the Arab community.
15 Orders from the Military Governor in Galilee in 1951 declared
abandoned villages as closed military areas, IDF Archive
7/54-54.
16 Letter from the Advisor to the Prime Minister on Arab Affairs
Yehoshua Palmon to the Military Governors 28.2.50 IA 97, 2181/5821
and also a letter from the Military Governor to the director of the
Rural Department in the office of the Custodian of Enemy Property
13.7.50, 68/55-68
17 Summary of the first meeting of the Regional Galilee Committee,
2.9.54, IA unit 79, 2314/6.
18 Cohen; 86-89.
19 Majid al-Haj 'Adjustment patterns of the Arab Refugees in
Israel' International Migration Sept. 1986, pg. 657
20 Alexander Bligh, "Israel and the Refugee Problem: from exodus to
resettlement 1948-1952' Middle Eastern Studies, 34:1. January 1998;
123-147.
21 Al-Haj; 659.