1948: The First Arab-Israeli War by Benny Morris. New Haven: Yale
University Press. 524 pp (including endnotes, bibliography and
index). Hardcover, $32.50; ₤19.99.
Paul Scham
Paul Scham is adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute,
Washington, D.C. and co-editor of Shared Histories: A
Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue.
Benny Morris has been the enfant terrible of Israeli historians
since the publication in 1989 of his book The Birth of the Arab
Refugee Problem, at the cutting-edge of the first wave of
revisionist or "new" historians (a term he coined) who have
employed newly available documents and a different sensibility to
question the received narrative of Israel's birth. Twenty years
later, he is certainly the doyen, at the least, of the historians
of "1948," which is not only the title of his new book but an
elegant means of finessing a name for what Jews call Israel's War
of Independence and Arabs refer to as the Nakba
(catastrophe).
The story of Israel's birth and the Palestinian dispersion is one
of the great sagas of the 20th century. The fact that its
consequences are not settled-to put it mildly-adds importance and
tension to the story.
Morris frames the conflict as an inevitable clash of two
nationalisms, Jewish and "Palestinian Arab." He is not interested
in alternative narratives or roads not followed. He deems the
uncompromising anti-Zionism of the Jerusalem mufti, Hajj Amin
al-Husseini, as the authentic and only relevant expression of
Palestinian political attitudes at that time; thus he considers
that if the Zionist project was to succeed, it had to prevail, not
compromise.
Morris's history is not about personalities. While he recognizes
individual choices matter-perhaps most of all those of David
Ben-Gurion-he focuses primarily on their effects. The internal
politics of the collective actors are discussed only insofar as
they affect the conflict itself. It is stark Greek tragedy. Morris
fully accepts, though he does not dwell on, the suffering of
Palestinians, but leaves no doubt that he is absolutely certain as
to who deserved to win, both morally and logistically.
In his clear and lucid prose he conveys the sweep of both the
political and military conflicts, though it is clearly the latter
that he loves to describe in-only occasionally-numbing detail.
Although he contends the Yishuv was tardy in preparing for what he
delineates as an inevitable and existential conflict, starting in
late 1947, it did develop an extensive and effective network of
cash and arms suppliers-the former primarily American Jews, the
latter traders of all nationalities in the huge amounts of military
surplus then available. In retrospect, the failure of Palestinian
society and of the Arab states to prepare for the war made their
defeat inevitable, touch and go as it seemed for a while at the
time.
Uninterested as he is in individual psychology, Morris nevertheless
stresses societal and military motivation as a key factor. He
juxtaposes the Jewish population's perception that it faced a
second holocaust-based both on the threats of Arab leaders and the
recent memory of the first-combined with a mobilized and energetic
society, against a traditional and stratified Palestinian
population, which identified with its nationalist leaders, but
whose organization and mobilization for war was never attempted,
let alone managed. Crucially, it had already been badly weakened by
the consequences of the revolt of 1936-39 when much of its
leadership, both traditional and ideological, had been killed or
had left the country, and intra-societal feuding had been
exacerbated.
Soon after November 29, 1947, when the UN passed the partition
resolution [Resolution 181], mandating but not supervising the
establishment of a Jewish and Palestinian state on the failed
British mandate, the Palestinians appeared to take the military
initiative. Until about March 1948, irregular, mostly local bands
("gangs" in Jewish parlance), plus volunteers from neighboring
countries and the semi-organized Arab Liberation Army (ALA)
attacked Jewish settlements and, especially, essential
transportation with some success but with little coordination or
planning. Morris provides a nuanced and multi-faceted explanation
of the factors underlying the shift that took place in late March
and April to a wide-ranging and aggressive campaign by the Haganah.
These included the completion of the reorganization of the Jewish
forces into an army; the increasingly desperate situation of the
100,000 Jews in Jerusalem; the recognition of the likelihood of
invasion by Palestine's neighbors when the Mandate would officially
end on May 15; the need to head off a possible American-supported
delay of partition and a bruited trusteeship plan for Palestine;
and the appearance of arms shipments, especially from
Czechoslovakia, though these would only turn into a flood after the
British blockade ended with the Mandate.
In this second stage of the "civil war," which lasted until May 15,
Israel implemented the famous - or notorious - Tochnit Dalet (Plan
D), which provided for establishing Jewish military control of
settlements, towns, and cities inhabited by Jews and clearing their
neighborhoods of potential security threats by Palestinians, which
in practice often led to their expulsion. Morris emphasizes that
the purpose of the plan was largely to prepare for the expected
invasion by the Arab states on that date. After a quick and bloody
conquest by the Haganah in Tiberias and again in Haifa, local Arab
leaders chose to evacuate their people. Though this had not been
demanded by the victorious Jewish forces, the benefits of Arabrein
cities and whole areas were immediately apparent to the Jewish
leadership.
Morris does not flinch from describing the expulsions and
occasional massacres by the Jewish forces which resulted in
approximately 250,000 Palestinians fleeing by May 15. His figure
for the total number of refugees by the end of the war was
approximately 700,000. He also makes clear, as have other Israeli
historians, that the allegations that Arab leaders had called for
the Palestinians to leave have no foundation; on the contrary most
Arab leaders quickly realized the mortal danger of evacuation and
did all they could to halt it, which was not much.
On May 14, the State of Israel was proclaimed; the next day, five
Arab states invaded. The first phase of the war was halted by a
UN-imposed truce on June 11. When that expired, the initiative
remained almost completely in Israel's hands, although the war
dragged on until early 1949.
Benny Morris is a meticulous historian who does not shrink from
documenting Israeli abuses. In his conclusion he boldly states:
"[T]he Jews committed far more atrocities than the Arabs and killed
far more civilians and POWs in deliberate acts of brutality in the
course of 1948," though he emphasizes this is probably due to the
fact that the Jews were far more successful in their military
actions.
But he makes clear in his conclusion-which is his only political
argumentation-that he is convinced Israel has nothing to apologize
for. He takes Arab and Muslim threats seriously, and argues that
Muslims are driven largely by a religious imperative. He believes
the Arabs started the war; having done so, they are ill-placed to
complain of Jewish responses. Moreover, he contends that there was
a net exchange of populations, given the approximately 700,000 Jews
who left or were driven out of Arab countries and came to Israel
between the 1940s and 1960s.
There is little question that this is now the best single book on
the 1948 war. Ironically, in his post-intifada, right-leaning
orientation, Morris has performed a great service for the Israeli
peace camp that had cast him out after his justifications of
massacres and expulsions in a famous Haaretz interview in 2004. His
lack of apologetics has made it possible for Israelis and Jews who
previously accepted the received history of no Jewish brutality to
start taking more seriously the claims of Palestinians that a Nakba
did occur. Perhaps a "shared history" based on now-available facts
and presented by Morris and others can help make a shared future
more possible. Eventually.
