The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1947-51, by Ilan
Pappe.
London: I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., 1992, 324 pp.
This book provides an intelligent guide to the causes and events
leading up to the 1948 war between Jews and Arabs in Palestine, to
the war's after¬math in terms of Israeli government diplomacy
and the policy of the sur¬rounding Arab states and, overall,
the developments leading to the fate of the Palestinians up to
1951.
Indeed, a key point of Ilan Pappe's is that the "fate" of Palestine
and its peo¬ples was "determined" - in terms of the
international forces involved, United Nations committees, the
internal manipulations of the Arab states, the pre-¬state
potential of the Jewish Yishuv population, and so on - before the
1948 war ever began: " ... it now seems clear that the fate of the
war was decided by the politicians on both sides prior to the
actual confrontation on the battlefield" (p. x); "determined ...
long before even one shot had been fired" (p. 271).
As said, this book is an intelligent guide, written from the point
of view of a Middle East historian, certainly one of the best brief
histories of polit¬ical and diplomatic relations of those
involved in the 1948 war, and yet there is a ('new historian') flaw
in the study. The problem is not, strictly speaking, with the
theoretical or methodological approach, but that the major
postulate of the study is over-determined.
Israel's No-Lose Future
The material presented leads Pappe to his main argument here that
it is not relevant why Israel accepted the U.N. resolution for
partition (Pappe rejects Flapan's Machiavellian thesis in his book
The Birth of Israel, that Israel accepted partition" ... as
a tactical move intended to pave the way for further territorial
expansion through war whenever possible"). More relevant is whether
or not Israel faced the danger of annihilation at that time (pp.
45-46).
That the Jewish Yishuv (population) need not have feared
turns out to be undeniable, certainly as Pappe spells out the long
list of positive features of this society against Arab states and
Palestinian shortcomings and failures in the chapters that follow.
The question, however, would seem to be at what time prior to and
following the decision for partition was the Yishuv
lead¬ership secure in its evaluation of victory? Not at all
secure, I should think; neither before, nor in the beginning and
only barely in the middle of the war; they were secure only when
the events and circumstances were in place, secured by internal
force and external backing and guarantees.
As the chapters build up, the sense of a no-lose future for Israel
is under¬lined. The Haganah military units multiplied;
the Jews had a "master plan" (Plan Dalet); the Jews prepared
themselves for takeover; a provisional gov¬ernment was in
place before May 15. Meanwhile, Palestinian society was internally
divided, the Arab states appropriated the Palestinian cause for
their own ambitious ends and, in brief, "The Jewish structure
facilitated smooth transition from autonomy to statehood whereas
the Arab structure was hardly sufficient to provide the needs of an
autonomous community, let alone an independent state" (p.
67).
And, since prior to, and during the official war, the Palestinians
were never the main Arab fighting force, they consequently had
little to say in political matters (p. 73). Along with Israeli
victories, the Palestine tragedy took form: hundreds of thousands
fled, and/ or were expelled, to become refugees.
The Opposing Forces
Pappe joins the debate, and takes sides, on the "Arab Exodus:
Expulsion or Flight?" question, by emphasizing that Plan Dalet was
a key factor in that "exodus." This was not a plan for specific
expulsion, but for the "destruction of the other party to the
conflict" (p. 91), and, concretely, "If the upper class¬es
left voluntarily, it does seem that the lower strata of the
Palestinian society were driven out through the implementation of
Plan D ... " (p. 96). If Plan D is to be regarded as a master plan
leading to expulsion, Pappe also recognizes other factors: the
Palestinian elite abandoned its constituency; the British did not
fulfill their role of keeping law and order; the Deir Yassin
massacre.
Critical to Pappe's text - here in terms of the war's outcome from
its very beginning, as far as each and both sides were concerned -
is his estima¬tion of the opposing military forces. Thus,
Pappe contends that while offi¬cial Israeli historians write
of five invading Arab armies upon the declaration of Israeli
statehood in May, 1948, these armies consisted of no more than
23,500 men in addition to 12,000 irregulars (Palestinians); that
is, 35,500 reg¬ular and irregular Arab troops faced a similar
number of Jews, and when the hostilities ceased in January, 1949,
each side had recruited altogether 100,000 soldiers. In other
words, on the eve of the war, the balance of power, in favor of the
Jews, "was perfectly known to the Arab side; the Arab leaders had
hardly entertained any illusions about the outcome of the war" (p.
112).
The "outcome" is indubitable when we add the understanding King
Abdullah reached with the Jewish Agency: that he took upon himself
only limited objectives for his army, not to speak of the
"collusion" wherein the West Bank was recognized as Transjordanian,
while on his part Abdullah would not attempt to occupy part of the
Jewish state. Rightly, Pappe does retreat from the deterministic
hook by adding, "The lack of a written agree¬ment means of
course that we shall never know whether this 'promise' was
intentional or the result of circumstances" (p. 131). However, he
immedi¬ately returns to the bedrock of incontrovertible
foreknowledge: "The indis¬pensability of the Legion to a
successful Arab war effort was known to the Jewish side; so were
Abdullah's objectives. Even without a clear sense about the
Legion's plan for the war itself, the newly-born Jewish state thus
knew it would not be facing a formidable force ... " (italics
added) (p. 133). In brief, for Pappe, what is politically
manipulated is central; the rest, including bloody Arab-Jewish
clashes, "incidental" and ''belong rather to the microhistory of
the war" (p. 133).
Providing Only the Facts
The final six chapters mainly treat the efforts and failed efforts
that went into cease-fires, armistices, peace commissions and
conferences. These chapters are equally informative and, moreover,
in my understanding have the additional advantage of not pressing
for historical necessity. Abdullah kept his part of the tacit
understanding and, all in all "the Israelis had little difficulty
in confronting the rest of the Arab units" (pp.140-141).
I agree with Pappe when he writes, "The fighting was to end only
after the Israelis had decided that they had accomplished their
goal of occupy¬ing as much as possible of western Palestine
without jeopardizing their understanding with King Abdullah" (p.
134). However, this was policy in action when victory was in hand,
and not a decision reached "before the battles began."
The most important decisions taken, as I see them, followed the
dictates of Ben-Gurion. His supporters fell in line, more Arabs
were forced out of the soon-to-be-Israeli territory, 400 villages
were "erased from the face of the earth," and Israel took the
position that repatriation was an impossibility.
As far as putting the blame for the failure of the endeavors for
peace, Pappe is for trying to "provide only the facts." It is too
bad that he rarely analyzes the underlying propositions and
controversies for the policies that might have been, or for that
matter, for those adopted, given the polit¬ical complexity of
Jewish society in 1948-49. The "facts" (which are really "the
facts" after they take place) do not at all explain this
complexity. We are offered only one hint at the possibility in a
single sentence: "At the same time, however, we would also point to
the alternative courses of action which were open to all involved
but which were not followed." This is undeniable since, "One thing
we do know for certain - the course cho¬sen brought in its
wake more violence, close to a. million Palestinian refugees and no
peace for either side" (p. 136). However, and this is Pappe's
error, "the course chosen" (a political decision) and the
"determined fate of the war" (hindsight) are not one and the same.
But (for reasons which are not absolutely clear to this day), U.S.
pressure lifted and, with the armistice agreements in hand, Israel
reneged on its acceptance of repatriation.
The claim then, that the Palestinians had lost the war before it
even began is, I believe, over-determined. The least of the
problems in this approach is that, in terms of hindsight, which is
difficult to fault, this is the way it turned out. However, I do
not believe, as Pappe appears to, that the sole task of the
historian is to organize causal factors in such a manner so that
those who were "making history," even if they had been aware of the
fac¬tors, necessarily, or conceivably, should have had the end
results firmly in grasp. The simple point is that "causal" factors
become effectively causal only over time; they appear, develop, are
clarified in terms of a process. While the developments are taking
place, are "in process" as it were, their outcome is uncertain,
equivocal: new forces, external and internal pres¬sures and
struggles, and so on, are implicit, alternatives may arise. For
example, the United States could have supported repatriation,
either gen¬eral or partial, immediate or in stages, postponed
its financial aid, placed pressure on U.S. Jewry, and so on.
Other Possibilities
More important, the historian who insists on an overriding
end-result or necessity, loses sight of many other issues which may
be, indeed were, and still are in the instance before us, no less
world-shaking than losing the war. The Palestinians might well have
"lost" the war before it began, but they need not necessarily have
lost all their land, their property, become refugees. Dozens of
other possibilities were open at the time for dozens of other
alternative outcomes.
As an outcome of warfare, hundreds of thousands fled the country or
were expelled; their becoming refugees, their not being allowed to
return, was, on the other hand a matter of political decision by
the Israeli government (Ben-¬Gurion and his supporters). Not
at all a necessary outcome of warfare and of "losing a war," the
fates of those who fled or were expelled could have been, should
have been, different. Indeed, the entire internal and external
political matter of how such a fateful decision of non-return of
the Palestinian people, of land-takeover, and so on is missing from
the study. This is so, I believe, because such momentous
circumstances were not foreseeable, could not be entertained as
"necessarily" following "a lost war," and such an
interpreta¬tion, if presented, necessarily would have been
mechanical.
In spite of his thesis, Pappe's book is first rate. His claim on
the order of "fates being decided before the first shots were
fired" stems, I think, from his associating himself with the "new
historians" (p.20). Refusing to be "mystified" by rhetoric and as
masters of newly-opened files from this or another archive, they
insist that they are writing objective history. That is, they see
collusion and disingenuity as the motor forces of history, the
forces that determine fates, even before the processes that develop
out of the forces are set in motion ... A great deal of their
fact-finding represents first-rate investigative reporting. Why
they think that (all?) the "old historians" were unaware of many of
the important facts they raise is never made clear. They hasten to
show the hidden agendas that seal fates and believe that one or
another fact from an up-to-now closed file contains the answer to
it all. Thus, they fail to come to grips with intensive political,
social and personal strug¬gles grounded in a historical
political economy carried out by parties, groups, movements and
classes for the priority of their stands. Such complex matters are
not to be reduced to a determined end-product.