Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of "Transfer" in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948 [Paperback]

Nur Masalha (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0887282350 | ISBN-13: 978-0887282355 | Publication Date: January 1992

In this meticulous work, based almost entirely on Hebrew archival material, Nur Masalha examines the Zionist concept of "transfer," or the expulsion of the Palestinian population to neighboring Arab lands. Masalha establishes the extent to which "transfer" was embraced by the highest levels of Zionist leadership, including virtually all the Founding Fathers of the Israeli state.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Nur Masalha is a graduate of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He has taught at both, as well as at the University of Bristol in England. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Nur Masalha is an Israeli-Arab and a graduate of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. He has taught at London University and Bristol University and is a fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at Durham University in the United Kingdom. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 235 pages
• Publisher: Inst for Palestine Studies (January 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0887282350
• ISBN-13: 978-0887282355
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,013,305 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Unconvicing, November 6, 2003

By 

Alyssa A. Lappen (Earth) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of "Transfer" in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948 (Paperback)

You have to hand it to Nur Masalha for trying to prove that 80 years of Zionist discussions on transferring Arabs preceded and caused the 1948 war and Arab exodus. This effort is an abysmal failure.

For one thing, the supposed Zionist transfer "discussions" Masalha cites were never part of mainstream Zionist political discourse or policy. He claims modern Zionism founder Theodore Herzl seriously discussed transfer. But Herzl merely discussed plans to buy land thereby transferring it from Arab to Jewish owners by legal means of purchase under the Ottoman Land Law of 1858. Herzl saw this as an eminently moral course, one not followed by any previous settlement movement.

He planned for Zionists to pay fair market value--and that's what happened. In fact, Jewish purchasers often paid far more than market value. (Besides, the Ottoman government held more than 80 percent of the land in Israel; it wasn't owned by anyone.)

Another major difficulty is Masalha's avoidance of declared 1948 Arab plans to annihilate the Jewish people and Israel. After all, this caused Arab flight from Israel; Without that war, the 1948 "transfer"--actually a conflict-bred refugee crisis--would not have occurred. And the Arabs declared the war. Masalha's claim that Israel pre-planned this doesn't track with actual events. Indeed, 1 million Arabs hold Israeli citizenship, with all attendant civil rights.

Contrary to Masalha's contention, the "population transfer" idea was not a Jewish, Zionist or Israeli idea. It was born in the 1920s, not the 1890s, and the term was first used to describe a 1920s Turkish-Greek population exchange. In Israel, the concept was first floated in the 1937 by Britain's Peel Commission, not Zionists. They wanted to transfer an Arab minority from a tiny Jewish state as part of a partition plan to further subdivide Western Mandate Palestine, which the British had already unilaterally divided from Eastern Mandate Palestine in 1922. David Ben Gurion actually opposed the plan at first.

Masalha claims the Zionists were behind the Peel Commission transfer proposal. But he really doesn't prove this point. In fact, David Ben-Gurion welcomed Britain's transfer idea reluctantly--and only to persuade Zionists to accept a sliver Jewish state. But in doing so, Ben Gurion also warned that the Peel plan contained inherent dangers. In any case, the transfer idea fizzled when the Zionists accepted it reluctantly and the Arabs opposed the proposed partition.

Masalha is unconvincing not least because only Israel's tiny revisionist faction incorporated transfer into an official party platform. And revisionists--who didn't adopt the notion until well after the 1948 war--never exercised major influence over Israel's labor Zionist mainstream.

Masalha forgets that early Zionist leaders expected Israel to obtain a Jewish majority from massive immigration. They believed (rightly, as we now know) that Western Palestine could accommodate millions of Jews and Arabs, up from 600,000 or so inhabitants in the 1920s, most of them fairly recent immigrants.

And finally, despite his wish to blame Zionists for planning a population transfer, Masalha neglects transfers forced on Jewish residents and landowners in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s by Arab riots and massacres. The ancient Jewish community of Hebron, for example, was wiped out in 1929 with the massacre of 70 unarmed Jewish civilians. Egypt likewise illegally removed Jewish residents of Gaza with its illegal 1948 occupation there, as did Jordan when it illegally seized the Jordan River's west bank in 1948 and forced 100,000 Jewish Jerusalemites to leave their ancient homes, tipping East Jerusalem's population balance from two thirds Jewish to 100 percent Arab.

This book is completely unconvincing. Masalha steeps his text in theory, but he does not prove it with historical facts.

--Alyssa A. Lappen

10 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very True, February 4, 2007

By 

Mohamed Abdelkarim - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of "Transfer" in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948 (Paperback)

excellent book, it reviews a very critical era in modern history. I like the factual evidence and the sober analysis

51 of 84 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Damning !, November 27, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of "Transfer" in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948 (Paperback)

This book proves, without a doubt, that the zionist's thoughts slowly converged to the necessity of the forced expulsion of the palestinians.

The inflexion point came in 1937, i.e. 11 years before the expulsion.

Masalha extensively quotes major figures of zionism and the result is, well, damning. These guys knew very well they had to expel the palestinians and felt very good about this.