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

by Nur Masalha (Author) "The Zionist concept of "transfer"-a euphemism denoting the organized removal of the indigenous population of Palestine to neighboring countries-is a prickly and even explosive subject..." (more)
Key Phrases: transfer committee, compulsory transfer, transfer proposals, Jewish Agency Executive, Palestinian Arabs, Peel Commission (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"Almost entirely based on declassified Israeli archival material, Dr. Masalha's sober and carefully researched account shows conclusively that "transfer" --- a euphemism for expulsion --- was from the start an integral part of Zionism...impressive and timely book...quietly devastating research." -- Rt. Hon. Lord Gilmour, The Guardian, London

"…(An) impressive and timely book…quietly devastating research." -- Rt. Hon. Lord Gilmour, The Guardian (London)

(Dr. Masalha) shows using documents from the Israeli archives, that the flight of the Arab population from what became Israel in 1948 - which Israel's first president, Chiam Weizmann hailed as 'a miraculous clearing of the land' - was in fact 'less than a miracle than the culmination of over a half century of effort, plans and (in the end) brute force'. -- Edward Mortimer, Financial Times

Almost entirely based on declassified Israeli archival materials, Dr. Masalha's sober and carefully researched account shows conclusively that 'transfer' - a euphemism for expulsion - was from the start an integral part of Zionism....(an) impressive and timely book....quietly devastating research.. -- Rt. Hon. Lord Gilmore, The Guardian [London]

Dr. Masalha's book will excite controversy, not because his conclusions can be challenged - the sources leave no doubt about the facts - but because the book exposes in detail the notion of the Zionist design and the means by which it was achieved...an important and scrupulous piece of revisionist history. -- Michael Adams, Middle East International

Product Description
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.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 236 pages
• Publisher: Institute for Palestine Studies (May 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0887282423
• ISBN-13: 978-0887282423
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #924,549 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 9 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)

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

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Unconvincing, November 6, 2003

By	Alyssa A. Lappen (Earth) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

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 transfering 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

48 of 81 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.