Summary
An Israeli historian of the “new historians” generation, author of Collusion Across the Jordan and The Iron Wall, whose work Makdisi draws on throughout Chapter 4 of Palestine Inside Out for the history of Zionist awareness of the Arab presence, the 1948 military balance, the Jordanian agreement, and Plan Dalet (Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, PDF p.283, p.299, p.311-312).
Details
- His Collusion Across the Jordan is listed among the academic histories that deconstructed the official myths of Israel’s creation; his The Iron Wall is noted as a notable exception to those books not being intended for a general audience (PDF p.283).
- The received view that the Zionist movement was generally unaware of the Arab Palestinian presence in Palestine, or tended conveniently to ignore it, is fatally flawed, Shlaim points out: it is not true “to say that the Zionists were unaware of the existence of an Arab population in Palestine or of the possibility that this population would be antagonistic to the Zionist enterprise” (PDF p.299).
- On the 1948 military balance: “Thus, at each stage of the war, the IDF [Israel Defense Forces, or army] significantly outnumbered all the Arab forces arrayed against it, and by the final stage of the war its superiority ratio was nearly two to one,” “The final outcome of the war was therefore not a miracle but a reflection of the underlying Arab-Israeli military balance.” (PDF p.311)
- From Shlaim and Benny Morris’s work, Makdisi records that Jordan’s King Abdullah had agreed with the Zionist leadership before the fighting that his Arab Legion would not enter the areas the Partition Plan proposed for the Jewish state, in return for Zionist acquiescence in his annexation of what became the West Bank (PDF p.311).
- On Plan Dalet: “The aim of Plan D was to secure all the areas allocated to the Jewish state under the UN partition resolution as well as Jewish settlements outside these areas and corridors leading to them, so as to provide a solid and continuous basis for Jewish sovereignty,” “By implementing Plan D in April and May, the Haganah thus directly and decisively contributed to the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem.” (PDF p.312)
Related pages
Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, Dalet Plan, Benny Morris, Transfer, Zionism