Consultancy

Summary

The ad-hoc body around David Ben-Gurion which in The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Pappe holds responsible for plotting and designing the dispossession of the Palestinians, preparing the plans for the ethnic cleansing and supervising its execution until half of Palestine’s native population had been uprooted. It was not an official outfit, and no proper minutes exist for most of its meetings.

Details

• Pappe’s name for the group: “a small group of people I refer to in this book as the ‘Consultancy’, an ad-hoc cabal assembled solely for the purpose of plotting and designing the dispossession of the Palestinians”; in one rare document recording its meeting it is referred to as the Consultant Committee — Haveadah Hamyeazet — and in another document the eleven names of its members appear, all erased by the censor, which Pappe says he managed to reconstruct (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.27).

• Composition: first and foremost the top-ranking officers of the future Jewish state’s army, such as Yigael Yadin and Moshe Dayan, joined by Yigal Allon and Yitzhak Sadeh, co-mingled with the ‘Orientalists’, experts on the Arab world and the Palestinians because they themselves came from Arab countries or were scholars of Middle Eastern studies; regional commanders and intelligence officers carried out and supervised the work on the ground (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.27-29).

• It was in the Red House in Tel-Aviv on 10 March 1948 that the group — eleven men, veteran Zionist leaders together with young Jewish military officers — “put the final touches to a plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine”, after which military orders with lists of target villages and neighbourhoods were dispatched to the units on the ground (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.15).

• Why it existed: Ben-Gurion created the Consultancy precisely because the questions it dealt with — disregarding the partition map and using force to ensure Jewish majority and exclusivity — could not be aired in public; in October and November 1947 it became his most important reference group, the only forum in which he discussed those implications openly (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.63).

• The record: it is doubtful whether notes were taken at all apart from at one or two crucial meetings that were transcribed; Pappe reconstructs the meetings from Ben-Gurion’s diary summaries, archival correspondence, the private archive of Israel Galili (present at all the meetings), Yossef Weitz’s diary and Ben-Gurion’s letters, notably to Moshe Sharett (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.63).

• Venues and rhythm: meetings took place partly in Ben-Gurion’s house in Tel-Aviv and partly in the Red House, some on Wednesdays within the official weekly meeting of the High Command (the Matkal, whose formal parts are recorded in the IDF archives), with more private consultations at his house the following day; on 15 May 1948 the meetings moved to a new place east of Tel-Aviv that became the headquarters of the Israeli Army (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.63-64).

• Regular meetings began in February 1947, from the moment the British decided to leave Palestine, and became more frequent in October 1947; its members knew they were to decide the fate of the Palestinians in the UN-designated Jewish state and that their policies would also affect Palestinians in the areas accorded to the Arab state (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.64).

• First documented meeting: 18 June 1947, during the Wednesday High Command meeting, reported in Ben-Gurion’s diary and published memoirs, where he said the Jewish community would need to “defend not only our settlements, but the country as a whole and Our National Future” — ‘our national future’ being his code, used again on 3 December 1947, for the demographic balance in the country (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.64).

• In the Defence Committee on 7 October 1947, before Resolution 181 was adopted, Ben-Gurion told this inner circle that in light of the Arab refusal to cooperate with the UN, there “are no territorial boundaries for the future Jewish State” (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.63).

• As a precedent: the Consultancy’s combination of security figures and specialists on ‘Arab affairs’ was to serve as the core for most of the bodies advising future governments of Israel on state security, strategy and policy planning towards the Arab world and the Palestinians (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.64).

• On 10 December 1947 the Consultancy rejected divide-and-rule, approved a systematic campaign of intimidation to put the Palestinian community ‘at our mercy’, and began the shift in its own vocabulary from tagmul (retaliation) to yotzma (initiative) (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.81-83).

• At the Long Seminar (31 December 1947–2 January 1948) — the only meeting with a protocol, in the Hagana archives — ethnic cleansing was accepted by all present as necessary; Weitz left with a ‘transfer committee’, and Ben-Gurion authorised attacks ending, in Danin’s summary, with “occupation, destruction and expulsion”, under the new term ‘aggressive defense’ (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.90-94).

• In February 1948 Ben-Gurion enlarged the Consultancy to absorb those responsible for recruitment and arms purchase; its 19 February meeting, with all experts reporting the rural Palestinians showed no wish to fight, concluded to continue terrorising the rural areas and to destroy neighbourhoods rather than houses (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.101, p.106-107).

• The Consultancy first discussed a draft of Plan Dalet in the second half of February 1948 and finalised it at its regular Wednesday meeting on 10 March 1948 (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.108-110).

• The Consultancy met again on Wednesday 7 April 1948 and decided to destroy, and expel the inhabitants from, all the villages on the Tel-Aviv-Haifa road, the Jenin-Haifa road and the Jerusalem-Jaffa road (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.134).

• After the Jewish state was declared it met less regularly, the master plan needing no further coordination, and moved to the new Matkal headquarters on the hill overlooking the evicted village of Shaykh Muwannis (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.163); before the end of May it had begun to consider annexing the Golan Heights after the Syrian troops’ poor performance (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.160-161).

• By the end of May 1948 the Consultancy’s Orientalist section advised on the small Palestinian communities left in the mixed towns, whose solution was to move them into one particular neighbourhood in each town, deprive them of their freedom of movement and put them under a military regime; the definitive IDF infrastructure decided in May gave the military regime (Ha-Mimshal Ha-Tzvai) and the Shabak central places, and Pappe concludes “The Consultancy was no longer needed. The machinery of ethnic cleansing was working on its own, propelled by its own momentum.” (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.177)

• A meeting of the new, reduced Consultancy on 1 June 1948, without Ben-Gurion, decided to instruct the army to prevent villagers trying to return to their homes at all costs; Ben-Gurion demanded prior approval from his government and was given carte blanche on 16 June 1948 (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.180).

Related pages

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, David Ben-Gurion, Dalet Plan, Plan C, Red House, Ethnic Cleansing, Bitachon