Summary
David Ben-Gurion’s second-in-command, head of the Jewish Agency’s political department and the ‘foreign minister’ of the Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine, later one of Israel’s prime ministers, who in The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine himself associated Jewish settlement with the dispossession of the indigenous Palestinians, in a 1938 lecture on a land purchase accompanied by “transfer of population”.
Details
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Sharett — printed Shertock in a 1930s reference — was the recipient of Yitzhak Ben-Zvi’s letter proposing that the Village Files project also expose the ‘Hebraic origins’ of each village, as “the head of the political department of the Jewish Agency (and later one of Israel’s prime ministers)” (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.42).
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Pappe presents him as Ben-Gurion’s second-in-command and the Jewish community’s ‘foreign minister’, an example of the more cautious Zionist leaders who nonetheless associated settlement with dispossession. Lecturing to employees of the Zionist organisations in Jerusalem on 13 December 1938, Sharett reported the purchase of 2500 dunam in the Baysan Valley and added: “This purchase was accompanied, interestingly, by transfer of population [unsure of his audience’s familiarity with the term, he repeated it in English]. There is a tribe that resides west of the Jordan river and the purchase will include paying the tribe to move east of the river; by this [act] we will reduce the number of Arabs [in Palestine].” (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.48-49)
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He was abroad for most of the Consultancy period, and Ben-Gurion’s letters to colleagues — those to Sharett being the most notable — are among the sources from which Pappe reconstructs the Consultancy’s meetings (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.63).
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In Manna, before Operation Hiram, Foreign Minister Sharett expressed reservations about completing the occupation of the Galilee, saying it was better for Israel to forego occupying it because it was “full of Arabs,” including refugees from western and eastern Galilee (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.85).
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In Manna’s Chapter 4 (part 4), Sharett and the Mapam ministers, concerned about world public opinion, stood against Ben-Gurion’s firm stand on return and the remaining Palestinians (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.153-154).
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As foreign minister Sharett wrote to Shitrit that League members should participate in the institutions being set up only suitably and should not be set up as bosses over the Arab masses; local self-government should rely basically on circles that had cooperated from early on (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.136).
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Maki opposed Sharett’s proposal to accept the return of 100,000 Palestinian refugees, saying it resulted from American pressure (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.144-145).
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In Manna’s Chapter 4 remainder (part 5), Sharett was mainly the opponent, among the ministers, of the December 1949 talk — approved by Ben-Gurion and most ministers — of expelling the inhabitants of Tarshiha, al-Jish, Hurfaysh, Fassuta and Mi’lya; the final outcome was that the villages survived (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.178).
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Sharett objected to Ben-Gurion over the 18 June 1949 operation in Nazareth’s eastern quarter, expressed fear of the repercussions of the events on the image of Israel in the world, and asked the prime minister and defence minister to conduct an investigation into what occurred and into the soldiers’ harsh treatment of the population, with no discrimination between common people and notables (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.180).
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As foreign minister, Sharett was the recipient of Moshe (son of Eliyahu) Sasson’s letter announcing a plan for the absorption of Palestinians in post-colonial Libya under King Idris, a plan Yehoshua Palmon also supported; and the foreign minister, with the prime minister, gave approval and blessings to Yosef Weitz’s Operation Yohanan plan to move the inhabitants of Jish to Argentina, which failed (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.182).
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As prime minister in 1954, Sharett intervened directly in the ‘Awda al-‘Ashhab case when Maki brought the family to the Knesset for a sit-in: he called Police Minister Shitrit and asked him to resolve the family-reunification issue immediately, and it was settled quickly (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.207).
Related pages
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, David Ben-Gurion, Transfer, Village Files, Consultancy