Summary
Palestinian attorney (1897–1984) who spent most of his life in Jerusalem close to the British mandatory government and, in ‘Ibirat Filastin (The Lesson of Palestine), first sketched the two-stage division of the 1948 war that became prevalent among historians, in Manna’s account (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.51).
Details
- His book was released in Beirut after the 1948 war had ended, so he could expand on its results and stages up to the cease-fire and the armistice agreements (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.51).
- He shares the other early authors’ analysis of the factors responsible for the Nakba, but points to Britain as bearing the primary responsibility, while not neglecting the role of the Americans and the Russians in issuing the UN Partition Plan and in the 1948 tragedy (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.51).
- His two stages: from the announcement of the partition plan until the declaration of the state of Israel in mid-May — about six months when the principal burden of the war fell on the Palestinians; and from mid-May 1948 until early the following year, when the Arab states and their armies took over the fighting, were defeated, and signed armistice agreements one after another (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.51).