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Tiberias

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Summary

Historic city on the Sea of Galilee, the first urban centre attacked in the April 1948 urbicide in Pappe’s account: 6,000 Jews and 5,000 Arabs had co-existed there for centuries before its Palestinian population was put to flight and the city fell on 18 April 1948.

Details

  • The offensive against the urban centres began with Tiberias, after news of Deir Yassin and of the massacre three days later, on 12 April, in nearby Khirbat Nasr al-Din; its people were also petrified by daily heavy bombardments from the hills overlooking the city (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.121).

  • British obstruction meant the Arab Liberation Army supplied only about thirty volunteers; the Haganah rolled barrel bombs down from the hills and used loudspeakers broadcasting terrifying noises to frighten the population — tactics Pappe compares to the supersonic flights over Beirut in 1983 and Gaza in 2005, “which human rights organisations have decried as criminal acts” (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.121).

  • Tiberias fell on 18 April 1948; the British first offered to protect the Palestinian residents, then urged them to negotiate a general evacuation with the Jewish forces, and King Abdullah sent thirty trucks to help move women and children, claiming he was convinced another Deir Yassin was about to occur (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.121-122).

  • Nasr al-Din, near Tiberias, was one of the three villages where men were executed to precipitate flight in the nearby town (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.140-141).

  • Sitta’s register lists Tiberias (Arab) at S 537: dated 17-04-48, Arab Population 48 of 6,160 on 15,729 dunums, defenders ALA; the Tiberias district subtotal is 28,872 people and 304,207 dunums (The Palestinian Nakba 1948 — The Register of Depopulated Localities in Palestine, PDF p.19).

  • In Manna, Jewish operations to occupy Tiberias and its district villages followed an attack on Nasir al-Din, southwest on the Nazareth-Tiberias road, killing dozens of defenders and civilians; survivors’ news heavily affected the city’s Arab morale; most of Tiberias’s six thousand Palestinians reached Syria and Lebanon, and only a few hundred were allowed west to seek refuge in Nazareth (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.61).

  • Houses in Tiberias and its villages were torn down at once so the Arabs would have nothing to return to, and return attempts were forcibly prevented — a policy that became official after Israel’s establishment in mid-May (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.62).

  • Refugees from Tiberias (and Bisan) in Nazareth were the clear exceptions to the permitted returns after Nazareth’s occupation, because Israel decided to turn both into Jewish cities denuded of their Arab population (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.73).

The Palestinian Nakba 1948 — The Register of Depopulated Localities in Palestine, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Deir Yassin, Haifa, Amir Abdullah

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