Summary
A military member of the Consultancy in The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, named among the figures, well grounded in the local Israeli ethos, who joined the top-ranking officers and the ‘Orientalists’ in the group that prepared the plans for the ethnic cleansing and supervised its execution.
Details
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Pappe’s naming of the Consultancy’s military men: the caucus “included first and foremost the top-ranking officers of the future Jewish State’s army, such as the legendary Yigael Yadin and Moshe Dayan. They were joined by figures unknown outside Israel but well grounded in the local ethos, such as Yigal Allon and Yitzhak Sadeh.” (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.27-28)
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Allon’s order for the February 1948 Sa’sa attack — to blow up twenty houses and kill as many villagers as possible — and his lesson from it are recorded on the Sa’sa page (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.105-107).
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On 10 July 1948 Ben-Gurion appointed Allon commander of Operation Dani, the attack on Lydd and Ramla, with Yitzhak Rabin as his second in command; Allon first ordered al-Lydd to be bombarded from the air, the first city to be attacked in this way (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.199).
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It was Allon who asked Ben-Gurion what was to be done with the population of Lydd and Ramla, to which Ben-Gurion replied with a hand-wave gesture that said “Drive them out!”, in Rabin’s recollection (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.202).
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In Manna’s al-Subayh account, Allon, head of the Palmach, calmed the demands for immediate retribution after the 16 March 1948 Keshet incident and urged postponing retaliation; the vengeance against the clan head’s family came on 8 June 1948 (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.213-214; the name is printed “Yigal Alon” on PDF p.214).
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In Makdisi, Allon as deputy prime minister proposed the Allon Plan in July 1967: permanent Israeli control of the Jordan Valley with limited autonomy for isolated Palestinian enclaves, producing “the Whole Land [of Israel] strategically, and a Jewish state demographically”; Makdisi treats the plan’s premises as the standing inspiration of Israeli policy, repackaged in the Oslo Accords (Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, PDF p.123-124, p.128-129).
Related pages
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Consultancy, Yitzhak Sadeh, Yigael Yadin