The Emigration of the Arabs of Palestine in the Period 1/12/1947-1/6/1948

Summary

The Intelligence Service (Arab Section) report of June 30, 1948, in the English translation published by the Akevot Institute, counts 391,000 Arabs displaced across Eretz Yisrael by June 1, 1948 — 239,000 of them from the area of the State of Israel, where approximately 180 of the 219 Arab villages stood empty and only 5,000 Arabs remained in Haifa, the one city retaining an Arab population — and attributes the movement decisively to Jewish military action: at least 55% of the overall migration was motivated by “our actions and their impact”, the Dissidents added about 15% direct impact, and “some 70% of the residents left their communities and migrated as a result of these actions”, while orders and directives by Arab institutions and gangs account for some 5% of villages, Whispering operations for no more than 2% of the total national migration, ultimatums for 2% of evacuated locales, and a “crisis of confidence” in Arab strength, expressed as general fear, for 10% of villages (The Emigration of the Arabs of Palestine in the Period 1/12/1947-1/6/1948, PDF p.2, 5-6). Its annex charts every evacuated village by district with its date, cause and trajectory, including villages recorded as expelled, destroyed, or emptied on Haganah orders.

What the file is

• A 29-page PDF: the English translation by the Akevot Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research of a report headed [Intelligence Service (Arab Section)], dated June 30, 1948, and titled inside Migration of Eretz Yisrael Arabs between December 1, 1947 and June 1, 1948 (PDF p.1). The page title used here is the form under which the document is delivered and cited in the delivery queue. The original record’s source is given on PDF p.1 as the Hashomer Hatza’ir (Yad Yaari) Archive, file 95-35.27(3). Downloaded from https://www.akevot.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/1948ISReport-Eng.pdf (access basis: NGO). The PDF’s own metadata, created July 1, 2019, gives its title as the inside title and its author as the Akevot Institute translation.
• Structure (PDF p.1): a general introduction; basic figures; national phases; causes; trajectories and absorption issues; and annexes. Annex 1, the regional reviews analyzing migration in each area, is marked “[Missing from document]” in the contents and is absent. The village charts, listed in the contents as Annex 2, are printed from PDF p.12 under the heading “Annex No. 1” — the annex numbering differs between the contents and the body, as printed.
• The report speaks in the first person of the Jewish forces it assesses: its causes list speaks of “our hostile actions”, “our actions”, “our whispering operations” and villages “occupied by our forces”, and it distinguishes those actions from the actions of “the Dissidents [Irgun, Lehi]” (PDF p.4-6, brackets as printed in the translation).
• Text quality: the supplied text copy (from the memex vault, about 9,472 words) is clean prose for PDF p.1-11. The annex tables on PDF p.12-29 extract with their columns interleaved and some cells split or grouped; the rows were reassembled in their printed column order (date, village, full/partial, cause, trajectory/comments) and checked against the original, including the south district’s population and evacuation tables (PDF p.24-26) and the Tel-Hai table (PDF p.13-14). A few cells are illegible or bracketed in the translation itself, among them Kabri’s trajectory “[illegible], Lebanon, north” (PDF p.20) and “Reidis [Fureidis?]” (PDF p.20). The report’s own stated margin of error for its figures is ten to fifteen percent, and greater for the area outside the State of Israel (PDF p.1).

Section by section

• General introduction (PDF p.1): the overview evaluates the intensity of the migration, its development phases, the factors that impacted population movement directly, and the main trajectories. Eretz Yisrael’s statistical figures are “in themselves, deficient”; the figures given are “close to the truth” with a margin of error of ten to fifteen percent, greater outside the State of Israel. The review summarizes the situation up to June 1, 1948, including a later occurrence in one case only, the evacuation of Jenin.
• Basic figures (PDF p.1-2): at the UN declaration [resolution] on the division of Eretz Yisrael, the borders of the Hebrew state held 219 Arab villages and 4 cities with Arab populations (Haifa, Tiberias, Safed, Beit Shean), a rural population of 190,000, an urban population of 92,000 and a Negev Bedouin population of 60,000 (estimate), a printed total of 342,000. By June 1, 1948 (Jenin and the south to June 14), approximately 180 villages were empty, 3 cities were entirely empty and Haifa held only 5,000 residents; 152,000 rural and 87,000 urban Arabs had migrated, the Negev Bedouin “did not migrate at all from the country”, and the total who left the State of Israel was 239,000 — 82% of rural locales, 80% of the rural population, 94% of the urban population and 0% of the Bedouin. In the Arab state and Jerusalem, at least 70 villages were evacuated, Jenin was completely evacuated, 4,000 persons were left in Acre and 4,600 in Jaffa, Lod and Ramla were partly evacuated, and 122,000 migrated from the Arab state plus 30,000 from Jerusalem, 152,000 in all. Remaining in the State of Israel: 5,000 urban dwellers, 38,000 villagers and 60,000 Bedouin, a printed total of 103,000, in 39 inhabited villages and one city. For Eretz Yisrael as a whole, “The number of displaced Arabs is 391,000”.
• Phases in the Arab migration (PDF p.3-4): four phases — early December to late February (movement only beginning, extremely small, some Central Region movement in February); March (a slight reduction on most fronts, increases on the Jaffa front and around the Sea of Galilee); April (moderate increases almost everywhere, the evacuations of Tiberias and Haifa, a major Central Region peak); and May, “the principal and decisive phase”, marked by a “migration psychosis” and a “crisis of confidence with respect to Arab strength”, major increases in the Tel-Hai, Gilboa, Jaffa and Western Galilee districts, and the start of Negev village evacuation. The conclusion is that the mass migration took place in April-May and that May was its climax, “or, more precisely, the Arab flight”.
• Causes: general (PDF p.4): the migration was not financially motivated — the Arab economy was not harmed so as to break the population’s ability to support itself, and finance moved only the wealthy in the very initial phases — and was not the result of “purely” political factors, which “had no effect whatsoever on the migration movement” beyond minute urban strata. The eleven factors, in the report’s order of importance: direct Jewish hostile actions; the impact of those actions on neighbouring communities, particularly the fall of large neighbouring communities; actions of the Dissidents [Irgun, Lehi]; orders and directives by Arab institutions and gangs; Jewish Whispering operations [psychological warfare]; evacuation ultimatums; fear of Jewish retaliation upon a major Arab attack; the appearance of gangs and foreign fighters near a village; fear of an Arab invasion and its consequences; villages isolated within purely Jewish areas; and various local factors and general fear.
• Causes in detail (PDF p.5-6): hostilities were “the main factor”; each district’s migration wave followed the intensification of “our actions” there, May’s wide-scale operations produced the maximum evacuations, and the British departure “freed our hands to take action”. Surprise, long shelling with extremely loud blasts and loudspeakers in Arabic “(mostly Haifa!)” were effective psychological factors; an attack’s effect on neighbouring communities was no lesser than on its target, and the fall of Tiberias, Safed, Samakh, Jaffa, Haifa and Acre produced large waves — “If the mighty have fallen….”. The report concludes “at least 55% of the overall migration movement was motivated by our actions and their impact”. The Dissidents’ special-impact actions were Deir Yassin, the kidnapping of five dignitaries from Sheikh Muwannis and actions in the south; Deir Yassin “can be defined as a decisive catalyst” of panic flight, and after Sheikh Muwannis Arabs learned a deal with the Haganah did not protect them from “other Jews” over whom the Haganah had no control; the Dissidents’ impact on Jaffa city and its rural area was “decisive and critical” and their national direct impact about 15%. Together, “Jewish military action” (Haganah and Dissidents) accounts for some 70% of residents leaving. Arab orders and directives — by the gangs, the Arab Higher Committee or the Transjordan government, for strategic reasons — mainly affected the Gilboa (threats to the Zu’biya), Sea of Galilee (Circassian villages), Tel-Hai (border villages) and Jerusalem areas (Legion base orders in northern Jerusalem, the Higher Committee’s order to Esawiyah) and amount to some 5% of villages. Whispering operations, run in an organized fashion in Tel-Hai (18% of its villages; 6% in the centre, 4% in Gilboa) as “friendly advice”, drove no more than 2% of the total national migration. Ultimatums were “more of a final push than the decisive factor” at 2% of evacuated locales; fear of reprisals, after village-linked attacks on Jews such as the “Ehud” convoy, Mishmar HaEmek and the attack on Lehavot, accounts for 1%; the remaining listed factors together for no more than 1%. General fear, the primary manifestation of the “crisis of confidence”, accounts for 10% of villages and ranks third after “our actions” and the Dissidents; local factors (failed negotiations, status-quo and non-aggression agreements, restricted-settlement plans) account for 8%-9% of villages.
• General comments (PDF p.7): an “evacuation psychosis” spread “like an infectious disease” — in Acre the mass arrival of Haifa refugees who instilled it had a decisive impact; typhus panic, more than the disease, catalysed evacuation where it appeared; extremely loud explosives and loudspeakers are highlighted; where a serious Arab fighting force was present only a direct, serious action led to evacuation; and the Arab Higher Committee’s early counter-flight measures — restrictions, penalties, threats, press and radio propaganda, enlisting neighbouring countries, above all against the flight of young men of conscription age — failed entirely and “simply led to corruption, and permits were issued in return for bribes”, before the mechanism collapsed in the mass flight.
• Trajectories (PDF p.7-8): origin largely determined destination — Haifa’s people, mostly originating from Lebanon and Syria, went there; the wealthy of the cities emigrated abroad. Urban dwellers reached a “final destination” directly; villagers moved through multiple stops governed by family origin and security, so first-phase destinations such as Beit Shean became second-phase points of escape, as in the printed chain of Beit Susin’s residents through al-Mughar, Yavneh and Ashdod to Gaza. Return movement to villages evacuated without a permanently stationed unit “forced us to engage, on more than one occasion, in expelling residents of a certain village”. There were no organized “national centers” of absorption; Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Transjordan abroad, and the Arab Triangle, the Ramallah-Birzeit area and the southern coastal plain inside Eretz Yisrael, were the main centres, and how many went abroad against how many stayed inside is stated to be unanswerable, with Syria and Lebanon receiving most of those who went abroad.
• Absorption centres by district (PDF p.9-10): the ordered lists for the thirteen districts — Tel-Hai; Sea of Galilee; Yizrael; Gilboa; Haifa city; Acre city; Haifa-Western Galilee; Central Region; Jaffa city; Jaffa villages; the south; the Negev; Jerusalem — are recorded in full in the reading notes.
• Absorption issues (PDF p.10-11): most migrants lacked means and many left without possessions, so absorption became a serious and growing burden, expressed in Arab countries’ calls for refugees to return and pressure on conscription-age men to return to the front. The report quotes, as printed, “Azzam Faha” declaring up to 250,000 Eretz Yisrael refugees in foreign countries, “(the number may be a slight exaggeration, but it is close to reality)”; Transjordan’s Radio Jerusalem broadcast “educational lectures” urging return to help “the war effort” on “definitive proof” that returnees were not risking their lives “when the Arabs are on the brink of certain victory”; King Abdullah’s announcements are called characteristic. The migrant did not become a fighter — “His sole focus now is collecting handout money” — because of the assessment of Jewish strength and the crisis of confidence, and because the war left no room for “volunteers” as the “Liberation Army” fell apart. The refugee problem’s effects on Arab societies and economies “will grow worse” without serious, comprehensive and organized measures.
• Annex: evacuated villages by district (PDF p.12-29): for each district a normal-times population list and a dated evacuation table (date, village, full/partial, cause, trajectory/comments). Tel-Hai (PDF p.12-15) is the only district given printed totals — 23,790 residents, 20,620 migrated, 3,170 remained — and its rows run from the January reprisal evacuations of Mughr al-Kheit and Mansurat al-Kheit through Ein Zaitun and Biriyya, both evacuated on 2.5, before the fall of Safed, with the cause “Destruction of village by us” and the comment “Many killed”, and the fall of Safed on 10.5, whose impact empties most of the district’s remaining villages, to the whispering-operation evacuations of 19-28.5. The Sea of Galilee table (PDF p.15-16) records Transjordan-government orders on five rows in March-April — Adamiyya on 15.3 and Sirin, ‘Ulam, Hadatha and Ma’dhar on 6.4 — and the Tiberias effect after 18.4. The Gilboa table (PDF p.17-18) turns on the fall of Beit Shean and the occupation of Kawkab al-Hawa on 16.5, and on the 20.5 rows for Dahi, Nein, Tamra, Kafr Misr, Tira Harb, Taiyiba and Na’ura, who evacuate upon receiving threatening letters from the gangs and with the arrival of foreigners to the area, fearing their villages would be seized by foreigners, to Nazareth; the 20.5 Sulam row is separate, calling its people “Members of the Zu’biya. protégé Arabs” and giving Nazareth as its trajectory, while the main text (PDF p.5-6) speaks of threats to the Zu’biya in the Gilboa area under Arab orders and directives. The Yizreel table (PDF p.18-19), largely without printed dates, records the Mishmar HaEmek and Ramat Yohanan effects and Lid al-‘Awadin, whose people “Tried to return and expelled”. The Haifa and Western Galilee table (PDF p.19-20) runs from the January refinery-incident evacuations at Balad a-Sheikh and Hawasa through the Haifa occupation of 22.4 and its effect on Acre, where a 6.5 row cites “Harassment, Typhus plague”. The Central Region and Jaffa table (PDF p.21-24) records, among many rows, explicit Haganah evacuation orders for Khirbat ‘Azzun (3.4, “at the demand of the Haganah”), Arab al-Fuqara, Arab a-Nufei’at and Bamariya (10.4, “Received order to evacuate from Haganah”), Sarkas (15.4) and Miska (15.4, “On orders of the Haganah”), the Dissidents-driven flight of Sheikh Muwannis (30.3), and Tantura (21.5, occupied, “Everyone held captive in their locale”). The south and Negev table (PDF p.24-26) records ultimatums at Najd and Sumsum (12.5), and rows whose cause is printed as expulsion: Arab Rubin (1.6.58 [sic], “Expelled as a result of our action”), Qubeiba and Zarnuga (27.5.48, “expulsion”, “Occupation and expulsion”) and Yibna (4.6.48). The Jerusalem table (PDF p.27-29) runs from Lifta in December-January through Dayr Yasin (9.4, Dissidents’ action, “Most were killed”) and its effect on Malliha and Dayr Abu Tor, Esawiyah’s Arab Higher Committee order (30.3), the Legion base orders of 13.5 for Judayra, Bayt Hanina, Bayt Nabala, al-Jib, Rafat and Shu’fat, to the last rows of 29-30.5.

Key passages

• “The number of displaced Arabs is 391,000.” (PDF p.2)
• “Without a doubt, hostilities were the main factor in the population movement.” (PDF p.5)
• “at least 55% of the overall migration movement was motivated by our actions and their impact” (PDF p.5)
• “The Deir Yassin action had a particular impact on the Arab psyche.” (PDF p.5)
• “these ultimatums were more of a final push than the decisive factor” (PDF p.6)
• “Compared to other factors, this element did not have decisive weight, and its impact amounts to some 5% of all villages having been evacuated for this reason.” (PDF p.6)
• “This type of action drove no more than 2% of the total national migration.” (PDF p.6, of whispering operations)
• “The Arab fighter has not turned into a fighter. His sole focus now is collecting handout money.” (PDF p.11)

Evidence the work relies on

• The report’s own statistical base, presented without a cited external source: district population figures for villages and cities “during normal times” and dated evacuation records for each village, printed in the annex tables (PDF p.12-29). The introduction states that Eretz Yisrael’s statistics are deficient and assigns its own figures a ten to fifteen percent margin of error (PDF p.1).
• The annex’s village-by-village records themselves: dates, full or partial evacuation, causes stated in the forces’ own terms (“our action”, “our reprisal”, “our whispering operation”, “our ultimatum”, “our notice to clear out”, orders of the Haganah, occupation, expulsion), trajectories and comments, including returns and re-evacuations (PDF p.13-29).
• The missing Annex 1 regional reviews, referred to throughout the main text for localized factors, breakdowns by area and the list of local factors by locale (PDF p.2, 4, 6); they are not in the document, so the main text’s district-level claims rest on material the file does not contain.
• Statements attributed inside the report: “Azzam Faha” on up to 250,000 refugees abroad (PDF p.10, name as printed); Transjordan radio (Radio Jerusalem) “educational lectures” and King Abdullah’s announcements on refugee return (PDF p.10); the Arab Higher Committee’s counter-flight measures (PDF p.7). No document, date or outlet beyond these namings is given for any of them.
• The fall-of-centres sequence the report itself treats as evidence for the neighbour effect: Tiberias, Safed, Samakh, Jaffa, Haifa and Acre (PDF p.5).

Analysis

• Method: an internal intelligence overview built from district returns: aggregate counts by area, a four-phase chronology, a ranked causal scheme with percentage weights, and a village-level annex from which the aggregates are drawn. Its percentages shift base between statements — shares of the overall migration movement, of residents, of villages and of evacuated locales are used in turn (PDF p.5-6) — so the weights cannot be added across factors, and the 70% figure (computed from the 55% and 15% figures) combines two differently-worded quantities (overall movement; total intensity); the text does not print that sum.
• Perspective and limits: the report is written from inside one party to the fighting — “our actions”, “our forces”, “the Dissidents” as a separate Jewish actor over whom the Haganah “had no control” — and it assesses the migration as an operational phenomenon: causes are ranked by their effect on movement, trajectories by their absorption consequences, and the refugees’ unwillingness to fight is treated as an intelligence finding. It is contemporaneous (June 30, 1948) and covers only December 1, 1947 to June 1, 1948 (Jenin and the south to June 14), so its totals are a mid-war snapshot, not a final count of 1948 displacement; its own margin of error is ten to fifteen percent. Annex 1, on which its district detail depends, is missing from the document. Nothing in the file names an individual author; the bracketed attribution is to the Intelligence Service (Arab Section).
• Support: the causal ranking is supported inside the file by the annex, whose rows independently record the same causes at village level — direct action, neighbour effect, Dissident actions, Arab orders, whispering operations, ultimatums, Haganah orders and expulsions — with dates that match the phase chronology (a May peak, the Safed and Beit Shean cascades). The headline totals are internally consistent as printed: 190,000 + 92,000 + 60,000 = 342,000; 152,000 + 87,000 = 239,000; 122,000 + 30,000 = 152,000; 239,000 + 152,000 = 391,000; 239,000 + 103,000 = 342,000; and the Tel-Hai district total, 20,620 + 3,170 = 23,790 (all computed from the figures as printed, PDF p.1-2, 12).

People, organizations, places and events

Intelligence Service (Arab Section), Akevot Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research, Hashomer Hatza’ir, Haganah, Irgun, Stern Group, Arab Higher Committee, Arab Liberation Army, Amir Abdullah, Bishop Hakim, Haifa, Tiberias, Safed, Beit Shean, Samakh, Jaffa, Acre, Jenin, Lod, Ramla, Nazareth, Deir Yassin, Sheikh Muwannis, Ein Zaitun, UN General Assembly Resolution 181

Concepts

Nakba, Ethnic Cleansing, Whispering operations, Crisis of confidence, Partition

How it relates to other sources

• With The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine: the report is a primary document of the kind Pappe’s account of 1948 rests on, and it both supports and bounds his frame. Its causal scheme assigns the decisive weight — some 70% of residents leaving — to Jewish military action by the Haganah and the Dissidents, records Haganah evacuation orders and expulsions at village level, and treats Deir Yassin as a decisive catalyst; it does not describe a master plan, and it records Arab orders, fear, local factors and a crisis of confidence as real if smaller causes, with percentages Pappe’s narrative does not reproduce. Its June 1 total of 391,000 displaced is a mid-war figure and is not comparable as a final total with the roughly 750,000 in later accounts on the Nakba page.

• With The Palestinian Nakba 1948 — The Register of Depopulated Localities in Palestine and Nakba and Survival: agreement in kind, difference in standpoint. Sitta’s register lists depopulated localities with dates, causes and populations compiled retrospectively; the report gives the same class of data — village populations “during normal times”, dated evacuations, causes — compiled contemporaneously by the forces carrying out many of the actions, and its normal-times populations can be checked village by village against the register’s 1948 populations where the two overlap. Manna’s village histories record returns and re-evacuations from the villagers’ side; the report records the same phenomenon from the other side, as return movement that “forced us” to expel residents again.

• With Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace: the report is an earlier, internal instance of an Israeli account of why the Arabs left, and it differs sharply from the public claim that Arab leaders ordered a general evacuation: here Arab orders and directives are one ranked factor among eleven, weighted at some 5% of villages, localized to named areas, and set below Jewish military action, its neighbour effect and the Dissidents’ actions; the Arab Higher Committee is shown trying and failing to stop the flight, not ordering it.

• What is new: the wiki’s first contemporaneous Israeli intelligence assessment of the 1948 exodus, and its first source to quantify the causes from inside the forces involved — including the 55% / 15% / 70% scheme, the 2% weight for whispering operations despite their district-level prominence, and a village annex that names Haganah evacuation orders and expulsions in the forces’ own words.

• With Silencing: DSDE’s Concealment of Documents in Archives: the Akevot report is the account of this document’s archival suppression and recovery — Morris’s 1986 publication from Aharon Cohen’s copy drew the Chief State Archivist’s pressure and the collection’s closure, a DSDE team ordered the document kept in the vault on June 20, 2004, and Akevot found the identical copy in Yosef Vashitz’ collection at Yad Ya’ari, had it cleared by the Military Censor and posted it with the report (PDF p.1, 6-10 of that report).

Open questions

• The percentages use shifting bases: 55% of “the overall migration movement” (our actions), about 15% “direct impact on the total intensity of the migration” (the Dissidents), some 70% of “the residents” (the two combined), 5% of “all villages” (Arab orders), 2% of “the total national migration” (whispering operations) against 18% / 6% / 4% of villages in three districts, 2% and 1% of “evacuated village locales” (ultimatums; fear of reprisals), no more than 1% for three further factors together, 10% of “all villages” (general fear) and 8%-9% of “the evacuated villages” (local factors). The report does not state a common base, and the figures are held as printed, not summed.
• Bureir’s normal-times population is printed as 400 in one column (PDF p.24) and as 4,000 in the continuation column (PDF p.25); both stand as printed in the original and are not reconciled in the document.
• The south table dates Arab Rubin’s expulsion “1.6.58 [sic]” (PDF p.25), in a table otherwise dated 1948; the year stands as printed, marked [sic] in the translation.
• The contents list the regional reviews as Annex 1, marked “[Missing from document]”, and the village charts as Annex 2, but the charts are headed “Annex No. 1” where they begin (PDF p.12); the numbering conflict stands as printed.
• “Azzam Faha” (PDF p.10) is the name as printed for the speaker of the 250,000-refugees declaration; no fuller identification is given in the document, and the name is not corrected here.
• The report spells the whole-country total’s subject “Eretz Yisarel Arabs” in one sentence (PDF p.2) and “Eretz Yisrael” elsewhere; the spelling stands as printed.
• Several annex cells are grouped or incomplete as printed: Muharraqa’s evacuation is dated 25.2 in a May sequence (PDF p.25); most Yizreel rows carry no date (PDF p.18-19); some population entries (Hamra, Arab al-Heib, Sirin, Ard al-Saris and several tribal entries) carry no figure in the text copy or the original’s extraction. These stand as printed; the missing Annex 1 might have supplied some of them, and it is not in the document.
• The trajectory/comment cell of Khirbat ‘Azzun’s 21.2 row in the Central Region annex is printed in full as “To the village of ‘Azzun, Sheikh Muwannis, first village evacuated in this area.” (PDF p.21). It can be read as naming Sheikh Muwannis the first village evacuated in the area, or as giving a trajectory (‘Azzun, Sheikh Muwannis) with “first village evacuated in this area” referring to Khirbat ‘Azzun itself; the same table dates Sheikh Muwannis’s own evacuation to 30.3, after earlier rows in the district. The two readings are held side by side and neither is stated as fact.
• The report’s Haifa normal-times population in the district list is 71,200 (PDF p.19), while its basic figures give the urban Arab population within the Hebrew state as 92,000 across four cities (PDF p.1); the two are different quantities as presented and are held side by side, not reconciled.

Coverage

PDF p.1-29 of 29, read in full