Nakba and Survival

Summary

Adel Manna’s Nakba and Survival is a history of the Palestinians who remained in Haifa and the Galilee in 1948–1956 — the Remainers — told from their own testimonies, family documents and Arabic, Hebrew and English archives, rather than a renewed history of the refugees who were expelled. Across the whole book (Foreword, Preface, Acknowledgments, Introduction, Chapters 1–7, Epilogue, Appendices, Notes, Bibliography and Index, all read in full), Manna argues that ‘non-expulsion’ in northern Palestine was not arbitrary but the result of high-level Israeli orders and policy, that the policy of ethnic cleansing was more complex and expansive than Plan Dalet alone, running through the prohibition of return, the post-war expulsions and village destruction under military rule to 1956, and that differential treatment — Druze spared under a cooperation agreement, Christians treated more leniently out of fear of Western reaction, Muslims subjected to the iron-fist implementation — explains many of the cases in which people were allowed to stay, alongside the successful resistance of many remainers themselves: their court cases, their voting, and their refusal to flee in 1956, which the Epilogue treats as the point where survival became collective identity (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.25-27, 32-33, 289-297). The Preface grounds the book in his own family’s story: the Majd al-Krum massacre in al-‘Ayn Square, the expulsion of hundreds including his own family to Ayn al-Hilwa camp in Lebanon, and their return by sea in the summer of 1951 (PDF p.12-15).

What the file is

• The file is the English edition of Adel Manna, Nakba and Survival: The Story of Palestinians Who Remained in Haifa and the Galilee, 1948–1956, University of California Press, Oakland, 2022, published in the Luminos open access programme as no. 6 in the series New Directions in Palestinian Studies (series editor Beshara Doumani) (PDF p.2, 5-6). Copyright © 2022 by the Institute for Palestine Studies; originally published as Nakba and Survival, © 2016 Institute for Palestine Studies; the work’s other title is given as Nakbah wa-baqāʼ. English (PDF p.7). Licensed CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. ISBN 9780520389366 (paperback), 9780520389373 (ebook); LCCN 2021053073 (print). Downloaded from https://archive.org/download/oapen-20.500.12657-57873/nakba-and-survival.pdf (open-license copy, as supplied).
• 388 PDF pages, about 189,369 words as supplied (189,248 words in the text copy as counted on ingest). The text copy supplied from Josh’s memex vault is clean, single-column, with === PDF p.N === markers for all 388 pages. Printed pagination in this part runs vii–xx for the front matter (Foreword vii–viii, Preface ix–xviii, Acknowledgments xix–xx), then Introduction printed p.1-24 (PDF p.24-47) and Chapter 1 beginning printed p.25 (PDF p.48), so printed page = PDF page − 23 from the Introduction onward. Chapter 2 runs printed p.60-92 (PDF p.83-115), Chapter 3 runs printed p.93-127 (PDF p.116-150) and Chapter 4 begins printed p.128 (PDF p.151), Chapter 5 runs printed p.163-197 (PDF p.186-220) and Chapter 6 begins printed p.198 (PDF p.221), so printed page = PDF page − 23 throughout these parts. The same offset holds through the end of the main text and back matter read in part 8: Chapter 7 ends at printed p.265 (PDF p.288), the Epilogue runs printed p.266-274 (PDF p.289-297), the Appendices run printed p.275-288 (PDF p.298-311) and the Notes begin at printed p.289 (PDF p.312).
• PDF p.3 and PDF p.9 are blank in the text copy. PDF p.305 is also blank, in the original as well as the text copy (checked against the original). PDF p.357 is likewise blank, in the original as well as the text copy (checked against the original), between the end of the Notes (printed p.333) and the start of the Bibliography (printed p.335). PDF p.371 is likewise blank, in the original as well as the text copy (checked against the original), between the end of the Bibliography (printed p.347) and the start of the Index (printed p.349); no printed p.348 appears.
• The Contents (PDF p.8) lists: Foreword, Preface, Acknowledgments, Introduction, Chapters 1–7 (1. Al-Nakba and Its Many Meanings in 1948; 2. Completing the Occupation of Galilee—Operation Hiram; 3. The Arab Communists: Between the Nakba and Independence; 4. Forced Migration Continues After the Cannons Fall Silent; 5. Stories About Individuals and Villages; 6. The Struggle to Remain: Between Politics and the Judiciary; 7. The Parliamentary Elections and Political Behavior), Epilogue, Appendices, Notes, Bibliography, Index. The Notes for the Preface, Introduction and Chapter 1 were read in part 8 (PDF p.312-319); the remaining Notes were read in part 9 (PDF p.320-356), completing the Notes at printed p.333. The Bibliography runs PDF p.358-370 (printed p.335-347) and the Index PDF p.372-386 (printed p.349-363), both read in parts 9-10; printed page = PDF page − 23 holds to the end of the Index. PDF p.387 is the publisher’s page and PDF p.388 the back cover, neither with a printed page number.

Section by section

Foreword (From the Series Editor) — PDF p.10-11 (printed p.vii-viii)

The unsigned-by-name Foreword, headed From the Series Editor (the series editor named on PDF p.5 is Beshara Doumani), calls the book an engaging, accessible and innovative departure in Palestinian historiography, focusing on how 120,000 Palestinians were able to remain in the Galilee during and after the 1948 war, when most other Palestinians were driven out or forced to flee in the events Palestinians call the Nakba (PDF p.10). It is based on family documents, oral history and hitherto unstudied archives in Hebrew, Arabic and English, tells the intimate story of Manna’s own family, and contributes to the controversial debate about the role of Palestinian leaders of the Israeli Communist Party and others during and after the 1948 war (PDF p.10). A reviewer of the earlier editions is quoted calling it “a rich, powerful and paradigm-breaking contribution to the history of the Nakba, and to Palestinian historiography more generally” (PDF p.11 / printed p.viii). The Foreword gives the frame figures: 120,000 Palestinians managed to remain in Israel after over 750,000 of their compatriots were forced to leave their homes, and by staying in their homes and on their land they resisted the wave of ethnic cleansing that transformed Palestine in 1948 (PDF p.11). The remainers became second-class minoritized citizens in their own country, where they today constitute 20 percent of the population (PDF p.10).

Preface — PDF p.12-21 (printed p.ix-xviii)

In the Beginning Was the Story (PDF p.12-18). Manna has heard since childhood, first from his father, the story of Majd al-Krum in 1948: a peaceful entry by soldiers from the west under a surrender agreement, then, a week later, soldiers from the east who tore down houses and killed young men in al-‘Ayn Square; most residents stayed despite the massacre, but two months later soldiers returned and evicted hundreds, including Manna and his parents, in trucks to Wadi ‘Ara, from where the deported walked to Nablus and Jenin and on through Transjordan and Syria to Ayn al-Hilwa camp near Sidon in Lebanon (PDF p.12, 14-15). After some two years of exile — during which his father repeatedly ‘infiltrated’ on foot to visit his mother in the village — the family returned by night by sea from Sidon in the summer of 1951, landing at Shavei Tzion north of ‘Akka, his mother pregnant with his brother Muhammad (PDF p.15). As a child the tale was kept secret outside the house at his father’s instruction. In June 1984 he published a paragraph of it in Haaretz; aggressive attacks from Jewish readers effectively silenced his interest for years, and he turned to the safe area of Ottoman Palestine history and completed his doctorate at Hebrew University, while standing by his promise that “the day will come when I will write it down in detail, in Hebrew no less!” (PDF p.12-13). The Arabic version appeared in 2016 and the Hebrew in 2017 (PDF p.13).

His counter-narrative begins in the spring of 1958, when as a fourth-grader he sang in the tenth-anniversary Independence Day festivities at school and his father told him for the first time that Independence Day was istihlal (occupation), not istiqlal (independence): “‘Independence Day’ is not a day for rejoicing, it is a disaster and a tragedy for Arabs in general and particularly for the people of our village” (PDF p.14 / printed p.xi). He grew up with two narratives of 1948. The family thread is his grandmother Zahra, ‘al-Ja‘uniyya’ after al-Ja‘una (later Rosh Pina): her second husband Abu Ma‘yuf was the first person executed in al-‘Ayn Square, after his house was blown up in front of his eyes, despite a protective letter from Mano Friedman, a Jewish neighbour’s son whom Zahra considered her milk-brother; her youngest son Samih had been killed in a bomb explosion earlier in 1948; in January 1949 the expulsion of Majd al-Krum’s population began and much of the family became refugees in Lebanon, while Zahra remained (PDF p.15-16). Manna notes the historical literature on the Nakba says far too little about women such as Zahra, who lost husband and home and took responsibility for the survivors (PDF p.16). Us and the Jews (PDF p.16-18) complicates the binary: Haim Orbach, a friend of a relative from a British army camp near ‘Akka, arrived during the massacre and intervened to stop the killing, as did Shafiq Abu ‘Abdu, a Palestinian who had crossed over and fought alongside the Jews in 1948 (PDF p.17); selling figs as a boy in Kiryat Motzkin and Kiryat Bialik taught Manna to differentiate the soldiers from the housewives who bought his figs (PDF p.17-18). Refugees from Sha‘b, al-Birwa, al-Damun and other Galilee villages lived in Majd al-Krum itself, poorer than the villagers because they owned no houses or land (PDF p.18).

Between Memory and History (PDF p.18-21). The stories of the Palestinians who stayed are not recorded in Israeli historical literature; those who stayed feared to tell them, and Palestinians in Israel had no universities or research institutions of their own. Manna returned to the subject only in 1998, for a fiftieth-anniversary article in al-Karmel at the encouragement of Mahmoud Darwish (PDF p.18). He defends memory, used with professional caution, as a real asset, citing Eric Hobsbawm on intimate personal memories, and gives an unnamed eyewitness’s account of the executions in al-‘Ayn Square — one every half hour, men squatting for hours in fear, until Orbach and Abu ‘Abdu came and “seemed to us like angels who had descended from heaven to end the torment” (PDF p.19 / printed p.xvi). He presents some eyewitness accounts without names, including a girl of about ten whose bed-wetting after watching her family’s home demolished lasted more than a year (PDF p.20). The remainers’ stories are, in his phrase, present but absent, like the internally displaced refugees; the generation that stayed was neither submissive nor heroic but succeeded in the struggle for survival, in the words of The Stand-Tall Generation bending with the wind and rising from the ruins (PDF p.20-21). He dedicates the book to his mother and her generation; his father, who first told him the story, died of cancer two years after the 1984 article (PDF p.21).

Acknowledgments — PDF p.22-23 (printed p.xix-xx)

Manna thanks more than one hundred people in Haifa, Nazareth and Galilee villages whose testimonies enrich the narrative; his wife ‘Aziza and her parents ‘Ali and Fatima (Shrayda) Hulayhel of ‘Akbara near Safad, from whom he learned the suffering of the Present Absentees of Qadditha; named helpers in Haifa and Nazareth; colleagues who read the manuscript, including Yehuda Shinhav, Nur al-Din Masalha, Ahmad Sa‘di, Mustafa ‘Abbasi, Bashir Bashir, Hillel Cohen, Hassan Jabareen and Amos Goldberg; the Institute for Palestine Studies (Salim Tamari, Khalil al-Hindi, Khaled Farraj in Ramallah); and, for the 2022 English edition, Rashid Khalidi and Beshara Doumani, translator Muhammad Jenab Tutunji and editor Anita Vitullo (PDF p.22-23). Transliteration follows the Institute for Palestine Studies standard, with exceptions for established spellings and local usage (PDF p.23).

Introduction: A Story of Catastrophe and Survival — PDF p.24-47 (printed p.1-24)

New Approaches in This Book (PDF p.24-30 / printed p.1-7). The book’s subjects are the Palestinians inside Israel, who became ‘citizens’ and suffered double marginalization by both sides to the conflict; peasants formed the vast majority of those who remained in northern and central Palestine, and their reasons for remaining have been absent from elite narratives (PDF p.24). Its novelty is the turn to ‘non-expulsion’: instead of re-researching the expulsion of the refugees, it studies those who were not expelled or who returned, and instead of re-arguing whether a general expulsion plan existed, it examines cases of Non-expulsion for the pattern of high-level policy behind them (PDF p.25). Even on the assumption there was no comprehensive plan, dispersal and the refusal of return became official policy after the state’s establishment (PDF p.25). Cases cluster in the Battles of the Ten Days (the so-called Operation Palm Tree, 8–18 July 1948): on 15 July 1948 Abu Snan, Kufr Yasif and Yarka surrendered without a battle, lower Galilee villages between Shafa ‘Amr and Nazareth were occupied without the majority being expelled, the policy continued until Operation Hiram completed the occupation, and the Druze of upper Galilee were not targeted (PDF p.26). Return too could be policy for political ends: dozens of communists and their families were allowed back to Haifa and the Galilee in the summer of 1948, and after the early 1949 elections communist rivals including Melkite Bishop George Hakim and attorney Muhammad Nimr al-Hawwari were allowed back, while ruling Mapai turned family reunification into an electoral instrument — at the same time as thousands of others were being expelled (PDF p.26). Israel criminalized returnees as ‘infiltrators’ and fired indiscriminately on refugees seen trying to return (PDF p.26).

On the larger frame, Manna argues the ethnic cleansing policy was rooted in a Zionist project that imagined Palestine empty of its Arab population; after the 1936–39 revolt and the Peel Commission plan of 1937, expulsion — ‘transporting’ the Arabs to neighbouring countries — became a declared policy; the unanimous objective in 1948 was a Jewish state with the smallest possible number of Palestinians, and the prohibition of return, the post-war expulsions and village destruction under military rule, particularly 1948–1956, were other links in the same chain as Plan Dalet (PDF p.27). Non-expulsion cases are explained by geography and differential treatment: the Druze treated differently from the general Arab population, Christians treated more leniently out of fear of the reaction of Western states and churches (PDF p.27). The method is microhistory placed in macro context — the mosaic of local and personal stories against the general narrative — and the contexts are adaptation as an undesired minority under military rule, isolation from the Arab world by the new borders (the ‘Israeli prison’), and the international arena of Western churches and the communist bloc (PDF p.28-29). The Palestinian communists who joined Maki are presented as ideologically convinced their cooperation with Zionism was part of the international proletarian struggle, their class analysis dominant over the national dimension and their policies devised in Moscow to a large extent; but the majority of remainers were neither collaborators nor communists, only steadfast people who preferred occupation at home to exile, and all alike were subject to military government and the colonialist emergency regulations (PDF p.29). The Introduction’s stated questions: why and how did a relatively large number of Galilee residents remain compared with regions totally emptied; what the Nakba means to this minority; and how they adjusted to forced demographic change (PDF p.30).

Who Are the Palestinians Who Remained? (PDF p.30-34 / printed p.7-11). The consensus figure for those who remained is 156,000, an estimate made in the summer of 1949 from Israeli statistics after the armistice agreements (PDF p.30). The initial nucleus registered in the first census in November 1948 was 69,000, of whom the residents of Nazareth and twenty villages in its district were the largest bloc; most took part in the first parliamentary elections at the beginning of 1949, which consolidated their citizenship while lending legitimacy to the Jewish state’s democratic nature (PDF p.31). The census, taken after Operation Hiram completed the occupation of the Galilee, did not include those who remained in the recently occupied territory; continued movement between the Galilee and Lebanon made unregistered life under occupation possible; and in the last month of 1948 and the start of 1949 Israel expelled thousands of remainers to neighbouring Arab countries — illegal even by the Israeli understanding — some of whom returned and won identity cards and citizenship in the courts (PDF p.31). The interim government under Ben-Gurion put Bechor Shitrit in charge of police and minority affairs, with a letter of appointment clear about the desired demographic objective for the expanded borders (PDF p.31). July 1948 was the turning point: after the second cease-fire the defeat of the Arab armies was obvious and Israel could expand without regard to partition borders, while Constantine Zurayk wrote Ma’na al-Nakba (PDF p.32). Within the Galilee outcomes varied village by village; eastern Galilee around Safad, Tiberias and Bisan was almost wholly uprooted, while in ‘Ilabun and ‘Illut internal migrants were allowed to live in the Galilee or return home (PDF p.32). The study does not cover the Naqab, whose Arab history remains meagrely known, and treats the Triangle (annexed from Jordanian control at Rhodes in the spring of 1949) by comparison (PDF p.32). On the sectarian spectrum: all Druze villages remained intact and unpunished, even Yanuh, where a heated battle killed many Israeli soldiers, because of a cooperation agreement with some Druze leaders concluded on the eve of the state’s creation (PDF p.32-33); Muslims suffered massacres, demolition and expulsion; Christians fell in between — Nazareth protected by strict orders, ‘Ilabun’s people killed and expelled then allowed to return in a permitted return Manna calls a unique case in the history of the Nakba, and Kafr Bir‘im and Iqrit destroyed but their people allowed to live elsewhere in the country rather than expelled to Lebanon; the villages that remained un-uprooted were Christian or Druze (Fassuta, Mi‘lya, Tarshiha, Hurfaysh, Jish) (PDF p.33). Family reunification in the 1950s returned thousands — official figures put it at twenty thousand — while expulsion continued until at least 1956: al-Majdal-Asqalan’s several thousand at the end of 1950, al-Hula plain villages (some of Krad al-Baqqara and Krad al-Ghannama expelled to Syria, others sent to Sha‘b in 1953), and in 1956 Yitzhak Rabin, northern commander, using the Sinai war to order the expulsion of about two thousand remainers to Jordan and Syria; expulsions in the Naqab continued until 1959 (PDF p.33-34). The Kafr Kassim massacre of 29 October 1956, in which Border Guard troops killed forty-nine Arab citizens returning from their fields, is presented as the signal of how remainers were viewed; that the Triangle’s residents nonetheless stuck to their homes showed Palestinians in Israel had become a resilient and permanent part of the population (PDF p.34). Plans to encourage emigration to countries such as Libya and Argentina continued after expulsions declined after 1952, and fear of expulsion persisted at least another decade (PDF p.34-35).

Weak Interest in the Conditions of Palestinians in Israel (PDF p.35-40 / printed p.12-17). A historiographical survey. Arab writing revolved around the Palestine Question and a legalistic defensive discourse, neglecting the victims; Arab academics among the remainers themselves produced few historians and no university or research institution, and double marginalization plus fear kept them from the Nakba (PDF p.35). The two 1966 pioneers are set against each other: Subhi Abu-Ghosh’s Princeton dissertation blamed Arab villages’ blocked modernization on traditional family and clan structure, exonerating military government, while Sabri Jiryis’s The Arabs in Israel — a detailed account of military rule, the 1945 defence (emergency) regulations, intelligence services and police as instruments of repression — became the antithesis and a model for a generation that broke the fear barrier (PDF p.35-36). Beirut research institutions turned first to resistance poetry (Darwish, Samih al-Qasim and others; Darwish’s reply article ‘Save Us from This Cruel Love’); Emile Habibi’s 1974 satirical novel Al-Mutasha’il [The Pessoptimist] first told the remainers’ story in literature, and Manna reads it as an admission, behind the satirical mask, that Habibi and many remainers searched for a way to stay at any price — his protagonist Sa‘id Abi al-Nahs demonstrating total loyalty and receiving payments for cooperation, yet never rising to the level of an average Israeli citizen — a theme the book returns to in its chapter on the communists (PDF p.36-37). Israeli academia is charged with splitting the country into departments that do not study the Palestinians and mostly lack Arabic, while Palestinian researchers often lack Hebrew; both sides write from a ‘know thine enemy’ maxim producing propaganda instead of truth (PDF p.37-38). The 1980s bring Ian Lustick’s Arabs in the Jewish State on the mechanisms of Jewish control, Tom Segev’s 1949: The First Israelis exposing systematic repression, and Benziman and Mansour’s book on policy toward Arabs in Israel (PDF p.38). The revisionist historians Benny Morris, Ilan Pappé and Avi Shlaim are credited with new information, and the debate is located as turning on the extent of top leadership responsibility: Pappé, Walid Khalidi and others hold Plan Dalet was a methodical blueprint for ethnic cleansing, while Zionist historians including Morris insist the massacres and expulsions were not the result of deliberate top-level planning (PDF p.38-39). Manna then reports Morris’s turn: in a 2004 Haaretz interview with Ari Shavit, Morris declared support for the expulsion policy Ben-Gurion led, blamed him for not expelling all Palestinians, retracted the claim there had been no top-level planning, and justified murder and expulsion, adding he did not oppose a future expulsion including of the remainers (PDF p.39). A new generation of remainer researchers follows — Ahmad Sa‘di, Nur Masalha, Mustafa Abbasi, Mustafa Kabha — combining documents with oral history; Hillel Cohen’s study of the present absentees and his book on Arab collaborators under military rule (1948–67); and Shira Robinson’s work combining Israeli archives, Arab sources and dozens of eyewitness interviews under theories of Zionist settlement and colonialism, which with Cohen’s is closest to Manna’s own topic (PDF p.39-40).

The Structure and Content of the Book (PDF p.40-43 / printed p.17-20). The occupation of Nazareth and the second cease-fire in mid-July 1948 are the real beginning of the remainers’ story; a military governor was appointed for Nazareth, and Radio Israel launched an Arabic broadcast and an Arabic daily newspaper to transmit government views (PDF p.40). Chapter 1 treats the meanings of the Nakba in northern Palestine to September 1948 (of which only the opening page is read in this part). Chapter 2 follows Operation Hiram and the residents’ role in foiling uprooting. Chapter 3 treats the Druze and the communists: in Haifa and the Galilee most leaders of the National Liberation League chose cooperation with Israel, opposed the entry of Arab armies, cooperated with the occupation in July 1948 and completed a 180-degree turn by joining Maki before the war ended (PDF p.41). Chapter 4 treats the post-war classifications — citizens, temporary residents, the border villages’ evicted as present absentees, unregistered returnees classed as infiltrators — and the two-way border movement of the early years (PDF p.41). Chapter 5 treats the Triangle (over thirty thousand people, from Kafr Qasim to Umm al-Fahm, made citizens in the spring of 1949 annexation) and the individual and village stories, including Israel’s permission for the residents of three villages — ‘Ilabun, ‘Illut and Kufr Qari‘ — to return (PDF p.41-42). Chapter 6 follows the adaptation tools, above all resort to the Supreme Court, beginning with Hajj Ahmad Abu-Laban’s case in Jaffa towards the end of 1948, mostly against land appropriation, expulsion and arrest (PDF p.42). Chapter 7 treats Knesset voting as itself a mechanism for arranging to stay and avoiding expulsion — hence both communists and collaborators urged voting in January 1949, and Maki leaders even demanded Arabs be recruited into the Israeli army as a demonstration of loyalty (PDF p.42). The conclusion returns to 1956 and Kafr Qasim, whose aftermath, contrary to the expectations of those who planned it, reinforced the solidarity of the remainers (PDF p.42-43).

Research Methodology and Sources (PDF p.43-47 / printed p.20-24). Most Palestinians of the period, particularly peasants, could not read or write, so oral testimony is the primary source for the defeated side’s point of view; memory is problematic if unexamined, but its categorical rejection is an obstacle historical research has surmounted (PDF p.43). Manna attacks the sanctity given to archival documents through Tom Segev’s review of Elias Khoury’s novel Gate of the Sun, in which Segev demanded proof for alleged war crimes in Sha‘b and wrote that Khoury “does not provide any kind of proof of what he alleges” (PDF p.43-44 / printed p.20-21). Against this Manna notes that many secret documents in Israeli archives concern massacres and expulsion, quoting Segev himself elsewhere that “a state that conceals printed war crimes concerning its history is retroactively complicit in those crimes” (PDF p.44 / printed p.21; ‘printed’ as in the text copy), and Morris’s admission in Correcting a Mistake and an article on Operation Hiram that “our information about these massacres is very limited because of the secrecy imposed by Israeli army archives on the relevant documents” (PDF p.44 / printed p.21). In the absence of Palestinian archives the study depends on eyewitnesses, the few written diaries, and locally published memoirs; he listened to the testimonies of 120 people who lived through the Nakba and the subsequent years in Haifa and the Galilee (PDF p.45). He reports finding some Israeli archival documents fake, with attempts to hide and mislead concealing war crimes that eyewitnesses describe in detail (PDF p.45). Personal memories are distinguished from the collective memory states promote; most of his interviewees were victims of ethnic cleansing in the Galilee, and the work of Zochrot and of local village history books is noted (PDF p.46). The study relies first and foremost on primary and secondary written sources from both sides: communists’ documents and press in Arabic and Hebrew make up the major share, with al-Ittihad as the counterweight to al-Yawm, the organ presenting government policy to Arab readers, plus Mapam documents and newspapers (PDF p.47). Court rulings, particularly of the Supreme Court, are a further source: plaintiffs and witnesses testified under oath while events were fresh, and some Galilee plaintiffs won judgments forcing the interior ministry to give them identity cards and barring renewed expulsion (PDF p.47).

Chapter 1: Al-Nakba and Its Many Meanings in 1948 — PDF p.48-82 (printed p.25-59)

The Nakba from the Perspective of the Arab Elite (PDF p.48-52). The chapter opens with Constantine Zurayk’s Ma’na al-Nakba (PDF p.48, read in part 1). Zurayk (1909–2000), AUB history professor and vice-president, writes under “The Oppressiveness of al-Nakba” that seven Arab states set out to invalidate partition and emerged having lost a considerable portion of Palestine, and that “Four hundred thousand or more Arabs are expelled from their homes” (PDF p.49 / printed p.26). His analysis puts Arab responsibility first — ill-preparedness, disunity, underestimation of the enemy — and warns against merely blaming others; the August 1948 first print run sold out and was reprinted in October, unrevised, while Arab disunity and mutual accusations, particularly against the Palestinian leadership under Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husayni, increased (PDF p.49). George Hanna (1893–1969), socialist head of the Soviet-Lebanese Friendship Society, published his book in November 1948: the foremost responsibility lies with the defeated Arabs themselves, people as well as regimes, and no exit is possible without social and political reforms — including on the status of women; uniquely for November 1948, Hanna also blames Russia frankly, saying it endorsed partition “in the hope that one of them would allow it a foothold into the Middle East” (PDF p.50 / printed p.27). Musa al-‘Alami’s ‘Ibirat Filastin (The Lesson of Palestine), published after the war ended, assigns primary responsibility to Britain and first sketches the war’s two-stage division — Palestinians bearing the burden to mid-May 1948, then the Arab states’ armies to the armistices — which became prevalent among historians (PDF p.51 / printed p.28). Muhammad Nimr al-Hawwari’s book, published in Nazareth after his permitted return, is an indictment of the mufti, the Arab countries and the Jaysh al-Inqadh under Fawzi al-Qawuqji, gives at least ten reasons why the refugees left, yet does not neglect Israel’s role, citing post-first-cease-fire killings, plunder and attacks in Lydda, Ramla, Bisan, Majdal, al-Tira, Ijzim, ‘Ayn Ghazal, Lubya, Saffuriyya and al-Mujaydil (PDF p.51-52). ‘Arif al-‘Arif’s six-volume, diary-based Al-Nakba: Nakbat Bayt al-Maqdis wal-firdaws al-mafqud 1947–49 closes the review. The early literature agrees on Britain’s principal role, the contributory roles of the United States and the Soviet Union, and an imbalance of forces favouring the Jewish side (PDF p.52).

The Beginning of the Nakba (PDF p.52-58). Palestinians saw the Balfour Declaration — “His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people …” — as the cornerstone of the Nakba: mandatory policy enabled Jewish state-building while preventing Palestinian state-building (PDF p.52 / printed p.29). The second event on the road was the 1936–39 revolt and the 1937 Peel Commission partition proposal, which would have put the rest of Palestine under Prince Abdullah’s Hashemite rule rather than Palestinian independence; Britain’s partial retreat in the May 1939 White Paper did not make the leadership absorb 1936’s lessons (PDF p.53). General Assembly Resolution 181 of 29 November 1947, giving 54 percent of the homeland to the Jews and 45 percent to the Palestinians who were two-thirds of the population, was a decisive defeat of Palestinian self-determination; the leadership said “no” without an acceptable alternative and directed the war from outside the country, despite Husayn al-Khalidi and Ahmad Hilmi ‘Abd al-Baqi urging the Higher Arab Committee to return (PDF p.53-54). Jewish experts knew the Palestinians were unprepared: Eliyahu Sasson estimated the mufti had mobilized only “between two and three hundred fighters”, and noted al-Hawwari had kept Jaffa quiet until his December 1947 departure (PDF p.54). Al-Sakakini, watching al-Qatamun, despaired: the Jews were “trained and organized and united and equipped with the most modern arms, while we are none of those things” (PDF p.55 / printed p.32). Manna divides the northern war into three stages — December 1947–March 1948; April–late July 1948; and Operation Hiram, late October–December 1948 — and poses the chapter’s question: the Zionist leadership had planned expulsion since at least the late 1930s, so why did a relatively large number remain in the Galilee? In stage one the Palmach’s Khisas operation of 18 December 1947 killed a dozen residents including children and panicked the Hula region, yet the family of Shaykh ‘Atiyeh Juwayyid, some of whom fought on the Jewish side in early 1948, was still expelled at the end of that year, to Israel’s interior rather than across the border (PDF p.55-56). In Haifa, the Irgun’s 30 December 1947 bombing of Arab workers at the oil refinery gate, the Arab workers’ retaliatory killing of a larger number of Jewish workers, and the Palmach’s revenge attack that night on Balad al-Shaykh and Hawwasa drove Galilee labourers home and well-to-do families to Nazareth, Shafa ‘Amr and Beirut; Manna calls Khisas and Balad al-Shaykh part of a blueprint to terrorize Palestinians in the Jewish-state areas into leaving (PDF p.56-57). Haifa’s National Committee under Rashid al-Hajj Ibrahim failed to stem the departure; elite families who understood war as revolt left expecting to return; Zionist “advice” to mayors and mukhtars to leave temporarily was followed by prevention of return; and tens of thousands left Haifa before its fall on 22 April 1948, among them National Liberation League brothers who reached al-Bi‘na, al-Rama and Tarshiha (PDF p.57-58). From January 1948 the Arab Rescue Army’s volunteers briefly cut Jewish transport lines, including at Bab al-Wad (PDF p.58).

Plan Dalet and the Onset of the Arab Defeat in April 1948 (PDF p.59-64). Brief Arab success led the US State Department to consider a UN trusteeship in February 1948; the Soviet Union declared firm support for partition and expedited the Czechoslovak arms deal, whose first batch landed at Bayt Daras on 31 March 1948, and Ben-Gurion ordered Operation Nachshon and Plan Dalet’s implementation (PDF p.59). Manna does not contest Plan Dalet as proof of an ethnic-cleansing policy: killing and terror to push emigration began at the end of 1947 and expulsion continued after hostilities ceased in early 1949; until early April each side had lost less than one thousand killed (PDF p.59-60). At Husha and al-Kasayir the Druze battalion under Shakib Wahhab stopped fighting the Jews and withdrew in agreement with the Zionist side — an important juncture, which al-‘Arif’s history treats at length (PDF p.60). The killing of ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni at al-Qastal on 8 April and the Irgun/Lehi attack on Dayr Yasin the next day, killing and wounding hundreds, acquired symbolic significance — sacrifice and martyrdom on one side, barbarism and victimization on the other (PDF p.60-61). The Arab Rescue Army’s failed Mishmar Ha‘emek attack was followed by the expulsion of several Marj ibn ‘Amir villages; Nasir al-Din’s killing of dozens preceded Tiberias’s fall, most of its six thousand Palestinians reaching Syria and Lebanon; a week later most of Haifa’s seventy thousand residents were forced to leave under British eyes (PDF p.61). Ben-Gurion’s diary for 1 May records “less than ten thousand [Palestinians] in Haifa, perhaps six thousand” and names the remaining Arab committee; Elias Kusa, who had gone to General Hugh Stockwell on 22 April, recorded that the mayor’s circular urging people not to leave had no effect while the Haganah rained bullets and grenades on the Arab quarters and forced families to the port (PDF p.62). Bulus Farah’s memoirs tell how he reopened his Haifa bookstore with Jewish friends’ help but was chased from his al-Anbiya’ Street home, becoming one of those pushed into the Wadi al-Nisnas “ghetto” (PDF p.63). In Jaffa the British forced the Irgun out of al-Manshiyya on 28 April to save face, then encouraged a surrender agreement signed 13 May; by Israel’s declaration on 15 May most of the four hundred thousand Palestinians of the areas taken over had become refugees before the Arab armies intervened, and those who remained to the war’s end — ‘Arab al-Hayb in Tuba al-Zanghariyya, the al-Zu‘biyya villages east of ‘Afula, and the Druze villages ‘Isfiya and Daliyyat al-Karmil — were largely those who had shown loyalty to the Jewish side (PDF p.63-64). No regular Arab army reached the Galilee, so from May the residents’ question became practical survival — holding onto home and land — rather than saving Palestine (PDF p.64).

The Nakba as Seen and Experienced by the Residents of the Galilee (PDF p.65-68). The refugees, estimated at the time at 400,000 or more, did not experience the Nakba uniformly: for the fellahin, turned overnight from owners of homes and lands into indigents on charity, its meaning differed from the urban elite’s (PDF p.65). In July Lydda and Ramla and their district were emptied entirely in the heat of Ramadan, while dozens of villages east of ‘Akka and Nazareth survived; Manna faults both Israeli historians who cite the remainers against a comprehensive expulsion plan and historians of Plan Dalet who do not explain why tens of thousands remained, and stresses instead the remainers’ own conduct and crystallized awareness that they had to remain (PDF p.65). Pre-nationalist identities (sectarian, tribal, ethnic) remained strongly rooted; the unarmed Galileans’ understanding was pragmatic, not philosophical, and protecting the Galilee fell to the Arab Rescue Army and local residents without reliable defences against an army supplied from Czechoslovakia (PDF p.66). People spoke of “the fall”, not war; Manna quotes Elias Khoury’s Bab al-Shams character Yunis: “By God, it was no war, it was like a dream.” After Haifa’s fall and the Arab armies’ quick cease-fire, the Druze, the communists of the National Liberation League and other local leaders ended their participation in the “theater of war”; ‘Arab al-Hayb, mobilized and trained by Yitzhak Hankin, fought alongside the Israeli army, burned Fir‘im’s houses, and later ambushed refugees trying to return from Lebanon (PDF p.66-68). In the ten-day battles (8–18 July) Shafa ‘Amr fell under the secret Druze agreement — most Arab battalion fighters returned to Syria and Lebanon, dozens joined the Israeli side, and Israel guaranteed Druze villages against maltreatment, killing and destruction; Kufr Yasif’s council head Yani Yani used his Druze neighbours’ Jewish relations, mediated by Haim Orbach of Nahariyya, to sign a surrender agreement on 10 July, yet the army still expelled the refugees sheltering there and detained dozens of young men (PDF p.68).

The Secret of Nazareth’s Survival (PDF p.69-76). Nazareth was spared, Manna argues, by the convergence of its distance from the Jewish state’s borders and Jewish settlement, its holiness to the Christian world and the Vatican, its late occupation, and a top-level policy decision. Ben-Gurion issued a clear order on the eve of its occupation prohibiting attacks on residents and holy places, and Mapam’s ‘Al Hamishmar wrote of an “occupation of hearts” (PDF p.69). Other factors were the city’s communists who had accepted partition in February 1948, mufti opponents with Jewish ties since the 1930s — prominently Sayf al-Din al-Zu‘bi, later set up by Israel as an Arab leader — its clergy and charitable institutions, and officers headed by Canadian Ben Dunkelman (PDF p.70). The sequence: Saffuriyya’s fighters were bombed out and its villagers fled to Nazareth; the Arab Rescue Army commander Madlul ‘Abbas withdrew but first asked residents to stay and posted soldiers to stop them following; on Friday 16 July Mayor Yusif al-Fahum consulted the Christian sect heads and notables, Dunkelman entered from al-Khannuq, and officers signed an eleven-article surrender agreement in Shafiq al-Jisr’s house, whose ninth clause promised residents “the civil rights in which all the residents of Nazareth are equal with the citizens of Israel without discrimination on the basis of ethnicity or language” — a text Manna believes was prepared in advance under Ben-Gurion’s direction (PDF p.71-72). Ben-Gurion’s telegram to northern commander Moshe Carmel ordered a special administrative team and strict prohibitions on desecrating churches and on looting; Manna notes such orders reveal what was expected where they were not issued (PDF p.72). Unusually, thousands of refugees in Nazareth were allowed to return home — except to Tiberias and Bisan, which Israel decided to make Jewish cities — and only about one thousand Nazarenes left, mostly Muslim notable and merchant families; of the district’s villages, Ma‘lul, al-Mujaydil, Saffuriyya and ‘Illut were destroyed and depopulated, ‘Illut alone later allowed to return (PDF p.73). The next day, 17 July, Carmel issued an order to expel Nazareth’s entire population; Dunkelman refused, Haim Laskov referred the question to Ben-Gurion, who prohibited the expulsion, and an attempt was made to replace Dunkelman’s battalion with one under Elie Yafeh; in the same days Ben-Gurion reversed his initial approval of expelling about four thousand remaining ‘Akka residents after an official insisted on a written order and Bechor Shitrit objected (PDF p.73-74). Manna asks whether Carmel and Laskov could have acted without Ben-Gurion’s knowledge, and whether his intervention was genuine opposition or fear of scandal; the residents, unaware of the drama, were also helped by the second cease-fire of 18 July. Mapam editor Eliezer Bray wrote in November 1948: “In Nazareth and Majdal ‘Asqalan the Arabs stayed because we wanted them to stay there. If they did not remain in other places, the authors of the ‘transfer’ policy had a share in that.” Four ministers visited within a week; military governor Elisha Soltz, advised by Shitrit to be sensitive and just, restored municipal life with cooperation from the municipality, the communists and al-Zu‘bi — a broker who had worked with the Jewish National Fund and survived a 1947 assassination attempt (PDF p.75-76). Manna concludes that Arabs-in-Israel history begins here: an entire city, institutions and elite intact, indicating the Jewish state’s willingness to accept a limited Arab minority, and a new remainer awareness of accepting the new reality in order to stay (PDF p.76).

Conditions in the Galilee during the Cease-Fire (Summer–Fall 1948) (PDF p.77-82). The second cease-fire had no fixed duration; the Arab armies’ defeat was clear and Zurayk published his book in this period (PDF p.77). UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte proposed Israel annex the whole Galilee or its occupied western and southern parts, with Jordan the second beneficiary and the Palestinians the main losers; the Arab states could not agree, and Galileans understood no Arab force could prevent Israel occupying the rest of the Galilee (PDF p.77). Bernadotte was assassinated by Lehi; his successor Ralph Bunche blamed the hostile atmosphere on the Israeli leadership; Israel, which had decided in mid-June to prohibit refugee return and was absorbing Jewish immigrants, refused return pressures (PDF p.78). Arab disputes centred on the unoccupied Palestinian territories: Egypt backed a Palestinian National Conference in Gaza at the end of September that declared an “All-Palestine Government” headed by Ahmad Hilmi ‘Abd al-Baqi, while King Abdullah, backed by Britain, gathered supporters in Amman to petition for annexation of the West Bank (PDF p.78-79). In Nazareth, schools reopened and the mayor, local leaders and communists worked with the military governor — cooperation once branded treason and later acknowledged as wisdom and steadfastness; the seventy thousand Palestinians counted in Israel’s survey then were “the nucleus or the beating heart of the Arabs in Israel” (PDF p.79). In the unoccupied Galilee pocket of sixty villages, residents doubted the Arab Rescue Army could defend them; some Druze and Christian villages refused the volunteers cooperation while others armed, fortified and fed them and ran joint local committees; open Lebanese borders kept arms and food flowing and let many who had fled to Lebanon return during the cease-fire (PDF p.79-81). Sakhnin’s mukhtar Ibrahim ‘Abdullah Khalayle surrendered his village prematurely on 18 July, through his Tamra relative Jad Mustafa Dhiyab, and was arrested and insulted by the Arab Rescue Army at its Majd al-Krum police-station jail — residents were caught between fear of Israeli vengeance and fear of Arab Rescue Army punishment (PDF p.80). Two return stories close the chapter: Najib Susan, seventeen when expelled from ‘Akka in May, returned from Beirut via Rumaysh and al-Bi‘na, joined Abu Is‘af’s unit in the Shaghur, retreated to Lebanon when central Galilee fell, then returned again to ‘Akka and his family (PDF p.81); and Elias Srouji’s family, returning from Beirut for his father’s cancer treatment, reached al-Rama on 25 October, were turned back from Dayr Hanna, and that night heard the bombing of al-Rama that opened Operation Hiram after a hundred-day cease-fire (PDF p.81-82). Chapter 1 ends at PDF p.82 / printed p.59.

Chapter 2: Completing the Occupation of Galilee—Operation Hiram — PDF p.83-115 (printed p.60-92)

Galilee on the Eve of Its Occupation (PDF p.83-85). Chapter 2 opens with the Galilee’s November 1947 population as printed: 241,000 in total, more than 200,000 of them Arabs, a few thousand Circassians and Armenians, and 31,790 Jews; the Arabs comprised 169,000 Muslims, 29,000 Christians and 10,700 Druze (PDF p.83 / printed p.60; the components do not sum to the stated totals — see Open questions). The dominant understanding that the Galilee escaped the Nakba is inaccurate: of 220 Arab cities and villages only 70 remained, over two-thirds were destroyed and their populations expelled, and 100,000 Arabs or fewer escaped that fate — about half the Galilee’s end-1947 Arab population; ethnic cleansing in the Safad area was almost total, while sparse Jewish settlement and mixed Druze–Christian–Muslim population centres in central and lower Galilee contributed to more remaining there (PDF p.83). After the summer the mountain Druze learned of the coastal Druze leadership’s agreement with Israel; the Ma‘di family of Yarka, a party to it, kept good relations with both sides, helping many Druze and neighbouring villages escape destruction; National Liberation League ties likewise enabled some central Galilee residents to stay, and contemporaries testify the population fully understood the military balance (PDF p.84). In October the Israeli army attacked the Egyptian army in the south and Arab Rescue Army officers increasingly predicted the Galilee’s fall; the “Galilee pocket” of sixty thousand people in fifty villages — Majd al-Krum west, ‘Ilabun east, al-Battuf south, the Lebanese border north — was occupied in sixty hours despite Israeli leaders’ appeals to remain peaceful in return for equality and dignity (PDF p.84). Before the operation, Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett argued Israel should forego occupying a Galilee “full of Arabs”; Ben-Gurion had told the 26 September 1948 cabinet, proposing renewed fighting: “Assuming there is an outbreak of fighting, we will clean central Galilee in one stroke; to cleanse it, including the refugees … that will not be possible without war.” A majority of ministers voted against the proposal and the expulsion of the Galilee’s 100,000 residents, but, as Tom Segev writes, the expulsion was merely postponed, not cancelled; a month later Ben-Gurion snapped, of Ezra Danin’s statement, “There is only one task left for the Arabs in Israel: to run.” (PDF p.85 / printed p.62). The occupation met no serious resistance — Druze knew of their leaders’ agreement and communist activists in al-Bi‘na, Tarshiha, al-Rama and ‘Ilabun knew of the league’s merger into the Israeli Communist Party, and most hoped for a Nazareth-like fate and were ready to surrender — yet, Manna writes, hundreds were executed and thousands forced to migrate during and after Operation Hiram, and the army perpetrated a number of massacres when a government and organized state institutions were already in place. The chapter continues in part 3.

The Western Front of the Galilee Pocket and Majd al-Krum’s Surrender (PDF p.86-89 / printed p.63-66). Contrasting Nazareth, Ben-Gurion a hundred days later wanted upper Galilee totally void of Arabs; Operation Hiram opened with aerial bombardment — in Tarshiha dozens were killed and buried under rubble — yet at least half the population remained (PDF p.86). Majd al-Krum (about 2,000 people plus hundreds of refugees) had helped the ARA defend al-Shaghur; on the night of Friday 29 October 1948 its Iraqi ARA commander advised the villagers not to leave, to hide their young men, and to seek a surrender agreement, then withdrew to Lebanon. That night a delegation reached Haim Orbach, the western Galilee intelligence officer, through the Ma’di family of Yarka, and agreed a surrender document at al-Birwa; the 123rd company entered peacefully on 30 October, collected twenty rifles and, “after a bit of pressure”, fifteen more, and the 122nd company took charge (PDF p.87-88). That afternoon Golani Brigade soldiers arriving from ‘Ilabun fired on the village by mistake before Orbach stopped them — “Why have you come here from ‘Ilabun?” — and the day ended without villager casualties (PDF p.88-89). Testimonies follow Khalid Dhiyab Farhat, who took his two unmarried sisters to Lebanon and later reached the United States (he died there in 2012; his sisters returned by family reunification), and Muhammad Kan’an, who sheltered with Druze friends in Sajur and hurried home on hearing the Golani were coming west “to punish its residents as they had done in ‘Ilabun” (PDF p.89).

Al-Shaghur: al-Bi’na, Dayr al-Asad, Nahaf and al-Rama (PDF p.89-93 / printed p.66-70). The next day, 31 October, a unit entering al-Bi’na and Dayr al-Asad under the same surrender agreement executed two young men from each village after sending them to fetch water — Subhi Muhammad Dhabbah (23) and Ahmad ‘Isa (27) of Dayr al-Asad, ‘Ali Muhammad al-‘Abid (17) and Hanna Elias Farhud (25) of al-Bi’na — took dozens to prison camps and ordered the rest north to Lebanon; many turned east, sheltered near Sajur, and returned, and that return saved both villages (PDF p.90). At Nahaf soldiers shot two young men on a threshing floor (an eyewitness in a cave, and a 1951 Supreme Court ruling, say four men were fired on and killed), expelled the rest toward Lebanon, and allowed return two to three days later after mukhtar Hamad Ahmad ‘Abdullah reached the Ma’di family at Yarka (PDF p.90-91). At Al-Rama on 31 October soldiers blew up Elias Shukri’s house, took young men as prisoners of war, and a soldier Manna’s source took for a Yemeni Jew announced: “Our Druze friends were with us from the beginning of the road. Everyone else is our enemy”; the Christians were ordered north, but Druze of Bayt Jan and al-Buqay’a brought Shaykh Jabr al-Ma’di’s intervention and the expulsion was reversed within a day or two (PDF p.91-93). Manna leaves open whether church pressure or Druze intervention weighed more, and concludes the al-Shaghur expulsions largely failed because surrendered, non-resisting residents used delay, peaceful resistance and Druze neighbours, in a mixed Muslim–Christian–Druze area (PDF p.93).

The Massacre in ‘Ilabun and the Expulsion of Its Residents (PDF p.93-98 / printed p.70-75). Ilabun, a Catholic and Orthodox village whose residents had put white flags on their roofs and whose clergy welcomed the Golani Brigade on 30 October, was gathered in al-Hara; shooting while clearing the churches killed ‘Azar Salim Maslam and wounded two youths, and seventeen young men were set aside and shot in five groups — at Subhi Matar’s vegetable garden, the cemetery, Elias Hawwa’s bakery, and south of the village centre — while the fifth group, five Zurayq men, was made to drive ahead of the expulsion caravan (PDF p.95-96). On the march north an old man cried “People, ‘Ilabun is dead!”; at Kufr ‘Anan Sam’an Jiryis Shufani was killed after soldiers had handed out boiled potatoes; the villagers reached Lebanon via Farradiyya and Mirun, camped in ‘Ayn Ibil’s church and then in Miya Miya camp east of Sidon, and were permitted to return at the end of December (PDF p.96-97). Thirty-four more men were taken to prisoner-of-war camps on 31 October. Manna calls the decision for this collective punishment of a Christian village far from the border, and the quasi-secret, devious channels of the permitted return, two riddles no archive has clarified, and stresses that without residents’ testimony the massacre could not be documented at all (PDF p.97).

Killings and Expulsions in Other Villages (PDF p.98-103 / printed p.75-80). Kufr ‘Inan and Farradiyya, passed on the march, were emptied a few weeks later. In the border villages the army killed, pillaged and raped in villages that had not resisted, some of which — Saliha among them — had even resisted the ARA’s presence: Yisrael Galili reported ninety-four killed at Saliha to a Mapam conference, while 1985 documentation from testimonies lists one hundred and five, with names and ages (PDF p.98). Al-Mawasi Arabs near ‘Ilabun lost two boys shot while grazing cattle on 1 November, and the next day twelve arrested men were killed at al-Battuf’s eastern entrance, the gravely wounded Sa’d Muhammad Dhib alone surviving to be hidden in a cave by Zahiya al-Fawwaz and later moved to Syria (PDF p.98-99). At Safsaf, occupied on Saturday 30 October in Manna’s dating, soldiers shot twelve young men, executed dozens of men at a well, and raped several women sent to fetch water, killing two; the account of ‘Aziza Shrayda — killed with her firstborn son and her husband after refusing rape in front of her family — was buried by her family for decades, as such memories were, out of shame and out of the remainers’ fear of annoying their “new masters” (PDF p.99-100). An investigation under Haim Laskov extracted admissions of prisoners killed and residents mistreated, yet no soldier was punished; Manna counts fifteen massacres in the week after the Galilee’s occupation and calls the cover-up proof of a top-level policy (PDF p.100). At Hula in southern Lebanon ninety-four people were murdered, including thirty-four prisoners blown up in the house detaining them; First Lieutenant Shmuel Lahis was tried at Deputy Battalion Commander Dov Yermiyahu’s insistence, convicted, and did not spend one day of his short sentence in jail (PDF p.101). More than thirty villages’ inhabitants were forced out in the operation. Against it stand the orders from the top: on 31 October Moshe Carmel telegraphed all unit commanders, “Do everything you can to achieve a quick and immediate purification of the occupied areas of all enemy elements, according to standing orders. It is imperative to help the residents leave the occupied regions”, and Ben-Gurion, recording Carmel’s report that of about 60,000 residents of the occupied area about half remained, commented “Many will migrate later” (PDF p.102 / printed p.79). The army history officer Yitzhak Moda’i, writing in the late 1950s from military documents, concluded: “Most of the Arab residents of the Galilee remained in their villages, but it was not because our forces did not try to expel them, quite often through means that were neither legal nor nice” (PDF p.102-103 / printed p.79-80). Mapam’s Yosef Waschitz reported the savage incidents in Safsaf and Saliha, and he and Aharon Cohen did nothing; those who knew and kept silent became complicit, Manna argues (PDF p.103).

The Majd al-Krum Massacre and Its Repercussions (PDF p.103-108 / printed p.80-85). A November intelligence report recommended “a speedy and serious combing operation, and a search for arms and collaborators with the ARA” in Majd al-Krum. On Friday 5 November a unit imposed a curfew, assembled the men in al-‘Ayn Square, and its officer gave mukhtar Hajj ‘Abd Manna’ one hour to produce arms supposedly hidden since the surrender, on pain of a young man executed every half hour. Abu Ma’yuf (Muhammad al-Hajj) was shot first, after watching his house blown up, then four more in the square by a six-man firing squad, each finished with a shot to the head; two visiting young men from Sha’b were tortured and killed in an olive orchard and two women fired on in house searches — eight to nine killed in all. Haim Orbach and Shafiq Abu ‘Abdu arrived and halted the killings, with three men, the mukhtar first, already standing in line (PDF p.104-105). The army denied the massacre to UN observers; Colonel Baruch Baruch complained the village had no military governor and that “the residents had gone too far with charges against us of committing atrocities, murder, and theft”, and liaison officer Yosef Schnurman (Shani) complained Arabs were testifying before the observers (PDF p.105). A Haaretz reader, Ze’ev Yitzhaki, commander of the unit that had received the surrender from the west, denied “thefts nor expulsions or executions” — which Manna accepts as sincere for his own company, the massacre having been perpetrated by soldiers from the east a week later (PDF p.106). Morris, who had written “But the army did not order the inhabitants to leave the village”, was unaware of the massacre until Manna told him in person, and overlooked military documents he himself gave Manna about the army’s January 1949 return and expulsion of hundreds (PDF p.106). Haifa intelligence officer Tsvi Rabinovich — the villagers’ “Khawaja Ghazal” — told Manna in a 1998 interview, which Manna sought for years, that he had not denied the massacre but called it confusion and error, and that on orders he had set up a roadblock west of the village, searched the UN team’s car and seized the film of the exhumed martyr’s body the observers had photographed: “What? I hope you do not think that we have to allow those foreigners (goyim) to publish pictures of the atrocities for the world to see” (PDF p.107 / printed p.84). In a 1951 High Court case judges Heishin, Zilberg and Zohar found Mukhtar Dhiyab Qasem Farhat’s statements credible and military government officer Shmuel Pesitsky’s testimony reliant “on unknown or dubious sources” (PDF p.108).

The Fate of the Border Strip Villages (PDF p.108-110 / printed p.85-87). After a Ben-Gurion–Carmel meeting, Carmel imposed a curfew on the Arab villages of the 5–15 kilometre strip along the Lebanese border and ordered their expulsion to create a strip “clean” of Arabs. Jish escaped: its Maronite dignitaries reached Mano Friedman, the minorities ministry’s Safad representative, and Bechor Shitrit and Yitzhak Ben-Tzvi persuaded the army command to change the order; most Christians stayed, most Muslims were uprooted (PDF p.108). Iqrit, occupied without resistance on 31 October, was ordered on 6 November to evacuate to al-Rama for what officer Ya’qub Qarra promised would be two weeks; 126 families, 616 people, were evicted that day (PDF p.108-109). Kufr Bir’im was counted by Friedman on 7 November at 1,050 people, then ordered on 13 November to leave for Lebanon within forty-eight hours, likewise on a promise of temporary, security evacuation; villagers who camped in the orchards lost — by the news that spread — seven children to the cold, and on 19 November many moved to abandoned houses in Jish and some to Rumaysh, with Shitrit visiting and repeating the promises (PDF p.109). On 24 November the government ratified the border strip expulsions; Ben-Gurion: “Along the whole border and in each village, we shall take everything based on the requirements of settlement. As for the Arabs, we shall not bring them back” (PDF p.109-110 / printed p.86-87). Shitrit complained the operations under General Elimelech Avnir had gone on without his knowledge or consultation; the government approved Kufr Bir’im’s people returning from Rumaysh only to live in Jish or elsewhere, not at home (PDF p.110). A few border villages escaped — Fassuta, Mi’lya, Hurfaysh and Arab al-‘Aramsha in the west, Jish and the Circassian al-Rihaniyya in the east — and Tarshiha, of over 4,000 people, was mostly emptied, especially of its Muslim majority, but its few hundred remaining, mainly Christians, refused army pressure to leave despite a plan to settle Jews from Romania in the abandoned houses (PDF p.110).

Those Who Remained at the End of 1948 (PDF p.111-115 / printed p.88-92). On the eve of the January 1949 elections the Arabs in the Jewish state numbered 125,000, about 100,000 of them in Haifa and the Galilee, and Manna states on those numbers that the official figure of 156,000 quoted by historians before the Triangle’s transfer is inaccurate (PDF p.111; see Open questions against the Introduction’s consensus figure). The chapter’s explanation of why so many remained combines geography, demographic composition, the prior Druze agreements and fear of international reaction, with the residents’ own resistance: Galileans occupied late had learned from the prohibited return of those expelled earlier, saw Nazareth and the Druze villages remain, and could use mountain terrain and guides from the border villages to return after expulsion (PDF p.111-112). The discrepancy between the July ten-day battles and Operation Hiram cannot be explained by field commanders: Ben-Gurion’s written orders spared Nazareth, and his contrary wish to complete the Galilee’s occupation without its Arab population governed Hiram; Morris’s explanations are “not at all convincing” (PDF p.112). Manna separates the sects Morris lumps together — “Generally speaking, Christians and Druze were treated better than Muslims”: no Druze village suffered repercussions even after Yanuh’s bloody battle, while Christians were killed and expelled at ‘Ilabun, Iqrit and Kufr Bir’im (PDF p.112-113). Against Morris’s statement that Majd al-Krum’s residents “remained in place after the occupation and were not expelled”, Manna sets the al-‘Ayn Square massacre and the expulsion of hundreds detailed in the next chapter (PDF p.113). Moda’i’s three factors, as quoted by Morris, are ARA officers’ resistance to migration, the Galilee mountains’ topography, and “friendly” villages promised good treatment — first and foremost the Druze, all of whom, about 11,000, remained, rising from 1 percent of Palestine’s population before 1947 to 8 percent of Israel’s Arabs after the Triangle’s annexation, their position consolidated by the so-called “blood alliance” (PDF p.113-114 / printed p.90-91). Ethnic cleansing was virtually total in Safad, Tiberias and Bisan, where there were no Druze villages and few Christians; Christians rose from 10 to 20 percent of the remaining 100,000 in Haifa and the Galilee, estimated at 30,000 countrywide in 1949 (PDF p.114). Chapter 2 ends with the imprint of this new demographic reality — fear and isolation for the small communities left south of Haifa and around Jerusalem, far from the Arab demographic centre of gravity (PDF p.115).

Chapter 3: The Arab Communists: Between the Nakba and Independence — opening, PDF p.116-122 (printed p.93-99)

Chapter opening and thesis (PDF p.116-119 / printed p.93-96). The chapter opens with the remainers’ pervasive sense of being “like orphans who could only hope for scraps from the table”, and the small discordant minority excepted from it: those who had collaborated with the Jews since the 1930s — al-Hayb ‘Arabs under Shaykh Abu Yusif, who struck a deal with Yigal Alon to fight alongside the Haganah on the eve of Operation Yiftah, Sayf al-Din al-Zu’bi and the Zu’bi villages, and the Circassians and Druze of Mount Karmil and Shafa ‘Amr (PDF p.116). The Arab communists are presented as a special case of Emile Habibi’s “pessoptimists”: guided by expelling British colonialism and reinforcing Soviet influence, and by a class analysis that accepted partition, National Liberation League members emerged quickly from the ruins, joined Maki in October 1948, and became the first remainers to integrate into the Jewish state’s political organizations (PDF p.117). Manna’s stated sources and method for the chapter are the party’s own press and documents in Hebrew (Kol HaAm) and Arabic (al-Ittihad, resumed in Haifa on 18 October 1948), comrades’ autobiographies and dozens of interviews; Maki has no official archives, and its Hebrew and Arabic publications differ obviously on sensitive matters (PDF p.117-118). Between governmental institutions and Maki there was, despite the huge difference in roles, a secret or veiled partnership in 1948 and the early state years (PDF p.118). His thesis: the majority decision of League activists to join Maki and support its policies “was a choice they made in order to remain”, later packaged as an independent ideological choice but in essence the result of the Soviet position’s change from opposing Zionism to allying with it; it paved the way for staying alongside the victors and proved loyalty, and the same party then led the resistance to the military government whose fruits were Tawfiq Zayyad’s election as Nazareth’s mayor in 1975, Land Day in 1976, and over half of Arab votes going to the Communist Party in 1977 (PDF p.118-119). Manna notes Maki, renamed Hadash after 1965 as printed, remained the sole political framework for the minority’s resistance up to the 1980s (PDF p.118-119; see Open questions).

The Druze: The First Remainers (PDF p.119-122 / printed p.96-99). The Druze section gives the sect’s history in Palestine from Emir Fakhr al-Din al-Ma’ni II in the early seventeenth century, its tense relations with Muslims and with Galilee Christians, its marginalization in the national movement and limited part in the 1936–39 revolt, and the cooperation some of its members built with Abba Hushi and other Zionist leaders, for which rebels accused them of being Zionist agents and cost a few their lives; the sons of those attacked sought vengeance, and the internecine fighting weakened the Palestinians on the Nakba’s eve (PDF p.119-120). After partition, the sect’s leaders, consulting Syria and Lebanon, formed the Jabal al-Arab battalion of about five hundred ARA volunteers under retired Lebanese officer Shakib Wahhab, deployed at Shafa ‘Amr in March 1948 on a defensive strategy, while Shai consolidated ties with Labib Abu Rukn of ‘Isfiya and Salih Khunayfis of Shafa ‘Amr, who brought in Jabr Dahish Ma’di (1919–2009) of Yarka (PDF p.120). After the battle of Husha and al-Kasayir (16 April), in which Zohar Dayan, Moshe Dayan’s brother, was among the Jewish dead, and Haifa’s fall on 22 April, Khunayfis and Ma’di convinced Wahhab to withdraw; the agreement was concluded in Khunayfis’s Shafa ‘Amr house on 9 May 1948, volunteers choosing return home or Haganah service at twenty-seven Palestine pounds monthly for those who stayed (PDF p.120). Druze then participated in ‘Akka’s occupation — Isma’il Qablan reporting its fortifications to the Jews, Khunayfis advising the besiegers to cut water and electricity — while ARA leader Mahmud al-Saffuri’s force arrested and humiliated alleged collaborators in Shafa ‘Amr, deepening Muslim–Druze mistrust (PDF p.120-121). The Zionist offer — survival of all Druze villages in return for leaders’ services, a successful divide-and-conquer — made the Druze the first large group of remainers, in a position to help Muslim and Christian neighbours stay; the agreement was tested at Shafa ‘Amr on 14 July, when Dunkelman’s forces entered from the Druze side in a mock battle of firing in the air, and a Druze unit under Sulayman Abu Rukn joined the town’s occupation and later Operation Hiram, consolidating the “blood pact” (Brit Damim) (PDF p.121). Arab researchers have largely bypassed this prickly topic, Manna notes (PDF p.122).

The Communist Camp and the Palestinian Nakba (opening, PDF p.122 / printed p.99). The section opens by restoring what later Arab literature expunged: Zurayk named “the Russians” among the external factors, al-‘Alami added “The Americans and the Russians share this [heavy responsibility]”, and George Hanna wrote that Russia endorsed partition “hoping this would provide it with a gateway to the East” — words Manna notes carry special weight from a Lebanese socialist and Soviet friend, and reinforce the contemporary Arab consensus on the Soviet role (PDF p.122 / printed p.99). The League’s merger with Maki was the price of Israel’s permission for Arab communists to lead the Palestinian minority legally; before the merger the League expressed its Palestine war positions in a publication signed with three Arab communist parties, dated early October 1948, with unsparing criticism of English and American colonialist war projects and reactionary Arab regimes — the document’s text continues in part 4.

Chapter 3: The Arab Communists — remainder, PDF p.123-150 (printed p.100-127)

The Communist Camp and the Palestinian Nakba, continued (PDF p.123-124). The early-October 1948 publication signed with three Arab communist parties blamed colonialism and reactionary Arab parties, more than Israel, for the non-creation of a Palestinian state, omitted the Soviet role entirely, and obfuscated the Marxist Zionists’ Palmach massacres and expulsions in order to lift the Zionist left to a class ally (PDF p.123). Manna stresses the missing critical history: Ahmad Sa’d’s Roots of the Evergreen Tree (Tawfiq Tubi’s testimony first, twenty-four members in all) and Musa al-Budayri’s twenty-plus mid-1970s interviews, unpublished for forty years, are material, not substitutes (PDF p.123-124). The leadership role the Jewish state allowed the communists served the Zionist enterprise and expressed gratitude to the Soviet camp; the League’s organised dissolution into Maki in October 1948 made accepting citizenship ideologically palatable, a full reversal from opposing Zionism (PDF p.124).

The League and partition (PDF p.124-128). Until World War II the communist camp held Zionism a settler movement collaborating with British colonialism; the Palestine Communist Party’s contradiction — equal rights for Zionist immigrant settlers and indigenous Palestinians under ‘Arab-Jewish brotherhood’ — split it in 1943, when the National Liberation League was established (PDF p.124-125). Soviet acceptance of partition in 1947 created a ‘political earthquake’: al-Ittihad still declared in October 1947 for British withdrawal, full independence and Palestinian self-determination, and days before the UN vote called partition a ‘colonialist proposal’; after weeks of turmoil a February 1948 Nazareth declaration supported partition, by simple majority, not consensus (PDF p.125-126). The pro-partition camp was led by Fu’ad Nassar, Tawfiq Tubi and Emile Habibi; the leading opponent, Emile Tuma, editor of al-Ittihad until early 1948, was arrested in Lebanon, held in Baalbek, and excluded from leadership until the early 1960s, the party not readmitting non-apologisers (PDF p.126-127). The Nazareth conference’s dates, venue, invitations and attendance remain hidden, Manna reports, despite his inquiries (PDF p.127).

From accepting partition to supporting the Jewish state (PDF p.128-133). The trio Nassar, Tubi and Habibi directed the League into Israeli political life. Habibi travelled with Shmuel Mikunis to the Belgrade Cominform conference and on to Prague, claiming he knew nothing of the Czechoslovak arms deal and winning a libel suit over the accusation; Manna questions whether the trip could credibly have had no League or Moscow coordination (PDF p.128). Mikunis joined the interim government in March 1948 and its communist representative signed the declaration of independence; Kol HaAm echoed Labor Zionist discourse, rejecting UN trusteeship proposals and commending Gromyko (PDF p.128-129, 131). Czech arms — first plane and ship in March, heavy arms by air 20 May to 10 August — ‘played a decisive role’, were used at al-Qastal, in the Galilee and in Haifa’s occupation and expulsion, yet the League increased coordination and declared opposition to the Arab armies’ entry (PDF p.129-130). Tubi, remaining in Haifa, co-wrote the 2 May leaflet blaming colonialism, the Palestinian leadership and Abdullah for Haifa’s calamity, with no mention of Ben-Gurion (PDF p.130-131). In June the League called the Arab armies ‘invaders’ and distributed Nassar’s ‘An Appeal to the Soldiers’ to Egyptian soldiers; distributors were prosecuted on the Arab side, Nassar escaping from Bethlehem detention and ‘Awda al-‘Ashhab and Hasan Abu ‘Isha held at Abu ‘Ujayla until the end of 1948; Tubi later quoted the leaflet in a reworded version (PDF p.132-133). Later League figures, notably Na’im al-‘Ashhab, criticised Nassar’s class-first recklessness and the Kremlin’s delusions (PDF p.133).

The beginning of communist leadership of the Arab minority (PDF p.134-139). After Nazareth’s fall, a League delegation headed by Saliba Khamis offered Minister Shitrit cooperation and asked the Jews to rely on ‘the popular forces’; the League then organised Arab workers on refugees’ fields and orchards with the military governor and the absentee-property trustee, angering older collaborator families (PDF p.134-135). Mapam’s Eliezer Be’eri defended the League (‘The Nazareth Scandal’), citing Davar’s gratitude for the leaflets to Egyptian and Jordanian soldiers and calling the League the first mass Arab organisation to support a project close to the official Jewish project; Sharett, however, instructed Shitrit that League members should participate only suitably and not be set up as bosses over the Arab masses (PDF p.135-136). In Haifa, returning comrades — dozens permitted back from Lebanon in summer and fall 1948, Hanna Naqqara by plane on 10 August — made the city a second stronghold with no more than one hundred veteran comrades in the two cities (PDF p.137-138). An August 1948 security-services document called the League ‘a real ally of the state of Israel’; in return members asked freedom of movement, an Arabic newspaper, and some leaders financial support; a proposal for the League to help oust the Arab Rescue Army from the Galilee, with a list of about thirty young men prepared by Hanna Abu Hanna, came to nothing, and Khamis received a pistol and a car (PDF p.139-140).

From the League to Maki (PDF p.140-143). The early-October leaflet signed by three Arab communist parties plus the League was distributed across the Galilee — Jibra’il Bishara of Tarshiha was arrested for distributing it and tried at Bint Jubayl — while blaming colonialism and Arab reaction with only a timid reference to ‘reactionary Zionist leaders’ (PDF p.140-141). The League requested to join Maki on 1 October, Maki’s central committee approved on 5 October, al-Ittihad resumed in Haifa on 18 October, and the 22–23 October unity conference at the Mayo movie theatre accepted the Jewish communists’ conditions; Habibi’s ‘armies of occupation’ meant the Jordanian and Egyptian armies, not Israel’s (PDF p.141-142). The Maki press made no mention, much less condemnation, of the killings and expulsions completing the Galilee’s occupation (PDF p.142). Eliyahu Gozansky’s death in a December arms-and-volunteers plane crash over Athens was celebrated by the party press into the January elections (PDF p.142-143).

‘Partners’ in Israel’s victory and propaganda (PDF p.143-147). Kol HaAm adopted Zionist discourse — Israeli dead as heroes, Arabs killed as victims of defensive retaliation — reserved ‘occupation’ for Gaza and the West Bank, defended Israel’s expanded borders (‘would not relinquish the Negev and the Galilee’), and, with the communist bloc states, opposed UN General Assembly Resolution 194 and Sharett’s proposal to accept 100,000 refugees’ return (PDF p.143-145). Maki’s first criticism of Israeli policy concerned its own people: 75 communists arrested and ill-treated in upper Galilee villages, whose POW-camp hunger strike al-Ittihad publicised in the tone of partners in Israel’s establishment (PDF p.145). The party fought the January 1949 elections in Israeli nationalist discourse, urged Galilee Arabs to vote, demanded Arab conscription in 1949 (Tubi again supporting it in 1954), did not object to the law of return for Jews or the ban on refugee return, and supported Jewish settlement on depopulated lands including Mapam settlements on Kufr Bir’im and Sa’sa’ land (PDF p.146). The elections were the remainers’ historic ‘initiation’, leaving only Maki or Zionist lists; Ben-Gurion then excluded Maki and Mapam from his first government, and the illusions dissolved until 1956, when Tubi helped expose the concealment of Kafr Kassim (PDF p.147).

Chapter 3 Summary (PDF p.147-150). Manna summarises the chapter as an unabridged first reading based on the communists’ own contemporary statements, against the heroism/treason dichotomy, and lists five turning points: (1) the February 1948 Nazareth decision for partition in practice, with the Habibi–Mikunis Belgrade–Prague trip speeding the Czech deal; (2) the May 1948 decision to resist Arab armies’ presence, while the bloc recognised Israel and supplied heavy arms amid massacres and expulsion; (3) October 1948 — the leaflets and the merger into Maki on acceptance of the Jewish state; (4) ‘forgetting’ partition and voting enthusiastically on 25 January 1949, legitimising the Galilee’s annexation before its borders were internationally known; and (5) Tubi’s 1949 request to draft Arab youth, with Maki still celebrating Independence Day at international communist conferences until 1956, its discourse changing only at the 1957 conference (PDF p.149-150). Chapter 3 ends at PDF p.150 / printed p.127.

Chapter 4: Forced Migration Continues After the Cannons Fall Silent — opening, PDF p.151-160 (printed p.128-137)

Chapter opening (PDF p.151-153). The armistices — Egypt 24 February 1949, Lebanon 23 March, Jordan at Rhodes 3 April (transferring the ‘little triangle’, population 31,000, to Israel), Syria 20 July 1949 — ended the uncertain period, and some historians treat them as the war’s real end (PDF p.151). Against the expectation that Israel would heed the December 1948 human-rights declaration and Resolution 194, Manna argues the opposite followed: the doors opened to the Jewish diaspora and shut to Palestinians expelled days earlier, leaders declared the remaining Arabs’ future not finalised, and thousands were expelled after the war under various pretexts (PDF p.151-152). In summer 1949, 160,000 Palestinian Arabs were estimated to be living in Israel under military rule, a figure concealing thousands of Galilee expulsions to the West Bank, Jordan and Lebanon alongside thousands of returns; late examples are Majdal ‘Asqalan’s few thousand expelled to Gaza in autumn 1950 and the southern Hula villages in October 1956 (PDF p.152). Mapai figures are quoted — Eliahu Hacarmeli wanting Israel ‘entirely Jewish’ — while the government, fearing internal and external criticism, used subterfuge and ‘security’ justifications and internal as well as cross-border expulsion to reduce and concentrate the Arab population (PDF p.152-153). Present absentees were barred from their towns and villages, Arab areas became closed districts under the 1945 emergency regulations, and the study reframes the refugee question as a formative experience of those who remained, who were criminalised for not informing on returning relatives (PDF p.153). Ben-Gurion, the critical decision-maker, declared in a 1950 cabinet discussion he would not allow 600,000 to return, ‘not even 600’, and in 1951 that Arabs were better in an Arab state, though not by force unless war broke out; quieter local steadfastness and pragmatic return paths, exploiting jurisdictional gaps and Israel’s greater care with Christians and Druze, are the chapter’s counter-thread (PDF p.153-154).

Shutting the Door to Return and Expelling ‘Infiltrators’ (PDF p.154-160). Surviving border villages made the strip impossible to seal and return easier; ‘combing’ operations against hidden Infiltrators also expelled relatives who had never left, especially young men whose families might follow (PDF p.154). Manna divides post-armistice security policy into external (preparing a ‘second round’), the returnees — mostly unarmed, returning for economic and social reasons — and internal treatment of the remainers as a ‘fifth column’ (PDF p.155). About 100,000 Palestinians from Haifa and the Galilee had sought refuge in Lebanon; rugged terrain and weak monitoring kept the border porous, and al-Yawm and al-Ittihad told returnee Muhammad ‘Abd al-Qadir Nabulsi’s story — repeatedly expelled, finally dead after jumping from Haifa police station’s roof, in disputed circumstances (PDF p.155-156). Detention figures: in November 1951, 195 ‘infiltrators’ in detention and 148 indicted, about 80 percent of detainees; at the end of May 1953, 341 infiltrators in jail, about 30 percent of Arabs in prison; the registered/‘infiltrator’ line was unclear, receipts and identity cards were not distributed to everybody, and residents who had never left were expelled (PDF p.156). General Elimelech Avnir’s January 1949 report records surprise searches in eleven villages expelling 1,038 people, 536 from Majd al-Krum alone; the 1 June 1949 western Galilee intelligence report gives conflicting figures for the 6 January operations at al-Bi’na (113 men investigated, four expelled) and Dayr al-Asad (140 investigated, sixteen expelled with families numbering sixty-two), and estimates of infiltrators (forty in al-Bi’na, thirty-five in Dayr al-Asad, forty-two in Majd al-Krum on 1 June 1949) — a ‘cat and mouse’ game through the first half of 1949 (PDF p.157-158). Other operations expelled Abu Snan, Kabul and al-Makr residents to the Triangle; Druze villages were searched for arms, smugglers and sheltered returnees while other Druze served as guides and smugglers, Ben-Gurion ordering extreme caution with the sect (PDF p.158). Kufr ‘Inan and Farradiyya’s remaining villagers were disposed of — 128 expelled to other villages, 64 beyond the borders — and Kufr ‘Inan’s refugees lived for dozens of years at al-Dabba in Al-Rama after return requests were refused (PDF p.158-159). The section Wholesale Expulsion: Majd al-Krum opens: census 12–14 December 1948, receipts only on 17–18 January 1949, and two combing operations (9 and 14 January) expelling 536 before the receipts came; on 9 January the village was surrounded at 3 a.m., men over twelve gathered, 506 investigated and 355 deported by Tsvi Rabinovich’s report, which complains late transport prevented 300 more deportations, while military-government representative Shlomo Pulman’s letter records very violent treatment — curses, kicks, and mukhtar Hajj ‘Abd Salim Manna’ beaten with rifle butts into critical condition at Nazareth Hospital (PDF p.159-160). Chapter 4: Forced Migration Continues After the Cannons Fall Silent — remainder, PDF p.161-185 (printed p.138-162)

Routes of agony: expulsion and return (PDF p.161-168). The remainder of the Majd al-Krum case: Shlomo Pulman’s letter reports 123rd Battalion soldiers stealing from shops and homes during the 9 January operation, with a recommendation to put those responsible on trial that army command did not follow (PDF p.161); 355 residents including women and children were expelled on 9 January 1949, taken west and south to Khubbayza near Wadi ‘Ara, fired over and left to walk to ‘Ara, Nablus and Jenin, many reaching Lebanon by spring via Transjordan and Syria (PDF p.161-163). “Abu Sa’id”, a friend of Haim Orbach, talked his family off the bus by invoking Orbach’s promised visit; others who tried the same were yelled at and cursed (PDF p.162). The 14 January operation expelled mostly Sha’b, al-Birwa and al-Damun refugees sheltering in the village; Tsvi Rabinovich told Manna that men had to prove permanent residence by census receipt and that even a registered man who lost his receipt was expelled — at a time when receipts had not yet reached all the Shaghur’s inhabitants (PDF p.162-164). Qaddah’s testimony (born 1928): he crossed back to the village at least four times over two years, built an olive-branch shack in his garden to avoid penalizing his elderly family, and described the Jordan route: Nablus, Jerusalem, Amman, al-‘Alamayn buses, reaching Beirut on Thursday 15 April 1949 (PDF p.164-166). A 6 November 1949 curfew operation, lured by the rumour that identity cards would be distributed, exiled 250 to 260 people to the Jenin area; al-Ittihad put the number at three hundred and said most were residents expelled before receiving receipts (PDF p.165-166). Returns ran through the courts and the 1951 elections: Hanna Naqqara’s summer 1951 central-court case for forty-eight Majd al-Krum residents set the precedent for Qaddah and for Manna’s own family, who returned by sea from Tyre to Shavei Tzion in mid-July 1951 — dated by Manna through his mother’s pregnancy complaint, Abu Jamil’s diary entry of Mariam wife of ‘Ali Sa’id Manna’s death on 24 June 1951, and the 30 July 1951 elections (PDF p.166-167). Dozens more returned “through Haim Orbach” before the elections, promising family votes for Mapai’s lists (PDF p.167). Return remained lethal: Abu Jamil’s diaries record returnees killed by shooting and mines in 1950-51, a two-and-a-half-year military-court sentence for Muhammad As’ad Sghayyir and Husayn Sarhan on 6 September 1951, a seven-consecutive-day curfew to force inhabitants to turn in relatives, and a Supreme Court ruling that obliged the authorities to issue identity cards to dozens whom the military government and police wanted to expel a second time (PDF p.167-168).

The remarkable story of the village of Sha’b (PDF p.168-174). After its occupation in Operation Hiram Sha’b’s villagers were expelled but its houses were not demolished; state institutions moved other Arabs in, first Shafiq Abu ‘Abdu and relatives from Damun, tasked with preventing the original inhabitants’ return (PDF p.168-169). Prime Minister’s advisor Yehoshua Palmon directed that “under no circumstances should land in the village be leased to the local population or whoever originally came from that village”; Manna and Hillel Cohen, as quoted, add revenge for the wartime fighting enthusiasm of Abu Is’af’s unit (PDF p.169). Abu Is’af — Ibrahim ‘Ali al-Shaykh Khalil (1908-2002), Qassam organization and 1936-39 revolt fighter — and Sa’id Salih al-Asadi (1918-1997), who spent his life in Ayn al-Hilwa yet returned to Galilee dozens of times to meet his wife in a Dayr al-Asad cave, are presented with their Elias Khoury Gate of the Sun fictionalizations labelled as fiction (PDF p.169-170). Supreme Court rulings supported villagers’ testimony that up to Operation Hiram Sha’b lay between the IDF and Rescue Army front lines, unpopulated except for elderly people; Sha’b was declared a closed military region in April 1951 (PDF p.170). In the 1953 case of eight Sha’b plaintiffs represented by Muhammad Nimr al-Hawwari, five were recognised as inhabitants; judges doubted the mukhtar and Shafiq Abu ‘Abdu had not played a role in failing to register villagers, and asked the legal councilor to “examine what is below the surface in Sha’b” (PDF p.171-172). Individual cases: Sa’id Husayn ‘Abbas, shot in the leg and robbed of forty-five goats days after the occupation, lived in a cave, was twice arrested and exiled, handed in two found rifles, and appealed for a permanent residence permit; Ahmad Mutlaq Hamid was arrested twelve times, lastly sentenced to two years, and got an identity card after his 1961 release; Salih Ibrahim Ghanim’s 1956 appeal to live on his Sha’b land was rejected and he was fined 75 liras (PDF p.172-174). Manna calls Sha’b “one of the most difficult among Galilee villages and the most egregious”: the village was not torn down, yet most of its people remain refugees in Israel and outside it to this day (PDF p.174).

Expulsions continue in the name of security and combatting “infiltrators” (PDF p.174-179). At the beginning of 1949 six Arab villages were left near the Lebanese border; Tarshiha, emptied of most of its 4,000, was kept by a few hundred remaining, mainly Christians. Soldiers gathered them at the church and systematically looted the vacant houses — oil, olives, wheat, cotton, furniture and the tobacco harvest — a subject Manna says researchers have not treated as deserved (PDF p.175). Dubek agent Yusif Nahhas, brought back on 1 November 1948 on a handwritten recommendation, lived in a vacant house and collected tobacco from abandoned houses for the company free of charge — an economic motive that let some inhabitants stay or return; Anis Bishara (Abu Salim) returned on a Sunday, was surprised by the collaborator Mr. Butrus saying “Don’t be afraid, enter the church,” and went home (PDF p.175). Ten Hawwari family members were killed in the aerial bombardment by Abie Nathan as Manna names the pilot; Fatma Hawwari, grievously wounded and left paralyzed, returned through the Red Cross in 1950 (PDF p.176). Jibra’il Bishara’s memoirs: released by the ARA 6 December 1948, returned via Fassuta, volunteered as a census worker, then saw a curfew operation expel those considered “infiltrators” even if registered — about 130 on 16 January 1949, with 33 heads of families and 131 members arrested, and 30 more from neighbouring Ma’liya including the sixteen-year-old historian Elias Shoufani (PDF p.176-177). A 21 January 1949 governmental committee chose transferring Tarshiha’s people to Haifa or ‘Akka — Weitz wanted the whole village depopulated to settle 1,000 Jews — but villagers with communists in the vanguard refused; Bishop Hakim’s June 1949 inducements and threats failed; a December 1949 cabinet-approved expulsion talk of Tarshiha, Jish, Hurfaysh, Fassuta and Mi’lya, opposed mainly by Sharett, came to nothing, and Tarshiha survived (PDF p.177-178). Romanian newcomers were settled in confiscated houses alongside the remaining Arabs — an introduction Manna calls unique — and the military governor used unpaid Arab skilled workers to repair settlers’ houses; the Supreme Court ruled Fahd Mikha’il Khalil’s house, seized in May 1949 and reoccupied in August 1953, had become state property (PDF p.178-179).

Condemning and resisting forced migration (PDF p.179-182). After the first parliamentary elections the communists intensified condemnation: the 1 March 1949 Kufr Yasif combing operation, in which 239 individuals were expelled (Quaker witness Charles Freeman’s figure), most refugees from ‘Amqa and Kuwaykat unregistered in the November 1948 census — with al-Ittihad questioning whether communists were being targeted after they arrested League members — and the 18 June 1949 Nazareth eastern-quarter operation, condemned by Mapam and even by Sharett, who asked Ben-Gurion to investigate the harsh treatment (PDF p.179-180). In late 1949 Tawfiq Tubi placed “army searches in Arab villages” on the Knesset agenda, detailed Majd al-Krum, Shafa ‘Amr, Dayr al-Asad and al-Bi’na, and proposed a parliamentary investigating committee; Ben-Gurion demanded the “defamation” be stricken from the record and told Tubi, “Shut up. You are sitting here thanks to us” (PDF p.180-181). The section closes with the post-war transfer talk: Moshe Dayan calling the 170,000 Arabs a “fifth column” whose fate was “still undecided,” chief of staff Yigael Yadin on 8 February 1950 calling an Arab minority a danger in war and peace, military governor Emmanuel Moore claiming in 1950 “all the people who live in Zion … do not want Arabs for neighbors,” and from 1952 plans — shared by the army, foreign ministry and HaKeren HaKayemet — to encourage emigration to Libya, Argentina, South America, Canada or Australia, among them Sasson’s Libya plan naming al-Hawwari’s support and Weitz’s Operation Yohanan to move Jish to Argentina, which failed; an intelligence report counted only about 2,000 voluntary departures by July 1951 (PDF p.181-182).

Chapter 4 conclusion (PDF p.183-185). Israeli army estimates put the returned refugees at end-1948 at 3,000 to 4,000; Ben-Gurion’s diary entry — “We should not expel any Arab if there is any doubt whether he is an infiltrator or an original resident. If it becomes clear that he is an infiltrator, then he should be expelled” — and the census’s completion on 17 January gave his diary 102,000 Arabs under Israeli rule, including 14,000 Druze (7 February 1949), a figure Manna calls more likely 120,000; the Bedouins of the Naqab (19,000) and Majdal (‘Asqalan)‘s 1,400 to 4,000 were excluded from the count (PDF p.183-184). At least 10,000 remainers were expelled from the war’s end to the mid-1950s, doubling with the Naqab expulsions; official Israeli sources five years after the Galilee’s occupation counted about 20,500 “infiltrators” who gained citizenship and about 3,000 through family reunification, the returnees constituting about a quarter of Galilee’s post-Nakba population (PDF p.184). The chapter ends on the present absentees as a suspended painful issue: Israel’s desire for the lands, not “security,” blocked a solution, though fear of repercussions forced acceptance of ‘Ilabun’s and ‘Illut’s returns, leaving Iqrit, Kufr Bir’im and Saffuriyya to ask why they must remain banished (PDF p.184-185).

Chapter 5: Stories About Individuals and Villages — opening, PDF p.186-197 (printed p.163-174)

Chapter opening (PDF p.186-187). Chapter 5 turns to the The Triangle and Jaffa, as told by original residents who became “present absentees”: the state’s refusal of return opened the way to land takeover and Jewish settlement, except for the three villages that escaped that fate — Ilabun, ‘Illut and Kufr Qari’ (PDF p.186). Triangle border villages endured seven years of killings and maltreatment in the “border war,” climaxing, in Manna’s framing, in the Kafr Kassim massacre of 29 October 1956 (PDF p.187).

The transfer of the Triangle to Israeli control (PDF p.187-190). While preventing refugee return and expelling remainers under “security needs” pretexts, Israel negotiated with Jordan for the Triangle’s transfer, a contradiction never seriously discussed; even the leftist opposition attacked the government for accepting the West Bank under Abdullah but not for taking the Triangle. Abdullah al-Tal’s memoirs devote a chapter to “the tragedy of the Triangle”; ‘Arif al-‘Arif, accusing Jordanian-side participants of treason, wrote in detail on the maps and their exploitation, but no one was held accountable and the documents remain unavailable (PDF p.187-188). The 3 April 1949 armistice included written and verbal commitments that Triangle inhabitants’ land and property rights would not be violated; Israel respected most but interpreted them narrowly — most of the 31,000 original inhabitants stayed after the May 1949 transfer, while thousands of refugees in Baqa al-Gharbiyya and small villages were expelled, estimates ranging 4,000 to 8,500 (PDF p.188). The fifty-by-five-kilometre strip of twenty-seven villages was taken without consulting or informing the population; military government staff in the southern Triangle confiscated and plundered thousands of dunums of al-Tira and Qalansuwa land and imposed a permanent nightly curfew, with Circassian and Druze police — in Qalansuwa the Circassian officer Idris Bakir — treating inhabitants violently and contemptuously (PDF p.188-189). The late-1949 expulsion of small hamlets put twenty villages and farms to flight by March 1950 under military governor Emmanuel Moore (Markovsky); al-Ittihad reported the February 1951 expulsion of al-Bayada, ‘Ayn al-Sahla, ‘Ayn al-Zaytuna and ‘Ayn Jarrar; and al-Jalama’s inhabitants, expelled on 2 March 1950 to Jatt, won a final Supreme Court order for their return — only for kibbutz Lehavot Haviva members, on the lands since 1951, to blow up al-Jalama’s houses with the army’s help on 11 August 1953 (PDF p.190-191). Mukhtar Muhammad Naddaf’s letter to the prime minister: “The court ruled in our favor,” the authorities backed the aggressors — “Is this a state or a gang?” (PDF p.191).

The return of the inhabitants of ‘Ilabun, ‘Illut and Kufr Qari’ (PDF p.191-197). Kufr Qari’, first to leave in May 1948 and last to return, came back in April 1949 without official approval, with the authorities’ tacit approval; ‘Illut’s return after a year and a half in Nazareth was uniquely approved; ‘Ilabun’s was quietly approved near the end of 1948 so that the vast majority were back by summer 1949 (PDF p.191-192). For ‘Ilabun: priest Murqus’s letter of 20 November 1948, carried by Mikha’il Damuni and Butrus Shukri Matta to Lebanon, started the return on 22 November; returnees found stripped houses and rebuilt with UNRWA and neighbours’ help, planting their land against “present absentee” claims; Shitrit’s secret consensual agreement secured the quiet return, which Manna calls a special case driven by the embarrassment church pressure caused the government (PDF p.192-193). Against Morris, Manna insists most ‘Ilabun villagers were back by May 1949, before Palmon’s agreement with Bishop Hakim returned several dozen more, and the villagers mourned over a year before celebrating the prisoners’ May 1949 release (PDF p.194-195). For Kufr Qari’: the Alexandroni attack of 9 May 1948, eleven months as a no man’s zone, harvest-mines and sniping, Hasan ‘Isa ‘Athamna’s delegation to kibbutz Kfar Glickson and the April 1949 return — questions Manna leaves open about a blind eye from above (PDF p.195-196). For ‘Illut: the Golani attack of 16 July 1948, two massacres — sixteen named martyrs mowed down by machine-gun fire in an olive grove on Nassim’s order and ten more killed near ‘Ayn al-Bayda — followed two weeks later by curfew, looting, and the majority’s flight to Nazareth’s Salesian monastery; Manna notes both Morris and Pappé fail to mention the massacres (PDF p.196-197).

Chapter 5: Stories About Individuals and Villages — remainder, PDF p.198-220 (printed p.175-197)

‘Illut’s return, concluded (PDF p.198-199). The ‘Illut section closes: the army had lodged Bedouin families of the al-Hayb, al-Jawamis, al-Ghrayfat, al-‘Iyadat and al-Mazarib tribes in the village houses for the winter under mukhtar Muhammad al-Hayb, and some Saffuriyya villagers with them; a year and a half after the uprooting the authorities consented to the return from the Salesian monastery — about half came home, half remained refugees in Jordan and Syria — the pressure of senior Salesian figures and the French consul in Haifa being, in Mustafa ‘Abbasi’s argument, the decisive factor, with the government order delivered on 3 January and the villagers, led by the monk Dubrovsky, walking home on 4 January, early in 1950. The returnees, still classed “present absentees,” lost most of their land: Nahalal had asked in August 1948 to annex about 700 dunums, writing “It seems to us that the time is ripe to transfer these lands to permanent Jewish ownership.” On 8 May 2008 the village first publicly commemorated its martyrs; council head Ibrahim Abu Ras put its pre-Nakba lands at 27,000 dunums, of which 3,330 remained (PDF p.198-199).

The “present absentees” as refugees in their own country (PDF p.199-204). About twenty thousand Galilee remainers lived a short distance from homes they could not return to; Nazareth held about five thousand migrants at the end of 1948, half of them expellees from Haifa, Tiberias, Bisan, ‘Akka and Shafa ‘Amr, and Sami Juraysi’s report records the crowded Salesian orphanage halls where “there was nothing to separate families except for a string or a rope or a piece of wood.” City returns cost the state nothing; village returns were refused because settlers wanted the land (PDF p.199). Iqrit and Kafr Bir’im, evacuated on false promises of return within weeks, fought back — a delegation to Maronite Archbishop Mubarak, the February 1949 arrest of sixty-five villagers who had repaired their houses, the Hashomer Hatzair nucleus of 5 June 1949 that became kibbutz Bar’am — and in May 1951 the two villages jointly took their case to the Supreme Court under Muhammad Nimr al-Hawwari; Manna says the court did not aid them, and the houses were torn down and most olive trees uprooted in 1953 (PDF p.200). Al-Ghabisiyya won its Supreme Court ruling on 30 November 1951, returned the next month, and was expelled again under a closed-military-area declaration, its houses later demolished to the mosque (PDF p.200-201). Qadditha’s Hulayhel clan returned in December 1948 through Mano Friedman on condition the whole clan come together, was settled in al-Ja’una, then forcibly moved to ‘Akbara in July 1949 — a removal Mapam MK Eliezer Bray called “an assault” in the Knesset — while every request to return to Qadditha itself was refused and its houses were blown up (PDF p.201-202). Al-Khisas closes the section: Shaykh ‘Atiya’s family, some of whom had fought in the Haganah and the Israeli army, were ordered on 5 June 1949 “to vacate the premises immediately,” dumped at the foot of Kan’an Mountain and later moved to Wadi al-Hamam; the Supreme Court accepted their 1949 expulsion had been illegal, but the army cured the error with individual expulsion orders of 7 July 1952 and the court then rejected them, recommending an arrangement that was never made (PDF p.203-204).

The story of “the prisoner” ‘Awda al-‘Ashhab and his friends (PDF p.204-207). Twelve League communists found in the Abu ‘Ujayla detention camp in Sinai at the end of December 1948 were imprisoned in Israel instead of decorated; MK Meir Vilner demanded their freedom in the Knesset — Salim al-Qasim was a friend of the “Israeli minister: Zalman Shazar” — and the twelve, mostly from Jerusalem, Hebron and Gaza outside Israel’s borders, were freed at the end of June 1949 and allowed to live in Israel. The camps then held over 9,000 Arab prisoners, hundreds of them Galileans kept over a year working without pay (PDF p.204-205). ‘Awda al-‘Ashhab’s family-reunification applications for his wife Mariam and daughter in Hebron were rejected repeatedly — Immigration Minister Haim Moshe Shapira holding the family had never been permanent residents of a region now in Israel — so he had them smuggled in from Sandala; Mariam hid for years in comrades’ and Knesset members’ houses, gave birth to Shadya in secret at Rambam Hospital on 20 August 1952, and the case was settled only in 1954 when Maki brought the family to the Knesset and Prime Minister Sharett ordered Shitrit to resolve it (PDF p.206-207).

The atypical return of the attorney Khalil Tuma ‘Abbud (PDF p.207-210). Against the early-1952 exposure of a foreign-ministry plan to push Arabs to emigrate to Libya, Manna tells how Khalil Tuma ‘Abbud of al-Rama, a UCL law student cut off by the Nakba, reached Tripoli as a Libyan-government legal consultant and returned through Shawqi Bey al-Sa’d, the Haifa refugee who headed Tripoli’s general security branch and extended the visa of Meir Shelon, Israel’s consul arranging Libyan Jewish emigration: ‘Abbud sailed on the Artsa in August 1952 as a “new immigrant” on entrance visa no. 41227 in his Jordanian passport, and became a lawyer, teacher and judge. The counter-case is Subhi Farah Khuri of Nazareth, the AUB pharmacy graduate of 1951 whose mother’s return application and Supreme Court appeal were both rejected (PDF p.208-210).

Between routine repression and terrifying events (PDF p.210-216). The Triangle section: the transfer agreement’s compensation clause, the pressure on Wadi ‘Ara to emigrate, and the hamlet expulsions (Bayada, ‘Ayn al-Sahla, ‘Ayn al-Zaytuna, ‘Ayn Jarar as printed here) frame a border regime in which the line between permitted movement and lethal “infiltration” stayed hazy (PDF p.210-211). At ‘Ara on 23 June 1952 soldiers fired without warning on Eid al-Fitr villagers come to see relatives across the border, killing two and wounding five; Ben-Gurion announced the soldiers had committed no criminal offense, “just an unpremeditated error,” and Elias Kusa rebutted that there were no “infiltrators, just citizens who came close to the border from the Israeli side so that they could see their relatives” (PDF p.211-212). At al-Tira the “Day of the Airplane” — the all-day search of 31 July 1953 after alleged fire at an Israeli plane — left extensive damage and theft and a miscarriage, and acting defense minister Pinhas Lavon mocked “the delicate pianos and aristocratic furniture” of al-Tira in the Knesset (PDF p.212-213). The Al-Subayh Arabs clan near Mount Tabur, whose clan head’s family was massacred and dismembered on 8 June 1948 after Yigal Allon postponed the retaliation for the Keshet killings, answered six months of collective curfew and exile orders in late 1954 by seeking conversion to Christianity at the Mount Tabur monastery; the embarrassment lifted the siege (PDF p.213-215). At Kufr Manda on 13 December 1954 villagers resisting a water catchment on their lands were arrested in dozens and marched handcuffed twelve kilometres to Shafa ‘Amr, thirty-seven of them military-court defendants — the first mass protest in defence of remaining Arab land, organized into a Galilee-wide solidarity campaign by the Communist Party (PDF p.215-216).

The 1956 Kafr Qasim massacre: a turning point (PDF p.216-219). On 29 October 1956, hours after the attack on Egypt began, Border Guards manning a barricade fired on villagers returning unaware of a curfew advanced from 6:00 to 5:00 p.m., killing forty-nine in cold blood, with several more killed in other southern Triangle villages. Manna sets it in the routine: Morris’s border policy “of shooting at infiltrators to kill” and his Israel’s Border Wars figure of “between 2,700 and 5,000 Arab infiltrators were killed,” most unarmed; the 10 October 1956 Qalqilya retaliation; and Operation Mole (“hafarperet”), the army’s exercised plan to expel the southern Triangle’s population to detention camps if war broke out at the end of 1956. Whether the massacre was part of a plan to terrorize the population into migrating he leaves open (PDF p.216-218).

Chapter 5 conclusion (PDF p.219-220). The remainers’ stories break the black-and-white mold: policy sought for years to reduce the Arab citizens and take the largest possible amount of their lands, yet the three returns (‘Ilabun, ‘Illut, Kufr Qari’), and even Kafr Qasim’s residents’ refusal to leave after the massacre, show Palestinians “not just powerless and hapless victims” but often successful in defining their own destiny; the struggle continued to 1956 at least, and the seeds of the massacre lay in the border-strip villages between Wadi ‘Ara and Kafr Qasim years before (PDF p.219-220).

Chapter 6: The Struggle to Remain: Between Politics and the Judiciary — opening, PDF p.221-234 (printed p.198-211)

Under “democratic” military rule (PDF p.221-223). Chapter 6 opens on the contradiction between Israel’s democratic claim and its raison d’être as a state for the Jews: no constitution or rights document was adopted, the Declaration of Independence’s equality promises were never translated into action, and the remaining Palestinians depended on the Jewish majority’s good behaviour. Inside the government, Shitrit — minister of police and minorities, Arabic-speaking, from a Moroccan family settled in Tiberias — defended a lenient policy and carried Arab complaints to Ben-Gurion, who supported the army and covered up its actions; the ministry of minority affairs was closed in June 1949 as Mapai took central control. Military rule worked through the 1945 defence (emergency) regulations, night curfews, permits, and closed military zones, controlling, in Manna’s summary, the economy and politics, movement, and time itself; yet the remainers exploited the multiplicity of institutions — party competition for their votes, the Histadrut, and above all the courts. Fewer than a dozen Arab lawyers practised in Haifa and the Galilee up to the mid-1950s, the most prominent Hanna Naqqara and Elias Kusa of Haifa and two Zu’bi family members of Nazareth (PDF p.221-223).

Stories from Jaffa (PDF p.223-226). Jaffa’s remainers — some three thousand of a pre-war seventy thousand — were isolated in a barbed-wire quarter while the mixed cities’ military government was cancelled only after the looting of Arab houses was completed. After Haifa fell, British pressure won a respite from the Irgun’s attack on al-Manshiyya, but the city fell: at least four leaders stayed and, under Ahmad Abu-Laban, signed the surrender with the Haganah on 13 May 1948; the terms were not honoured — searches in which “much property and furniture was stolen or destroyed,” an official reporting on 25 May 1948 “I saw soldiers, civilians and policemen as well as military police themselves committing theft and robbery,” the rape of a twelve-year-old girl and fifteen Arabs murdered near the port — and the cabinet decided on 16 June not to allow the refugees in Lydda and al-Ramla to return. In early July the Northern Command’s plan to expel ‘Akka’s remaining four thousand was likely foiled by Shitrit’s insistence on a written defense-minister order. Jaffa’s first military governor Yitzhak Chizik resigned on 25 July 1948 when his complaints achieved nothing; his successor Meir Laniado moved all remaining Arabs into the al-‘Ajami “ghetto” (PDF p.224-226).

The Kafkaesque story of Hajj Ahmad Abu-Laban (PDF p.226-229). Abu-Laban (born 1910), the Emergency Committee head who had received the municipality keys from Mayor Yusif Haykal and signed the surrender with Michael Ben-Gal — which promised civil rights, no arrests even of fighters, and the expelled’s return — was threatened, house-arrested and detained on an arms charge in July 1948, then arrested again on 12 September and disappeared into military custody, his lawyer Yitzhak Benyamini told “the detainee is in the military section so he should see the military police” and then that he was not there at all. The Supreme Court ruled on 3 January 1949 that his article-111 administrative detention was procedurally unlawful and ordered his release; he was freed only weeks later, after Jaffa’s 1,500-signature petition and Shitrit’s unanswered letters. Threats and assaults followed, and he emigrated to Jordan; Haaretz warned the case would be a dangerous precedent if “the tension between the rule of law and the administrative authority does not lead to the victory of the law.” Two other signatories frame the outcomes: Salah Ibrahim al-Nadhir left with the last British forces on 14 May 1948 and died in Amman in 1992; Amin Andrawus kept his house, refused the move to al-‘Ajami, and brought his children back from Jordan by family reunification in early 1950, among 117 Jaffa returnees al-Yawm named (PDF p.227-230).

The return of Fakhri Jaday (PDF p.230-231). Fakhri Jaday, the Beirut-trained pharmacologist, returned on 15 October 1950 by family reunification to the al-‘Ajami pharmacy, was kept from leaving again for a Paris doctorate by his parents, and testified to the elite’s quiet departure — Emergency Committee member Hasan Barakat selling his plantations and emigrating, and all but a few of Jaffa’s one thousand Armenians gone by the early 1950s. Ahmad Abd al-Rahim, another signatory, protected his al-‘Ajami house by renting and then selling it to the French consulate before leaving for Beirut (PDF p.230-231).

Muhammad Nimr ‘Awda and the tragic affair of the attorney Subhi al-Ayyubi (PDF p.231-234). Al-Ittihad’s Libya-emigration exposé names Muhammad Nimr ‘Awda — the Mandate communist expelled from the party leadership in 1940 for “nationalist deviation,” a participant in al-Kaylani’s 1941 Iraq revolt — as the man in Libya encouraging Palestinian emigration, and Subhi al-Ayyubi as its example. Al-Ayyubi’s own case: an elderly, asthmatic Jaffa attorney living at his Jaljuliyya plantation, robbed and beaten in August 1949, who came to Jaffa for treatment on article-125 permits, stayed at his brother’s after they expired on 31 October 1949, and was ordered on 2 March 1950 under article 110 to return to the plantation. Judge Shimon Agranat’s Supreme Court, in the case submitted 30 March 1950, declined to examine the security justifications, found no technical administrative error — unlike Abu-Laban’s case — and rejected him on 26 May 1950; MK Moshe Aram’s questions exposed the retaliatory grounds (his law-licence bid and Islamic Council membership), and Ben-Gurion deferred to the judiciary. The section, and this part, end mid-question on whether al-Ayyubi was driven out (PDF p.232-234; continues PDF p.235).

Chapter 6: The Struggle to Remain — remainder, PDF p.235-254 (printed p.212-231)

Al-Ayyubi’s emigration, concluded (PDF p.235). The question is completed: did the authorities propose to Subhi al-Ayyubi that he sell his property and immigrate to Libya after he found all doors closed? The available sources give no clear answer on who played a role, but indicate the overwhelming majority of those who chose Libya were educated urban residents; the mixed cities (Lydda, al-Ramla, Jaffa) were repopulated by Jews who became rulers and masters, and their remainer elite’s alienation — doctors, engineers, lawyers deciding to leave — exceeded even the village remainers’ tragedy (PDF p.235).

The attorney Elias Kusa: a one-man institution (PDF p.235-239). Elias Kusa (1896–1971), of Lebanese origin, AUB-educated, in Palestine from December 1917 with Allenby’s forces, resigned from the justice department in 1928 and practised in Haifa; he remained after April 1948 and watched state institutions systematically store and then, from early July 1948, sell Haifa refugees’ furniture and clothing cheaply to incoming Jews. As an Arab Emergency Committee member and lone-wolf critic — letters in Arabic and English to ministers and the UN, articles in the dissident Nir — he attacked the March 1950 present-absentee land law and the travel/passport regime: “In theory, the Arabs in Israel have equal rights with the Jews, but in fact they are persecuted in almost all areas.” Intelligence services, unable to frame a legal charge, discussed a plan “to break his bones” in an anonymous letter of 21 August kept in the prime minister’s advisor’s file; his home was burgled and his library ransacked, and his son Nicola immigrated to Canada. Passport denial was the regime’s lever: Hanna Naqqara’s application (19 November 1952, under article 3 of the 1952 Citizenship Law) was rejected over his August 1948 entry, yet the Supreme Court accepted his election on 16 October 1953 on the Haifa central court’s basis; Kusa, who never left Haifa, got no justification at all for his March 1957 application’s seventy days of silence (PDF p.236-239).

Law in the service of the policy of repression (PDF p.239-244). Through Kretzmer’s The Legal Status of the Arabs in Israel and Alina Korn’s dissertation, Manna argues the 1950s fixed remainers’ legal status: the 1952 Citizenship Law’s three cumulative article-3 conditions (registered 1 March 1952; inhabitant when the law took force; continuously present or legally entered since the state’s establishment) excluded many remainers, for whom an identity card meant protection from expulsion, not from discrimination. Korn’s three tailor-made law groups — the 1952 entry law, “The law to combat infiltration, violations, and the judiciary of 1954” (title as printed), and the 1945 emergency regulations — made most remainers law-violators: at least half of 1950–52 violators were Palestinian-minority members, most of them “infiltrators” by registration delay, tried in military courts for permit-less work travel. The situation continued under most years of military government, which as a matter of policy made minority members violators of the law — not, Manna stresses, a true reflection of the inhabitants’ behaviour. The Galilee was divided into fifty-four closed regions; permits were carrot and stick; four ‘Arabat al-Battuf men were administratively detained a month over an education tax. When the same article 111 was used against a Jewish terrorist cell in May 1951, Menachem Begin called the emergency laws “a Nazi law” in the Knesset and demanded their abrogation within a week — they were not abrogated, and were used for internal exile (Nadim Musa, al-Bi’na to Tuba) and, via wasta and regime-connected intermediaries such as Bishop Hakim, for the carrot-and-stick control system. Iqrit and Kufr Bir’im worked through bureaucracy for years before hiring al-Hawwari; their famous Supreme Court ruling’s temporary success “did not alter their destiny” (PDF p.239-244).

The Supreme Court: another battleground (PDF p.244-250). Muhammad Nimr al-Hawwari, Naqqara and Kusa divided the fewer-than-a-dozen Arab attorneys’ court burden. Ben-Gurion announced in the Knesset on 8 April 1949 that no one bearing a legal registration coupon was to be expelled. Naqqara pioneered the identity-card cases: the November 1950 case for seventy al-Bi’na plaintiffs won a provisional order compelling the interior ministry to explain itself within fifteen days, and al-Yawm reported cards exchanged for red temporary cards at Majd al-Krum and twenty-two Supreme Court wins for Majd al-Krum, al-Bi’na and Dayr al-Asad men. Al-Hawwari won cards for twenty-three Majd al-Krum plaintiffs before Heishin, Zilberg and Zohar — but lost for Muhammad ‘Ali al-Husayn and nine others, in a decision Manna quotes at length: the judges believed both mukhtars over officer Shmuel Pisetsky, called the 8 November 1948 al-‘Ayn Square operation “an ordinary military retaliatory operation” rather than a search for two “infiltrators”, and still held the plaintiffs had “fled—that is, they were not expelled—to Lebanon”, Judge Heishin refusing cards although “that would prevent the army from assaulting them” — a forcible-expulsion/voluntary-leaving binary Manna calls a precedent legitimising the expulsion of thousands. Salam Ahmad Kiwan’s later case turned on “whether the plaintiff had been expelled illegally” and was won on 29 July 1953; combing operations (Majd al-Krum and Dayr al-Asad, 24 August 1952) continued into the mid-1950s (PDF p.244-250).

The loyalty test: the attempt to recruit those who remained (PDF p.250-254). Non-service was used from the early 1950s to justify discrimination, though most governments never tried to recruit Arabs. Maki’s leaders, Tawfiq Tubi at their head, had demanded Arab conscription since 1949 — a class-based loyalty Manna finds puzzling in an army still expelling Palestinians. The government’s own attempt came in 1954: a registration order published 9 July, registration from 25 July, officially for “equality in rights and responsibilities”; Maki’s Jewish leaders supported conscripting Arab men and women enthusiastically, while the unsigned al-Rabita piece Manna attributes likely to Kusa argued colonial regimes do not conscript the occupied and concluded “Conscription should be rejected because the time is not suitable for it.” After thousands registered, the government stopped without explanation — Amnon Lin called it a loyalty test, Yehoshua Palmon said he had expected young men to leave the country; both designs failed. In 1956 the government conscripted the Druze only, widening the rift with the Palestinian people; no later attempt was made, but non-service kept justifying discrimination. Chapter 6 ends at PDF p.254 / printed p.231.

Chapter 7: The Parliamentary Elections and Political Behavior — opening, PDF p.255-271 (printed p.232-248)

Between military and electoral battles (PDF p.255-257). Return was granted where it served Israel — communists, and their rivals: Sayf al-Din al-Zu’bi used the League leaders’ return to demand his own family’s. A mid-December 1948 meeting of party experts mostly opposed including Arabs in the first elections; Ben-Gurion’s opinion, on domestic and international interest, was decisive. Mapai set up two Arab lists headed by known collaborators — not genuine parties — voiding free elections’ meaning by barring independent Arab parties. The chapter’s thesis: Maki’s leaders remained comfortable partners to Israel until at least 1955, obscuring Palestinian identity behind “the Arab minority” / “the Israeli Arabs”, monopolising representation, confining struggle to civil anti-discrimination, and not resisting the Law of Return, settlement on depopulated villages’ lands, the flag or the anthem. Support for either communists or collaborators was a fight-to-stay strategy, not conviction: most remainers expected temporary endurance until the “coming of the saviors”. Eliyahu Sasson estimated 80 percent would vote Mapai/Shitrit lists, 20 percent Mapam and Maki (PDF p.255-257).

The first Israeli elections and their results (PDF p.257-264). The November 1948 census (782,000 total; 713,000 Jews, 69,000 Arabs) undercounted the Galilee and omitted the Naqab; about 30,000 Arabs had voting rights of 507,000 total, and about 25,000 (over 83 percent) voted — voting, like identity cards, a talisman against expulsion. Seats: Mapai 46, Mapam 19, religious bloc 16, Herut 14, General Zionists 7, Progressives 5, Maki 4, Nazareth Democratic list 2; Arabs held three seats — al-Zu’bi and Amin Jarjura on the Nazareth list, Tubi for Maki. Ben-Gurion’s “neither Maki nor Herut” excluded Maki from coalition despite its hopes, making Arab voting inconsequential while lending a democratic hue. Al-Zu’bi is Manna’s “good Arab” faithful follower; Jarjura (1886–1975) refutes the agent generalisation — in June 1949 he told the Knesset the refugees were driven out “under conditions of fear and terrorism” and that Haifa, Jaffa, Tiberias, ‘Akka and Bisan were emptied before 15 May 1948, and in June 1951 he called Nazareth’s takeover an “occupation”; Mapai ensured his non-election in 1951, and he was Nazareth’s mayor 1954–1959. Vote estimates: about 10,600 Arab votes to Mapai’s lists, about 6,000 to Maki; Mapam’s Popular Arab Bloc took 2,812, below threshold. Maki won over half in Nazareth (party data: 52 percent there, 28 percent in ‘Iblin and Kufr Yasif, 25 percent in Shafa ‘Amr and ‘Akka; officially about 22 percent of Arab votes overall) — explained by ten months of League organising under Saliba Khamis, Mapam-ministry channels, Arab-Jewish partnership, partition support and the unattractiveness of Zionist parties that excluded Arabs from membership, as Aharon Cohen and Rustum Bastuni admitted inside Mapam in May–June 1949. Maki meanwhile supported unrestricted aliyah and even kibbutzim on Kufr Bir’im’s and Sa’sa”s ruins, Vilner declaring “We see aliya as a vital need for the state of Israel.” (PDF p.257-264).

The return and politics: two rivals of communism (PDF p.265-271). After the elections Mapai brought back anticommunist rivals. Bishop Hakim — visitor in June 1948, approved early 1949 amid Resolution 194 pressure, returned by plane 18 February 1949 — offered to “purify the air that was full of communist poison”, resumed al-Rabita, banned communists in his denomination, and built a rival camp: church property restored with compensation, a scout movement whose 14 April 1952 Nazareth march ended in a clash in which Ni’mat al-Qasim died, and the October 1952 ‘Ilabun club fire that killed Suhayl Zurayq and, counter-intuitively, consolidated the party there. Hakim’s help returned the Srouji brothers (‘Aziz, arrested near Fassuta and released through Hakim in 1951; ‘Anis, family reunification summer 1951, later the bishop’s architect and a 1954 Home Bloc pillar). Al-Hawwari returned in December 1949 at Yehoshua Palmon’s initiative (“has worked with us since 1945”), was met by communist demonstrations shouting “Al-Hawwari to the gallows”, cooperated with Hakim toward an anticommunist party before 1951, then renounced politics from 1950 for law and the judiciary. The part closes with the second Knesset elections of 1951: Arab voting rights doubled to about 70,000 (still only 40 percent of an Arab population totalling 160,000 at the end of 1949), turnout 86 percent, and eight Arab MKs elected — Tubi and Emile Habibi (Maki), five from Mapai-associated slates, and Rustum Bastuni (Mapam), with two Druze (Salih Khunayfis, Jabr Ma’di) and the Triangle’s first MK from Baqa al-Gharbiyya (PDF p.265-271).

Chapter 7: The Parliamentary Elections and Political Behavior — remainder, PDF p.272-288 (printed p.249-265)

The second elections (1951) concluded (PDF p.272-275). Mapai headed its Arab slates with proven loyalists representing sectarian and tribal interests compatible with divide and rule; most of those elected saw the seat as a reward for services, lacked the education and Hebrew for an independent role, and were easily controlled — unlike the educated leftists Bastuni, Tubi and Habibi. The eight Arab MKs of 1951 included two Druze at the Muslims’ expense (Muslims held two of the five Mapai-slate seats: al-Zu’bi and Faris Hamdan), Hakim’s Catholic Mas’ad Qassis succeeding Jarjura, and two Maki Christians from Haifa — Maki’s Arab representatives stayed urban Christians, with no Muslim in the party leadership until the 1970s (PDF p.272). Maki took 31,000 votes in 1951, 10,000 of them Arab (16.3 percent of Arab votes, down from 22.2 percent in 1949); it was widely believed the authorities let some “infiltrators” remain so their families would vote Mapai, the rumoured price of a card being 200 votes. Habibi’s June 1951 appeal against removal from Haifa’s voter roll succeeded: the interior ministry’s claim that he had entered illegally was, Manna writes, the government “playing dumb”, since he had returned with its knowledge in autumn 1948, and he showed identity card no. 46386 of 16 January 1949 (PDF p.272-273). Mapam took only 3,300 Arab votes (5.6 percent); Eliezer Be’eri put Mapai pressure only third among the reasons, noting still heavier pressure on Maki. Manna explains the communist retreat “objectively”: the newly voting Naqab Bedouin (under expulsion threat to the late 1950s, voting in blocs behind their shaykhs, and never courted by Maki), the all-Muslim conservative Triangle, and upper Galilee’s Druze, drawn to al-Zu’bi’s slate by Jabr Ma’di’s 1948 help — the three regime slates took 32,288 votes, about 55 percent of Arab votes (PDF p.273-274). The difference from 1949 was political: the minorities ministry was abolished, Mapam military governors were replaced by Mapai men, teachers were fired and rivals promoted once Israel turned from the USSR toward the West; electoral seasons became known in Arab folklore as “the year of marhaba (greetings!)” (PDF p.275).

Between a rock and a hard place: the independents (PDF p.276-280). Amos Elon’s early-1951 Haaretz reports frame the section: a teacher told him, “I shall not vote, just as prisoners do not vote. Israel has pushed us all into a giant prison.” Elon noted Arabs could elect ten or eleven MKs with an independent national organisation, yet no independent Arab slate existed among the twenty slates; Manna adds that not all government-slate voters acted from fear, but an independent slate’s prospects were dim so soon after the Nakba, with the urban elite lost (PDF p.276). Elias Kusa’s reply to Sharett’s 28 July 1951 Arabic broadcast is quoted at length: the Declaration promised “full equality in civil rights”, land, movement and work mattered more than electing MKs, and the three Mapai lists’ candidates “were not elected by Arabs or any Arab party”; his one agreement was that the courts showed no discrimination by gender or religion (PDF p.277). Wadi’ al-Bustani (1888–1954), the AUB-educated author and lawyer who had stayed in Haifa, found minority life and separation from Lebanon unbearable and left in 1953 for Dibya, dying there the next year; dozens of the educated elite likewise renounced citizenship to reach the Arab world in the early 1950s (PDF p.277-278). The independent circle around al-Rabita — Jabbur Jabbur, Qassis, Shaykh Tahir al-Tabari, later Tahir al-Fahum, Shukri al-Khazin and Hanna Shumar — tried in 1953 and again in spring 1955 (as the Arab-Israeli Bloc, with a registration letter from Haifa district official Jacob Bergman) to organise independently, and was attacked by al-Ittihad as “the Deportation Party” supposedly backed by the American and British consuls (PDF p.278). Kusa and al-Fahum’s November 1954 letter charged all eight Arab MKs with failure and the communists with exploiting a joint rights-defence committee for party ends; Kusa challenged the communist MKs “to mention one single Arab problem which they managed to solve in the interests of the Arabs” and listed his own quiet achievements (Absentees Law amendment, Arabic on official checks/receipts, memoranda on the Nationality and Land Acquisition laws); the bloc withdrew before the 1955 elections (PDF p.279-280).

The third elections (1955) and their results (PDF p.280-288). The 1954 local elections are the section’s prelude: in Kufr Yasif, Yani Yani was re-elected council head with two communist members despite military governor Ya’cov Muhriz; in Nazareth (12 April 1954) the authorities used threats and even violence from al-Zu’bi’s supporters, yet could not form a coalition without Maki’s six members, and former MK Amin Jarjura became mayor in July 1954; Geremy Forman saw no direct connection to the decision that year to build Nazareth Elit (Upper Nazareth) (PDF p.280-281). The third Knesset elections (26 July 1955) drew 86,723 eligible Arab voters, of whom 77,750 voted (90 percent); Mapai and its slates won over 62 percent of Arab votes; al-Zu’bi’s 15,475 votes elected only two MKs, and in March 1956 al-Zu’bi was pressured to yield his seat to Jabr Ma’di, while Qassis refused to step down under Hakim’s protection. Maki rose to six seats on Jewish votes but fell to just over 15 percent of Arab votes, holding the large cities and failing among small villages and the Naqab Bedouin (PDF p.281-282). Mapam’s Rustum Bastuni (1923–1994) — a Tirat Haifa refugee of spring 1949 who returned through his brother Muhammad’s Jewish acquaintances, edited al-Mirsad from September 1951, and drew Arab youth to Mapam (about 6,000 Arab votes in 1955, double the earlier figure) — was dropped for Yusif Khamis after openly criticising Mapam for not opening membership to Arabs and for building kibbutzim on depopulated villages’ lands, Kufr Bir’im and Sa’sa’ among them (PDF p.282-283). In the 1956 war Mapam, now in the governing coalition, and Maki parted ways: Maki stood with the Soviet Union and Egypt, led the opposition to the war and to the Kafr Qasim massacre, and called the 6 January 1957 mourning strike that al-Ittihad described as “the unity of the Arab masses in their struggle against national oppression” (PDF p.283). Domestically Maki attacked the Jews-only first neighbourhood of Upper Nazareth — “Nazareth will not become South Africa” — completing its reversal (PDF p.284). Habibi’s move from Haifa to Nazareth in 1956, his mother’s 1954 departure through the Mandelbaum Gate after surrendering her citizenship, and the Shabak’s accusation that he had called for an Algerian-style rebellion frame the thirteenth congress (May 1957), whose affirmation that the Arabs in Israel are an inseparable part of the Palestinian people with a “right to self-determination, even separation” crossed an Israeli red line (PDF p.284). The closing analysis, “Tenth Anniversary and Turning the Tables (1948–58)”, reads the 1955–58 reversal as a temporary, Moscow-driven honeymoon with Nasserism: the party that had annually invited readers to Independence Day celebrations and, at its twelfth congress (May 1952), made no mention of Palestinians at all, reframed Independence Day with the nationalists as Nakba Day on 1 May 1958 in Nazareth; then, following the USSR to Qasim’s Iraq against Nasser, it was punished in 1959 — three seats, 11 percent of the Arab vote, third place behind Mapam (whose Rashid Husain wrote “When History Grows Hungry”) — winning less than half the Arab votes of 1949 (PDF p.285-288). Chapter 7 ends at PDF p.288 / printed p.265.

Epilogue — PDF p.289-297 (printed p.266-274)

The “second round” as a turning point (PDF p.289-292). Both superpowers backed a Jewish state at the Palestinian people’s expense in 1948 and neither pressed Israel on Resolution 194; Israel acted with impunity, its actions counted as self-defense, at least until 1956. In the Sinai War both superpowers opposed the colonial war with Britain and France and compelled Israel’s withdrawal from Sinai and Gaza (March 1957), while Nasser’s political victory made him a nationalist hero among the remainers too. The Arab communists, jailed in 1956 for opposing the collusion — the reverse of 1948 — split definitively from Mapam; al-Ittihad demanded “a halt to the aggression and occupation and massacres and arrests” (PDF p.289-290). The Kafr Qasim trials were the first punishment of Israeli security personnel for killing Palestinians since 1948, forced by Arab and Jewish public opinion after the government tried concealment; between 1948 and 1956 an estimated three to five thousand Palestinians had been killed along the border and in Arab villages with no one held to account. The remainers escaped the “second round”: transfer-minded Israelis had despaired of expelling them except under “the fog of war”, yet Kafr Qasim and its neighbours did not contemplate leaving — the Nakba’s lesson, in Manna’s formulation, was that dying at home was preferable to the humiliating life of refugees — and the war passed without the Arabs behaving as the fifth column of Mapai rhetoric (PDF p.290-291). The war launched a new era, from survival to rebuilding collective identity: Arab students at Hebrew University, the 1957 communist–nationalist rapprochement, and the road to Nazareth on 1 May 1958; Manna marks his methodological difference from the literature — the Ratner committee’s recommendation to keep military government made researchers miss the war’s effect, which shows in the remainers’ conduct, not in government policy (PDF p.292).

Awareness and identity formation (PDF p.292-295). Israel waged war on the remainers’ national consciousness as well as their land, promoting a distorted “Arabs of Israel” identity and sectarian, tribal and ethnic identities under divide and conquer; the Druze, conscripted from 1956, were consolidated toward a separate national identity, and Druze voting patterns differ essentially from other Arab citizens’ (PDF p.292-293). Independence Day was an identity mechanism: from spring 1949 the military government used carrot and stick (school participation enforced by intimidation; free movement without permits on the day itself) to stage Arab participation, in which communists and regime agents alike took part while nationalists chose a “wisdom of silence”; Habibi’s 1952 front-page formulation — the people affirm their determination “to achieve the independence which they sold and to end their subordination to American imperialism” — already showed the gap (PDF p.293-294). Judaization supplied the anger: Upper Nazareth from 1956, and 200,000 dunums between al-Shaghur and al-Battuf decreed a closed area as the first step toward building Karmiel. The government considered outlawing Maki in January 1958 and had intelligence fabricate a rebellion charge against Habibi and his Nazareth comrades (Yair Bäuml’s conclusion); by March 1958 al-Ittihad was declaring, “We will celebrate when we regain our nationalist rights.” On 1 May 1958 in Nazareth the banned Labor Day march became unprecedented confrontations — dozens wounded, hundreds arrested — and on 6 July 1958, despite administrative detentions and house arrests, meetings in ‘Akka and Nazareth announced the Arab Front; its non-communist leaders, Kusa among the first to predict its failure, resigned by January 1959, a first step toward al-‘Ard (PDF p.294-295).

From struggling to survive to fighting to build a future (PDF p.295-297). In Karl Mannheim’s terms the Arab Front marks a new political generation. The immediate prehistory is Kusa’s: the 27 December 1956 meeting at his house, whose declaration (headed by Judge Musa al-Tabari, three Christian clergymen, Jabbur Jabbur and Yani Yani, with later al-‘Ard activists Habib Qahwaji and Mansur Kardush among the signatories) exposed the government’s responsibility for Kafr Qasim; his 11 January 1957 letter to fifty-six leading Arab figures; and the intelligence pressure channelled through Bishop Hakim — a handwritten note signed “Carmel” to Uri Lubrani’s office records the approach to Hakim to warn Kusa to keep quiet (PDF p.296). Kusa helped establish al-‘Ard after the front’s failure and, in 1960, published two booklets attacking the Ben-Gurion government and its collaborators, Hakim most notable, dedicating the second “to every Arab who is proud of his Arabism and who cherishes his human dignity, who resists persecution and tyranny, who fights to gain his rights as a citizen” (PDF p.296-297). The Epilogue closes: the remainers broke the barrier of fear and trauma; the government retreated from outlawing Maki but laid down new red lines that pushed the party back to its 1950s positions; readiness to confront nonetheless entered the remainers’ experience, and the next broad Arab front challenge came on “Land Day” in 1976. The Epilogue ends at PDF p.297 / printed p.274.

Appendices — PDF p.298-311 (printed p.275-288)

Seven Israeli military documents are reproduced in full, each headed “Appendix N1” as printed in the text copy (the appendix number with its note number run together; checked against the original). Appendix 1 (PDF p.298-299): the Battalion 123 intelligence report of 31 October 1948 (signed Hanan Levi) on Majd al-Krum’s surrender — the delegation from Majd al-Krum, al-Bi’na, Dayr al-Asad and Nahaf, the friendly-fire exchange with Battalion 12’s column from al-Rama, the cease-fire accepted at 12:30 and signed at 14:25 on 30 October, about 1,800 residents by a first estimate, and weapons to be handed in gradually by 8:00 on 31 October. Appendix 2 (PDF p.300-301): the Haifa District/Battalion 123 daily report of 31 October 1948 — twenty rifles turned in by noon and fifteen more “after pressure was applied and threats made”, Battalion 122’s arrival at 16:15 and its choice of 1,000 Arab labourers to repair the road to Acre, about 2,000 inhabitants, and the named “gang members” around Hajj ‘Abid. Appendix 3 (PDF p.302-303): the 1 November 1948 intelligence excerpts from Battalions 122 and 123 urging “a swift and precise combing operation”, with the arms count found in a Latin-alphabet report of 10 October — 56 German, 22 French and 16 British rifles. Appendix 4 (PDF p.304): Col. Baruch’s secret letter of 18 November 1948 to Lt. Col. Schnurman — Majd al-Krum had no military governor or officer, UN observers on 10 November heard residents’ accusations of “atrocities of plunder and murder”, and the reports would cause damage “when they are transmitted to Paris, where they will be exaggerated”. PDF p.305 is blank. Appendix 5 (PDF p.306-307): Gen. Elimelech Avnir’s 10 February 1949 report on the January combing operations in eleven villages — 1,038 exiled beyond the borders, 20 sent to a POW camp, 69 arrested for further interrogation and 128 moved to other villages; the village table gives Majd al-Krum 536 expelled, al-Bi’na 59, Kabul 128, Tarshiha 90, al-Mujaydil 64 expelled and 128 moved. Appendix 6 (PDF p.308-309): Tsvi Rabinovich’s report on the 9 January 1949 Majd al-Krum combing operation — 506 men’s identities checked, 355 expelled, a further 300 not transported because the vehicles arrived late, and two Battalion 123 soldiers who looted a shop to be tried. Appendix 7 (PDF p.310-311): Shlomo’s 12 January 1949 report to the Military Government of Western Galilee on the same operation — the soldiers’ “extremely boorish” conduct under Rabinovitch [spelling as printed here], expellees beaten out of the interrogation room “even if merely for being a refugee”, the sick mukhtar Hajj ‘Abd al-Salim beaten with rifle butts and hospitalised in Nazareth in critical condition, shops and homes looted, and the recommendation that those responsible be tried. The Appendices end at PDF p.311 / printed p.288.

Notes (Preface, Introduction, Chapter 1) — PDF p.312-319 (printed p.289-296)

The Notes begin at PDF p.312. They are overwhelmingly bibliographic — the works cited for the Preface (PDF p.312-313), Introduction (PDF p.313-315) and Chapter 1 (PDF p.315-319), as listed in the reading notes — with a number of substantive notes: the tenth-anniversary festivities and the 1 May 1958 Nazareth clashes (Preface n.2); istihlal as the colloquial term for occupation (Preface n.3); Orbach’s Haganah intelligence work and the Ma’di family’s surrender campaign (Preface n.7); the Operation Palm Tree villages described in the military orders as “communications bases” (Introduction n.1, citing Morris); the estimate that three to five thousand Arabs were killed in the “border wars” as “infiltrators”, tens if not hundreds of them “Israeli Arabs” (Introduction n.2); Hassan Jabareen’s “Hobbesian moment” of the January 1951 elections (Introduction n.4); the three permitted-return villages’ shared outcome (Introduction n.31); and, for Chapter 1, Walid al-Khalidi’s republication of the four early Nakba books (n.2), the five other notions Zurayk weighed besides al-Nakba — defeat (hazima), setback (naksa), evil (shar), tribulation (mihna) and, elsewhere in the book, disaster (karitha) (n.3) — Gad Machnes’s session statement, “We must strike without mercy, including women and children” (n.40), the estimate that about 450,000 Palestinians lived in the Jewish-state area at the end of 1947, of whom 95 percent became refugees (n.41), the Dayr Yasin toll in recent Palestinian research as 104, against the Haganah-derived figure of over 250 (n.51), and the official pre-October-1948 census figure of 69,000 Arabs (n.64). Chapter 1 note 79 breaks off mid-sentence at PDF p.319 (the different treatment of the refugees from al-Mujaydil, Ma’lul and Saffuriyya) and continues in part 9.

Notes (Chapter 1 conclusion, Chapters 2–7, Epilogue, Appendices) — PDF p.320-356 (printed p.297-333)

The Notes continue from PDF p.320, where Chapter 1 note 79 is completed: the refugees from al-Mujaydil, Ma’lul and Saffuriyya “were prevented from returning to their villages which remained deserted, and were later destroyed” (PDF p.320 / printed p.297). Chapter 1 note 80 states the book’s counter-position to Morris directly: Morris attaches greater weight to the conduct of army officers in the field, whereas the orders issued in Lydda and Ramla on the one hand, and Nazareth and the Druze on the other, led to the desired results (PDF p.320). The Chapter 2 notes (PDF p.320-327 / printed p.297-304) are the evidentiary apparatus for Operation Hiram, and several are substantive: the three “friendly” villages that escaped destruction — Tuba al-Zanghariyya (‘Arab al-Hayb), Circassian al-Rihaniyya, and Jish, whose remaining population after 1948 were mostly Maronite (n.1); Maklef’s September estimate that occupying the Galilee pocket would take two to three days (n.8); the claim that the massacres of Operation Hiram constitute about half of the major known massacres of the entire war, indicating a policy at the highest level, particularly as Ben-Gurion protected the identities of the perpetrators who were never brought to justice (n.10, PDF p.321 / printed p.298); the correction of Nazzal’s account of Majd al-Krum, which Morris reported without close examination (n.17); the surrender-signing details from Levi’s report, the ‘Izzat Café and Yitzhaki’s confirmation (nn.21-25); the Supreme Court judge’s finding that al-Bi’na’s residents “were expelled from their village at the time of its occupation” (n.32, PDF p.322 / printed p.299); the Shaghur pattern — gather the inhabitants, execute a number of youth, then order the residents to Lebanon, the killing intended to strike terror so the expulsion order would not be delayed (n.33); Morris’s erroneous statement that most of ‘Ilabun’s residents were Maronites (n.46); the al-Maghar Druze notables’ refusal of separation — “Either you kick us all out, or we shall remain together in our homes and country” (n.69, PDF p.324 / printed p.301); the list of massacre places in ‘Ilabun, against the al-Mawasi Arabs, Kufr ‘Inan, Farradiyya, Majd al-Krum, al-Bi’na, Dayr al-Asad, Nahaf, Tarshiha, Safsaf, Jish, Sa’sa’, Hula and Saliha, with hundreds of defenseless civilians and prisoners executed in upper Galilee alone (nn.83, PDF p.324-325); Galili’s report of the Safsaf murders and rapes to Ben-Gurion, dated 11 September 1948 as printed, and Ben-Gurion’s disregard of the request for trials (n.81 — see Open questions); the official Naqab remainer estimate of only 13,000, said to need greater examination (n.130); and the 9 January 2004 Shavit interview, in which Morris is recorded as admitting Ben-Gurion carried out a programmed and methodical expulsion of the Galilee’s residents, which he defended (n.132, PDF p.327 / printed p.304).

The Chapter 3 notes (PDF p.327-332 / printed p.304-309) document the Druze agreement and the communists from Cohen, Parsons, Firro, Gelber and Dunkelman, and from the League’s and party’s own press and memoirs (Sa’d, al-Budayri, Farah, the ‘Ashhab brothers, Tubi’s testimony). Substantive notes include: Communist Arabs’ monopoly on institutionally and legally permitted national action in Israel up to the 1980s, and their marketing of a heroism narrative that silenced mention of their 1948 role and their support for conscripting Arabs (n.13, PDF p.328 / printed p.305); the Nazareth conference’s circumstances remaining shrouded in mystery (n.23); Tuma’s obligatory apology letter after his return to Haifa (n.28); the conference-of-the-union record’s exaggerated League numbers, meant to legitimize joining Maki in Jewish eyes (n.86, PDF p.331 / printed p.308); the explanation of communist silence on army criminal actions as adoption of Zionist discourse blaming the Palestinians, not censorship alone (n.87); and al-Ittihad’s 25 October 1948 accusation against Arab leaders, which helped Israel evade responsibility for the refugee problem and reject the UN-endorsed right of return (n.95).

The Chapter 4 notes (PDF p.332-338 / printed p.309-315) rest on the Israeli Annual Census Book and Ben-Gurion’s differing end-1948 figures (n.1), Masalha on transfer policy, the army-archive originals of the Appendices 5–7 documents (nn.14, 22, 25), and Abu Jamil’s diaries and the Majd al-Krum interviews. Substantive notes include: the violent-infiltration counts for April 1951–March 1952 (thirty-seven cases, only one along the Lebanese border) and the following year (forty-four cases, none across the Lebanese border) (n.8, PDF p.333 / printed p.310); Ben-Gurion’s diary figure of 3,000 to 4,000 for increased “infiltration” (n.13); Carmel’s support for collecting the Druze’s arms against Ben-Gurion’s decision not to ask for them (n.18); the Majd al-Krum registration of 12–14 December 1948 with receipts distributed only five weeks later, on 17 January 1949 (n.37, PDF p.334 / printed p.311); the authorities’ decision to expel the majority of young men of military age even when census-registered, and many returnees’ court-won identity cards (n.38); al-Ittihad’s 13 November 1949 figures of three hundred expelled from Tarshiha and sixty-three from al-Bi’na and Dayr al-Asad (n.42); Cohen’s figure of about two hundred of Sha’b’s original inhabitants returned by 1950 (n.53); Jiryis’s later count, from Naqqara’s files, of 865 persons who obtained identity cards after court appeals in 1950–52 (Chapter 6 n.91, PDF p.348 / printed p.325); and the Tarshiha bishop’s later help with permanent identity and residence cards (n.90).

The Chapter 5 notes (PDF p.338-343 / printed p.315-320) cite al-Tal, al-‘Arif and al-Yawm on the Triangle transfer — Wadi ‘Ara’s villages transferred to Israeli sovereignty on 20 May 1949, as al-Yawm reported (n.44, PDF p.340 / printed p.317) — and record that the villagers remained not out of love for Israel but to live in their homes and on their land (n.10). They correct Cohen on the al-Jalama Supreme Court decision date (28 July 1952, not 30 June) (n.18, PDF p.339 / printed p.316), correct Morris on ‘Ilabun at length — his account, including a summer 1949 return date, “contains many errors” (n.24), and Morris does not mention the ‘Illut killings in Lidata at all, noting the massacre only in a Border Wars footnote (n.48, PDF p.340 / printed p.317) — and note Pappé’s single, mistaken placement of ‘Illut among northern Galilee raid targets (n.49). Other substantive notes: the army’s plan to blow up all of ‘Ilabun’s houses, with measurements and markings on twenty houses on 25 November 1948 (n.37, PDF p.339-340); the priest Murqus’s diary record of the methodical November looting of ‘Ilabun’s houses and livestock (n.26); about 2,000 expelled villagers sheltered at the monastery, by its top clerics’ account (n.57); about 240 migrated from al-Khisas in the wake of the operation while about sixty of Shaykh ‘Atiya’s family stayed (n.69); al-Ittihad’s 10 February 1951 report of thirteen small Wadi ‘Ara villages uprooted (n.99); and, for Kufr Manda, both solidarity petitions dated December 1954 (n.121).

The Chapter 6 notes (PDF p.343-349 / printed p.320-326) rest on the Supreme Court decisions themselves (48/7, 50/46, 51/108, 51/125, 52/81, 53/112, 53/155), the Central State Archives files on Abu-Laban, Kusa and the minorities ministry, Kretzmer and Korn. Substantive notes include: Shitrit’s singularity among Ben-Gurion’s ministers (n.2); the judges’ closing recommendation in the al-Ayyubi-line decision (no. 50/46232, as printed run together) that the military authorities rethink the plaintiff’s residence under police supervision, taking his illness and fear of violence at his plantation into account (n.49, PDF p.346 / printed p.323); the still-unstudied fate of the marginalized central cities, Lydda, Ramla and Jaffa (n.51); the lost Kusa papers, deposited with a Haifa charitable organization and unlocatable despite Abu Hanna’s help (n.55); Christian clergymen’s and Communist Party members’ exemption from the travel rule (n.64); Korn’s figure that 80 percent of the permits were for work outside the village (n.77); the al-Husayn judges’ use of the term “occupation” for Majd al-Krum and central Galilee, and their typology for the random killing of civilians and house demolition, without reservation or criticism, which the note calls astonishing (nn.103, 107, PDF p.348 / printed p.325); the dating of the al-‘Ayn Square massacre to a week after the village’s surrender, 5 November 1948 (n.104); and al-Ittihad’s 29 May 1949 comment on the “special” conscription project: “Good luck to this special project, God willing. Are Arabs to be class B citizens even in defending the independence of the country?” (n.119, PDF p.349 / printed p.326).

The Chapter 7 notes (PDF p.349-355 / printed p.326-332) rest on al-Zu’bi’s memoirs, Ben-Gurion’s diary, the November 1948 census publication, Landau, Ra’nan Cohen, Amitay, Forman and Bäuml. Substantive notes include: the confusion surrounding the first census of the Arab population — who was counted, and why others were not, is not clear (n.7, PDF p.350 / printed p.327); Gelber’s figure of 37,000 Arabs with voting rights (n.9); al-Ittihad’s 31 January 1949 election figures as inexact, with the boasted 90 percent turnout corrected to official figures of 80 percent or less (n.24); al-Hawwari’s denial of the accusations against him, and al-Hut’s scathing criticism of Sirr al-Nakba as untruthful and fact-free (nn.54, 61); the conflicting 1951 Arab-vote totals in the cited literature — Ra’nan Cohen’s 58,984 Arab votes cast in 1951 against 26,332 in 1949 (n.63), and Landau’s 70,000 Arab voters, then 80,000 two pages later, out of 924,885 voters in 1951 (n.65, PDF p.352 / printed p.329); the Triangle’s underrepresentation despite Faris Hamdan, and the Naqab’s lack of a representative until Hammad Abu Rabi’a in the eighth elections (nn.67, 76); al-Tayba as the Triangle exception giving Maki 35 percent (n.77); “Red al-Bi’na” (n.79); the meaning of the “year of marhaba” expression (n.84); Landau’s over-91-percent 1955 participation rate corrected by a simple calculation (computed from the given data) to barely 90 percent (n.105); Moshe Sneh’s split from Mapam as one reason for Maki’s Jewish-vote success (n.107); and the twelfth congress political report’s dating in the note to 29 May–1 June 1953 (n.123 — see Open questions). The Epilogue notes (PDF p.355-356 / printed p.332-333) add: the Kafr Qasim trial’s opening on 15 January 1957 before a military tribunal in Jerusalem (n.3); Avivi’s finding that Maki got no foothold and no votes in Druze villages in the 1950s (n.6); the nightly curfew on Galilee and Negev villages (n.9); the Arab Front’s named non-communist leaders (nn.16, 21-22); and the Kusa letter among his documents in the Israel State Archives (n.20). The Appendix notes (PDF p.356 / printed p.333) are single archive citations for each appendix: Israeli Army and Security Forces Archives, Tel Aviv, with file no. 632 for Appendix 2, document no. 616/13 for Appendix 3, file no. 107 for Appendix 5, file no. 580 for Appendix 6 and file no. 43/1 for Appendix 7, the hand-written markings as printed. The Notes end at PDF p.356 / printed p.333.

Bibliography (opening) — PDF p.358-363 (printed p.335-340)

PDF p.357 is blank. The Bibliography opens with ARCHIVES AND MANUSCRIPTS (PDF p.358 / printed p.335): the Israeli Army and Security Forces Archives, the Labor Party Archives at Beit Berl, the Israeli State Archives in West Jerusalem, the Hashomer Hatzair archives at Giv’at Haviva, and the diverse private papers of interviewees, with named thanks to Anis Srouji, Elias Saliba Surur and Farid Zurayq, Butrus Abu-Manneh and Na’ila Naqqara, Muhammad Haydar (Abu Jamil), and Su’ad Bishara and her children. ORAL TESTIMONIES (PDF p.358-359): over 120 interviews conducted personally, plus some Nazareth interviews conducted by Ahmad Mruwwat; begun in 1984, the vast majority between 2008 and 2011, most in eleven named Galilee villages, with further interviews in Haifa, Jerusalem, other Galilee villages and the Triangle; the three official interviews with Jewish Israeli eyewitnesses are Benyamin Ghonin, Tsvi Rabinovich (Bahrav), “Khawaja Ghazal,” and Peretz Kidron — Kidron revealed details of the attempt to expel Nazareth’s people after its occupation which Ben Dunkelman decided not to publish in his autobiography (PDF p.359 / printed p.336). OFFICIAL ISRAELI DOCUMENTS lists the Supreme Court decisions, the Interim Government minutes (1948–49) and the Knesset minutes (1949–56). FILMS lists five works, including the television Al-Mutasha’il [The Pessoptimist], Nizar Hasan’s Istiqlal [Independence], Dalia Karpel’s films on Emile Habibi and on Yosef Nahmani, and Hisham Zurayq’s Abna’ ‘Ilabun [The People of ‘Ilabun] (PDF p.359). NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS lists sixteen titles with their affiliations and runs, from Adala and Haaretz through the two al-Ittihad incarnations, Kol Ha’am, Nir, al-Rabita, Sedeq and Al-Yawm (PDF p.359). BOOKS AND ARTICLES then begins with its Arabic subsection, alphabetical by author, running in this part from Mustafa ‘Abassi’s Al-Jishsh and Salih ‘Abd al-Jawad’s Nakba-narrative article (PDF p.359-360) through the Abu Hanna autobiographies, al-‘Arif’s Al-Nakba, the ‘Ashhab memoirs, Cohen’s Present Absentees, Farah, Habibi, al-Haj Ibrahim, Hanna, al-Hawwari, al-Hut, Jiryis, Kabha, Kanafani and al-Khalidi, Khoury, Kretzmer and Kusa (PDF p.360-362), to Manna’s own two articles and the Manna–Golani Two Faces of a Coin, Masalha, Murqus, Musa, the Thirteenth Congress proceedings, al-Nashashibi, Pappé, Qahwaji, Sa’d and al-Sakakini’s diaries at PDF p.363 / printed p.340.

Bibliography (remainder) — PDF p.364-370 (printed p.341-347)

The Arabic list concludes at PDF p.364 / printed p.341 with Najib Susan’s Sada al-ayyam, Yusif Susan’s Bir’im diaries, Sultani’s edited Muwatinun bila muwatana [Citizens Without Citizenship] (Mada’s 2000–2002 monitoring report), Surur’s two ‘Ilabun books, Shoufani’s memoir, al-Tal’s memoirs, Tubi’s Kufr Qasim, al-Zu’bi’s memoirs, and Zurayk’s Ma’na al-nakba in the Khalidi-edited republication. The Hebrew list (PDF p.364-366 / printed p.341-343) runs from Avivi’s Tas Nihoshet [Copper Tray], Amitay on Mapam, Beki’s census volume, Bäuml, Be’eri’s “Nazareth Scandal”, Benziman and Mansour, Aharon Cohen, and Orna Cohen’s al-Majdal thesis, through Ra’nan Cohen, Hillel Cohen’s ‘Arvim tuvim, Dotan, Dunkelman, Erlich, Gelber, Golani, the 1951 Israeli Annual Census book, Hazan and Monterescu on Jaffa, Jabareen’s Hobbesian-moment article, Kadish’s renewed-discussion volumes, Kamen, Karmel’s Battles of the North, the October 1948 unity-conference record, Korn’s dissertation, Kusa’s Nir reply to Sharett, Landau, and the personalities lexicon, to Lustick, Morris’s four Hebrew books (Lidata, 1948, Border Wars, Tekkun ta’ut), Noy, Osetski-Lazar’s Iqrit and Bir’im book and her Kufr Qari’ paper, Rabin, Rabinowitz and Abu-Bakr’s Stand-Tall Generation, Rechess, Rosenthal’s Kafr Qasim volume, Segev’s 1949 and two Haaretz articles, Sela on the Arab Liberation Army in the Galilee, Shavit’s Morris interview, Stendahl, Yizhar’s Khirbet Khiz’eh, and Nadir Zu’bi’s dissertation. The English list (PDF p.367-370 / printed p.344-347) runs from Abbasi’s four Galilee-city studies and Abdel-Jawad, through Abu-Ghosh, El-Asmar, Baransi, Bashir and Goldberg, Beinin, Ben-Ze’ev, Benvenisti, Bilsky, Bracha on the infiltrators and the Supreme Court, Budayri, Caplan, Hillel Cohen’s two English books, Stanley Cohen, Dallasheh on Nazareth, Elkins and Pedersen, Firro, Forman, Gelber, Habibi’s Pessoptimist in translation, Jabareen, Jiryis, Kamen, Kanaana, Kerr, Khalaf, Rashid Khalidi, Walid Khalidi’s three essays, Khwalidi on Krad al-Baqqara and Krad al-Ghannama, Kidron, Lahav, Lustick, and Manna’s own Jerusalem Quarterly article and the Manna–Golani book — entered here as Two Sides of the Coin (see Open questions) — to Masalha’s three books, Molavi, Morris’s English works, Nazzal, Pappé’s two books, Parsons, Peretz, Robinson’s two works, Rogan and Shlaim, Rotberg, Sa’di, Sa’di and Abu-Lughod, Said, Said and Hitchens, Sayigh, Shlaim’s three works, Shoufani, Smooha, Srouji, Suleiman, Troen and Lucas, Hayden White, Wolfe on settler colonialism, and Zureik. The Bibliography ends at PDF p.370 / printed p.347.

Index — PDF p.372-386 (printed p.349-363)

PDF p.371 is blank. The Index (PDF p.372-386 / printed p.349-363) is printed in two columns and indexes the whole book by printed page and by note number, front matter in roman numerals. Its collective entries gather the book’s apparatus under heads including Battles, Armistice agreements and truces, Elections (First 1949, Second 1951, Third 1955, 1959, 1977), Israel (army companies, ministries, security, Parliament), Laws (Absentees, Assets of Absentees, Citizenship, Conscription, Entry to Israel, Land Ownership, Prevention of Encroachment, Return, Sequestering Assets), Massacres, Operations (Yiftah, Nachshon, Dekel/Palm Tree, Hiram, Yohanan), Prisons, and Wars (1948, 1956, First and Second World Wars). As printed — checked against the original — the Index carries anomalies no other part of the book carries: copy-editing-style parentheticals left inside entries (on ‘Abdel Nasser’s spelling, on ‘Abd al-Rahim, on Abu al-‘Asal, on Abu Ayash, on Abu al-Sa’id, and on Ahyayud, PDF p.372-373); a duplicated Saliha entry (PDF p.384); a garbled, out-of-order locator string under Massacres ending in the bare locators 335, 337 (PDF p.381); locator misprints including “347nn15,16,17,18” under Knesset (PDF p.379), “260–623” under al-Ittihad (PDF p.378), “299nn336,37” under Supreme Court (PDF p.384), “205n12” under Tuqan (PDF p.385), and a note locator 361n15 under Baqa al-Gharbiyya beyond the Notes’ range (PDF p.374); the Ten-day battles dated 9–18 July 1948 in the Index against 8–18 July in the text (PDF p.374); a Popular Arab Bloc entry whose locator string belongs in substance to Mapam (PDF p.383); and entries with no locators at all (Arab-Israeli Party, Arab National Movement, and the UN observers entry, PDF p.373, 385); the National Democratic Assembly entry carries the bare locator 308 as printed (PDF p.382). Each is recorded as printed under Open questions. The Index ends at PDF p.386 / printed p.363.

Publisher’s page and back cover — PDF p.387-388

PDF p.387 is the University of California Press / UC Press Foundation page, without a printed page number. PDF p.388 is the back cover: the publisher’s description presents the book as telling the stories of Palestinians in Haifa and the Galilee during, and in the decade after, mass dispossession, reconstructing from oral histories and Palestinian and Israeli archives, diaries and memoirs the social history of those who remained and returned to become Israeli citizens, and argues in the publisher’s words that remaining and fighting to return “are acts of heroism in their own right” (PDF p.388). The endorsements printed there are Salim Tamari’s (“bound to be the standard authoritative study of the 1948 war in the city of Haifa and the Galilee”), Maha Nassar’s, and Orit Bashkin’s (PDF p.388). The cover image is credited to Jouni Mansour, Haifa, the Word that Became a City (2015): the family of Beshara Constantine Medawar from Haifa in the 1930s (PDF p.388).

Key passages

• “‘Independence Day’ is not a day for rejoicing, it is a disaster and a tragedy for Arabs in general and particularly for the people of our village. It is not a day of istiqlal (independence). What happened to us in 1948 was istihlal (occupation).” (Manna’s father, as reported by Manna, PDF p.14 / printed p.xi)

• “the day will come when I will write it down in detail, in Hebrew no less!” (Manna, on his 1984 promise, PDF p.13 / printed p.x)

• “It is clear that “non-expulsion” in northern Palestine was not arbitrary, but was the result of high-level orders and policy on the part of the Israeli leadership.” (PDF p.25 / printed p.2)

• “The policy of ethnic cleansing during the 1948 war was more complex and expansive than a specific plan such as Plan Dalet.” (PDF p.26 / printed p.3)

• “This book is first and foremost a history of a generation of Palestinians who remained in their estranged homeland after the Nakba” (PDF p.20 / printed p.xvii)

• “Our information about these massacres is very limited because of the secrecy imposed by Israeli army archives on the relevant documents.” (Benny Morris, quoted by Manna, PDF p.44 / printed p.21)

• “Four hundred thousand or more Arabs are expelled from their homes, they are stripped of their property and possessions, and they wander listlessly in what remains of Palestine and other Arab countries.” (Zurayk, quoted by Manna, PDF p.49 / printed p.26)

• “And Russia, the third major power, is also responsible. Despite its hostility to Anglo-American policy, and its constant quarrel with it, Russia endorsed partition, and the establishment of a Zionist state next to the Arab state, in the hope that one of them would allow it a foothold into the Middle East.” (George Hanna, quoted by Manna, PDF p.50 / printed p.27)

• “There are now less than ten thousand [Palestinians] in Haifa, perhaps six thousand.” (Ben-Gurion’s diary, 1 May 1948, quoted by Manna, PDF p.62 / printed p.39)

• “In Nazareth and Majdal ‘Asqalan the Arabs stayed because we wanted them to stay there. If they did not remain in other places, the authors of the ‘transfer’ policy had a share in that.” (Eliezer Bray in ‘Al Hamishmar, November 1948, quoted by Manna, PDF p.75 / printed p.52)

• “Assuming there is an outbreak of fighting, we will clean central Galilee in one stroke; to cleanse it, including the refugees … that will not be possible without war.” (Ben-Gurion to the cabinet, 26 September 1948, quoted by Manna, PDF p.85 / printed p.62)

• “There is only one task left for the Arabs in Israel: to run.” (Ben-Gurion, quoted by Manna, PDF p.85 / printed p.62)

• “Our Druze friends were with us from the beginning of the road. Everyone else is our enemy. Under the orders of the Israeli government you have one hour to go back to your houses and fetch what you want; after that you will have to head north.” (A soldier addressing al-Rama’s residents, as reported by Elias Srouji in his memoirs and quoted by Manna, PDF p.92 / printed p.69)

• “People, ‘Ilabun is dead!” (An old man on the expulsion march from ‘Ilabun, PDF p.96 / printed p.73)

• “Do everything you can to achieve a quick and immediate purification of the occupied areas of all enemy elements, according to standing orders. It is imperative to help the residents leave the occupied regions.” (Moshe Carmel’s telegram to unit commanders, 31 October 1948, quoted by Manna, PDF p.102 / printed p.79)

• “Most of the Arab residents of the Galilee remained in their villages, but it was not because our forces did not try to expel them, quite often through means that were neither legal nor nice.” (Yitzhak Moda’i’s army history research, quoted by Manna, PDF p.102-103 / printed p.79-80)

• “What? I hope you do not think that we have to allow those foreigners (goyim) to publish pictures of the atrocities for the world to see.” (Tsvi Rabinovich, Haifa intelligence officer, in his 1998 interview with Manna, PDF p.107 / printed p.84)

• “Along the whole border and in each village, we shall take everything based on the requirements of settlement. As for the Arabs, we shall not bring them back.” (Ben-Gurion on government policy, 24 November 1948, quoted by Manna, PDF p.109-110 / printed p.86-87)

• “Our friendship with the Soviet Union, in its capacity as a non-imperialistic state that supports the freedom of peoples, does not mean that we are bound to a Western foreign policy.” (Emile Tuma opposing partition, quoted by Manna, PDF p.127 / printed p.104; ‘Western’ as printed in the text copy)

• “Return to your homelands and aim your fire at the chests of the colonialists and their lackeys.” (The League’s leaflet ‘An Appeal to the Soldiers’ to Egyptian soldiers, June 1948, quoted by Manna, PDF p.132 / printed p.109)

• “Our enemies are their enemies. In all their activities and actions, they demonstrate loyalty to our state. We therefore see in them (the League members) an important political factor and real ally of the state of Israel.” (Israeli security-services document, August 1948, quoted by Manna, PDF p.139 / printed p.116)

• “The union of Jewish and Arab communists in the framework of the Israeli Communist Party will reinforce the war for the independence of the state of Israel” (Maki’s Hebrew newspaper on the October 1948 merger, quoted by Manna, PDF p.149 / printed p.126)

• “Of course we should not allow 600,000 to return; not even 600.” (Ben-Gurion in a 1950 cabinet discussion, quoted by Manna, PDF p.154 / printed p.131)

• “All those who did not have a receipt we considered to be illegal residents of Israel whose fate was expulsion.” (Tsvi Rabinovich to Manna on the Majd al-Krum operations, PDF p.164 / printed p.141)

• “He was expelled. It was his problem since he had not retained the receipt.” (Tsvi Rabinovich on a census-registered man who lost his receipt, PDF p.164 / printed p.141)

• “under no circumstances should land in the village be leased to the local population or whoever originally came from that village.” (Yehushua Palmon’s directive on Sha’b, quoted by Manna, PDF p.169 / printed p.146)

• “We are not confident that the mukhtar and his brother did not play a role in the failure to register villagers whom they did not want to help.” (Supreme Court judges on Sha’b registration, quoted by Manna, PDF p.172 / printed p.149)

• “examine what is below the surface in Sha’b and to enforce justice if it turns out that the above accusations are true.” (Supreme Court judges to the legal councilor, quoted by Manna, PDF p.172 / printed p.149)

• “Don’t be afraid, enter the church.” (Mr. Butrus, a collaborator who turned in infiltrators, to Anis Bishara returning to Tarshiha, PDF p.175 / printed p.152)

• “The basic sense of justice rebels at hearing this claim, that the armed forces authorities cannot remove the kibbutz from the land on which it was set up.” (The Supreme Court in the al-Jalama case, quoted by Manna, PDF p.190 / printed p.167)

• “Is this a state or a gang?” (Al-Jalama mukhtar Muhammad Naddaf to the prime minister, 11 August 1953, quoted by Manna, PDF p.191 / printed p.168)

• “Shut up. You are sitting here thanks to us.” (Ben-Gurion to Tawfiq Tubi in the Knesset, quoted by Manna, PDF p.181 / printed p.158)

• “an Arab minority in our midst constitutes a danger in times of war as in times of peace.” (Chief of staff Yigael Yadin, 8 February 1950, quoted by Manna, PDF p.181 / printed p.158)

• “We should not expel any Arab if there is any doubt whether he is an infiltrator or an original resident. If it becomes clear that he is an infiltrator, then he should be expelled.” (Ben-Gurion’s diary, quoted by Manna, PDF p.183 / printed p.160)

• “In the expulsion operations Israel carried out against the Arab population from the end of the war to the mid-1950s, at least 10,000 individuals among those who remained were expelled. If we also add the Arabs who were expelled from the Naqab, the number doubles.” (Manna, Chapter 4 conclusion, PDF p.184 / printed p.161)

• “he made them stand in a single line, then the machinegun on the officer’s car mowed them down within minutes.” (Manna on the ‘Illut olive-grove massacre, PDF p.197 / printed p.174)

• “It seems to us that the time is ripe to transfer these lands to permanent Jewish ownership.” (Residents of moshav Nahalal to the authorities on ‘Illut’s land, 8 August 1948, quoted by Manna, PDF p.199 / printed p.176)

• “there was nothing to separate families except for a string or a rope or a piece of wood.” (Sami Juraysi’s report on the Salesian orphanage refugees, quoted by Manna, PDF p.199 / printed p.176)

• “to vacate the premises immediately.” (Soldiers and policemen to Shaykh ‘Atiya’s family at al-Khisas, 5 June 1949, quoted by Manna, PDF p.203 / printed p.180)

• “I did not think at the time that there would be problem concerning my return to the country after I completed my studies.” (Khalil Tuma ‘Abbud, quoted by Manna, PDF p.208 / printed p.185)

• “Mr. ‘Abbud Khalil relinquished his Jordanian citizenship in order to obtain Israeli citizenship.” (Hebrew note on ‘Abbud’s Jordanian passport, quoted by Manna, PDF p.210 / printed p.187)

• “infiltrators, just citizens who came close to the border from the Israeli side so that they could see their relatives.” (Elias Kusa on the ‘Ara shootings, quoted by Manna, PDF p.212 / printed p.189)

• “The attack on the residents of Kufr Manda is an attack on all Arab citizens of Israel.” (‘Ilabun petition to the prime minister, December 1954, quoted by Manna, PDF p.216 / printed p.193)

• “between 2,700 and 5,000 Arab infiltrators were killed. All indicators point to the fact that the vast majority of those killed were unarmed.” (Benny Morris, Israel’s Border Wars, quoted by Manna, PDF p.217 / printed p.194)

• “In theory, the Arabs in Israel have equal rights with the Jews, but in fact they are persecuted in almost all areas.” (Elias Kusa, quoted by Manna, PDF p.237 / printed p.214)

• “What shall we do with this scoundrel? Give your opinion. I am prepared to cooperate! Why don’t we break all his bones one night?” (Anonymous letter on Kusa, quoted by Manna, PDF p.238 / printed p.215)

• “That is not true. There are tyrannical laws, there are immoral laws, there are even Nazi laws.” (Menachem Begin in the Knesset on the emergency regulations, quoted by Manna, PDF p.243 / printed p.220)

• “fled—that is, they were not expelled—to Lebanon.” (The Supreme Court judges on the al-Husayn plaintiffs, quoted by Manna, PDF p.248 / printed p.225)

• “Conscription should be rejected because the time is not suitable for it.” (Unsigned al-Rabita article, likely by Elias Kusa, quoted by Manna, PDF p.252 / printed p.229)

• “If the Jewish people have retained their right in Palestine, including the right to live there, for two thousand years, why do the Arab refugees not have the right to return to their lands and cities and villages?” (Amin Jarjura in the Knesset, June 1949, quoted by Manna, PDF p.261 / printed p.238)

• “We see aliya as a vital need for the state of Israel.” (Meir Vilner for Maki in the Knesset, quoted by Manna, PDF p.264 / printed p.241)

• “purify the air that was full of communist poison and to publish the truth and correct principles in Arab circles.” (Bishop Hakim in his printing-press licence application, quoted by Manna, PDF p.266 / printed p.243)

• “the detainee is in the military section so he should see the military police.” (Answer given to Abu-Laban’s lawyer at Jaffa central prison, quoted by Manna, PDF p.228 / printed p.205)

• “the tension between the rule of law and the administrative authority does not lead to the victory of the law.” (Haaretz on the Abu-Laban case, quoted by Manna, PDF p.229 / printed p.206)

• “I shall not vote, just as prisoners do not vote. Israel has pushed us all into a giant prison.” (An unnamed teacher to Amos Elon, quoted by Manna, PDF p.276 / printed p.253)

• “I challenge the MKs belonging to the Communist Party, both Arabs and Jews, to mention one single Arab problem which they managed to solve in the interests of the Arabs, whether inside the Knesset or outside it.” (Elias Kusa in al-Rabita, quoted by Manna, PDF p.279 / printed p.256)

• “Nazareth will not become South Africa.” (Al-Ittihad on Upper Nazareth, quoted by Manna, PDF p.284 / printed p.261)

• “The establishment of Israel was the proclamation of an essential development in the struggle of the peoples of the Middle East.” (Al-Ittihad editorial board, quoted by Manna, PDF p.285 / printed p.262)

• “The dismissal of Glubb Pasha, then the nationalization of the Suez Canal, and then the settlement of the Israeli-Arab conflict, are links in the chain of getting rid of colonial domination.” (Emile Habibi at Kafr Kana, quoted by Manna, PDF p.287 / printed p.264)

• “a halt to the aggression and occupation and massacres and arrests” (Al-Ittihad on the Sinai War, quoted by Manna, PDF p.290 / printed p.267)

• “We will celebrate when we regain our nationalist rights.” (The communists on the tenth-anniversary celebrations, quoted by Manna, PDF p.294 / printed p.271)

• “to every Arab who is proud of his Arabism and who cherishes his human dignity, who resists persecution and tyranny, who fights to gain his rights as a citizen” (Elias Kusa’s dedication of his 1960 booklet, quoted by Manna, PDF p.297 / printed p.274)

• “We must strike without mercy, including women and children” (Gad Machnes in a session convened by Ben-Gurion, quoted by Manna in Chapter 1 note 40, PDF p.317 / printed p.294)

• “Either you kick us all out, or we shall remain together in our homes and country.” (The Druze notables of al-Maghar to the army officers, quoted by Manna in Chapter 2 note 69, PDF p.324 / printed p.301)

• “According to the credible testimony of Shukri Najib al-Khazen and the statements by officer Shmuel Pesitsky, the residents of al-Bi’na were expelled from their village at the time of its occupation” (A Supreme Court judge, quoted by Manna in Chapter 2 note 32, PDF p.322 / printed p.299)

• “Good luck to this special project, God willing. Are Arabs to be class B citizens even in defending the independence of the country?” (Al-Ittihad on the conscription project, quoted by Manna in Chapter 6 note 119, PDF p.349 / printed p.326)

• “Nakba and Survival is bound to be the standard authoritative study of the 1948 war in the city of Haifa and the Galilee.” (Salim Tamari, endorsement printed on the back cover, PDF p.388)

• “The empathy for, and solidarity with, Adel Manna’s historical subjects shapes the book’s narratives, the questions it asks, and its deft use of oral histories. A must-read for all those who want to understand daily lives under settler colonial rule.” (Orit Bashkin, endorsement printed on the back cover, PDF p.388)

Evidence the work relies on

For the whole work, as set out in the Foreword, Preface, Acknowledgments and Introduction:

• Oral testimonies: more than one hundred people met in Haifa, Nazareth and Galilee villages (Acknowledgments, PDF p.22); the methodology chapter specifies testimonies of 120 people who lived through the Nakba and subsequent years in Haifa and the Galilee (PDF p.45), many of them victims of ethnic cleansing in the Galilee (PDF p.46), some presented without names (PDF p.20).

• Family documents and Manna’s own family memory — his father’s and relatives’ accounts of Majd al-Krum, his mother’s memory during the seven years of research, his grandmother Zahra’s experience (Preface, PDF p.12-21; Foreword, PDF p.10).

• Archives in Hebrew, Arabic and English, including hitherto unstudied archives (Foreword, PDF p.10), and Israeli archival documents, some of which Manna reports finding fake or misleading (PDF p.45).

• Communist documents and press in Arabic and Hebrew, the major share of the source list, including al-Ittihad and the memoirs of communist activists; al-Yawm as the government-policy organ for Arab readers; Mapam party documents and newspapers (PDF p.47).

• Court rulings, particularly Supreme Court rulings, with sworn testimony of plaintiffs and witnesses from shortly after the events (PDF p.47).

• Locally published memoirs and autobiographies of Palestinians, and local history books about Galilee villages carrying oral testimonies (PDF p.45-46).

• The scholarship the Introduction surveys and positions itself against: Zurayk’s Ma‘na al-Nakba (1948), Jiryis’s The Arabs in Israel, Abu-Ghosh’s Princeton dissertation, Lustick, Segev, Morris, Pappé, Shlaim, Sa‘di, Masalha, Abbasi, Kabha, Cohen and Robinson (PDF p.32, 35-40).

• The Bibliography’s own lists (PDF p.358-359 / printed p.335-336): ARCHIVES AND MANUSCRIPTS — the Israeli Army and Security Forces Archives (Tel Aviv), the Labor Party Archives (Beit Berl), the Israeli State Archives (West Jerusalem), the Hashomer Hatzair archives (Giv’at Haviva), and diverse private papers and documents relating to the 1948 war and the early 1950s from interviewees, with named thanks to Anis Srouji, Elias Saliba Surur and Farid Zurayq, Butrus Abu-Manneh and Na’ila Naqqara, Muhammad Haydar (Abu Jamil), and Su’ad Bishara and her children; ORAL TESTIMONIES — over 120 interviews conducted personally, begun in 1984 with the vast majority between 2008 and 2011, most in eleven named Galilee villages, with further interviews in Haifa, Jerusalem, other Galilee villages and the Triangle, plus some Nazareth interviews conducted by Ahmad Mruwwat, and the three official interviews with Jewish Israeli eyewitnesses Benyamin Ghonin, Tsvi Rabinovich (Bahrav) and Peretz Kidron; OFFICIAL ISRAELI DOCUMENTS — the Supreme Court decisions, the Interim Government minutes (1948–49) and the Knesset minutes (1949–56); FILMS — five works: Gideon Druri’s television Al-Mutasha’il [The Pessoptimist], Nizar Hasan’s Istiqlal [Independence], Dalia Karpel’s films on Emile Habibi and on Yosef Nahmani, and Hisham Zurayq’s Abna’ ‘Ilabun [The People of ‘Ilabun]; and NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS — Adala, Haaretz, ‘Al Hamishmar, the two al-Ittihad incarnations, Al-Jadid, Kol Ha’am, Ma’ariv, Masharif, Nir, Ha-Olam Hazeh, Al-Rabita, Sedeq and Al-Yawm, with their affiliations and runs as listed.

• For Chapter 1 and the Chapter 2 opening (part 2): the early Nakba literature itself — Zurayk (1948), George Hanna (November 1948), Musa al-‘Alami, Muhammad Nimr al-Hawwari and ‘Arif al-‘Arif’s six-volume diary-based history (PDF p.49-52); Ben-Gurion’s diary (1 May 1948 Haifa entry, PDF p.62; the 17 July 1948 Nazareth expulsion entry, PDF p.73) and Ben-Gurion’s memoirs and Dunkelman’s 1970s memoirs on the Nazareth expulsion order (PDF p.73); the eleven-article Nazareth surrender agreement of 16 July 1948 (PDF p.72); Ben-Gurion’s telegram to Moshe Carmel on Nazareth’s administration (PDF p.72); Bulus Farah’s memoirs on post-fall Haifa (PDF p.63); Mapam’s ‘Al Hamishmar (Eliezer Bray, November 1948, and the paper’s correspondent on Nazareth, PDF p.75); the 26 September 1948 cabinet discussion of occupying and cleansing the Galilee and Ezra Danin’s statement as reported via Tom Segev (PDF p.85); Elias Khoury’s novel Bab al-Shams, quoted as literature for Galilee sentiment, not as fact (PDF p.66); and Manna’s own Galilee interviews, e.g. on the Arab Rescue Army and on radio/newspaper reliance (PDF p.80).

• For Chapter 2’s remainder and Chapter 3’s opening (part 3): Israeli military documents on Majd al-Krum’s surrender — the 123rd company intelligence officer Hanan Levi’s report and the Haifa intelligence officers’ “secret and urgent” document of 31 October 1948 (PDF p.88); the 1951 Supreme Court (High Court of Justice) rulings on Nahaf (PDF p.91) and on Majd al-Krum, with judges Heishin, Zilberg and Zohar (PDF p.108, and PDF p.91); Elias Srouji’s memoirs on al-Rama (PDF p.91-92); ‘Ilabun’s own documentation — the village historian Elias Surur’s publications, and the books, films and filmed testimonies of its residents (PDF p.95, 97); Yisrael Galili’s report to the Mapam party political conference on Saliha and the 1985 testimony-based documentation listing its dead (PDF p.98); Haim Laskov’s investigation of Safsaf, with officers’ admissions (PDF p.100); the trial of First Lieutenant Shmuel Lahis for the Hula massacre, pressed by Dov Yermiyahu (PDF p.101); Moshe Carmel’s 31 October 1948 telegram to unit commanders and his report to Ben-Gurion, in Ben-Gurion’s diary (PDF p.102); Yitzhak Moda’i’s late-1950s research paper for the Israeli army history department, based on military documents unknown to the public (PDF p.102); Yosef Waschitz’s Mapam report on Safsaf and Saliha (PDF p.103); the November 1948 Haifa intelligence report on Majd al-Krum recommending a combing operation (PDF p.103-104); UN observers’ report on Majd al-Krum, relied on by Morris, and Colonel Baruch Baruch’s and Yosef Schnurman’s (Shani) confidential correspondence on covering it up (PDF p.105, 108); Ze’ev Yitzhaki’s letter to Haaretz (PDF p.106); and Manna’s own 1998 interview with Tsvi Rabinovich (“Khawaja Ghazal”), obtained through Colonel Dov Yermiyahu (PDF p.106-107). For Chapter 3: the communist press in Hebrew (Kol HaAm) and Arabic (al-Ittihad, resumed at Haifa 18 October 1948), party publications in Arabic, comrades’ autobiographies and dozens of interviews with the rank and file (PDF p.117-118); and the early October 1948 publication signed by the League with three Arab communist parties (PDF p.122).

• For Chapter 3’s remainder and Chapter 4’s opening (part 4): Ahmad Sa’d’s Roots of the Evergreen Tree testimonies (Tawfiq Tubi first of twenty-four) and Musa al-Budayri’s mid-1970s interviews (PDF p.123-124); al-Ittihad’s October 1947 and pre-vote communiques and Emile Tuma’s dissent in the paper (PDF p.125-127); ‘Awda al-‘Ashhab’s memoir on the Habibi–Mikunis visas and Belgrade trip (PDF p.128); Kol HaAm editorials on trusteeship and Gromyko (PDF p.129); Aharon Cohen on the Czech arms and the Israeli army report calling them decisive (PDF p.129); Tubi’s later testimony on the 2 May 1948 Haifa leaflet, the leaflet itself, and Molotov’s recognition statement (PDF p.130-131); the ‘An Appeal to the Soldiers’ leaflet and Tubi’s reworded quotation of it (PDF p.132); Na’im al-‘Ashhab’s later criticism of Nassar (PDF p.133); the Shitrit–League meeting and Eliezer Be’eri’s ‘The Nazareth Scandal’, Davar of 15 July 1948, Sharett’s letter to Shitrit and Shitrit’s letter to Soltz (PDF p.134-136); return testimonies of Zahi Karkabi and Matiya Nassar (PDF p.137-138); the August 1948 security-services document on the League (PDF p.139); Hanna Abu Hanna’s memoirs on the secret-mission proposal (PDF p.139-140); Jibra’il Bishara’s handwritten memoirs (PDF p.141); the Conference of the Union record (League request 1 October, approval 5 October) (PDF p.141); al-Ittihad on Gozansky and on the detained communists (PDF p.142, 145); and, for Chapter 4, General Avnir’s January 1949 report, the western Galilee intelligence officer’s 1 June 1949 report, Tsvi Rabinovich’s and Shlomo Pulman’s opposed reports on the 9 January 1949 Majd al-Krum operation, and ‘Awad Hasan Mansur’s testimony on Kufr ‘Inan (PDF p.156-160).

• For Chapter 6’s remainder and Chapter 7’s opening (part 7): the Central State Archives correspondence on Kusa’s protest letters and the prime minister’s office file holding the anonymous “break his bones” letter (PDF p.236, 238); Kusa’s Nir articles and his 9 May 1957 letter to the prime minister (PDF p.238-239); Naqqara’s passport litigation record (PDF p.239); Kretzmer’s The Legal Status of the Arabs in Israel and Alina Korn’s Hebrew University dissertation (PDF p.239, 241); the Supreme Court proceedings in the al-Husayn and Kiwan cases, quoted directly, including both mukhtars’ sworn testimony and the judges’ comments on Pisetsky and Hasan Sarhan (PDF p.246-250); Hanna Abu Hanna’s The Owl’s Dowry on League recruitment (PDF p.251); al-Rabita’s conscription pages and its unsigned anti-conscription article (PDF p.252); Amnon Lin’s and Yehushua Palmon’s later explanations of the 1954 conscription attempt (PDF p.253); Sasson’s election estimates and the December 1948 experts’ meeting (PDF p.255, 257); the official and party election figures for 1949 and 1951 (PDF p.258-259, 262-263, 271); Jarjura’s Knesset speeches of February and June 1949 and June 1951 (PDF p.260-261); Aharon Cohen’s 15 May 1949 letter and Rustum Bastuni’s 14 June 1949 secretariat statement inside Mapam (PDF p.264); al-Zu’bi’s memoirs on return demands (PDF p.255, 265); Hakim’s printing-press licence application (PDF p.266); Hillel Cohen on the ‘Ilabun arsonist (PDF p.268); and the Srouji brothers’ return accounts (PDF p.267).

• For Chapter 7’s remainder, the Epilogue and the Appendices (part 8): Hanna Naqqara’s papers, holding Habibi’s June 1951 voter-roll appeal and identity card no. 46386 (PDF p.273); the official and party election figures for 1951, 1955 and 1959 (PDF p.273, 281-282, 287-288); Amos Elon’s two Haaretz reports on Nazareth (PDF p.276); Kusa’s reply to Sharett’s 28 July 1951 broadcast and his and al-Fahum’s November 1954 letter, both in al-Rabita (PDF p.277, 279-280); Geremy Forman’s study of the 1954 Nazareth municipal elections (PDF p.281); Bastuni’s al-Mirsad (PDF p.282); the twelfth (May 1952) and thirteenth (May 1957) Maki congress proceedings and resolutions (PDF p.284, 286); Yair Bäuml’s conclusion that the rebellion charge against Habibi was fabricated (PDF p.294); the intelligence note signed “Carmel” to Uri Lubrani’s office on warning Kusa through Bishop Hakim (PDF p.296); Kusa’s two 1960 booklets (PDF p.296-297); and the seven Israeli military documents reproduced as Appendices 1–7 — the Battalion 123/122 intelligence reports of 30–31 October and 1 November 1948 on Majd al-Krum’s surrender, Col. Baruch’s 18 November 1948 letter on the UN observers’ visit, Avnir’s 10 February 1949 combing-operations report with its eleven-village table, and Rabinovich’s and Shlomo’s opposed reports on the 9 January 1949 Majd al-Krum operation (PDF p.298-311). The Notes for the Preface, Introduction and Chapter 1 (PDF p.312-319) are the work’s own citation apparatus for those parts, including the substantive notes recorded in the Section by section entry.

• For the Notes to Chapters 2–7, the Epilogue and the Appendices, and the Bibliography’s opening (part 9): the work’s own citation apparatus for those chapters, as listed in the reading notes — for Chapter 2, the army telegrams and documents, the Majd al-Krum and ‘Ilabun interviews (Qaddah 2007, Kan’an and the Zurayqs 2008, al-Shawahda 2010, Abu Shawkat 2013), Surur’s two ‘Ilabun books and the priest Murqus’s diaries, and Morris’s Lidata, Tekkun ta’ut and 1948 and After; for Chapter 3, Sa’d’s Roots of the Evergreen Tree, al-Budayri’s Communists in Palestine, the League and Maki press (al-Ittihad, Kol HaAm) and the October 1948 unity-conference record; for Chapter 4, the census book, Abu Jamil’s diaries, the Naqqara papers and the army-archive originals behind Appendices 5–7; for Chapter 5, Osetski-Lazar’s Kufr Qari’ paper and Iqrit and Kufr Bir’im, Beshr-Saffuri’s ‘Illut through History and Abbasi on Nazareth; for Chapter 6, the Supreme Court decisions and the Central State Archives files on Abu-Laban and Kusa, with Kretzmer and Korn; for Chapter 7, the 1948 census publication, Landau, Ra’nan Cohen, Amitay, Forman and Bäuml; for the Epilogue, al-Ittihad 1956–58 and Bäuml; and the Bibliography’s own archive, interview, official-document, film and periodical lists (PDF p.358-359), which put the oral testimonies at over 120 interviews conducted personally, begun in 1984 with the vast majority in 2008–2011, plus the Nazareth interviews conducted by Ahmad Mruwwat.

• For the Bibliography’s remainder and the Index (part 10): the work’s own full bibliography in its three language lists (Arabic concluded PDF p.364, Hebrew PDF p.364-366, English PDF p.367-370), which is the book’s complete statement of the literature, memoirs, dissertations and press it draws on, and its Index (PDF p.372-386), whose anomalies are recorded under Open questions; and the publisher’s back-cover description and endorsements (PDF p.388), which are the publisher’s presentation of the work, not part of its evidence.

• For Chapter 5’s remainder and Chapter 6’s opening (part 6): Mustafa ‘Abbasi’s study of ‘Illut and Nazareth and Sami Juraysi’s report on Nazareth’s refugees (PDF p.198-199); the Supreme Court records for al-Ghabisiyya (30 November 1951), al-Khisas (1952) and the Iqrit–Kufr Bir’im case (PDF p.200-201, 203-204); ‘Ali Hulayhel (Abu Husayn)‘s testimony and Sayf al-Din al-Zu’bi’s memoirs on ‘Akbara (PDF p.202); ‘Awda al-‘Ashhab’s memoir and the Knesset record of Vilner’s, Tubi’s, Shitrit’s and Shapira’s interventions (PDF p.204-207); Khalil ‘Abbud’s testimony and his Jordanian passport with its visa and Hebrew note (PDF p.209-210); the investigating committee on the ‘Ara shootings and Elias Kusa’s letter (PDF p.212); Hanna Abu Hanna’s account of Kufr Manda’s “Uri’s day” and the solidarity petitions (PDF p.215-216); Ruvik Rosenthal’s research on Operation Mole (PDF p.218); Benny Morris’s Israel’s Border Wars as quoted (PDF p.217); the Israeli Army and Security Forces Archives file no. 1860/1950-76 and Central State Archives file no. 298/5 on Abu-Laban, the Jaffa surrender document and Emergency Committee correspondence, and Yitzhak Chizik’s reports (PDF p.225-228); Fakhri Jaday’s testimony (PDF p.230-231); Musa al-Budayri’s book of Communist Party interviews, including Nimr ‘Awda’s of 15 March 1974 (PDF p.232-233); and Judge Shimon Agranat’s Supreme Court decision in the al-Ayyubi case (PDF p.233-234).

• For Chapter 4’s remainder and Chapter 5’s opening (part 5): Shlomo Pulman’s letter on thefts in the 9 January Majd al-Krum operation (PDF p.161); Manna’s interviews with Muhammad ‘Ali Sa’id Qaddah and with Tsvi Rabinovich (PDF p.163-164, 166); Abu Jamil (Muhammad Haydar)‘s diaries for Majd al-Krum 1950–51, including the date of Mariam’s death, 24 June 1951 (PDF p.166-168); the communist press on the November 1949 expulsion (al-Yawm, al-Ittihad, Kol HaAm) (PDF p.165); Supreme Court deliberations and judgments on Sha’b (PDF p.170-172), Tarshiha’s Fahd Khalil (PDF p.178-179) and al-Jalama (PDF p.190-191); Hanna Naqqara’s Haifa papers, including Sa’id Husayn ‘Abbas’s letter to the military governor (PDF p.172-173); Elias Khoury’s novel Gate of the Sun, used as fiction for Abu Is’af and Sa’id Salih (PDF p.169-170); Jibra’il Bishara’s handwritten memoirs on Tarshiha (PDF p.176-177); Elias Shoufani’s memoirs on the Mi’lya expulsion (PDF p.177); a UN observer’s report and Quaker Charles Freeman’s testimony on the 1 March 1949 Kufr Yasif expulsion (PDF p.179); Tawfiq Tubi’s late-1949 Knesset speech and Ben-Gurion’s diary (PDF p.180-181, 183); Abdullah al-Tal’s and ‘Arif al-‘Arif’s writings on the Triangle’s transfer (PDF p.187-188); al-Yawm’s reports on the May 1949 Triangle transfer (PDF p.189); Elias Surur’s The Nakba in ‘Ilabun and the ‘Ilabun returnees’ testimonies collected there and by Manna (PDF p.193-195); and Sara Osetski-Lazar’s research on Kufr Qari’, complementing army documents with villagers’ testimonies (PDF p.195).

Analysis

Manna’s method is microhistory (local, personal stories) set inside a macro context, with oral testimony critically read and compared against written sources in the same way as documents, and archival documents in turn distrusted where they serve self-interest or concealment (PDF p.28, 45, 47). His perspective is explicitly that of a participant-historian — a child of Majd al-Krum whose family was massacred, expelled and returned — who argues intimate personal memory is an asset when used with professional caution (PDF p.19). His central analytic move in the whole work is to shift the question from expulsion to non-expulsion, treating the exceptions (Nazareth, the Druze villages, permitted returns, family reunification) as evidence of high-level policy rather than accidents (PDF p.25-27, 33). Chapter 1 (completed in part 2) adds the complementary move: explaining remaining also by the remainers’ own conduct — pragmatic, pre-nationalist and local leaderships (Druze, communists, Bedouin clans) crystallizing a survival awareness after Haifa’s fall — while treating the top-level record (Ben-Gurion’s Nazareth protection order against his 26 September 1948 ‘cleanse Galilee’ cabinet language) as evidence that outcomes turned on written orders from above (PDF p.65-66, 72, 85).

Chapter 2 in full (part 3) is the book’s test case for that move: the same surrender agreements are honoured by one unit and violated by another arriving from the east, the same prime minister protects Nazareth by written order and orders the Galilee cleansed, and Manna argues the variable is top-level decision, not field chaos — against Morris’s earlier “chaotic situation” picture, which Morris himself partly retracted in Correcting a Mistake while still, in Manna’s account, overlooking documents and testimonies outside the army archives (PDF p.106, 112-113). The chapter’s second analytic thread is the remainers’ agency under that policy: turning back on the mountain paths, enlisting Druze neighbours and church pressure, and making expulsion fail in al-Shaghur and ‘Ilabun. Chapter 3’s opening (part 3) extends the argument to the communists: joining Maki is read neither as heroism nor as simple treason but as a choice to remain, made under the Soviet line’s reversal, whose price and reward was legal political leadership of the minority (PDF p.118-119).

Chapter 3 in full (part 4) is the evidentiary core of Manna’s communist argument: the turn was sequential (partition in words, then support for the state in practice, then merger, then elections, then the conscription demand), each step documented from the party’s own press and memoirs and each, in his reading, obscured in later party historiography — the Soviet role expunged, leaflet wordings re-quoted in softened form, the Nazareth conference’s facts still hidden. His analytic claim is not that the communists were uniquely treasonous but that following Moscow contributed to the Nakba while also, dialectically, purchasing the legal leadership from which the later anti-military-government struggle was fought (PDF p.118-119, 147-150). Chapter 4’s opening (part 4) extends the book’s chronological thesis: ethnic cleansing did not end with the cannons but continued through the legal categories of ‘present absentee’ and ‘infiltrator’, the January 1949 combing operations, and the refusal of return stated at cabinet level into 1951, with remainers’ quiet return paths as the agency counterpoint (PDF p.152-156).

Chapter 4 in full (part 5) completes the book’s post-war mechanism argument: expulsion after the cannons ran through paperwork (census receipts withheld or delayed, then treated as proof of illegality), closed-area declarations, collaborator mukhtars controlling registration, and court precedents that individual returnees could sometimes turn into general ones — with the electoral calendar (Mapai’s Arab lists before July 1951) and church and international embarrassment as the two external levers Manna repeatedly documents. His conclusion’s symmetry — at least 10,000 expelled after the war against some 20,500 “infiltrators” who gained citizenship — is the quantitative frame. Chapter 5’s opening (part 5) widens the geography to the Triangle and tests the same mechanisms there: an armistice-guaranteed population subjected to hamlet expulsions without legal basis, and a Supreme Court return order physically defeated by a kibbutz blowing up the houses (al-Jalama), set against the three approved or tacit returns (‘Ilabun, ‘Illut, Kufr Qari’).

Chapter 5 in full (part 6) is the book’s evidence that the post-war regime was beaten at its margins as often as it prevailed: the same Supreme Court that failed Iqrit and Kufr Bir’im (in Manna’s telling) ordered al-Ghabisiyya’s return and Abu-Laban’s release, and in each case the military government answered with a legal counter-move — a closed-area declaration, retroactive expulsion orders, a demolition. His analytic point is institutional, not heroic: the remainers won where a lever existed outside the military government (church and consular pressure at ‘Illut, party and Knesset pressure for al-‘Ashhab, a foreign consul’s visa desk for ‘Abbud, the embarrassment of publicity for the al-Subayh clan) and lost where none did. Chapter 6’s opening (part 6) then names the frame explicitly — the unadopted constitution, Shitrit’s defeated leniency inside the cabinet, and the emergency regulations as the operating system of control over economy, movement and time — with the courts introduced as the chapter’s arena, and the Jaffa cases arranged as a spectrum: Abu-Laban’s procedural win that still ended in exile, and al-Ayyubi’s procedural loss on identical machinery.

Chapter 6 in full (part 7) completes that frame with its negative image: the same court that believed Majd al-Krum’s mukhtars over the army still supplied the legal binary — forcible expulsion versus voluntary leaving — on which thousands of expulsions were legitimised, and the same Knesset that heard Begin denounce the emergency regulations as a Nazi law against Jews left them in force against Arabs. Manna’s analytic point is that remainers’ victories were real but individual (a card, a passport ruling, a Kiwan), while the system’s precedents ran the other way; the 1954 conscription episode is his limiting case, where even the minority’s own leadership, Maki first, volunteered for the state’s loyalty test. Chapter 7’s opening (part 7) then reframes voting itself as a survival instrument rather than democratic participation: inclusion was Ben-Gurion’s interest-driven decision, the choice was structured (Mapai’s puppet lists or Maki), and the exceptions — Jarjura’s independence, Maki’s Nazareth organisation — are explained by concrete organisation and patronage channels, not by the ballot’s formal equality.

Chapter 7 in full and the Epilogue (part 8) close the book’s argument in two moves. First, the electoral record is explained without recourse to conviction: Maki’s decline after 1949 is decomposed into the new electorates of 1951 (Naqab, Triangle, upper Galilee), the abolition of the minorities ministry and the purge of Mapam governors, and Israel’s Cold War turn — pressure explains 1951 precisely because the state’s posture, not the voters’, had changed since 1949. Second, Maki’s whole trajectory is read as Moscow-determined at both ends: the Israeli nationalism of 1948–55 (Independence Day invitations, a 1952 congress silent on Palestinians) and the nationalist reversal of 1955–58 were alike functions of Soviet policy toward Nasser, so the party’s 1959 punishment by its own voters is presented as the price of borrowed positions. The Epilogue then shifts the book’s centre of gravity from policy to conduct: the remainers’ refusal to flee in 1956, the Kafr Qasim trials as a first accountability, and the 1958 Nazareth confrontation and Arab Front are treated as the point where survival became collective identity — with Kusa, the book’s recurring independent, cast as the bridge between the fathers’ generation and al-‘Ard. The Appendices anchor the Majd al-Krum chapters in the army’s own paperwork, letting the surrender and combing-operation documents testify against the operations they record.

The Notes in full and the Bibliography’s opening (part 9) expose the book’s scaffolding. The substantive notes are where the argument with Morris is carried on most directly — note by note, Manna marks where Morris reported an account without close examination, erred on ‘Ilabun’s composition, omitted ‘Illut, or, in the 2004 interview, admitted the programmed expulsion he had earlier framed as chaos — while the bibliographic notes show the counter-archive the book is built from: village historians working from a grandfather’s diaries (Surur), a mukhtar’s son’s diary kept since 1948 (Abu Jamil), a lawyer’s files in his daughter’s Haifa home (Naqqara), and interviews begun in 1984 and concentrated in 2008–2011. The Bibliography’s oral-testimony statement, with its three named Jewish Israeli eyewitness interviews and its note that Kidron supplied what Dunkelman left unpublished, is the method chapter’s claims made concrete.

The Bibliography’s remainder and the Index (part 10) complete the apparatus without adding argument. Read as a whole, the three language lists confirm the Introduction’s method claims in detail: the evidentiary weight sits in Arabic memoirs, diaries and village histories and in Hebrew archives, party records and dissertations, with the English list supplying the scholarly frame (settler-colonial theory, the Supreme Court literature, the Morris–Pappé debate) rather than primary evidence. The Index is the book’s weakest apparatus: its collective entries are useful, but the misprints, duplicated entry, garbled Massacres locators and copy-editing parentheticals left in print (see Open questions) mean its locators cannot be trusted without checking the page. Taken together with the Notes, the closing sections support the book’s central strength and its central limit as the parts above record them: the claims are documented village by village and case by case from named testimonies and reproduced documents, while the headline figures — how many remained, how many were expelled after the war, how many each operation killed — are given in several unreconciled forms across the text, the Notes and the apparatus, and the book nowhere gathers them into a single accounting.

People, organizations, places and events

Adel Manna, Majd al-Krum, Ayn al-Hilwa, Constantine Zurayk, Ma’na al-Nakba, Maki, National Liberation League, Institute for Palestine Studies, Tom Segev, Hillel Cohen, Shira Robinson, David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Rabin, Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe, Nur Masalha, Sabri Jiryis, Emile Habibi, Mahmoud Darwish, Ghassan Kanafani, Druze, Nazareth, Haifa, Ilabun, Iqrit, kfar-birim, Kafr Kassim, Operation Hiram, Operation Palm Tree, Dalet Plan, Peel Commission, Zochrot, ‘Arif al-‘Arif, Muhammad Nimr al-Hawwari, George Hanna, Musa al-‘Alami, Ben Dunkelman, Shakib Wahhab, Sayf al-Din al-Zu’bi, Kufr Yasif, Shafa ‘Amr, Nazareth surrender agreement (16 July 1948), Arab Liberation Army, Folke Bernadotte, Moshe Sharett, Ezra Danin, Khisas, Balad al-Shaykh, Tiberias, Jaffa, Acre, Saffuriyya, Deir Yassin, Lydd, Ramla, Al-Rama, Nahaf, Saliha, Hula, Tarshiha, Jish, Safsaf, Safad, Moshe Carmel, Bechor Shitrit, Mano Friedman, Haim Orbach, Yigal Allon, Tawfiq Tubi, Fu’ad Nassar, Emile Tuma, Shmuel Mikunis, Saliba Khamis, Mapam, Czechoslovak arms deal, Hanna Naqqara, Aharon Cohen, Elimelech Avnir, Kufr ‘Inan, Sha’b, Abu Is’af, Sa’id Salih al-Asadi, Shafiq Abu ‘Abdu, Jibra’il Bishara, The Triangle, ‘Illut, Kufr Qari’, Al-Jalama, Moshe Dayan, Yigael Yadin, Yehoshua Palmon, Joseph Weitz, Golani Brigade, Israel–Jordan Armistice Agreement (Rhodes, 1949), Bishop Hakim, Muhammad Haydar (Abu Jamil), Lehavot Haviva, Gate of the Sun, ‘Awda al-‘Ashhab, Khalil Tuma ‘Abbud, Ahmad Abu-Laban, Subhi al-Ayyubi, Fakhri Jaday, Muhammad Nimr ‘Awda, Elias Kusa, Kufr Manda, Al-Subayh Arabs, Qadditha, Al-Ghabisiyya, ‘Akbara, Operation Mole, ‘Ara, Amin Jarjura, Menachem Begin, Mas’ad Qassis, Rustum Bastuni, Wadi al-Bustani, Arab Front, Usrat al-Ard, Nazareth Elit, Karmiel, Amos Elon, Rashid Hussein

Concepts

Nakba, Ethnic Cleansing, Remainers, Non-expulsion, Present Absentees, Transfer, Infiltrators, Right of Return

How it relates to other sources

• Against The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine: Manna credits Pappé’s book as a daring challenge to the Zionist narrative and reports a consensus that dozens of massacres and expulsions occurred before and after May 1948, with the debate now over top-level responsibility; Manna’s own position in this part is close to Pappé and Walid Khalidi on Plan Dalet as a methodical blueprint, but he explicitly widens the frame: the ethnic cleansing policy was more complex and expansive than Plan Dalet, operating before and after it and through the prohibition of return and military rule to 1956 (PDF p.26-27, 38). Where Pappe’s narrative centres the expelled, Manna centres those who remained in the same Galilee villages Pappe treats — Nazareth, ‘Ilabun, Iqrit, Kafr Bir‘im — and adds the mechanism Pappe records only in passing for Nazareth: high-level non-expulsion orders differentiated by sect.

• On Nakba terminology: Pappe argues the term leaves out the actor and may have contributed to denial; Manna, in the Chapter 1 opening, traces the term to Zurayk’s Ma‘na al-Nakba of late summer 1948 as a deliberate elite coinage for the Arab defeat (PDF p.48). The two accounts are complementary, not contradictory, in the parts read so far.

• On figures: Sitta’s register counts 531 fully depopulated localities; Manna’s Introduction works with the consensus 156,000 remainers (summer 1949) and a November 1948 census nucleus of 69,000 in Haifa and the Galilee (PDF p.30-31) — population figures for the complementary, non-depopulated population, not in conflict with the register.

• On Nazareth against The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine: both accounts have the northern commander ordering Nazareth’s total eviction on 17 July 1948 and Ben-Gurion countermanding it because of the Christian world’s attention. Manna adds the prior day’s eleven-article surrender agreement, Ben-Gurion’s pre-occupation telegram to Carmel prohibiting desecration and looting, Dunkelman’s refusal (rather than mere hesitation) and the attempted replacement of his battalion, the parallel reversal over ‘Akka’s four thousand, and his open questions about whether Carmel and Laskov could have acted without Ben-Gurion’s knowledge (PDF p.72-74). Pappe’s commander is named Moshe Karmil and his account gives a short quoted countermand from Ben-Gurion about the world watching; Manna names him Moshe Carmel and does not give that quotation — the spelling and wording differences are recorded, not resolved, in the parts read so far.

• On figures against Sitta’s register (again): Manna’s Chapter 2 opening counts 220 Arab cities and villages in the Galilee, of which only 70 remained after the Nakba (PDF p.83); the register counts depopulated localities countrywide, so the two figures cover different scopes and are not in conflict in the parts read so far.

• On Safsaf against The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine: Pappe dates Safsaf’s capture to 29 October 1948 and counts seventy captured men blindfolded and summarily shot; Manna dates its occupation to Saturday 30 October, counts twelve young men shot on gathering and then dozens of men executed at a well, and gives a named, family-buried account of the rapes Pappe also reports from oral testimonies (PDF p.99-100). The dates and the tolls’ composition differ as printed in each work; both are kept.

• On Hula against Pappe: Pappe counts more than eighty villagers executed at Hula on 31 October 1948; Manna counts ninety-four murdered there, including thirty-four prisoners blown up in the house detaining them, and adds Lahis’s trial, conviction and unserved sentence (PDF p.101). The figures differ as printed; both are kept.

• On Saliha against Pappe: Pappe says Israeli troops butchered more than 100 people at Saliha; Manna gives Galili’s report of ninety-four killed and a 1985 testimony-based list of one hundred and five killed, with names and ages (PDF p.98). The three figures are recorded as each source presents them.

• On Ilabun against Pappe: Pappe has the occupying commander change his mind on the march and order the Christians — half the deportees — back, with 750 allowed to return; Manna has the whole village marched north to Lebanon, camped at ‘Ayn Ibil and Miya Miya, and permitted to return at the end of December through quasi-secret, devious channels after its voice reached the outside world (PDF p.96-97, 110). Both accounts agree on the massacre of young men at the occupation and on a permitted Christian return; the route and timing of the return differ as printed.

• On the Druze against Pappe: both works make the Druze agreement central to who remained in the Galilee. Manna’s Chapter 3 opening adds the pre-history Pappe compresses — the Jabal al-Arab battalion of about five hundred under Shakib Wahhab, the 9 May 1948 withdrawal agreement in Khunayfis’s house, the twenty-seven Palestine pounds monthly for those who joined the Haganah, and the 14 July mock battle at Shafa ‘Amr — and argues the Druze case then sheltered Muslim and Christian neighbours, as at al-Rama, Nahaf and Majd al-Krum in Chapter 2 (PDF p.120-121, 90-93).

• On Iqrit and Kfar Bir’im against The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine: Pappe gives the villagers a categorical Supreme Court victory (Iqrit’s eviction declared illegal on 31 July 1951) defeated by a fabricated expulsion order, and dates the demolitions to 1951 — Iqrit’s to Christmas Eve 1951. Manna’s Chapter 5 says only that the two villages’ joint May 1951 case, brought by Muhammad Nimr al-Hawwari, did not deliver the hoped-for justice, and dates the tearing down of both villages’ houses and the uprooting of most olive trees to 1953 (PDF p.200). For Al-Ghabisiyya the two accounts are closer: both have a court ruling for return defeated by the army; Manna dates the ruling 30 November 1951 and gives no demolition date. The differences stand as printed in each source.

• On ‘Illut against The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine: Manna states Pappé’s book also fails to mention ‘Illut’s two July 1948 massacres and the expulsion of its villagers (PDF p.197); Pappe’s pages read in earlier ingests do not treat ‘Illut in the passages Manna cites, and the point is recorded as Manna’s claim about Pappe.

• The Bibliography and Index (part 10) add no new substantive claims and resolve none of the conflicts recorded under Open questions, whether Manna’s own or those against Pappe and Sitta; the publisher’s back-cover endorsements (Tamari, Nassar, Bashkin, PDF p.388) are presentation, not evidence, and are recorded on this page only as what the file is.

Open questions

• The Foreword says 120,000 Palestinians remained in the Galilee (PDF p.10) and that 120,000 managed to remain in Israel after over 750,000 were forced to leave (PDF p.11), while the Introduction gives the consensus total of those who remained as 156,000 in the summer of 1949 and a November 1948 census nucleus of 69,000 in Haifa and the Galilee (PDF p.30-31). The scopes (Galilee vs. all Israel, census vs. later estimate) are not reconciled in the text read so far; to be checked as reading continues.

• The Preface dates the Majd al-Krum expulsion both to two months or so after the massacre (PDF p.12, 14-15) and, for the family, to January 1949, described as more than two months after the massacre (PDF p.16); the massacre itself is not dated in the part read so far.

• The Introduction says the first plebiscite did not include all villages of upper and central Galilee (PDF p.41, in the Chapter 4 summary); in context this appears to mean the first census/elections, but the word as printed is ‘plebiscite’ and is recorded as printed.

• Segev is quoted (via Manna) calling the concealed documents ‘printed war crimes’ (PDF p.44); recorded as printed in the text copy, possibly for ‘documented’ — to be eyeballed against the original if it matters later.

• Zurayk’s five other candidate terms for the catastrophe, mentioned on PDF p.48, are still not named in the pages read in part 2 (PDF p.49-85); the elite-literature discussion moves on to Hanna, al-‘Alami, al-Hawwari and al-‘Arif without listing them.

• Chapter 2’s opening Galilee population figures do not sum as printed (PDF p.83 / printed p.60): 241,000 total, of which more than 200,000 Arabs and 31,790 Jews, plus a few thousand Circassians and Armenians; and the Arab components — 169,000 Muslims, 29,000 Christians, 10,700 Druze — sum to 208,700 (computed from the printed components), which is more than the stated ‘more than 200,000’ in an unspecified amount. Recorded as printed; the components may be rounded, but the text read so far does not say so.

• In the Introduction (part 1) the Galilee pocket is described as sixty villages (PDF p.79-80 repeats sixty), while Chapter 2’s opening says sixty thousand people lived in central Galilee in fifty villages (PDF p.84). Both figures are recorded as printed; whether fifty counts a subset of the sixty is not explained in the parts read so far.

• Manna gives two different scopes for the September 1948 cabinet vote: ministers voted against expelling ‘the 100,000 residents of the Galilee’ (PDF p.85), while his own Chapter 2 figures put the central Galilee pocket at sixty thousand people (PDF p.84) and the number who escaped expulsion in the whole Galilee at 100,000 or fewer (PDF p.83). Recorded as printed.

• On Nazareth’s surrender, Manna’s commander of the Arab Rescue Army unit in Nazareth is named Madlul ‘Abbas (PDF p.71), who withdrew after asking residents to stay; Pappe’s account names the Nazareth ALA commander Madlul Bek, who surrendered the city at 10 pm on 16 July. Whether these are the same man under different renderings is not stated in either part read so far.

• Chapter 1 gives two dates in different places for Kufr Yasif: the Introduction says Abu Snan, Kufr Yasif and Yarka surrendered on 15 July 1948 (PDF p.26), while Chapter 1 says Yani Yani signed Kufr Yasif’s surrender agreement, mediated by Haim Orbach, on 10 July (PDF p.68). Recorded as printed in each place.

• Manna states as printed (PDF p.98 / printed p.75) that “The fact that al-Maghar and ‘Ilabun endured was also part of this general policy to allow Druze villages to remain untouched.” ‘Ilabun is presented throughout Chapter 2 as a Catholic and Orthodox (Christian) village, not a Druze one, and al-Maghar is not described as Druze in the pages read so far; recorded as printed.

• The al-Mawasi figures do not align neatly as printed: soldiers arrested twelve men and “killed them all, except for Sa’d Muhammad Dhib” (PDF p.98-99 / printed p.75-76), while Sa’d’s testimony, as related by Husayn al-Shawahda, says fourteen al-Mawasi Arabs had been killed and that he and Mu’jal al-‘Usba’ were “merely wounded”, Mu’jal then being shot in the head (PDF p.99). Two boys had separately been shot, one killed each in two encounters, on 1 November (PDF p.98). Recorded as printed in each place.

• The Majd al-Krum massacre toll is given as “eight to nine people were killed” (PDF p.104 / printed p.81): five executed in al-‘Ayn Square, two young men from Sha’b tortured and killed in an olive orchard, and soldiers firing on two women in the village while searching houses — whether the two women were among those killed is not stated in the sentence as printed.

• The Introduction gives the consensus figure for those who remained as 156,000, an estimate made in the summer of 1949 (PDF p.30), while Chapter 2 states the number of Arabs in the Jewish state on the eve of the January 1949 elections stood at 125,000, about 100,000 of them in Haifa and the Galilee, and that “the official figure of 156,000 quoted by historians and researchers prior to the transfer of the villages of the Triangle to Israeli control is inaccurate” (PDF p.111 / printed p.88). The two passages’ dates and scopes are recorded as printed; the text read so far does not reconcile them.

• Manna describes Maki as “renamed Hadash (the Hebrew acronym for the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality) after 1965” (PDF p.118-119 / printed p.95-96). Recorded as printed in the text copy.

• Haim Laskov is described, in the Safsaf investigation passage, as “head of the seventh army guidance division” (PDF p.100 / printed p.77). Recorded as printed in the text copy.

• Safsaf’s occupation date in Manna is Saturday 30 October 1948 (PDF p.99), while Pappe dates its capture to 29 October 1948 and Sitta’s register gives a depopulation date of 28-10-48 for Safsaf; the three dates stand as printed in each source (see How it relates to other sources).

• Chapter 4 gives the summer 1949 estimate as 160,000 Palestinian Arabs living in Israel under military rule (PDF p.152 / printed p.129), against the Introduction’s consensus figure of 156,000 for the summer of 1949 (PDF p.30) and Chapter 2’s 125,000 on the eve of the January 1949 elections (PDF p.111). The scopes differ (the 160,000 follows the Triangle’s transfer, with its 31,000 people, PDF p.151), but the text read so far does not reconcile the figures explicitly; recorded as printed in each place.

• The January 1949 expulsion figures for al-Bi’na and Dayr al-Asad conflict between the two military documents Manna quotes: Avnir’s report gives fifty-nine expelled from al-Bi’na and eight from Dayr al-Asad (PDF p.157), while the 1 June 1949 intelligence report gives, for the 6 January operations, four expelled of 113 investigated at al-Bi’na and sixteen men expelled with families numbering sixty-two individuals at Dayr al-Asad (PDF p.157-158). Manna notes a possible monthly-versus-single-operation explanation for al-Bi’na only; recorded as printed in each document.

• For Majd al-Krum’s 9 January 1949 operation, Rabinovich’s report gives 506 investigated and 355 deported, with 300 more prevented only by late transport (PDF p.159-160), while Avnir’s total for the two January operations (9 and 14 January) is 536 expelled (PDF p.159). The scopes (one operation vs. two) are stated, but the second operation’s separate figure is not given in the pages read so far.

• Emile Tuma’s anti-partition statement is printed with the phrase “not tied to the policy of the Soviet Union, or any other organization” preceded by “does not mean that we are bound to a Western foreign policy” (PDF p.127 / printed p.104); ‘Western’ is recorded as printed in the text copy.

• Manna writes that with the returning comrades Tubi “succeeded into turning the city of Karmil into a second stronghold of the League, alongside Nazareth” (PDF p.138 / printed p.115); in context the city is Haifa, and ‘the city of Karmil’ is recorded as printed in the text copy.

• The Mapai secretary quoted in Chapter 4 is named “MK Zeev Oan” in the text copy (PDF p.152 / printed p.129); recorded as printed.

• Manna himself leaves the Habibi Prague questions open — whether Habibi could credibly have known nothing of the trip’s objectives, and whether the two party representatives could have gone without Moscow’s approval or coordination (PDF p.128) — and lists the Nazareth conference’s unanswered facts (city choice, dates, venue, invitations, attendance) as still hidden with the party leadership (PDF p.127).

• Chapter 4 dates the Jordanian authorities’ encouragement of Galilee expellees’ return or transport to Lebanon to “after signing the armistice agreement with Israel in Rhodes (23 April)” (PDF p.163 / printed p.140), while this source page records the Jordan armistice as 3 April 1949 (PDF p.151) and Chapter 5 gives the same date, 3 April 1949 (PDF p.188). Recorded as printed in each place.

• The Majd al-Krum expulsion numbers accumulate without a single reconciled total as printed: 355 expelled on 9 January (PDF p.161), 536 in the two January operations in total (PDF p.164, and Avnir’s figure in part 4), 250 to 260 exiled on 6 November 1949, with al-Yawm publishing a figure of two hundred expelled (PDF p.165) and the communist press putting it at three hundred, not just two hundred (PDF p.165), and Tubi in the Knesset speaking of two hundred men and one hundred women and children expelled from the village (PDF p.180). Recorded as printed in each place.

• Chapter 2’s summary in part 3, from PDF p.97 and 110, dated ‘Ilabun’s permitted return to the end of December 1948 and to gradual return after its voice reached the outside world, while Chapter 5 (part 5) has priest Murqus’s letter carried to Lebanon on 20 November 1948, the return journey beginning 22 November, and return by Christmas Eve, with most villagers back by May 1949 (PDF p.192-194). The start dates differ as printed between the chapters; both stands are kept.

• Dayan’s Mapai-meeting statement is printed with the phrase “there will be an opportunity to repatriate those was well” (PDF p.181 / printed p.158); recorded as printed in the text copy.

• The ‘Ilabun Christmas Eve return account says “three brigades had attacked” Khalil Salim Matar’s group (PDF p.193 / printed p.170); recorded as printed in the text copy, in context apparently for groups of soldiers or bandits.

• Manna’s Chapter 4 conclusion estimate that the eve-of-elections population was “likely” 120,000 (PDF p.184) sits against his diary-based 102,000 (PDF p.183), the Introduction’s 156,000 consensus figure (PDF p.30), Chapter 2’s 125,000 (PDF p.111) and the summer 1949 estimate of 160,000 (PDF p.152); scopes and dates are recorded as printed in each place and not reconciled in the text read so far.

• For Tarshiha’s 16 January 1949 expulsion, other sources confirm about 130 people from Tarshiha were expelled on 16 January 1949 (PDF p.176), while the older residents of Tarshiha remember the same operation as arresting 33 heads of families along with 131 family members, the aged, women and children (PDF p.176-177). The two counts are recorded as printed; the text does not reconcile them.

• For Kufr Yasif’s 1 March 1949 expulsion, the text repeatedly gives hundreds expelled — the communists’ reaction was to the expulsion of hundreds of residents, and hundreds were taken in truckloads (PDF p.179) — while Charles Freeman, the Quaker relief activist who witnessed it, testified that 239 individuals were expelled from the village (PDF p.179). Recorded as printed in each place.

• The 28 May 1951 mine deaths are given in two forms a page apart, both from Abu Jamil’s diaries as Manna reports them: on 28 May 1951 a refugee from the village of Sha’b, a former resident of Marj al-Krum, as printed (PDF p.167, probably for Majd al-Krum), was killed in a mine explosion near the Lebanese border and two others from the same village, Ahmad Mustafa Taha and the wife of Khalid Sa’id Kiwan, were wounded (PDF p.167); and Muhammad Hikma, whom the authorities had arrested in Majd al-Krum and deported to Lebanon on 11 May 1950, was killed and two others wounded by a mine planted by the soldiers on 28 May, the news spreading throughout the village (PDF p.168). The text does not say whether these are the same incident; the named dead differ as printed.

• For the Triangle’s small villages, the military governor Emmanuel Moore (Markovsky) informed officials that by March 1950 the remaining population of twenty small villages and farms had been forced to migrate (PDF p.190), while MK Tawfiq Tubi’s Knesset questions, about a month after al-Ittihad’s February 1951 report, concerned small villages numbering thirteen which had been subjected to expulsion (PDF p.190). Recorded as printed in each place.

• Spellings differ within this part as printed: the Nablus camp is Bayt ‘Ayn al-Ma’ (PDF p.162) and ‘Ayn Bayt al-Ma’ (PDF p.163); the village neighbouring Tarshiha is Ma’liya (PDF p.177) and Mi’lya (PDF p.177, both on the same page); the Majd al-Krum witness is Muhammad ‘Ali Sa’id Qaddah (PDF p.162) and Muhammad Sa’id Qaddah (PDF p.167); and the Sha’b letter writer in Hanna Naqqara’s papers is Sa’id Husayn ‘Abbas, who lived in Majd al-Krum (PDF p.172), while the cover of his file in those papers reads Husayn Sa’id ‘Abbas from the village of al-Bi’na (PDF p.173). Each form is recorded as printed in its place; the variant spellings are added to the aliases or text of the pages that use these names (see the fix log entry).

• Whether the Israeli government and army deliberately turned a blind eye to Kufr Qari’s April 1949 return so as not to compromise the Jordan agreement is a question Manna himself leaves open, with no clear answers in Israeli archive documents (PDF p.196).

• For al-Khisas, the text dates the Knesset question about the expulsion to “1 August 1948” (PDF p.203 / printed p.180), with Ben-Gurion’s answer two weeks later — but the expulsion it describes took place on 5 June 1949 (PDF p.203), almost a year after the date as printed. Recorded as printed in the original PDF, checked against it.

• Jaffa’s May 1948 dates do not align as printed: the surrender was signed on 13 May (PDF p.225), the British pull-out is dated “the following day, 15 May” (PDF p.225), Israel’s establishment is placed “one day after the surrender agreement” — i.e. 14 May (PDF p.227) — and Salah al-Nadhir is said to have left “on 14 May 1948, with the last of the withdrawing British forces” (PDF p.229). Recorded as printed in each place.

• Spellings differ within this part as printed: the Wadi ‘Ara council head is Suwaylih Mansur in the narrative and Suwayla Mansur at the press conference (PDF p.213); the hamlet is ‘Ayn Jarar (PDF p.211) against ‘Ayn Jarrar in part 5 (PDF p.190); the Sa’d family’s villages are “Shajur and Kufr ‘Inan” (PDF p.209) against al-Shaghur as used elsewhere in the book; Khalil ‘Abbud’s relatives waited at “the port of Karmil” (PDF p.210) as printed in the original PDF; and the Palmach commander is “Yigal Alon” (PDF p.214) against Yigal Allon elsewhere. Each form is recorded as printed in its place.

• Manna’s May 1951 Supreme Court account for Iqrit and Kufr Bir’im — the court “did not come to the aid of the villagers,” houses torn down in 1953 (PDF p.200) — differs from Pappe’s account of a categorical ruling for return and demolitions in 1951 (see How it relates to other sources); within Manna’s own text the point is also in tension with Chapter 4’s conclusion, which groups ‘Ilabun and ‘Illut as returns Israel was “forced to accept” through the courts-and-pressure route while Iqrit and Kufr Bir’im remained banished (PDF p.184-185). Recorded as printed in each place.

• The al-Ayyubi section, and Chapter 6, break off mid-question at the end of this part — “Did the” (PDF p.234) — to be completed in part 7. [Resolved in part 7: the completed question (PDF p.235) is whether the authorities proposed to al-Ayyubi that he sell his property and immigrate to Libya; Manna records the sources give no clear answer.]

• Chapter 7’s Arab population figure — the Arab population “totaled 160,000 at the end of 1949” (PDF p.271 / printed p.248) — sits against the Introduction’s summer-1949 consensus figure of 156,000 (PDF p.30), Chapter 4’s summer-1949 estimate of 160,000 (PDF p.152) and Chapter 2’s 125,000 on the eve of the January 1949 elections (PDF p.111); recorded as printed in each place and not reconciled in the text read so far.

• The 1949 Arab vote figures are given in two registers a few pages apart: Maki received “about 6,000 votes from Arabs, representing about one quarter of Arab voters” (PDF p.262) and, by official party data, 28 percent of the votes of Arabs in Israel (PDF p.263), against final official figures of only 22 percent (PDF p.263). Manna notes some party figures are a bit higher than the final official figures; both registers are recorded as printed.

• Spellings differ within this part as printed: the military-government officer in the al-Husayn case is Shmuel Pisetsky (PDF p.246-247) against Shmuel Pesitsky in earlier parts; the Nazareth Mapai activist is Abba Hoshi (PDF p.257) against Abba Hushi elsewhere; and Kufr Yasif is printed “Kafr Yusif” in the party vote percentages (PDF p.263). Each form is recorded as printed in its place.

• Chapter 7, and its account of the 1951 elections, break off mid-sentence at the end of part 7 — the ruling Mapai party “succeeded in pushing through and consolidating” (PDF p.271). [Resolved in part 8: the sentence is completed at PDF p.272 by the account of Mapai’s choice of loyal slate heads representing sectarian and tribal interests.]

• Zurayk’s five other candidate terms, left unnamed in part 1’s reading of PDF p.48, are named in Chapter 1 note 3 (PDF p.315): defeat (hazima), setback (naksa), evil (shar), tribulation (mihna), and, elsewhere in the book, disaster (karitha). The earlier open question is resolved by the Notes.

• The January 1949 expulsion figures conflict inside the Appendices as printed: Avnir’s report (Appendix 5) totals 1,038 expelled in eleven villages, with Majd al-Krum at 536, al-Bi’na 59 and Dayr al-Asad 8 (PDF p.306-307), while Rabinovich’s operation report (Appendix 6) gives 355 expelled at Majd al-Krum on 9 January alone, with 300 more not transported (PDF p.308-309) — the same documents quoted in Chapter 4 (see the January 1949 entries above); the Appendix table’s al-Mujaydil row (64 expelled, 1 to POW camp, 128 moved) carries the whole “moved to another village” total of 128 in a single row, as printed.

• Majd al-Krum’s population at surrender is given differently across the Appendices as printed: about 1,800 residents by a first estimate (Appendix 1, PDF p.299) against about 2,000 inhabitants (Appendices 2 and 3, PDF p.300, 302), matching Chapter 2’s figure of about 2,000 people plus hundreds of refugees (PDF p.87). Recorded as printed in each document.

• The 1951 Maki Arab-vote share is given as 16.3 percent (10,000 of the Arab votes, PDF p.272-273), while the 1955 share is given as just over 15 percent of Arab votes, one percent less than in the previous election (PDF p.281-282) — as printed, a fall of about one point from 16.3 percent; recorded as printed in each place.

• Chapter 1 note 51 (PDF p.318) gives recent Palestinian research’s Dayr Yasin toll as 104 killed, against the Haganah-derived figure of over 250 repeated in earlier literature; Manna’s Chapter 1 text speaks only of hundreds killed and wounded (PDF p.60-61). The note’s figure is recorded as the note presents it.

• Chapter 1 note 79 breaks off mid-sentence at the end of this part — the different treatment of the refugees from al-Mujaydil, Ma’lul and Saffuriyya, “as they” (PDF p.319). [Resolved in part 9: the sentence is completed at PDF p.320 — they “were prevented from returning to their villages which remained deserted, and were later destroyed.”]

• Chapter 2 note 81 (PDF p.324 / printed p.301) dates Yisrael Galili’s report to Ben-Gurion of the massacres, particularly the murders and rapes in Safsaf, to 11 September 1948 — before the Safsaf massacre of late October 1948 as the main text dates it (PDF p.99-100). Recorded as printed, checked against the original PDF.

• The Bibliography attributes Quddat madaji’ihum [The Sleepless] (Matba’at al-Ittihad, 1960) by the author dash to Ghassan Kanafani, following Kanafani’s ‘Awd ila Haifa (PDF p.362 / printed p.339), while Epilogue note 24 attributes the same title and year to Elias Kusa (PDF p.356 / printed p.333). Recorded as printed in each place.

• Chapter 7 note 123 (PDF p.354 / printed p.331) dates Shmuel Mikunis’s political report to the Israeli Communist Party’s Twelfth Congress to 29 May–1 June 1953, while the main text dates the twelfth congress to May 1952 (PDF p.286) and the Bibliography dates the Thirteenth Congress to 29 May–1 June 1957 (PDF p.363). Recorded as printed in each place.

• The 1951 election figures in the literature the Chapter 7 notes cite do not align as printed: Ra’nan Cohen gives 58,984 Arab votes cast in 1951 against 26,332 in 1949 (note 63, PDF p.352), while Landau gives the number of Arab voters in 1951 as 70,000, then as 80,000 two pages later, out of 924,885 voters (note 65, PDF p.352). Manna records Landau’s two figures without reconciling them; recorded as printed in each place.

• Segev’s “The First Secrets” is dated 2 March 1995 in Introduction note 36 (PDF p.315) and 3 February 1995 in the Bibliography’s Hebrew list (PDF p.366). Recorded as printed in each place.

• The Shavit interview with Morris is dated 6 January 2004 in Introduction note 22 (PDF p.314) and in the Bibliography’s Hebrew list (PDF p.366), and 9 January 2004 in Chapter 2 note 132 (PDF p.327). Recorded as printed in each place.

• The Manna–Golani book is titled Two Faces of a Coin in the Bibliography’s Arabic list (PDF p.363) and Two Sides of the Coin in its English list (PDF p.368-369). Recorded as printed in each place.

• Kusa’s Nir article is entered in the Bibliography’s Hebrew list as “Tshuva le-Moshe Sharrett” [Response to Prime Minister Moshe Sharrett] (PDF p.365), while Chapter 7 note 88 cites it as “Reply to Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett” (PDF p.353). The title rendering and Sharett’s office differ as printed in each place.

• The Index gives Mikunis’s book on Gozansky under two titles: the Mikunis entry gives “Eliyahu Gozansky; the Man and His Works” (PDF p.381 / printed p.358), while the Gozansky entry gives Gozansky, Eliyahu: the Man and His Deeds (PDF p.377 / printed p.354). Recorded as printed in each place.

• The Index, as printed and checked against the original, carries copy-editing-style parentheticals inside entries: on ‘Abdel Nasser (a note that the name always shows up without the ‘ayn marker, the marker word printed as ‘pior’), on ‘Abd al-Rahim, on Abu al-‘Asal, on Abu Ayash, on Abu al-Sa’id, and on Ahyayud (a note that there are no instances of the spelling ‘Ahyayd’) (PDF p.372-373). Recorded as printed in the original.

• The Index prints the Saliha entry twice, once after Sakhnin and once after al-Shaghur with an added See also to massacre (PDF p.384); its Massacres entry’s locator string is garbled and out of order, ending in the bare locators 335, 337 (PDF p.381); and its locator misprints include 347nn15,16,17,18 under Knesset (PDF p.379), 260–623 under al-Ittihad (PDF p.378), 299nn336,37 under Supreme Court (PDF p.384), 205n12 under Tuqan (PDF p.385), a bare 293 among the Soviet Union locators (PDF p.384), and a note locator 361n15 under Baqa al-Gharbiyya (PDF p.374) beyond the printed Notes’ range (the Notes end at printed p.333; note locators elsewhere run to 333n25). Recorded as printed in each place.

• The Index dates the Ten-day battles 9–18 July 1948 (PDF p.374), against 8–18 July 1948 in the Introduction and Chapter 1 (PDF p.26, 59-60); its Popular Arab Bloc entry carries a long locator string that belongs in substance to Mapam, which the entry cross-refers to (PDF p.383); and several entries carry no locators as printed: Arab-Israeli Party and Arab National Movement (PDF p.373), and UN observers (Haifa; Majdal Krum [as printed]) (PDF p.385); the National Democratic Assembly entry carries the bare locator 308 as printed (PDF p.382). Recorded as printed in each place.

• Checked through the end of the book in part 10: the Bibliography and Index resolve none of the conflicting figures, dates or spellings recorded above — the remainer totals (120,000 / 125,000 / 156,000 / 160,000), the Majd al-Krum expulsion figures, the Safsaf, Hula and Saliha tolls and dates against Pappe and Sitta, and the rest. All stand as printed in each place.

Coverage

PDF p.1-388 of 388, read in full in parts 1-10 of 10. Complete: Foreword, Preface, Acknowledgments, Introduction, Chapters 1–7, Epilogue, Appendices, Notes, Bibliography and Index in full, with the publisher’s page (PDF p.387) and back cover (PDF p.388).