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Palestine Betrayed
A searing account of the UN resolution to partition Palestine, and its bloody aftermath
The 1947 UN resolution to partition Palestine irrevocably changed the political landscape of the Middle East, giving rise to six full-fledged wars between Arabs and Jews, countless armed clashes, blockades, and terrorism, as well as a profound shattering of Palestinian Arab society. Its origins, and that of the wider Arab-Israeli conflict, are deeply rooted in Jewish-Arab confrontation and appropriation in Palestine. But the isolated occasions of violence during the British Mandate era (1920–48) suggest that the majority of Palestinian Arabs yearned to live and thrive under peaceful coexistence with the evolving Jewish national enterprise. So what was the real cause of the breakdown in relations between the two communities? In this brave and groundbreaking book, Efraim Karsh tells the story from both the Arab and Jewish perspectives. He argues that from the early 1920s onward, a corrupt and extremist leadership worked toward eliminating the Jewish national revival and protecting its own interests. Karsh has mined many of the Western, Soviet, UN, and Israeli documents declassified over the past decade, as well as unfamiliar Arab sources, to reveal what happened behind the scenes on both Palestinian and Jewish sides. It is an arresting story of delicate political and diplomatic maneuvering by leading figures—Ben Gurion, Hajj Amin Husseini, Abdel Rahman Azzam, King Abdullah, Bevin, and Truman —over the years leading up to partition, through the slide to war and its enduring consequences. Palestine Betrayed is vital reading for understanding the origin of disputes that remain crucial today.
The 1947 UN resolution to partition Palestine irrevocably changed the political landscape of the Middle East, giving rise to six full-fledged wars between Arabs and Jews, countless armed clashes, blockades, and terrorism, as well as a profound shattering of Palestinian Arab society. Its origins, and that of the wider Arab-Israeli conflict, are deeply rooted in Jewish-Arab confrontation and appropriation in Palestine. But the isolated occasions of violence during the British Mandate era (1920–48) suggest that the majority of Palestinian Arabs yearned to live and thrive under peaceful coexistence with the evolving Jewish national enterprise. So what was the real cause of the breakdown in relations between the two communities? In this brave and groundbreaking book, Efraim Karsh tells the story from both the Arab and Jewish perspectives. He argues that from the early 1920s onward, a corrupt and extremist leadership worked toward eliminating the Jewish national revival and protecting its own interests. Karsh has mined many of the Western, Soviet, UN, and Israeli documents declassified over the past decade, as well as unfamiliar Arab sources, to reveal what happened behind the scenes on both Palestinian and Jewish sides. It is an arresting story of delicate political and diplomatic maneuvering by leading figures—Ben Gurion, Hajj Amin Husseini, Abdel Rahman Azzam, King Abdullah, Bevin, and Truman —over the years leading up to partition, through the slide to war and its enduring consequences. Palestine Betrayed is vital reading for understanding the origin of disputes that remain crucial today.
342 pages, Hardcover
First published March 30, 2010
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407 people want to read
About the author
Efraim Karsh
64 books30 followersEfraim Karsh is director of the Middle East Forum, editor of the Middle East Quarterly, and Professor of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at King's College London.
Born and raised in Israel, Mr. Karsh earned his undergraduate degree in Arabic language and literature and modern Middle Eastern history from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and his graduate and doctoral degrees in international relations from Tel Aviv University. After acquiring his first academic degree, he served for seven years as an intelligence officer in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), where he attained the rank of major.
Prior to coming to King's in 1989, Mr. Karsh held various academic posts at Columbia University, the Sorbonne, the London School of Economics, Helsinki University, the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in Washington D.C., and the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel-Aviv University. In 2003 he was the first Nahshon Visiting Professor in Israel Studies at Harvard.
Mr. Karsh has published extensively on the Middle East, strategic and military affairs, and European neutrality. He is the author of fifteen books, including Palestine Betrayed (Yale); Islamic Imperialism: A History (Yale); Empires of the Sand: the Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East 1798-1923 (Harvard); Fabricating Israeli History: The "New Historians" (Routledge); The Gulf Conflict 1990-1991 (Princeton); Saddam Hussein (Free Press); Arafat's War (Grove); and Neutrality and Small States (Routledge).
Mr. Karsh has appeared as a commentator on all the main British and American television networks and has contributed over 100 articles to leading newspapers and magazines, including Commentary, The Daily Telegraph, The International Herald Tribune, The London Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.
He has served on many academic and professional boards; has acted as referee for numerous scholarly journals, publishers, and grant awarding organizations; has consulted the British Ministry of Defence and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, as well as national and international economic companies/organizations; and has briefed several parliamentary committees. A recent CENTCOM directory of Centers of Excellence on the Middle East ranked Mr. Karsh as the fifth highly quoted academic among 20 top published authors on the Middle East, with his articles quoted three times as often as the best of the four non-American scholars on the list.
He is founding editor of the scholarly journal Israel Affairs, now in its sixteenth year, and founding general editor of a Routledge book series on Israeli History, Politics and Society.
(meforum.org)
Born and raised in Israel, Mr. Karsh earned his undergraduate degree in Arabic language and literature and modern Middle Eastern history from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and his graduate and doctoral degrees in international relations from Tel Aviv University. After acquiring his first academic degree, he served for seven years as an intelligence officer in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), where he attained the rank of major.
Prior to coming to King's in 1989, Mr. Karsh held various academic posts at Columbia University, the Sorbonne, the London School of Economics, Helsinki University, the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in Washington D.C., and the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel-Aviv University. In 2003 he was the first Nahshon Visiting Professor in Israel Studies at Harvard.
Mr. Karsh has published extensively on the Middle East, strategic and military affairs, and European neutrality. He is the author of fifteen books, including Palestine Betrayed (Yale); Islamic Imperialism: A History (Yale); Empires of the Sand: the Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East 1798-1923 (Harvard); Fabricating Israeli History: The "New Historians" (Routledge); The Gulf Conflict 1990-1991 (Princeton); Saddam Hussein (Free Press); Arafat's War (Grove); and Neutrality and Small States (Routledge).
Mr. Karsh has appeared as a commentator on all the main British and American television networks and has contributed over 100 articles to leading newspapers and magazines, including Commentary, The Daily Telegraph, The International Herald Tribune, The London Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.
He has served on many academic and professional boards; has acted as referee for numerous scholarly journals, publishers, and grant awarding organizations; has consulted the British Ministry of Defence and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, as well as national and international economic companies/organizations; and has briefed several parliamentary committees. A recent CENTCOM directory of Centers of Excellence on the Middle East ranked Mr. Karsh as the fifth highly quoted academic among 20 top published authors on the Middle East, with his articles quoted three times as often as the best of the four non-American scholars on the list.
He is founding editor of the scholarly journal Israel Affairs, now in its sixteenth year, and founding general editor of a Routledge book series on Israeli History, Politics and Society.
(meforum.org)
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
April 1, 2013
Howard Sachar, author of “A History of Israel”, calls Efraim Karsh’s book “A work of meticulous, even exhaustive scholarship. . . Indeed, any student of modern Israel will ignore at their peril its sheer cornucopia of factual revelations” (from the dust jacket of the hardback edition). There is one problem with what Howard Sachar says, and it is this: in the bibliography professor Karsh does not include references that question his conclusions. Professor Karsh’s purpose is to prove that the Israeli’s are the victims, and Palestine’s Arab population are the aggressors who wish to wipe “the Jews” from the land.
On page 1, he has this quote from David Ben-Gurion, seen as modern Israel’s founder: “We do not wish and do not need to expel Arabs and take their place. All our aspiration is built on the assumption . . . that there is enough room in the country for ourselves and the Arabs.” Yet he misses a quote from Mr. Ben-Gurion that says just the opposite: “With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement’ . . . I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see anything immoral in it” (source: Benny Morris: “Righteous Victims”, page 144). if Professor Karsh is a scholar, that should have sent him on an exhaustive search of that side of the story. That it didn’t is very telling, and the telling is not good.
Instead, on the final page of his book (page 257) just before his extensive bibliography, Professor Karsh makes this statement: “And so it goes on. More than six decades after the Mufti and his followers condemned their people to statelessness by rejecting the the UN partition resolution and waging a war of annihilation against their Jewish neighbors, their reckless decisions are still being re-enacted by the latest generation of Palestinian leaders,” ending his statement with this shocking declaration: “Only when Palestinian and Arab leaders change these dispositions and eschew their genocidal hopes will the refugees and their descendants be able to leave the squalid camps where they have been kept by their fellow Arabs for decades, and will the Palestinians be able to look forward to putting their self-inflicted ‘catastrophe‘ (Palestinians call it “the Nakba”) behind them.”
Is the book worth reading anyway? Definitely. His disrespect for Palestine’s Arabs is a crystal clear as is his pro-Israeli bias. Stern, dismissive of other points of view, and very much interested in convincing his readers that what he says is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, he sounds like an abusive husband who points to his wife and says that her suffering is all her doing. His “exhaustive scholarship”, being so one-sided, gives the truth of the matter away: all along it has been the Palestinians who have been defending themselves against an aggressor that has sought to obliterate them from their ancestral homeland. And this Professor Karsh does not want people to know.
Professor Karsh has an undergraduate degree in Arabic and Modern Middle East History from Hebrew University (Jerusalem), and an MA and PhD in International Relations from Tel Aviv University. He is currently Professor and Head of the Middle East and Mediterranean Studies Programme at King’s College in London.
On page 1, he has this quote from David Ben-Gurion, seen as modern Israel’s founder: “We do not wish and do not need to expel Arabs and take their place. All our aspiration is built on the assumption . . . that there is enough room in the country for ourselves and the Arabs.” Yet he misses a quote from Mr. Ben-Gurion that says just the opposite: “With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement’ . . . I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see anything immoral in it” (source: Benny Morris: “Righteous Victims”, page 144). if Professor Karsh is a scholar, that should have sent him on an exhaustive search of that side of the story. That it didn’t is very telling, and the telling is not good.
Instead, on the final page of his book (page 257) just before his extensive bibliography, Professor Karsh makes this statement: “And so it goes on. More than six decades after the Mufti and his followers condemned their people to statelessness by rejecting the the UN partition resolution and waging a war of annihilation against their Jewish neighbors, their reckless decisions are still being re-enacted by the latest generation of Palestinian leaders,” ending his statement with this shocking declaration: “Only when Palestinian and Arab leaders change these dispositions and eschew their genocidal hopes will the refugees and their descendants be able to leave the squalid camps where they have been kept by their fellow Arabs for decades, and will the Palestinians be able to look forward to putting their self-inflicted ‘catastrophe‘ (Palestinians call it “the Nakba”) behind them.”
Is the book worth reading anyway? Definitely. His disrespect for Palestine’s Arabs is a crystal clear as is his pro-Israeli bias. Stern, dismissive of other points of view, and very much interested in convincing his readers that what he says is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, he sounds like an abusive husband who points to his wife and says that her suffering is all her doing. His “exhaustive scholarship”, being so one-sided, gives the truth of the matter away: all along it has been the Palestinians who have been defending themselves against an aggressor that has sought to obliterate them from their ancestral homeland. And this Professor Karsh does not want people to know.
Professor Karsh has an undergraduate degree in Arabic and Modern Middle East History from Hebrew University (Jerusalem), and an MA and PhD in International Relations from Tel Aviv University. He is currently Professor and Head of the Middle East and Mediterranean Studies Programme at King’s College in London.
July 11, 2012
An incredible piece of primitive anti-Arab propaganda posing as a historical book
February 14, 2011
Good, well-researched history of the pivotal period in which Palestine was depopulated of Palestinians. Karsh lays out extensive evidence that the narrative blaming the Jews for forcing out the resident Arabs is false and simplistic, and that Zionist leaders tried not only to persuade Palestinians to stay (for the most part; there are some post-battles in 1947-48 where the Israeli forces agreed that certain villages should be emptied out) but expressed willingness over and over for a two-state solution. But both sides had their non-negotiables: Israel insisted on existing, the Arab world insisted on it not. Sounds like today.
The author elides over atrocities, though. He mentions Deir Yassin and offers no excuses for the killing of Arab civilians by Jewish forces, but he protests that it was only the Irgun and other "irregulars" who were guilty. Yet he does very, very little to untangle the likes of the Irgun and the Stern Gang from the blameless Haganah. Or did Menachem Begin settle for a quiet retirement in the 1950s? For that matter, language: "gang" is used only for Arab irregulars, never for Jewish ones. Karsh throws in the occasional car bombing of Arab police stations or civilian locations without grappling with its emotional impact. He also needed to slug it out with some of the modern Israeli revisionists.
Overall, a workmanlike book that, if read, would force the reader to go beyond glib narratives of twentieth-century Palestine. In that sense, it feels like Holocaust history -- certain facts are undeniable, and yet the world denies them. Israel was not set on genocide or ethnic cleansing. The Arab world could have had peace on better terms than it ultimately achieved. Arab nations surrounding Palestine cared little for its occupants, and quite a lot about its territory and their own ambitions. The British were indifferent and short-sighted. And, ultimately, military strength will create its own facts -- and nations.
The author elides over atrocities, though. He mentions Deir Yassin and offers no excuses for the killing of Arab civilians by Jewish forces, but he protests that it was only the Irgun and other "irregulars" who were guilty. Yet he does very, very little to untangle the likes of the Irgun and the Stern Gang from the blameless Haganah. Or did Menachem Begin settle for a quiet retirement in the 1950s? For that matter, language: "gang" is used only for Arab irregulars, never for Jewish ones. Karsh throws in the occasional car bombing of Arab police stations or civilian locations without grappling with its emotional impact. He also needed to slug it out with some of the modern Israeli revisionists.
Overall, a workmanlike book that, if read, would force the reader to go beyond glib narratives of twentieth-century Palestine. In that sense, it feels like Holocaust history -- certain facts are undeniable, and yet the world denies them. Israel was not set on genocide or ethnic cleansing. The Arab world could have had peace on better terms than it ultimately achieved. Arab nations surrounding Palestine cared little for its occupants, and quite a lot about its territory and their own ambitions. The British were indifferent and short-sighted. And, ultimately, military strength will create its own facts -- and nations.
February 8, 2016
The entire time I spent reading this book I kept asking myself one question, "So what's the author not telling us?". Because of this I've taken the book with a very slight pinch of salt. However, as practically all of the one star reviews appear to utterly ignore (naturally a book portraying a positive narrative of Israel is going to get slated), there is an impressively comprehensive index of government reports, statistics, interviews, news paper articles, and television broadcasts to support the vast majority of Eifraim's narrative. All of which paint some pretty ugly pictures of Arab leadership (or lack thereof) and raise some pretty damning questions.
I now have a plethora of notes to go back an re-read, as well as diving further into the extensive references used throughout the book, but I have to admit that I enjoyed reading it, so four stars it is! I can't go and give it five because that would really show just how biased I am, wouldn't it?
I now have a plethora of notes to go back an re-read, as well as diving further into the extensive references used throughout the book, but I have to admit that I enjoyed reading it, so four stars it is! I can't go and give it five because that would really show just how biased I am, wouldn't it?
December 18, 2011
Not an easy read, but worth the trouble. This book is thoroughly researched and annotated.
Read
August 5, 2015Remarkable effort; extremely misleading analysis and conclusions.
The ideological, highly-politicized, and selective approach made this well-written study a grave insult to history, historical facts and to academia.
The ideological, highly-politicized, and selective approach made this well-written study a grave insult to history, historical facts and to academia.
March 14, 2016
A good study of the arab inflicted nakhba of the Palestinian Arabs. A must read.
August 17, 2018
Tragedy, Victory + Time
Other than in Barry Rubin's The Arab States And The Palestine Conflict I don't think I've read a better resource for understanding the transitional and conflicting allegiances within the Arab community of the Palestine Mandate in 1947/48. Karsh takes on a district by district tour that I found enlightening every step of the way.
On the Arab side Karsh selects a number organizational actors, not any one of which was primary representative of the population as a whole. In no particular order:
The Arab Higher Committee (AHC), formed in 1946 as a political instrument of the Grand Mufti Hajj Amin Al-Husseini, who's previous organization had received funding from the Nazis during WWII. Husseini, indicted as a war criminal in Yugoslavia, does not enter British held Palestine, but directs his efforts remotely from Cairo and through extended family (ie: Jamal Husseini). At best he has the allegiances of 25% of the urban Arab population (my estimate), but his leadership collapsed as events progress. In major urban centers the AHC formed National Committees (NCs) to co-ordinate local military activity, shore up morale and represent civilian interests.
Aside from the Mufti the religious leadership seemed to be more or less ambivalent. Arabs with money and close relatives outside the conflict zone left early and urged others to follow, hoping to return once the various Arab armies had.
Of the local Arab element there was an equally large base that favored Jordanian monarch King Abdullah, who was interested in ruling a Greater Syria, having previously proposed to encorporate the Jewish Yishuv as an autonomous internal republic to serve as his primary economic engine. (pp202-204) This group included a large contingent of educated and modernized Arab "notables" such as Mayor Yusuf Heikal and lawyer Muhammad Hawari, founder of the Najada militia/police which stressed co-existence and in 1947 had patrolled streets preventing attacks on Jews. This group tended to ignore the Arab League's call boycott of Jewish businesses.
Representing the Egyptians and the Arab League, Abdel Rahman Azzam Pasha (pp191) lamented that the Mufti "had learned very little" during his years of exile and that his extremism was "at least, if not more, harmful to the Arabs as to the Jews". but he "had captured the imagination of the Arab Masses and the League could not, therefore drop him But when the UN asked for a truce in March 1948, it was Azzam who essentially demanded a Jewish surrender, saying that he would only acquiesce if this included a cessation of Jewish immigration, the disbanding of the Haganah, the annulment of Partition and the establishment of a Palestinian Arab State, to which the AHC added the expulsion of all "terrorist Jews" and the repatriation (expulsion) of all Jews "smuggled into Palestine".
In contrast to Azzam, Ismail Sidqui who had been Egyptian Prime Minister a year earlier noted that the Egyptian army was unready for war. This didn't stop Egypt from launching its aerial attack against the Tel Aviv Central Bus station the day after Israel announced it's independence.
The presence Iraqi soldiers under the command of Iraqi General Ismail Safwat, head of the polynational Arab Liberation Army (ALA) is interesting. re, in the Galilee and in the West Bank. In Feb '48 Jaffa's Iraqi command said "I do not mind destruction of Jaff if we secure destruction of Tel Aviv.", and ALA troops used Arab Jaffa as a base to pummel nearby Tel Aviv, Holon and Bat Yam. In Jaffa as discipline broke down they were responsible for puncturing the car tires of every Jaffa dignitary (to prevent them from fleeing? - April 1948, pp155) and went on a looting spree.
As to the general Arab population the mood swung not so much out of conviction but out of opportunism. Individual truces were signed and honoured with the various Arab villages and side by side Jewish communities but were broken when Arab forces approached and seemed to have the ascendancy. One notable example (pp213-219) Tel Aviv Karsh discusses is the famous "gesture" by Ben Gurion to Yigal Allon and Yitzchak Rabin that signaled the only significant forced expulsion of urban Arabs during the war. The Etzel (IDF) forces had achieved the surrender of Lydda (Lod) and Ramle in a brutal battle to secure the road between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, however as Arab Legion forces approached they reneged on the agreement and started fighting again. From the POV of the Yishuv it was essential to clear the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem corridor of enemy forces as the 100,000 Jews of Jerusalem were close to starvation and surrender. A second example (Ch 8) would be between Jewish and Arab communities in the environs of Jerusalem.
There are also the British, officially neutral but in action biased towards the Arabs, blockading the Yishuv until the end of the Mandate and supplying the Arabs directly and indirectly on the outside. The most successful actions against the nascent Jewish State came from the Jordanian Legion, commanded by British officer John Glubb Pasha.
And so it goes...
On the downside Karsh does not offer the same level of detail to the relationships within the Jewish leadership. Some readers may be disappointed that the degree of focus on the Irgun and even tinier Lehi is proportional to the size of the mainstream Haganah which was 20x larger. IMHO their significance is often overdone.
It's a well researched and well written book making good use of British, Arab and Israeli archives. The footnotes at the back were a great enhancement the narrative of the text. There are three additional appendices - a well organized "Dramatis Personae" organized by nationality, a table of abbreviations used and list of Arab villages along with estimates of when and ranges of how many fled during the war leading up to an estimate of 583-609,000 Palestinian refugees.
The book delivers all sorts of fascinating details and linkages, much more than I've touched on here. Highly recommended for both personal and library purchases and well suited for those interested in the key events of the 1948 War of Independence.
Other than in Barry Rubin's The Arab States And The Palestine Conflict I don't think I've read a better resource for understanding the transitional and conflicting allegiances within the Arab community of the Palestine Mandate in 1947/48. Karsh takes on a district by district tour that I found enlightening every step of the way.
On the Arab side Karsh selects a number organizational actors, not any one of which was primary representative of the population as a whole. In no particular order:
The Arab Higher Committee (AHC), formed in 1946 as a political instrument of the Grand Mufti Hajj Amin Al-Husseini, who's previous organization had received funding from the Nazis during WWII. Husseini, indicted as a war criminal in Yugoslavia, does not enter British held Palestine, but directs his efforts remotely from Cairo and through extended family (ie: Jamal Husseini). At best he has the allegiances of 25% of the urban Arab population (my estimate), but his leadership collapsed as events progress. In major urban centers the AHC formed National Committees (NCs) to co-ordinate local military activity, shore up morale and represent civilian interests.
Aside from the Mufti the religious leadership seemed to be more or less ambivalent. Arabs with money and close relatives outside the conflict zone left early and urged others to follow, hoping to return once the various Arab armies had.
Of the local Arab element there was an equally large base that favored Jordanian monarch King Abdullah, who was interested in ruling a Greater Syria, having previously proposed to encorporate the Jewish Yishuv as an autonomous internal republic to serve as his primary economic engine. (pp202-204) This group included a large contingent of educated and modernized Arab "notables" such as Mayor Yusuf Heikal and lawyer Muhammad Hawari, founder of the Najada militia/police which stressed co-existence and in 1947 had patrolled streets preventing attacks on Jews. This group tended to ignore the Arab League's call boycott of Jewish businesses.
Representing the Egyptians and the Arab League, Abdel Rahman Azzam Pasha (pp191) lamented that the Mufti "had learned very little" during his years of exile and that his extremism was "at least, if not more, harmful to the Arabs as to the Jews". but he "had captured the imagination of the Arab Masses and the League could not, therefore drop him But when the UN asked for a truce in March 1948, it was Azzam who essentially demanded a Jewish surrender, saying that he would only acquiesce if this included a cessation of Jewish immigration, the disbanding of the Haganah, the annulment of Partition and the establishment of a Palestinian Arab State, to which the AHC added the expulsion of all "terrorist Jews" and the repatriation (expulsion) of all Jews "smuggled into Palestine".
In contrast to Azzam, Ismail Sidqui who had been Egyptian Prime Minister a year earlier noted that the Egyptian army was unready for war. This didn't stop Egypt from launching its aerial attack against the Tel Aviv Central Bus station the day after Israel announced it's independence.
The presence Iraqi soldiers under the command of Iraqi General Ismail Safwat, head of the polynational Arab Liberation Army (ALA) is interesting. re, in the Galilee and in the West Bank. In Feb '48 Jaffa's Iraqi command said "I do not mind destruction of Jaff if we secure destruction of Tel Aviv.", and ALA troops used Arab Jaffa as a base to pummel nearby Tel Aviv, Holon and Bat Yam. In Jaffa as discipline broke down they were responsible for puncturing the car tires of every Jaffa dignitary (to prevent them from fleeing? - April 1948, pp155) and went on a looting spree.
As to the general Arab population the mood swung not so much out of conviction but out of opportunism. Individual truces were signed and honoured with the various Arab villages and side by side Jewish communities but were broken when Arab forces approached and seemed to have the ascendancy. One notable example (pp213-219) Tel Aviv Karsh discusses is the famous "gesture" by Ben Gurion to Yigal Allon and Yitzchak Rabin that signaled the only significant forced expulsion of urban Arabs during the war. The Etzel (IDF) forces had achieved the surrender of Lydda (Lod) and Ramle in a brutal battle to secure the road between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, however as Arab Legion forces approached they reneged on the agreement and started fighting again. From the POV of the Yishuv it was essential to clear the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem corridor of enemy forces as the 100,000 Jews of Jerusalem were close to starvation and surrender. A second example (Ch 8) would be between Jewish and Arab communities in the environs of Jerusalem.
There are also the British, officially neutral but in action biased towards the Arabs, blockading the Yishuv until the end of the Mandate and supplying the Arabs directly and indirectly on the outside. The most successful actions against the nascent Jewish State came from the Jordanian Legion, commanded by British officer John Glubb Pasha.
And so it goes...
On the downside Karsh does not offer the same level of detail to the relationships within the Jewish leadership. Some readers may be disappointed that the degree of focus on the Irgun and even tinier Lehi is proportional to the size of the mainstream Haganah which was 20x larger. IMHO their significance is often overdone.
It's a well researched and well written book making good use of British, Arab and Israeli archives. The footnotes at the back were a great enhancement the narrative of the text. There are three additional appendices - a well organized "Dramatis Personae" organized by nationality, a table of abbreviations used and list of Arab villages along with estimates of when and ranges of how many fled during the war leading up to an estimate of 583-609,000 Palestinian refugees.
The book delivers all sorts of fascinating details and linkages, much more than I've touched on here. Highly recommended for both personal and library purchases and well suited for those interested in the key events of the 1948 War of Independence.
January 31, 2016
Explosive. Most certainly one of the best works of historical research that I have ever read. Continuing to move against the current, Karsh annihilates every thread of the tapestry of lies peddled by the anti-Israel contingent. One can easily be taken away by the narrative and transported into the world of this titanic conflict. It should not be forgotten that there is another side to the story, but the scholarship presented in this book puts the Arab sympathizers on very shaky ground.
October 11, 2010
Although certainly a book written with some bias. However, the overall theme of the book - that Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq and other Arab states cared nothing about the inhabitants of Palestine and were merely jockying for position at the expiration of the Mandate - is clearly presented. The Zionists come off perhaphs a little too clean and today's Palestinian leadership a little too dirty but it is nevertheless a worthwhile read for anyone studying teh origins of the conflict.
November 14, 2020
I knew the events rather well but wanted to read a coherent version in a book form. The book is apparently well researched and written without much water. Still, not enjoyed at all considering the theme. Overall, the reading solidified my convictions that Palestinians should be more accurately called Husseini's Children, considering how much they still follow his teachings and intents.
February 26, 2015
هذا الكتاب يوضح أنك تستطيع قلب الأحداث وجعل الضحية مجرم فقط بإخفاء نصف التاريخ وليس تزويره،
November 6, 2025
“They should be put on trial for the charge of political stupidity!”
Here’s a story little known to Western readers.
It was 1971, and Egypt had just fallen under the new leadership of Anwar Sadat, who succeeded Jamal Abdel Nasser after his death the previous year. Many in the Nasserist old guard saw Sadat as a weak placeholder they could control, and some plotted to bring him down. A group of ministers, anxious about their future began holding spirit-summoning sessions hoping for supernatural guidance (yes, you read that right). In the last of these séances, the medium urged them to resign together, convinced this would topple Sadat. Instead, their resignations were swiftly accepted. Unbeknownst to them, their meetings had been recorded, the transcripts leaked to the press, and the medium himself was secretly working under instructions when he told them to quit. Their humiliation was complete. Watching the spectacle unfold, Sadat delivered his cold, unforgettable verdict: “They should be put on trial for the charge of political stupidity.”
Now, although the book has nothing to do with Sadat, Abdel Nasser, or 1970s Egypt for that matter, it’s still useful to draw on this story to illustrate a recurring theme that runs through its pages: that of stupidity and the judgment reserved for those guilty of it.
The author of this book is concerned with the origins of the Nakba, the catastrophe that followed the 1948 first Arab-Israeli war, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced. This event marked the failure of the 1947 UN Partition Plan to establish an Arab state alongside the newly created Jewish one, a failure whose consequences are still visible today.
The author clears up the misconceptions surrounding this event. His main thesis, which seems to hold, is that the catastrophe was self-inflicted, the result of decisions made by Palestinian leaders such as Haj Amin Husseini, along with other Arab rulers. Driven by a mix of inter-Arab rivalry, self-serving political calculations, abstract notions of pan-Arabism, and chauvinist attitudes, they made a series of choices that ultimately deprived the Arab population of the Mandate for Palestine of a state of their own.
Being from the MENA region myself, I cannot help but feel both lament and sorrow that the same attitudes which caused this tragedy are still unfolding today and keeping it alive. The same duplicity and empty rhetoric from Arab leaders, the same dead-end decisions from Palestinian representatives, all continue to this day. There is a clear, unbroken line connecting what is happening now to the origins of it all: that is, the period the author examines from World War I through the 1948 –1949 war.
Of course, under the tyranny of brevity, it’s impossible to cover everything, since the author delves deeply into the background, context, and the intricate machinations behind these events. I’ll therefore confine myself to two main causes of the issue, enough to illustrate my point:
the FIRST, it's about the obsession with the ideal and the pursuit of the abstract. At the local level: within Arab Palestine, the leadership under the Mufti (who, as is well known, collaborated with Hitler)was fixated on maximalist demands. They insisted on turning the entirety of Palestine into an Arab Muslim state, where Jews, like other minorities, would be tolerated yet subordinate, in a dhimmi structure. This rigid stance built on a romanticized idyllic Islamic past made them reject several opportunities that could have led to the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state.
At the broader Arab level, the Palestine question was seen as a corollary of the pan-Arab ideal rather than a distinct issue in its own right. Palestine was not viewed as a national entity with its own identity, but as part of a larger Arab whole. The emphasis was on the Arab aspect above all else. In this view, Palestine was simply another province in the vast empires they sought to establish.
Had the Palestinian leadership accepted the 1937 Peel Commission plan (which the Jews, though granted only about twenty percent of the land, accepted) they would have had a state. Had they accepted the 1939 White Paper, which severely limited Jewish immigration and promised an independent Palestine within ten years under an Arab majority, they would have had a state. Had the Arab countries pressured the Palestinian leadership to accept any of the later proposals the Jews offered (often at great cost to their own national aspirations) before the UN partition resolution or even during and after the 1948 war, they would have had a state. If they had agreed to extend the first truce of the war and accepted the borders as they stood, they would have had a state. The same applies to the second truce’s proposals, the post-1949 negotiations, and every offer made after the Six-Day and Yom Kippur wars....they would have had a state.
Which brings me to my SECOND point: the Arab leaders, under the pretense of advancing the Palestinian cause, hijacked it and used it to pursue their own interests and ambitions. It was widely known at the time that the pan-Arab invasion was more of a scramble for Palestine than an effort to secure Palestinian national rights. Had the Arab states succeeded in defeating the Jews and destroying the nascent state, its territory would not have been handed over to the Palestinians but divided among the invaders. No sooner had the Arab armies attacked Israel than King Abdullah of Jordan began erasing all traces of a distinct Palestinian Arab identity in the territories his army occupied (that is, the west bank and east Jerusalem), a process that culminated in their formal annexation in April 1950. Egypt, while stopping short of annexing Gaza, did not support Palestinian nationalism either. The local population was kept under military rule, denied citizenship, and subjected to severe restrictions on movement.
The invasion of the five Arab armies stemmed as much from mutual distrust as from any real commitment to the Palestinian cause. King Abdullah of Jordan dreamed of a greater kingdom for himself that would include Palestine, a prospect that alarmed Egypt, which in turn sought to secure the area around Gaza, the Negev and a slice of the Mediterranean coast. The Syrians, wary of Jordan’s ambitions, aimed to claim the Eastern Galilee, and the Lebanese wanted a share as well. In the end, each joined the war not out of unity, but out of fear of being left without a piece of the spoils.
Despite all their machinations, the hollow slogans of Arab unity, and the grand declarations of a holy struggle, the Jews emerged with a state, the Palestinians with ruin, and the Arab leaders with nothing but their empty speeches. All that remains of their lofty rhetoric is the echo of failure...a material fit for ridicule in hindsight.
As Abdullah al Qasemi, one of the Arab world’s sharpest critics, put it, “Arabs are a vocal phenomenon.” Generations have passed and the pattern still persists. The same skeletal, ossified rhetoric keeps replaying itself, serving nothing but to indulge in the fanciful daydreams of an eleventh hour victory. That dynamic shows up everywhere. Hezbollah presents itself as a shield for Lebanon and the Palestinian cause while effectively holding the state hostage and promoting illusions that cost its supporters dearly. In Egypt, cheering Houthi attacks on shipping routes around Bab al Mandeb produces a strange self-harm: those attacks push ships to avoid the Suez and shrink Egyptian revenues, yet the applause continues because it feels like virtue. The pattern is the same in other places. The Palestinian cause is used either as an opioid for the masses or as a cover for autocrats to protect their own ambition and mask their incompetence.
Call it Gaza, call it Palestine, call it the West Bank. Whatever the label, the function remains the same. The cause becomes a screen behind which political actors hide their failures, and the polity learns to accept empty rhetoric instead of demanding competence. Ultimately this is not merely tragic. It is political stupidity dressed up as principle, and it deserves contempt rather than applause.
A great read, detailed and enlightening. Though it's one best taken slowly.
Rating: 3.5/5
Here’s a story little known to Western readers.
It was 1971, and Egypt had just fallen under the new leadership of Anwar Sadat, who succeeded Jamal Abdel Nasser after his death the previous year. Many in the Nasserist old guard saw Sadat as a weak placeholder they could control, and some plotted to bring him down. A group of ministers, anxious about their future began holding spirit-summoning sessions hoping for supernatural guidance (yes, you read that right). In the last of these séances, the medium urged them to resign together, convinced this would topple Sadat. Instead, their resignations were swiftly accepted. Unbeknownst to them, their meetings had been recorded, the transcripts leaked to the press, and the medium himself was secretly working under instructions when he told them to quit. Their humiliation was complete. Watching the spectacle unfold, Sadat delivered his cold, unforgettable verdict: “They should be put on trial for the charge of political stupidity.”
Now, although the book has nothing to do with Sadat, Abdel Nasser, or 1970s Egypt for that matter, it’s still useful to draw on this story to illustrate a recurring theme that runs through its pages: that of stupidity and the judgment reserved for those guilty of it.
The author of this book is concerned with the origins of the Nakba, the catastrophe that followed the 1948 first Arab-Israeli war, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced. This event marked the failure of the 1947 UN Partition Plan to establish an Arab state alongside the newly created Jewish one, a failure whose consequences are still visible today.
The author clears up the misconceptions surrounding this event. His main thesis, which seems to hold, is that the catastrophe was self-inflicted, the result of decisions made by Palestinian leaders such as Haj Amin Husseini, along with other Arab rulers. Driven by a mix of inter-Arab rivalry, self-serving political calculations, abstract notions of pan-Arabism, and chauvinist attitudes, they made a series of choices that ultimately deprived the Arab population of the Mandate for Palestine of a state of their own.
Being from the MENA region myself, I cannot help but feel both lament and sorrow that the same attitudes which caused this tragedy are still unfolding today and keeping it alive. The same duplicity and empty rhetoric from Arab leaders, the same dead-end decisions from Palestinian representatives, all continue to this day. There is a clear, unbroken line connecting what is happening now to the origins of it all: that is, the period the author examines from World War I through the 1948 –1949 war.
Of course, under the tyranny of brevity, it’s impossible to cover everything, since the author delves deeply into the background, context, and the intricate machinations behind these events. I’ll therefore confine myself to two main causes of the issue, enough to illustrate my point:
the FIRST, it's about the obsession with the ideal and the pursuit of the abstract. At the local level: within Arab Palestine, the leadership under the Mufti (who, as is well known, collaborated with Hitler)was fixated on maximalist demands. They insisted on turning the entirety of Palestine into an Arab Muslim state, where Jews, like other minorities, would be tolerated yet subordinate, in a dhimmi structure. This rigid stance built on a romanticized idyllic Islamic past made them reject several opportunities that could have led to the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state.
At the broader Arab level, the Palestine question was seen as a corollary of the pan-Arab ideal rather than a distinct issue in its own right. Palestine was not viewed as a national entity with its own identity, but as part of a larger Arab whole. The emphasis was on the Arab aspect above all else. In this view, Palestine was simply another province in the vast empires they sought to establish.
Had the Palestinian leadership accepted the 1937 Peel Commission plan (which the Jews, though granted only about twenty percent of the land, accepted) they would have had a state. Had they accepted the 1939 White Paper, which severely limited Jewish immigration and promised an independent Palestine within ten years under an Arab majority, they would have had a state. Had the Arab countries pressured the Palestinian leadership to accept any of the later proposals the Jews offered (often at great cost to their own national aspirations) before the UN partition resolution or even during and after the 1948 war, they would have had a state. If they had agreed to extend the first truce of the war and accepted the borders as they stood, they would have had a state. The same applies to the second truce’s proposals, the post-1949 negotiations, and every offer made after the Six-Day and Yom Kippur wars....they would have had a state.
Which brings me to my SECOND point: the Arab leaders, under the pretense of advancing the Palestinian cause, hijacked it and used it to pursue their own interests and ambitions. It was widely known at the time that the pan-Arab invasion was more of a scramble for Palestine than an effort to secure Palestinian national rights. Had the Arab states succeeded in defeating the Jews and destroying the nascent state, its territory would not have been handed over to the Palestinians but divided among the invaders. No sooner had the Arab armies attacked Israel than King Abdullah of Jordan began erasing all traces of a distinct Palestinian Arab identity in the territories his army occupied (that is, the west bank and east Jerusalem), a process that culminated in their formal annexation in April 1950. Egypt, while stopping short of annexing Gaza, did not support Palestinian nationalism either. The local population was kept under military rule, denied citizenship, and subjected to severe restrictions on movement.
The invasion of the five Arab armies stemmed as much from mutual distrust as from any real commitment to the Palestinian cause. King Abdullah of Jordan dreamed of a greater kingdom for himself that would include Palestine, a prospect that alarmed Egypt, which in turn sought to secure the area around Gaza, the Negev and a slice of the Mediterranean coast. The Syrians, wary of Jordan’s ambitions, aimed to claim the Eastern Galilee, and the Lebanese wanted a share as well. In the end, each joined the war not out of unity, but out of fear of being left without a piece of the spoils.
Despite all their machinations, the hollow slogans of Arab unity, and the grand declarations of a holy struggle, the Jews emerged with a state, the Palestinians with ruin, and the Arab leaders with nothing but their empty speeches. All that remains of their lofty rhetoric is the echo of failure...a material fit for ridicule in hindsight.
As Abdullah al Qasemi, one of the Arab world’s sharpest critics, put it, “Arabs are a vocal phenomenon.” Generations have passed and the pattern still persists. The same skeletal, ossified rhetoric keeps replaying itself, serving nothing but to indulge in the fanciful daydreams of an eleventh hour victory. That dynamic shows up everywhere. Hezbollah presents itself as a shield for Lebanon and the Palestinian cause while effectively holding the state hostage and promoting illusions that cost its supporters dearly. In Egypt, cheering Houthi attacks on shipping routes around Bab al Mandeb produces a strange self-harm: those attacks push ships to avoid the Suez and shrink Egyptian revenues, yet the applause continues because it feels like virtue. The pattern is the same in other places. The Palestinian cause is used either as an opioid for the masses or as a cover for autocrats to protect their own ambition and mask their incompetence.
Call it Gaza, call it Palestine, call it the West Bank. Whatever the label, the function remains the same. The cause becomes a screen behind which political actors hide their failures, and the polity learns to accept empty rhetoric instead of demanding competence. Ultimately this is not merely tragic. It is political stupidity dressed up as principle, and it deserves contempt rather than applause.
A great read, detailed and enlightening. Though it's one best taken slowly.
Rating: 3.5/5
September 14, 2019
The concluding sentence of Professor Efraim Kash, head of the Middle East and Mediterranean Studies Programme, King's College London is a better summary than I could possible hope to offer, "Only when Palestinian and Arab leaders change these dispositions and eschew their genocidal hopes will the refugees and their descendants be able to leave the squalid camps where they have been kept by their fellow Arabs for decades, and the Palestinians will be able to look forward to putting their self inflicted "catastrophe" behind them. This book is a must read for every person who wants to understand the origin of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Professor Kash traces demonstrates how starting with the Mufti of Jerusalem who was put in office by the British to continue his brothers' legacy of cooperation with the Jews of Palestine turned into the start and perpetuation of a conflict that continues to this very day. He shows with painstaking references that except for a few tactical engagements, that the Israelis did force most Arabs from their lands, in fact it was the surrounding Arab nations who encouraged the abandonment of their lands. Much documentation was offered to show how the Jews of the Yishuv made a concerted effort to encourage the Arabs to stay and be a part of the State of Israel. Equally he demonstrates that the actors of the surrounding nations were no benevolently coming to the Palestinians aid, but acting in their own self interest to expand their fledgling states and expand their bid to build the biggest state in the Middle East. He demonstrates time and again these state actors had no love nor concern about Palestinian Arabs pointing out that in 1950 King Abdul Hussein annexed the area today known as the West Bank to become Jordan. He was not interested in forging a Palestinian state. Thinking about it, perhaps there was only one other Englishman who could have made a more elegant summary of the book. Had The Bard written this book, perhaps he would have ended it with, "The fault, dear Palestinians, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves."
July 28, 2017
An excellent book that belies the false claims of expulsion of the Palestinians. Rather, it shows how they were encouraged to leave by their own leadership, either directly or indirectly.
The book does cover the few cases of Palestinian expulsions, but mostly the efforts by the Jewish community to get its Arab citizens to stay.
The expulsion of the Jews, a fact ignored by many, is also covered.
The book does cover the few cases of Palestinian expulsions, but mostly the efforts by the Jewish community to get its Arab citizens to stay.
The expulsion of the Jews, a fact ignored by many, is also covered.
January 31, 2016
Impeccably researched and extremely factual. These facts are just displayed with an extreme bias.
Starts off good but focuses on minute details too much to be keep you interested for long.
Starts off good but focuses on minute details too much to be keep you interested for long.
October 1, 2024
Karsh articulates his belief that the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight was "exclusively of their own making". Pure negationism.Dispicable.
May 24, 2025
A review of this book THAT IS ON THE YALE PRESS WEBSITE (tells you everything you need to know about it):
“[A] tour de force. . . . With his customary in-depth archival research . . . clear presentation, and meticulous historical sensibility, Karsh argues . . . that Palestinians decided their own destiny and bear near-total responsibility for becoming refugees.”—Daniel Pipes, National Review
I would never read this. I vomited in my mouth just reading the review. Blegh
Yes, let's listen to this Israeli born "historian" who is totally unbiased and it's not a propagandist. It's Look What You Made Me Do in a "non fiction" book form. I mean par for the course as far as the importance of academia in Israel is concerned. I didn't expect anything less. This book was published 14 YEARS AGO btw
“[A] tour de force. . . . With his customary in-depth archival research . . . clear presentation, and meticulous historical sensibility, Karsh argues . . . that Palestinians decided their own destiny and bear near-total responsibility for becoming refugees.”—Daniel Pipes, National Review
I would never read this. I vomited in my mouth just reading the review. Blegh
Yes, let's listen to this Israeli born "historian" who is totally unbiased and it's not a propagandist. It's Look What You Made Me Do in a "non fiction" book form. I mean par for the course as far as the importance of academia in Israel is concerned. I didn't expect anything less. This book was published 14 YEARS AGO btw
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